Presumably advertisements on the show would be seen by the pet-owners who would then be more likely to purchase the advertised product. I assume that the type of people who would buy this for their pets - the "hard-core" dog-owners, as it were - are also the sort to buy "premium" dog food for $15.00 per can, or diamond-studded dog collars or whatever, so there is probably money to be made in that market.
It's unfortunate, however, that nowadays everything has to be justified by an explanation on how it can be monetized. Admittedly, it costs money to run a cable station but it would be nice to sometimes see somebody go "Fuck it, I just love dogs so what the hell; let's give them cable!"
Allow me to dissect your argument and prove why it is entirely irrelevant.
I understand that many might not approve of spying and the NSA, but Snowden was a professional working for them via the contractor Booz Allen.
Who else would know the facts of the program? Who else could provide this information? It had to be somebody "inside". Had these accusations come from some guy on the street they would have been ignored as yet another crackpot conspiracy theory. Whistle-blowing on illegal activities always comes from a man on the inside.
Everyone knows what the NSA is about,
There were long suspicions of "what the NSA is about" but no proof, and the rule of law is that proof is necessary to convict. Prior to Snowden's release, any accusations of mass surveillance of US citizens leveled at the NSA were scoffingly disregarded and without evidence it was impossible to proceed. Thanks to Snowden, these accusations can no longer ignore the accusations (they may ignore the orders to stop, sadly).
but Snowden takes the operational details of the programs and gives them the Russians and Chinese.
Snowden released the details of the illegal and un-Constitutional programs to the/press/. You make it sound as if he snuck up to the Russian ambassador and passed secrets on to only them, which is hardly the case. Yes, the Russians now are aware of the program (most likely, the ones in power who actually worried about such things probably had a good idea of the capability of those programs already anyway, but that's beside the point). But more importantly, the US citizenry know about it as well. Ultimately, they are the only ones who can legally force a change. That other nations may now know of these programs is a side effect and - idealistically - irrelevant anyway. After all, illegal programs should be stopped so any intelligence gained about them becomes useless.
Snowden may be a "traitor" to the/people/ in the NSA, but our loyalty should not lie towards individuals but to the law and ideals that define our nation. Snowden obeyed those principles while other agents turned a blind eye or actively pursued these unconstitutional activities. He's far more a patriot than they.
What do you expect Microsoft to do if the NSA come knocking with a request for information? Say no? You either provide it to them or your company will get severely fined with possible additional legal action taken against it.
Ask to see the warrant signed by a judge specifying the individual and information they are requesting the information for?
Say no when they can't produce that information?
Take the government to court when they demand you do something unconstitutional?
In other words, obey the law of the land rather the law of the individuals who happen to be in power at the time?
Other companies - sadly only a handful - have fought these illegal orders; Microsoft could follow that same course too. In fact, given that they have so much power over others, I'd say they have a/responsibility/ to do so.
Pursuit of profit may be the primary incentive for corporations, but it is not their only responsibility. Furthermore, failure to protect the interests of their customers will, in the long run, only/hurt/ their profits.
Here's an edited version of the text for those too lazy to click on the link (used without permission, but go visit the site anyway as it has lots of amusing - if not entirely truthful - anecdotes)
As time passed, a proprietary gateway server to communicate with credit processing agencies would crash more and more frequently. And these were bad crashes, too — the kind of crashes where the server wouldn't respond to ping and would have to be restarted manually. It wasn't really a big deal for the admin, Erik, to hit the restart button on the server when he was there, but that was only 40 hours a week. The credit union needed it to be active 24/7, but was unwilling to hire 24 hour staff in the datacenter.
Erik had a script running that would ping the server every few minutes and alert him if it didn't respond so he could halfway proactively keep things running. It had to be restarted manually whenever it crashed, so there was no easy way to fix it remotely.
It was then that Erik idly looked at his computer, which had just ejected a disk image DVD he'd burned. It sparked an idea, but it was too absurd to say out loud. Still, he couldn't help but chuckle at the thought. "A CD ROM drive in an old system could eject and hit the reset button. I'd have to position the servers just right, somehow get the heights and alignment correct, and update the polling script to eject the CD ROM drive any time it didn't respond to ping." It was a ridiculous idea.
Yet that was exactly what Erik found himself spending the rest of the afternoon setting up. He found an old PC, updated his script to ping the server every two minutes and eject if there was no response, and with the help of a few phone books found the perfect height and position on the floor. Finally, Erik stood up, and ashamedly admired his work. He slapped a label on it that read "ITAPPMONROBOT," and another below with big underlined letters that read "DO NOT MOVE."
Somebody else did a similar hack to open a security door, and yet another to reset a wireless network.
I don't think the DEFCON organizers expect that/no/ government officials will make an appearance. Rather, they are making a statement that - because of recent revelations - they will no longer be offering an open hand to those officials. Furthermore, it might be unsafe (electronically, not physically) for agents to openly make an appearance because they will be more of a target for malicious hacking than usual.
It's more along the lines of "We don't like what you are doing and therefore aren't being as welcoming to - and thus in complicit agreement with - you or your goals. Also, if you do come it's on your own head if bad things happen because you've managed to piss off all our other guests and many will consider you/persona non grata/ and take it upon themselves to make those feelings clear."
