Honest ones will tell you it can be a pretty annoying device.
A friend told me about doing some internet banking on one the other day... halfway through a transaction set up he needed to use a calculator... but opening the calculator app would terminate the internet banking app and he had to re-login and select the accounts, and start the transaction every time he switched between them. For a web banking app its appropriate that it discard its session when you suspend it for obvious reasons...but it was effectively impossible to do any calculations at the same time as a result.
What he really wanted was the two apps in their own window, so he could go back and forth, and have both on the screen at the same time - you know so he could see the source for the numbers rather than remembering them in his head.
Ended up having to get a separate calculator.
He also thought it was stupid that he couldn't easily use it to view other peoples pictures. (e.g. they'd visit, and have a CD/DVD or memory card of vacation or baby pictures, and there was no efficient way of viewing it on the ipad. Importing the photos to iphoto and then syncing them to the ipad was simply idiotic. It was too much work, and he didn't want to import the pictures into his computer.
There is no law saying exactly that. But there were certain mandates set forth in the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, with amendments throughout the decades, that gave rise to what we have today. There's quite a bit of blame to spread around, but it all starts back in 1977.
Firstly, the majority of the problematic loans were made by organizations who were not subject CRA rules. So why exactly is CRA responsible for "making them issue bad loans" when the vast majority of bad loans were made by companies who were exempt from the supposed CRA rules that "mandated" it.
Secondly, commercial real-estate loans are also in bad shape, and full of the same problems. Commercial real-estate is also completely outside the scope of CRA rules. So why were bad loans being made on commercial real estate when there were no rules "mandating" it.
Thirdly, the CRA didn't "mandate" bad loans. Period. And any reading of it that says it did is intellectually dishonest.
I've been telling people that Cameron got Avatar "right" in terms of 3D exactly for this reason.
Yeah. Its a great tech demo. (As long as you learn to look where the director wants you to look. Try and look at those out of focus flowers projected to look like you can touch them with your fingertips though and you get a headache.)
Its also too bad Cameron got Avatar so "wrong" in terms of actually being a good movie.
Google controls 70% of the online ad market. That, by itself puts it in its own category. Everyone else from Microsoft and Yahoo on down fights over 30%. Google also has 66% of the search market.
The difference between living under surveillance and not is one of degree. Getting caught on some guys camera on the way to work is not surveillance. Having that guy setup 100,000 camera's in the city and watch me as I move around is.
The other advertising companies may be -striving- for surveillance -- but even if yahoo, aol, and msn split the 30% without any other players they only have 10% of the market. I'm fine with the reach of a company being around 10%.
Try downloading a free app on your iphone. They force an itms EULA on you there too. And yes its over 100 "pages" there. 100+ pages of eula to obtain a free app is stupid.
I like Google AdWords. Well, perhaps it's better to say that I don't dislike them. They are unobtrusive, easy on my battery/processor temp, and occasionally useful. I see no reason to block them.
The ads themselves don't bother me. The fact that virtually every website I visit reports to google that I went there does. Sometimes it feels like I might as well be browsing through a google proxy, and just feeding them every url I visit as I go there. This is what they want. And adwords is ubiquitous enough that it almost gives it to them. Add in gmail, youtube, and the other g-services, and google analytics on the backend on a lot of sites that don't have ads and... they are closer than you think.
I find that offensive. I don't want to be stalked and everything I do recorded by google. And googles reply is essentially... "we're not singling you out" doesn't imrprove my view of it. Just because they are using the technology to stalk everyone at once doesn't change anything... if anything it just makes it worse.
I wonder what percentage of administrators, professors and students at other universities also speak of grade inflation.
A large percentage.
Maybe less, maybe more, but I don't see why Harvard is getting singled out.
I'm not singling Harvard out. The original artical is about Harvard, so my response is directed at Harvard. But I'm not saying they are alone (although they ARE one of the more egregious examples of it.)
You say "various studies have demonstrated this to be true." What studies?
Grading in American Colleges and Universities, Rojstaczer & Healy, 2010 Evaluation and the Academy: Are We doing the Right Thing? Grade Inflation and Letters of Recommendation, Rosovsky & Hartley, 2002
This term I decided to experiment with the grading of my political-philosophy course at Harvard. I am giving each student two grades: one for the registrar and the public record, and the other in private. The official grades will conform with Harvard's inflated distribution, in which one-fourth of all grades given to undergraduates are now A's, and another fourth are A-'s. The private grades, from the course assistants and me, will be less flattering. Those grades will give students a realistic, useful assessment of how well they did and where they stand in relation to others.
