Interesting post. Part of the issue here seemed to be an ongoing understanding and knowledge of the impact of new technologies. New technologies were used before their impact was really known. The debate would then lead to - should new technologies been used before any longer term tests are done, or just proceed with the best knowledge at hand. I'd imagine both sides could make a compelling argument.
Also I think you are right - common law seemed to have done the job here - initially at least. But the problem for me is that without an EPA like institute (maybe a state level one would suffice), the crime needs to be committed before the retroactive action is taken and it is fixed. Anything with that sort of feedback loop isn't very efficient [often times this is the worst cost effective approach if a long term analysis is done]. It would be better to monitor on an on-going basis these types of activities before the river was destroyed. The EPA like organization can note the environmental issue resolved by common law in this case, and make it part of its knowledge base for monitoring in the future to avoid having such a long feedback loop.
On the whole I agree though - it is very hard to compare standards now vs. a previous generation. What is acceptable changes over time. The only way a previous generation of bad decisions should be punished by law is if there is evidence supporting that the decision makers had information at the time indicating they were knowingly making a bad decision that would harm people and break the law (either a specific law or common law).
If only your grandfather had a discreet cell phone to record that event:(
Hopefully we can expose these types of events now and in the future so that companies don't get away with this anymore.
This is pretty spot on. In the grand scheme of things I would imagine a human life is worth their (average economic output due to both their labor + personal spending/yr) + (avg tax revenue generated from income/yr) + (avg tax revenue generated from purchases/yr) - (avg gov money spent on the individual due to services, etc/yr)
Hard things to adjust for are how many other people connected to this human being would be affected by their loss to the point that it would hurt their own economic output profile. This could be emotional affects, loss of opportunity to work for/with or do business with them, loss of opportunity to learn/inspire for younger generation, and so on...
I don't know it that amounts to 100k yr or not, but that doesn't seem wholly unreasonable. I doubt these numbers are easy to calculate at all as they have a domino affect. A human being that has passed too early has lost their ability to provide and spend on goods and services, which in turns slightly changes the numbers for each company they would do business with, which in turn changes the tax generated from those companies as well, which in turn slightly lowers the profits for that company, which in turn slightly reduces pay/benefits/shareholder worth for that company, which in turn reduces these people's ability to spend, which in turn....
The Opera browser (and maybe other browsers) has a 'delete cookies on exit' feature. In other words, you can accept cookies when you browse to various websites, but these cookies are not saved between browsing sessions. This is an excellent feature, because you can make it a per-site setting. e.g I'll let my cookies persist for slashdot, or other forums sites, but amazon has its cookies deleted after every browser session automagically.
Another nice tactic with keeping facebook data segregated from cookie re-targeting is to have multiple browsers on your computer and dedicate one browser specifically for facebook. On my macbook, I use Opera for daily browsing, firefox for facebook, and safari for banking transactions (there isn't much rhyme or reason as to how I divided up browsers by browsing type, other than I like Opera's UI). Cookies are segregated, less vulnerability to cross site scripting, and this also forces be to copy paste urls for banking sites from emails into safari (since its not the default browser).
I have 3 friends that decided to escape the IT induced dementia by planting a very clever money making scheme based off Superman III that deposits small amounts of money that would otherwise be rounded off. Try installing it on your company's mainframe and see what happens. If something goes wrong, find the weird guy in the basement and steal his red Swingline.
Two of 'em ended back in IT, the other is construction.
Isn't that the standard prescription to IT induced dementia? Every 3-6 months take an unplanned day off, pig out, stay in bed, and watch Office Space with buddies?
You are right, it isn't necessarily a moral question. Obviously, the researchers are trying to do a good thing, and their good intentions are good and correct.
It is more of a legal/tehcnical question. Are you legally allowed to do this? And the major problem for researchers is that they have no cloak of anonymity like the bad guys do: they are easily linked/traced to all their actions by the mere fact that they publish their work and share their results. If anything goes wrong, or even if an overzealous user just wants to sue/go to court for the sake of suing, then the researchers are SOL.
It IS a gray area, even if you are morally correct.
I think its a vareity of alternative revenue streams that are often overlooked.
1. Advertising (in two forms - being exposed to revenue generating targeted advertising as well as the free promotion/advertising a band can achieve through internet music sharing)
2. Concert tickets
3. Merchandise (like t-shirts, posters)
4. List probably continues, please add your thoughts here
I have been exposed to many bands through word of mouth from friends, streaming radio, sites like pandora or last.fm, etc. I also don't buy CD's. What the music industry doesn't consider is that I have paid lots of money over the last 5 years to go see bands I've discovered through non-traditional means that I would otherwise never even heard of live in concert, purchased their t-shirts and posters, and been exposed to targeted advertising and other bands similar to the bands I like through the internet and concerts. Recently, I have even started buying custom remix tracks a la carte from Amazon from some of my favorite bands because they are unqiue and hard to find otherwise.