Government agents will be at this year's DEFCon; it's just that they will be even less likely to announce their affiliation than usual.
Taking a different approach from most of these comments, I think a reorganization is exactly what Microsoft needs. It has long been known that the individual departments of Microsoft rarely communicate well between themselves and often seem actively hostile towards one another. I remember reading an article (when Office 97 came out, so this shows how far back this problem goes) about how the OS team was upset that Office utilized a goodly number of non-standard tricks rather than using the standard APIs. Thus, moving forward the OS team had to add in shims into their OS to ensure that its Office suite would continue to function in later versions of Windows. Or years later, how PlaysForSure didn't, on the Zune. Each division had its own methods and goals and rarely would they consider the needs of the other divisions. So a re-organization that helps solve some of these issues is probably long overdue. (incidentally, a telling graphic of this problem is the following cartoon)
On the gripping hand, I have to wonder if Balmer is really the best person to enact these changes; he hasn't inspired confidence with his recent (or any?) decisions. Similarly, I suspect that this "one company approach" is less to solve internal problems and more to officially shift the whole company from product-based development (e.g., write a program and sell it to the customers) to a service-based company (e.g., continual subscription-based access to its portfolio of services). , which is a direction Microsoft has been edging towards for over a decade.
Also, it's not so much that PC sales are declining as returning to a norm.
Starting in the late '90s, everybody got a computer because prices for the hardware were so low, the economy was still strong and the Internet was new and exciting. But many of those new computer users had no real use for a general-purpose computing device that had as much capability as a PC and even if the machine itself didn't end up gathering dust in the corner, rarely would it be used to its full capabilities.
Nowadays, smaller and more specialized devices - MP3 players, smartphones, tablets - offer the desired subset of a full PCs capabilities in a more convenient and easier to use form factor. True, a $100 tablet might not be able to play a high-resolution video-game or let you program the next Call of Duty, but it can probably surf the web, play MP3s and send email. Plus, it's far cheaper, usually simpler to use and takes up much less space.
Basically, all those people who had no use for a computer have stopped buying them. There was a bubble in PC sales, but it's popped leaving PC manufactures with a smaller - but more regular - customer base.
Just as importantly, make that ticketing system responsive to the users. Because otherwise they will ignore it and find other ways of contacting you.
If a user creates a ticket explaining their problem and don't get a response at all - or only receive a generic "ticket #12743573 created" response - they will have absolutely no confidence that the problem is going to be noticed, much less resolved. Since their workflow probably depends on the problem being fixed, they will desperately seek out a human contact, be it some random tech they worked with in the past, the sales person who sold them the program, or the CEO of the company that developed the software. And they will keep pestering people until they get some indication that their problem is being worked on.
On the other hand, if somebody replies quickly (within the hour) to their ticket, even if only to say "hey, we see you submitted a problem, we're looking into it", it will buy the developers days or even weeks before they hear from the user again because they now have confidence (perhaps misplaced, perhaps not) that their problem is not lost in some machine.
Even with forms, don't bet on getting clear bug reports.
Aside from all the other issues mentioned earlier, there is another reason users do not provide good bug reports: time. It takes time to write up a proper report, explaining all the details (what they were doing, what they expected the program to do, what it actually did), provide.LOG files, screenshots, annotations, etc.
A form can remind them of what information they need to provide, but it won't make the actual data-collection any simpler. And users frequently already have enough on their plates without requiring them to take the time to write up all the necessary information. Add in to this their frustration that the program "doesn't work" and they have little incentive to put the effort into writing up a detailed synopsis of the problem. They just want to do their job, not have to deal with (what they consider) YOUR job.
In short, don't expect the users to provide good reports for you. Better to build the necessary tools into your software so that it can collect most of the data you need automatically.
Top 8 Reasons Dropbox Won't Be Replacing My Hard-Drive Anytime Soon
1) Speed - Obviously a hard-drive will continue to be necessary to serve apps (not to mention the OS) for the forseeable future, but even when it comes to my data I'd rather have it accessible locally rather than wait for it to torturously download from the Internet.
2) Access - Dropbox requires an additional complication to an already complicated system with the addition of a necessary Internet uplink. If the Internet is down - beware the backhoe! - then my data is not accessible. Data stored locally is also subject to failure but it's one less component to worry about. Also, I can usually prepare for local disasters - backup the data, multiple workstations, etc - but what happens if Dropbox.com itself is down? I have no remedy.
3) Privacy - Increasingly, corporations and governments are tossing aside all moral and legal restrictions in their greedy attempts to data-mine the entire world. Whether it is my personal medical history or my "Little Rascals" fanfiction (just kidding!), I only want people I specifically allow to have access to that data. I have little faith that Dropbox will honor my request.
4) Security - Yes, the average user's local machine is often riddled with viruses, trojans and other spyware. But increasingly we are seeing that large corporations suffer the same problems and inadvertently letting user information out into the wild due to poor security practices. And given how large a target Dropbox would make itself, I'd rather stay under the radar than trust them with my data.