A longtime critic of grade inflation, I have seen my grades dragged gradually higher over the years, while still trailing the rising average. I could not ignore the pressure to meet student expectations that other faculty members have created and maintained, but I did not want just to go along silently. The two-grade device is a way to show my contempt for the present system, yet not punish students who take my course. My intent was to get attention and to provoke some new thinking....
And yes, most of our congressmen and senators are pretty fucking educated, actually.
Educated sure. But exceptionally smart? Average and above sure, but no smarter than any other educated professional group. They sure aren't "fucking amazing".
Anyone who tells you there's grade inflation at Harvard is lying.
Because you said so?
Harvard administrators said they are inflating grades. Harvard professors said they are inflating grades. Harvard students said their grades were inflated.
Various studies have demonstrated this to be true.
Besides, use some common sense: Harvard has been a highly sought after ivy league school for a few generations... are you really arguing that the class of 2007 are really that much more "fucking amazing" than the class of 1997? Yet the class of 2007 has a lot more A students than any class in the 90s.
There's not a single student at Harvard who got an A or an A- (they don't give out A+'s) who didn't deserve it. Granted, it's hard to get a C grade, but that's to be expected considering how fucking amazing these students are.
Many of our politicians - congressmen and senators are harvard alums; do they strike you as particularly erudite? Does 'fucking amazing' leap to your mind? Harvard grads trend towards success because they come often from successful families before they ever enrolled, and they often build invaluable social networks while enrolled. The education itself is certainly good quality but its nothing special, and the students aren't really all that 'fucking amazing' either.
"Harvard University is the poster campus for academic prestige - and for grade inflation, even though some of its top officials have warned about grade creep. About 15 percent of Harvard students got a B-plus or better in 1950, according to one study. In 2007, more than half of all Harvard grades were in the A range. Harvard declined to release more current data or officially comment for this article."
"Plus, tough grading makes a student less likely to get into graduate school, which could make Harvard look bad in college rankings."
and also from that article this interesting bit:
"Fewer than 20% of all college students receive grades below a B-minus, according to a study released this week by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. That hardly seems justified at a time when a third of all college students arrive on campus so unprepared that they need to take at least one remedial course."
"The article reported a record 91% of Harvard University students were awarded honors during the spring graduation. Said one student, Trevor Cox, "I've coasted on far higher grades than I deserve. It's scandalous. You can get very good grades and earn honors, without ever producing quality work."
Can someone with a droid report whether this site works fine... or is it also 'shockingly bad'? iphone users don't bother... thanks to Steve you can't actually see most of the site, because the top menu is.. gasp... flash.
So they are raising the cost because they can, but it took them 10 years to do this?
The unspoken assumption is that 'can' means that most people will pay the new price without much complaint, they will lose few customers over it, and it will be a net gain.
Otherwise they could have raised it to a billion dollars 3 days after launching the service... but only an idiot would attempt to interpret my use of 'can' in such a manner.
My argument however is devoid of any connection to cost.
Your logic is faulty
There is nothing faulty about it.
My argument boils down to:
1 They want more money. 2 They felt that if they raised it to $60 most subscribers would just suck it up without complaint. 3 Therefore they raised it.
You'll note that the unit cost of service doesn't really factor in. The unstated assumption is that its not mentioned because it doesn't matter. I expect the economies of scale plus advances in technology (performance gains per doller, bandwidth per dollar, etc) more than offset any increases in costs due to inflation.
An increase every so often because of inflation would be expected
20% inflation? In an industry where processing AND bandwidth AND storage gets cheaper by the day? And most of the labour is continually outsourced to where ever it is cheapest? And the incremental cost of adding users benefits from economies of scale?
Realistically the costs could well be going down, and profitability going up.
RIM is on my do-not-purchase list.
Sorry, why? Which other provider offers end-to-end encryption a la Blackberry enterprise server?
Does Android do a better job? Nope. Windows Mobile? Nope. Apple? LMAO.
So basically you are boycotting RIM to support companies who never offered the level of security RIM -still- offers everywhere it can?
It's almost as if trying to catalog every location on the planet is a big job.;)
Indeed. But even so, when google can't find some residential cul-de-sac with 2 homes on it in some hick town with 50 people... we would shrug it off. When it can't find a world famous art gallery in new york city its a bit more jarring.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't believe me, talk to product owners.
Honest ones will tell you it can be a pretty annoying device.
A friend told me about doing some internet banking on one the other day... halfway through a transaction set up he needed to use a calculator... but opening the calculator app would terminate the internet banking app and he had to re-login and select the accounts, and start the transaction every time he switched between them. For a web banking app its appropriate that it discard its session when you suspend it for obvious reasons...but it was effectively impossible to do any calculations at the same time as a result.
What he really wanted was the two apps in their own window, so he could go back and forth, and have both on the screen at the same time - you know so he could see the source for the numbers rather than remembering them in his head.
Ended up having to get a separate calculator.
He also thought it was stupid that he couldn't easily use it to view other peoples pictures. (e.g. they'd visit, and have a CD/DVD or memory card of vacation or baby pictures, and there was no efficient way of viewing it on the ipad. Importing the photos to iphoto and then syncing them to the ipad was simply idiotic. It was too much work, and he didn't want to import the pictures into his computer.
Replying to my own post because clipperz actually appears to be Affero GPL... !
Pretty cool. Is there an open source equivalent? One that can be hosted on one's own servers?
There is no law saying exactly that. But there were certain mandates set forth in the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, with amendments throughout the decades, that gave rise to what we have today. There's quite a bit of blame to spread around, but it all starts back in 1977.
Firstly, the majority of the problematic loans were made by organizations who were not subject CRA rules. So why exactly is CRA responsible for "making them issue bad loans" when the vast majority of bad loans were made by companies who were exempt from the supposed CRA rules that "mandated" it.
Secondly, commercial real-estate loans are also in bad shape, and full of the same problems. Commercial real-estate is also completely outside the scope of CRA rules. So why were bad loans being made on commercial real estate when there were no rules "mandating" it.
Thirdly, the CRA didn't "mandate" bad loans. Period. And any reading of it that says it did is intellectually dishonest.
That's the kind of thing that would be happening all the time.
It happens all the time now.
It does when it its presented to you *on your iphone*, which it is.
I've been telling people that Cameron got Avatar "right" in terms of 3D exactly for this reason.
Yeah. Its a great tech demo. (As long as you learn to look where the director wants you to look. Try and look at those out of focus flowers projected to look like you can touch them with your fingertips though and you get a headache.)
Its also too bad Cameron got Avatar so "wrong" in terms of actually being a good movie.
Every advertising company does this sort of crap.
Google is different.
Google controls 70% of the online ad market. That, by itself puts it in its own category. Everyone else from Microsoft and Yahoo on down fights over 30%. Google also has 66% of the search market.
The difference between living under surveillance and not is one of degree. Getting caught on some guys camera on the way to work is not surveillance. Having that guy setup 100,000 camera's in the city and watch me as I move around is.
The other advertising companies may be -striving- for surveillance -- but even if yahoo, aol, and msn split the 30% without any other players they only have 10% of the market. I'm fine with the reach of a company being around 10%.
70% is something completely different.
Try downloading a free app on your iphone. They force an itms EULA on you there too. And yes its over 100 "pages" there.
100+ pages of eula to obtain a free app is stupid.
I like Google AdWords. Well, perhaps it's better to say that I don't dislike them. They are unobtrusive, easy on my battery/processor temp, and occasionally useful. I see no reason to block them.
The ads themselves don't bother me. The fact that virtually every website I visit reports to google that I went there does. Sometimes it feels like I might as well be browsing through a google proxy, and just feeding them every url I visit as I go there. This is what they want. And adwords is ubiquitous enough that it almost gives it to them. Add in gmail, youtube, and the other g-services, and google analytics on the backend on a lot of sites that don't have ads and... they are closer than you think.
I find that offensive. I don't want to be stalked and everything I do recorded by google. And googles reply is essentially... "we're not singling you out" doesn't imrprove my view of it. Just because they are using the technology to stalk everyone at once doesn't change anything... if anything it just makes it worse.
I wonder what percentage of administrators, professors and students at other universities also speak of grade inflation.
A large percentage.
Maybe less, maybe more, but I don't see why Harvard is getting singled out.
I'm not singling Harvard out. The original artical is about Harvard, so my response is directed at Harvard. But I'm not saying they are alone (although they ARE one of the more egregious examples of it.)
You say "various studies have demonstrated this to be true." What studies?
Grading in American Colleges and Universities, Rojstaczer & Healy, 2010
Evaluation and the Academy: Are We doing the Right Thing? Grade Inflation and Letters of Recommendation, Rosovsky & Hartley, 2002
This in particular you might find interesting:
http://www.philosophyproject.org/assets/Grade%20Inflation%20-%20Time%20to%20Face%20the%20Facts%20-%20Harvard%202001.pdf
by Harvey C. Mansfield, Professor of Government, Harvard University.
First two paragraphs:
And yes, most of our congressmen and senators are pretty fucking educated, actually.
Educated sure. But exceptionally smart? Average and above sure, but no smarter than any other educated professional group. They sure aren't "fucking amazing".
Exactly my point.
Anyone who tells you there's grade inflation at Harvard is lying.
Because you said so?