5) Compatibility - You know what programs work with my hard-drive? All of them! You have to go back nearly thirty years before you start running across programs that didn't expect a hard-drive. You think that all these developers are going to update their programs to take advantage of this new Dropbox development? And I don't care how hard Dropbox works at integrating their service with the OS, there will always be programs - usually that one absolutely necessary to your work - that won't be compatible with the Cloud.
6) Longevity - I have data from 1991 on my hard-drive. Okay, it's not the same hard-drive I used back in '91, but it's followed me through every upgrade over the past two decades and I expect it will continue to do so over the next twenty. Will Dropbox still be available in twenty years? I have my doubts. And then how will I access my data?
7) Cost - For most users, the cost of a hard-drive is essentially $0.00; it is included in the cost of the computer. I doubt that if Dropbox were suddenly to replace the HDD, the cost of computers would significantly change. On the other hand, I have little doubt that - were it to become as essential to computing as they hope - that the price for Dropbox's services would significantly increase.
8) Control - Oh no! Due to a changing political climate, the "Little Rascals" are now banned from the United States; no distribution of any "Little Rascals" material is allowed within its borders. With my data stored locally, this sudden shift would not affect me because my "Little Rascals" fan-fiction (just kidding, really!) is outside the control of corporation or government. But if it were on Dropbox, it would be available to scrutiny and deletion.
So, yeah, I think I'll stay with the hard-drive for a while longer Dropbox. Your mediocre advantages in no way counter the numerous disadvantages. Maybe I'll use your service (or any of the hundreds of other similar services) to supplement local storage but it won't be replacing it anytime soon.
Don't worry, I'm sure that in a few days Oracle will announce that this change was just a bug, just like when they did it with the MariaDB man pages a few weeks back. It's all an innocent mistake made by their software. Oracle is our friend and only has the best of intentions for everything it does.
(The above was intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek; I have no real opinion of the change or whether it is good or bad for the end-uses. It just amuses me that Oracle would attempt something like this after getting spanked for a similar change they made just a few weeks back. Did they think nobody would notice? They don't have such a good reputation to begin with; better to be above-board rather than try to silently slip in a new re-licensing).
In response, let me counter with these three arguments:
1) This is not an attack against advertising; it is an attack against/targeted/ advertising. Seeing as how the marketing industry thrived for decades without this technology, I think that the lack will not hurt them significantly. Websites can still put up advertisement banners that have worth to the readership (based on the content of the website) rather than relying on targeting specific ads at people based on a profile.
2) Websites that use more obtrusive advertisements are going to sacrifice short-term gain for long-term readership. The tools to block the ads exist already and are amongst the most downloaded plugins already. Making ads even more annoying are going to simply drive visitors away.
3) And so what if some advertisement-supported websites disappear (even, , slashdot!). Corporate sites will continue to exist as opt-in advertisment platforms for specific products, retail sites will continue to exist to sell those goods, and there are millions of dedicated fans who will put up websites using their own time and money to fund it. Oh, we might lose these megalithic corporate-sites (like Facebook) but I honestly don't see that as much of a loss. Too much power has been invested in these companies already; I'd prefer a more fragmented, federated web than something dominated by three or four giant entities anyway.
Destroy the Internet, hah! It'll just make the Internet better.
It's not the goal - targeted advertisements - that offends me; it is the method. I simply do not like the idea of there being a profile of me available to anyone who wants it. This is increasingly useful data to not only marketers, but insurance companies, employers, banks, governments, criminals, and other unsavory sorts. I'd like to believe I'm not being targeted by any of them right now, but who knows what the future holds? And there's no telling into whose hands it will fall, either due to loose ethics or looser security. Worse, they compile this data without offering me - the source - any real recourse as to how it is to be used; how long they can keep it, what they can do with it or who they can give it to. It's an unfair bargain, often made unwittingly and I'm not averse to sabotaging the advertisers efforts.
Sadly, in America there does seem to be a growing number of people who have no issue with arresting protesters, dissenters and other people who speak against the status quo. You only have to look at major recent protests over the past ten years (OWS, G8, anti-Iraq War, etc) to see how often people are detained under the most frivolous of charges. Dare to step outside the designated "free speech zones" they outline for you, be they literal or figurative and thereby attract the attention of the Powers That Be and you are ever more likely to rue your actions. I had a colleague who went to one OWS protest, was arrested but never charged and/still/ he had to go to court three times. He wasn't imprisoned but just the inconvenience of having all these court dates has made him reconsider participating in future protests.
The grandparent poster wasn't suggesting that/you/ believe in arresting dissenters, or even that most Americans do. But increasingly there is an awareness that if you/do/ go to one of these protests, you are likely to face detainment despite the fact you are doing nothing more than expressing your right to free speech and assembly. Are they arresting everybody? Of course not, but it is far more likely to happen than it was even fifteen years ago. It is a legitimate fear.
Attempting to log-onto their website, I get the following warning:
For security reasons we recommend that you change your password
and a link to change the password.
Interestingly, there is no option to log-on/without/ changing the password. "Recommend" apparently means "you have no choice" in UbiSpeak.
Unfortunately, since the email address I used to register the account is no longer active, and there is no option to update the email address (since I can't log-on at all) I guess I'm screwed (silly me for not keeping my info up to date on a service I had little interest in joining except that it was forced on me to play a game I had legally purchased).
So, I guess it's par for the course for you guys at Ubisoft; you've screwed me over again. Great job, guys; first you force me to sign up to UPlay in the first place, then you screw up by leaking the log-in info all over the net and now you prevent me from changing my password. Maybe you can block access to the games I paid for as well just to round out the whole experience.
Although if they are so interested in "dignity" and "class", then perhaps they shouldn't use a popularity contest to determine the results (or at least claim to be doing so, if they intend to ignore the results anyway).
The people (or at least the subset of the people who care enough about this to actually vote) made their voice heard. Claiming first that their opinion is worth listening to by holding the contest and then ignoring it when the results don't match their expectations only makes the IAU look doubly foolish.
Don't worry, I nice room at the ADX supermax awaits. The next 50 years of your existence: 23 hours a day locked up, in a poured concrete cell, sleeping on a poured concrete bed, pissing in a poured concrete toilet, with a 4 inch wide window that you can only see the sky out of.
hope it was worth it..
If life imprisonment is ultimately Snowden's fate, then it's up to/us/ to make sure his sacrifice is "worth it" by holding the criminals that his disclosures forced into the light accountable for their crimes. We need to get the politicians, cops, bureaucrats and any others who supported these blatantly un-Constitutional activities out of their positions of power and replaced by people who actually follow the laws and ideals of this country.
So, given Snowden is likely to have sacrificed his freedom for us, I too hope it was worth it. We have an opportunity to squish the roaches underfoot before they scuttle out of the light. Let's make the best of it.
is industry is changing, and rather than adapt to the new medium, he's throwing up FUD that the new technology is dangerous, and should have never been invented.
To be fair, this new technology/is/ dangerous. It can be used by malefactors to lie, steal or even - given the perfect set of circumstances - even kill others.
Not unlike any other technology, of course.
Whether the risks outweigh the benefits of a new technology is something every society has to determine for itself. Obviously, those whose livelihoods depend on the "old way" are more likely to stress the threats as they themselves reap less benefit. On the other hand, those that benefit directly from the new technology are less likely to focus on the threats. In either case, it doesn't mean that threat doesn't exist nor that the opposing sides are unable to recognize the advantages or disadvantages; they just weigh them differently.
Fortunately, I think most people recognize that the advantages the Internet brings to a society greatly outweigh the disadvantages, and that most of the dangers can be mitigated given proper concern and money (e.g., companies need to stop treat internet and computer security like a red-headed step-child and actually invest in securing their cybernetic holdings). There is a gradual movement in this direction, thanks to a number of large hacks getting hit by the media spotlight. Hopefully this trend continues before there is a serious breach where people actually get hurt.
So, yeah, Samuelson's article should be taken with a grain of salt but at the same time we shouldn't ignore it completely. There is some truth to his words and - as those most familiar with the new technology - we should not completely ignore him but heed his warnings to ensure his prophecies do not come to term.
You can try PrefBar which adds a toolbar with customizable buttons that can be used to toggle things like Java, Javascript, Flash, etc. I used it back in the day when I was still on dial-up; I'd load pages with all the bling disabled first and only if the content looked interesting would I enable (and download) the various imagesand applets. With the advent of broadband and Noscript, my need for PrefBar lessened but if you want a quicker way to activate/deactivate Javascript then PrefBar will probably work for you.
Heh. I just reinstalled the extension and it still remembers all my old settings, which only goes to show you how ancient my Mozilla profile must be;-)
Sometimes I have to wonder if this lack of concern isn't all our fault.
Before Snowden: Wild-haired man: The gub'ment be spying on us! The NSA, the CIA, the FBI; they all are reading our emails, monitoring our online chat and seeing all the websites we go to! And all of them telecom and internet companiers are involved too! Common citizen: Oh, you wacky nutcase; you've been going on for years about this. Where's your proof of this great conspiracy, huh? They aren't spying on us! This is America and that sort of thing doesn't happen here!
After Snowden: Wild-haired man: The gub'ment be spying on us! They see everything you do online, everything! And the big internet and telecom companies are in cahoots with them! And look, now I got irrefutable proof! Common citizen: Well, of course they were spying on us. Hasn't this been known for years? I remember hearing about it from/somebody/ a while ago. Anyway, it's been going on forever and the only thing different now is that its out in the open, so why make a fuss about it now?
It's sort of like crying wolf, except the warnings were always true. Instead of making people disregard you, it instead acclimatizes them to the threat to the point where it doesn't seem dangerous anymore (also seen in sci-fi movies where the aliens use conspiracy theories to make people ignore the threat of a coming alien invasion).
Perhaps we should dub this tactic "Snowden's Law"?
You want controversy, just wait until people start asking about the legality of cloning for the purpose of harvesting the body parts. Can I clone myself, alter the hormone balance in utero so the creature is born effectively brain-dead, then grow it (in a tank, for a proper sci-fi ambiance) until I need a new kidney or heart?
Less futuristic, how about I clone myself but abort the fetus and harvest its stem-cells?