Harvard administrators said they are inflating grades.
Harvard professors said they are inflating grades.
Harvard students said their grades were inflated.
Various studies have demonstrated this to be true.
Besides, use some common sense: Harvard has been a highly sought after ivy league school for a few generations... are you really arguing that the class of 2007 are really that much more "fucking amazing" than the class of 1997? Yet the class of 2007 has a lot more A students than any class in the 90s.
There's not a single student at Harvard who got an A or an A- (they don't give out A+'s) who didn't deserve it. Granted, it's hard to get a C grade, but that's to be expected considering how fucking amazing these students are.
Many of our politicians - congressmen and senators are harvard alums; do they strike you as particularly erudite? Does 'fucking amazing' leap to your mind? Harvard grads trend towards success because they come often from successful families before they ever enrolled, and they often build invaluable social networks while enrolled. The education itself is certainly good quality but its nothing special, and the students aren't really all that 'fucking amazing' either.
"Harvard University is the poster campus for academic prestige - and for grade inflation, even though some of its top officials have warned about grade creep. About 15 percent of Harvard students got a B-plus or better in 1950, according to one study. In 2007, more than half of all Harvard grades were in the A range. Harvard declined to release more current data or officially comment for this article."
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2008/10/05/doesnt_anybody_get_a_c_anymore/
"Plus, tough grading makes a student less likely to get into graduate school, which could make Harvard look bad in college rankings."
and also from that article this interesting bit:
"Fewer than 20% of all college students receive grades below a B-minus, according to a study released this week by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. That hardly seems justified at a time when a third of all college students arrive on campus so unprepared that they need to take at least one remedial course."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002/02/08/edtwof2.htm
Or how about a student testimonial:
"The article reported a record 91% of Harvard University students were awarded honors during the spring graduation. Said one student, Trevor Cox, "I've coasted on far higher grades than I deserve. It's scandalous. You can get very good grades and earn honors, without ever producing quality work."
http://www.endgradeinflation.org/
Why not ditch finals? The hurdle at these schools is getting in not getting through. Once you are in they pad your grades, and pass everyone anyway.
At least Android users have the choice to install and view Flash content if they choose. iPhone users aren't allowed that choice.
Pretty much... flash support isn't just about being able to watch TV on your phone browser. Its about visiting a site like this on your mobile...
http://www.parkplacewhiterock.com/
Can someone with a droid report whether this site works fine... or is it also 'shockingly bad'? iphone users don't bother... thanks to Steve you can't actually see most of the site, because the top menu is.. gasp... flash.
So they are raising the cost because they can, but it took them 10 years to do this?
The unspoken assumption is that 'can' means that most people will pay the new price without much complaint, they will lose few customers over it, and it will be a net gain.
Otherwise they could have raised it to a billion dollars 3 days after launching the service... but only an idiot would attempt to interpret my use of 'can' in such a manner.
My argument however is devoid of any connection to cost.
Your logic is faulty
There is nothing faulty about it.
My argument boils down to:
1 They want more money.
2 They felt that if they raised it to $60 most subscribers would just suck it up without complaint.
3 Therefore they raised it.
You'll note that the unit cost of service doesn't really factor in. The unstated assumption is that its not mentioned because it doesn't matter. I expect the economies of scale plus advances in technology (performance gains per doller, bandwidth per dollar, etc) more than offset any increases in costs due to inflation.
An increase every so often because of inflation would be expected
20% inflation? In an industry where processing AND bandwidth AND storage gets cheaper by the day?
And most of the labour is continually outsourced to where ever it is cheapest?
And the incremental cost of adding users benefits from economies of scale?
Realistically the costs could well be going down, and profitability going up.
They are raising the price because they can.
"As always, not mentioned..."
Unless you RTFA....
Thanks for the info.
So servers for spammers, hackers, torrents, porn, & gambling sites all have safe haven in Chile now?
I see you failed to read even the summary. The traffic still has to be legal.
Just proprietary companies fucking up some computers.
Does grub have any more reason to be there these other companies? It looks like nobody is supposed to be there... including grub.
RIM is on my do-not-purchase list. Sorry, why? Which other provider offers end-to-end encryption a la Blackberry enterprise server? Does Android do a better job? Nope. Windows Mobile? Nope. Apple? LMAO. So basically you are boycotting RIM to support companies who never offered the level of security RIM -still- offers everywhere it can?
It's almost as if trying to catalog every location on the planet is a big job.
Indeed. But even so, when google can't find some residential cul-de-sac with 2 homes on it in some hick town with 50 people... we would shrug it off. When it can't find a world famous art gallery in new york city its a bit more jarring.
How long before it falls apart again?