And who "owns" the clone, prior to its birth anyway? The donor? The doctors? The woman who has been implanted with the fetus? Can it even be owned?
Worrying about paternity rights or cost is just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, cloning could (but not necessarily/will/) reduce human life to literally just another resource to be harvested.
Slashdot Mirror
I admit, I LOLed.
(You drool on it, you buy it)
Sadly, not the policy at the local Walmart...
Presumably advertisements on the show would be seen by the pet-owners who would then be more likely to purchase the advertised product. I assume that the type of people who would buy this for their pets - the "hard-core" dog-owners, as it were - are also the sort to buy "premium" dog food for $15.00 per can, or diamond-studded dog collars or whatever, so there is probably money to be made in that market.
It's unfortunate, however, that nowadays everything has to be justified by an explanation on how it can be monetized. Admittedly, it costs money to run a cable station but it would be nice to sometimes see somebody go "Fuck it, I just love dogs so what the hell; let's give them cable!"
Allow me to dissect your argument and prove why it is entirely irrelevant.
I understand that many might not approve of spying and the NSA, but Snowden was a professional working for them via the contractor Booz Allen.
Who else would know the facts of the program? Who else could provide this information? It had to be somebody "inside". Had these accusations come from some guy on the street they would have been ignored as yet another crackpot conspiracy theory. Whistle-blowing on illegal activities always comes from a man on the inside.
Everyone knows what the NSA is about,
There were long suspicions of "what the NSA is about" but no proof, and the rule of law is that proof is necessary to convict. Prior to Snowden's release, any accusations of mass surveillance of US citizens leveled at the NSA were scoffingly disregarded and without evidence it was impossible to proceed. Thanks to Snowden, these accusations can no longer ignore the accusations (they may ignore the orders to stop, sadly).
but Snowden takes the operational details of the programs and gives them the Russians and Chinese.
Snowden released the details of the illegal and un-Constitutional programs to the /press/. You make it sound as if he snuck up to the Russian ambassador and passed secrets on to only them, which is hardly the case. Yes, the Russians now are aware of the program (most likely, the ones in power who actually worried about such things probably had a good idea of the capability of those programs already anyway, but that's beside the point). But more importantly, the US citizenry know about it as well. Ultimately, they are the only ones who can legally force a change. That other nations may now know of these programs is a side effect and - idealistically - irrelevant anyway. After all, illegal programs should be stopped so any intelligence gained about them becomes useless.
Snowden may be a "traitor" to the /people/ in the NSA, but our loyalty should not lie towards individuals but to the law and ideals that define our nation. Snowden obeyed those principles while other agents turned a blind eye or actively pursued these unconstitutional activities. He's far more a patriot than they.
What do you expect Microsoft to do if the NSA come knocking with a request for information? Say no? You either provide it to them or your company will get severely fined with possible additional legal action taken against it.
Ask to see the warrant signed by a judge specifying the individual and information they are requesting the information for?
Say no when they can't produce that information?
Take the government to court when they demand you do something unconstitutional?
In other words, obey the law of the land rather the law of the individuals who happen to be in power at the time?
Other companies - sadly only a handful - have fought these illegal orders; Microsoft could follow that same course too. In fact, given that they have so much power over others, I'd say they have a /responsibility/ to do so.
Pursuit of profit may be the primary incentive for corporations, but it is not their only responsibility. Furthermore, failure to protect the interests of their customers will, in the long run, only /hurt/ their profits.
Do you mean this story, written by Jake Vinson?
Here's an edited version of the text for those too lazy to click on the link (used without permission, but go visit the site anyway as it has lots of amusing - if not entirely truthful - anecdotes)
Somebody else did a similar hack to open a security door, and yet another to reset a wireless network.
I don't think the DEFCON organizers expect that /no/ government officials will make an appearance. Rather, they are making a statement that - because of recent revelations - they will no longer be offering an open hand to those officials. Furthermore, it might be unsafe (electronically, not physically) for agents to openly make an appearance because they will be more of a target for malicious hacking than usual.
It's more along the lines of "We don't like what you are doing and therefore aren't being as welcoming to - and thus in complicit agreement with - you or your goals. Also, if you do come it's on your own head if bad things happen because you've managed to piss off all our other guests and many will consider you /persona non grata/ and take it upon themselves to make those feelings clear."
Government agents will be at this year's DEFCon; it's just that they will be even less likely to announce their affiliation than usual.
Taking a different approach from most of these comments, I think a reorganization is exactly what Microsoft needs. It has long been known that the individual departments of Microsoft rarely communicate well between themselves and often seem actively hostile towards one another. I remember reading an article (when Office 97 came out, so this shows how far back this problem goes) about how the OS team was upset that Office utilized a goodly number of non-standard tricks rather than using the standard APIs. Thus, moving forward the OS team had to add in shims into their OS to ensure that its Office suite would continue to function in later versions of Windows. Or years later, how PlaysForSure didn't, on the Zune. Each division had its own methods and goals and rarely would they consider the needs of the other divisions. So a re-organization that helps solve some of these issues is probably long overdue.
(incidentally, a telling graphic of this problem is the following cartoon)
On the gripping hand, I have to wonder if Balmer is really the best person to enact these changes; he hasn't inspired confidence with his recent (or any?) decisions. Similarly, I suspect that this "one company approach" is less to solve internal problems and more to officially shift the whole company from product-based development (e.g., write a program and sell it to the customers) to a service-based company (e.g., continual subscription-based access to its portfolio of services). , which is a direction Microsoft has been edging towards for over a decade.
Also, it's not so much that PC sales are declining as returning to a norm.
Starting in the late '90s, everybody got a computer because prices for the hardware were so low, the economy was still strong and the Internet was new and exciting. But many of those new computer users had no real use for a general-purpose computing device that had as much capability as a PC and even if the machine itself didn't end up gathering dust in the corner, rarely would it be used to its full capabilities.
Nowadays, smaller and more specialized devices - MP3 players, smartphones, tablets - offer the desired subset of a full PCs capabilities in a more convenient and easier to use form factor. True, a $100 tablet might not be able to play a high-resolution video-game or let you program the next Call of Duty, but it can probably surf the web, play MP3s and send email. Plus, it's far cheaper, usually simpler to use and takes up much less space.
Basically, all those people who had no use for a computer have stopped buying them. There was a bubble in PC sales, but it's popped leaving PC manufactures with a smaller - but more regular - customer base.
Just as importantly, make that ticketing system responsive to the users. Because otherwise they will ignore it and find other ways of contacting you.
If a user creates a ticket explaining their problem and don't get a response at all - or only receive a generic "ticket #12743573 created" response - they will have absolutely no confidence that the problem is going to be noticed, much less resolved. Since their workflow probably depends on the problem being fixed, they will desperately seek out a human contact, be it some random tech they worked with in the past, the sales person who sold them the program, or the CEO of the company that developed the software. And they will keep pestering people until they get some indication that their problem is being worked on.
On the other hand, if somebody replies quickly (within the hour) to their ticket, even if only to say "hey, we see you submitted a problem, we're looking into it", it will buy the developers days or even weeks before they hear from the user again because they now have confidence (perhaps misplaced, perhaps not) that their problem is not lost in some machine.
Even with forms, don't bet on getting clear bug reports.
Aside from all the other issues mentioned earlier, there is another reason users do not provide good bug reports: time. It takes time to write up a proper report, explaining all the details (what they were doing, what they expected the program to do, what it actually did), provide .LOG files, screenshots, annotations, etc.
A form can remind them of what information they need to provide, but it won't make the actual data-collection any simpler. And users frequently already have enough on their plates without requiring them to take the time to write up all the necessary information. Add in to this their frustration that the program "doesn't work" and they have little incentive to put the effort into writing up a detailed synopsis of the problem. They just want to do their job, not have to deal with (what they consider) YOUR job.
In short, don't expect the users to provide good reports for you. Better to build the necessary tools into your software so that it can collect most of the data you need automatically.
Top 8 Reasons Dropbox Won't Be Replacing My Hard-Drive Anytime Soon
1) Speed - Obviously a hard-drive will continue to be necessary to serve apps (not to mention the OS) for the forseeable future, but even when it comes to my data I'd rather have it accessible locally rather than wait for it to torturously download from the Internet.
2) Access - Dropbox requires an additional complication to an already complicated system with the addition of a necessary Internet uplink. If the Internet is down - beware the backhoe! - then my data is not accessible. Data stored locally is also subject to failure but it's one less component to worry about. Also, I can usually prepare for local disasters - backup the data, multiple workstations, etc - but what happens if Dropbox.com itself is down? I have no remedy.
3) Privacy - Increasingly, corporations and governments are tossing aside all moral and legal restrictions in their greedy attempts to data-mine the entire world. Whether it is my personal medical history or my "Little Rascals" fanfiction (just kidding!), I only want people I specifically allow to have access to that data. I have little faith that Dropbox will honor my request.
4) Security - Yes, the average user's local machine is often riddled with viruses, trojans and other spyware. But increasingly we are seeing that large corporations suffer the same problems and inadvertently letting user information out into the wild due to poor security practices. And given how large a target Dropbox would make itself, I'd rather stay under the radar than trust them with my data.
5) Compatibility - You know what programs work with my hard-drive? All of them! You have to go back nearly thirty years before you start running across programs that didn't expect a hard-drive. You think that all these developers are going to update their programs to take advantage of this new Dropbox development? And I don't care how hard Dropbox works at integrating their service with the OS, there will always be programs - usually that one absolutely necessary to your work - that won't be compatible with the Cloud.
6) Longevity - I have data from 1991 on my hard-drive. Okay, it's not the same hard-drive I used back in '91, but it's followed me through every upgrade over the past two decades and I expect it will continue to do so over the next twenty. Will Dropbox still be available in twenty years? I have my doubts. And then how will I access my data?
7) Cost - For most users, the cost of a hard-drive is essentially $0.00; it is included in the cost of the computer. I doubt that if Dropbox were suddenly to replace the HDD, the cost of computers would significantly change. On the other hand, I have little doubt that - were it to become as essential to computing as they hope - that the price for Dropbox's services would significantly increase.
8) Control - Oh no! Due to a changing political climate, the "Little Rascals" are now banned from the United States; no distribution of any "Little Rascals" material is allowed within its borders. With my data stored locally, this sudden shift would not affect me because my "Little Rascals" fan-fiction (just kidding, really!) is outside the control of corporation or government. But if it were on Dropbox, it would be available to scrutiny and deletion.
So, yeah, I think I'll stay with the hard-drive for a while longer Dropbox. Your mediocre advantages in no way counter the numerous disadvantages. Maybe I'll use your service (or any of the hundreds of other similar services) to supplement local storage but it won't be replacing it anytime soon.
Don't worry, I'm sure that in a few days Oracle will announce that this change was just a bug, just like when they did it with the MariaDB man pages a few weeks back. It's all an innocent mistake made by their software. Oracle is our friend and only has the best of intentions for everything it does.
(The above was intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek; I have no real opinion of the change or whether it is good or bad for the end-uses. It just amuses me that Oracle would attempt something like this after getting spanked for a similar change they made just a few weeks back. Did they think nobody would notice? They don't have such a good reputation to begin with; better to be above-board rather than try to silently slip in a new re-licensing).
In response, let me counter with these three arguments:
1) This is not an attack against advertising; it is an attack against /targeted/ advertising. Seeing as how the marketing industry thrived for decades without this technology, I think that the lack will not hurt them significantly. Websites can still put up advertisement banners that have worth to the readership (based on the content of the website) rather than relying on targeting specific ads at people based on a profile.
2) Websites that use more obtrusive advertisements are going to sacrifice short-term gain for long-term readership. The tools to block the ads exist already and are amongst the most downloaded plugins already. Making ads even more annoying are going to simply drive visitors away.
3) And so what if some advertisement-supported websites disappear (even, , slashdot!). Corporate sites will continue to exist as opt-in advertisment platforms for specific products, retail sites will continue to exist to sell those goods, and there are millions of dedicated fans who will put up websites using their own time and money to fund it. Oh, we might lose these megalithic corporate-sites (like Facebook) but I honestly don't see that as much of a loss. Too much power has been invested in these companies already; I'd prefer a more fragmented, federated web than something dominated by three or four giant entities anyway.
Destroy the Internet, hah! It'll just make the Internet better.
It's not the goal - targeted advertisements - that offends me; it is the method. I simply do not like the idea of there being a profile of me available to anyone who wants it. This is increasingly useful data to not only marketers, but insurance companies, employers, banks, governments, criminals, and other unsavory sorts. I'd like to believe I'm not being targeted by any of them right now, but who knows what the future holds? And there's no telling into whose hands it will fall, either due to loose ethics or looser security. Worse, they compile this data without offering me - the source - any real recourse as to how it is to be used; how long they can keep it, what they can do with it or who they can give it to. It's an unfair bargain, often made unwittingly and I'm not averse to sabotaging the advertisers efforts.
I love the idea behind this plugin.
I'm tempted to go to CafePress and create something exactly like that.
Sadly, in America there does seem to be a growing number of people who have no issue with arresting protesters, dissenters and other people who speak against the status quo. You only have to look at major recent protests over the past ten years (OWS, G8, anti-Iraq War, etc) to see how often people are detained under the most frivolous of charges. Dare to step outside the designated "free speech zones" they outline for you, be they literal or figurative and thereby attract the attention of the Powers That Be and you are ever more likely to rue your actions. I had a colleague who went to one OWS protest, was arrested but never charged and /still/ he had to go to court three times. He wasn't imprisoned but just the inconvenience of having all these court dates has made him reconsider participating in future protests.
The grandparent poster wasn't suggesting that /you/ believe in arresting dissenters, or even that most Americans do. But increasingly there is an awareness that if you /do/ go to one of these protests, you are likely to face detainment despite the fact you are doing nothing more than expressing your right to free speech and assembly. Are they arresting everybody? Of course not, but it is far more likely to happen than it was even fifteen years ago. It is a legitimate fear.
And America is less free because of it.
Attempting to log-onto their website, I get the following warning:
For security reasons we recommend that you change your password
and a link to change the password.
Interestingly, there is no option to log-on /without/ changing the password. "Recommend" apparently means "you have no choice" in UbiSpeak.
Unfortunately, since the email address I used to register the account is no longer active, and there is no option to update the email address (since I can't log-on at all) I guess I'm screwed (silly me for not keeping my info up to date on a service I had little interest in joining except that it was forced on me to play a game I had legally purchased).
So, I guess it's par for the course for you guys at Ubisoft; you've screwed me over again. Great job, guys; first you force me to sign up to UPlay in the first place, then you screw up by leaking the log-in info all over the net and now you prevent me from changing my password. Maybe you can block access to the games I paid for as well just to round out the whole experience.
Although if they are so interested in "dignity" and "class", then perhaps they shouldn't use a popularity contest to determine the results (or at least claim to be doing so, if they intend to ignore the results anyway).
The people (or at least the subset of the people who care enough about this to actually vote) made their voice heard. Claiming first that their opinion is worth listening to by holding the contest and then ignoring it when the results don't match their expectations only makes the IAU look doubly foolish.
Don't worry, I nice room at the ADX supermax awaits. The next 50 years of your existence: 23 hours a day locked up, in a poured concrete cell, sleeping on a poured concrete bed, pissing in a poured concrete toilet, with a 4 inch wide window that you can only see the sky out of.
hope it was worth it..
If life imprisonment is ultimately Snowden's fate, then it's up to /us/ to make sure his sacrifice is "worth it" by holding the criminals
that his disclosures forced into the light accountable for their crimes. We need to get the politicians, cops, bureaucrats and any others who supported these blatantly un-Constitutional activities out of their positions of power and replaced by people who actually follow the laws and ideals of this country.
So, given Snowden is likely to have sacrificed his freedom for us, I too hope it was worth it. We have an opportunity to squish the roaches underfoot before they scuttle out of the light. Let's make the best of it.
is industry is changing, and rather than adapt to the new medium, he's throwing up FUD that the new technology is dangerous, and should have never been invented.
To be fair, this new technology /is/ dangerous. It can be used by malefactors to lie, steal or even - given the perfect set of circumstances - even kill others.
Not unlike any other technology, of course.
Whether the risks outweigh the benefits of a new technology is something every society has to determine for itself. Obviously, those whose livelihoods depend on the "old way" are more likely to stress the threats as they themselves reap less benefit. On the other hand, those that benefit directly from the new technology are less likely to focus on the threats. In either case, it doesn't mean that threat doesn't exist nor that the opposing sides are unable to recognize the advantages or disadvantages; they just weigh them differently.
Fortunately, I think most people recognize that the advantages the Internet brings to a society greatly outweigh the disadvantages, and that most of the dangers can be mitigated given proper concern and money (e.g., companies need to stop treat internet and computer security like a red-headed step-child and actually invest in securing their cybernetic holdings). There is a gradual movement in this direction, thanks to a number of large hacks getting hit by the media spotlight. Hopefully this trend continues before there is a serious breach where people actually get hurt.
So, yeah, Samuelson's article should be taken with a grain of salt but at the same time we shouldn't ignore it completely. There is some truth to his words and - as those most familiar with the new technology - we should not completely ignore him but heed his warnings to ensure his prophecies do not come to term.
You can try PrefBar which adds a toolbar with customizable buttons that can be used to toggle things like Java, Javascript, Flash, etc. I used it back in the day when I was still on dial-up; I'd load pages with all the bling disabled first and only if the content looked interesting would I enable (and download) the various imagesand applets. With the advent of broadband and Noscript, my need for PrefBar lessened but if you want a quicker way to activate/deactivate Javascript then PrefBar will probably work for you.
Heh. I just reinstalled the extension and it still remembers all my old settings, which only goes to show you how ancient my Mozilla profile must be ;-)
D'oh! Why do they say "'I' before 'E', except after 'C'"? That's weird.
That's because everyone forgets the second verse...
"or when sounding like "ay" as in neighbor or weigh".
Or the equally forgotten and badly rhymed third verse for words like ancient:
"Or when CIE sound like "sheh"'
And, of course, every rule of English grammar has an unwritten fourth verse:
"Exceptions will be made."
Sometimes I have to wonder if this lack of concern isn't all our fault.
Before Snowden:
Wild-haired man: The gub'ment be spying on us! The NSA, the CIA, the FBI; they all are reading our emails, monitoring our online chat and seeing all the websites we go to! And all of them telecom and internet companiers are involved too!
Common citizen: Oh, you wacky nutcase; you've been going on for years about this. Where's your proof of this great conspiracy, huh? They aren't spying on us! This is America and that sort of thing doesn't happen here!
After Snowden: /somebody/ a while ago. Anyway, it's been going on forever and the only thing different now is that its out in the open, so why make a fuss about it now?
Wild-haired man: The gub'ment be spying on us! They see everything you do online, everything! And the big internet and telecom companies are in cahoots with them! And look, now I got irrefutable proof!
Common citizen: Well, of course they were spying on us. Hasn't this been known for years? I remember hearing about it from
It's sort of like crying wolf, except the warnings were always true. Instead of making people disregard you, it instead acclimatizes them to the threat to the point where it doesn't seem dangerous anymore (also seen in sci-fi movies where the aliens use conspiracy theories to make people ignore the threat of a coming alien invasion).
Perhaps we should dub this tactic "Snowden's Law"?
You want controversy, just wait until people start asking about the legality of cloning for the purpose of harvesting the body parts. Can I clone myself, alter the hormone balance in utero so the creature is born effectively brain-dead, then grow it (in a tank, for a proper sci-fi ambiance) until I need a new kidney or heart?
Less futuristic, how about I clone myself but abort the fetus and harvest its stem-cells?
And who "owns" the clone, prior to its birth anyway? The donor? The doctors? The woman who has been implanted with the fetus? Can it even be owned?
Worrying about paternity rights or cost is just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, cloning could (but not necessarily /will/) reduce human life to literally just another resource to be harvested.
Forget the FTP search engines, most of the old FTP sites are gone.
I miss WUARCHIVE.WUSTL.EDU. I downloaded Doom from there...