If you ask the record industry, I'm just another unpaying music listener since I don't go to Walmart and buy 5 CDs a month. If you ask me, the record industry doesn't even have a clue as to how I spend my money on music.
Well certainly having hardware assisted decode with the new Intel chipsets will be a great improvement.
From a recent anandtech review (http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3246&p=2):
"The Mobile GM45/47 chipsets are an integral part of Montevina and will feature the new GMA X4500HD graphics core. The X4500HD will add full hardware H.264 decode acceleration, so Apple could begin shipping MacBook Pros with Blu-ray drives after the Montevina upgrade without them being a futile addition. With full hardware H.264 decode acceleration your CPU would be somewhere in the 0 - 10% range of utilization while watching a high definition movie, allowing you to watch a 1080p movie while on battery power . The new graphics core will also add integrated HDMI and DisplayPort support."
However, there is going to have to be some sacrifice on the user experience. I mean you can't really expect to watch 30-40gb of data in 2 hours and expect battery life not to take a hit. What would be ideal is if a single blu-ray discs had both an H.264 and a lower quality MPEG-2/mpeg-4 version of the video. If I am watching on a laptop screen (hooking the laptop to a HDTV would be another story), I don't really need to see 1080p resolution.
Haven't read through everything, so I apologize in advance if this is redundant:
1) Graphical passwords (might be easier, fun for yougner ones) for authentication. Example: PassFaces (http://www.realuser.com/). There are many options in research, however, I don't know how many of them have a downloadable product.
2) As already mentioned, a fingerprint reader might be a good option as well.
I think the principle of this CMU system is sound. Obfuscating the output and the input for an authentication system is a good approach to limit vulnerabilities to observation. The key is to be able to do it without annoying the user. This scheme seems to be able to make some headway in this regard. However, one aspect I don't like is that it requires a separate hardware solution (i.e. all ATMs would have to have this trackball). If such an investment is going to be made by banks, I figure they would be more inclined to try something else like biometrics. I personally believe this type of input obfuscation can be accomplished with the devices we already have (keypads) and software (I am currently researching this), and thus there would be no added costs (at least additional hardware costs) to implement such a system.
Other interesting work on CAPTCHAs
on
Yahoo CAPTCHA Hacked
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
thread. Are people really OK with caps and/or metering?
I think the last thing I want to think about is how much the next byte of usage is going to change my bill. My internet usage habits would change dramatically under such a plan; I would do far less browsing, do less syncing with my computers remotely, etc.
There are completely legitimate methods of using your connection BW; if you use Remote Desktop or VNC to manage or use a computer remotely while traveling, you can quickly use up your caps.
I'm not saying that having tiered internet service is completely wrong . Certainly if it was applied correctly where exceeding BW caps just put you in the next tier for that month (as the article states), that is not a horrible approach. BUT, the REAL QUESTION is will TW actually pass on the savings for those in the lowest tier. In other words for those who really don't use that much BW on their cable line and fall into the lowest tier, what would their bill for the month be? If you are under 6GB lets say (I can use that much up in a couple days just using my computer remotely and browsing the internet), I really don't think you should be paying anymore than $5 - $15 a month. Do you really TRUST TW to pass on this kind of savings to these customers? I doubt it...I bet they still charge $25+/mo and just pocket the savings. And how ridiculous would the prices be for the heavy hitters $40/mo? Yeah right! My guess is TW would charge them $80/mo or more.
Just because it is a good idea in theory, doesn't necessarily mean TW will pass all the savings back to the consumer.
Hehe...can't argue with that. I guess I didn't close a tag, DOH! Although this just goes to show that some formatted ASCII characters on a screen reflects little about the person behind it:)
Sorry if my post came out the wrong way. It sounds like your wife IS the ideal candidate for telecommunication. She is good at what she does, already has a good relationship with her boss, and is saving both herself and the company a lot of money and resources (and being environment friendly). I think that is great.
My post was more geared at new employees and people early in their careers; I think some decent amount of facetime during the beginning of a career and for new-hires is probably a good thing in the long run and sometimes people overlook that.
As for the last part of my post (which I accidently made entirely bold), it was more geared at those who don't telecommute. Both the telecommuter and the company save a lot of money and resources; it makes sense that if a large amount of people telecommute, then a small bit of the large amount of money saved would be well served providing some very small and inexpensive perks for the employees who are able to make it to the office. Nothing big...just stuff like food, drinks, and transportation (simple things so life can be made easier for everyone).
As a new-grad entering the workforce I have mixed feelings over telecommuting.
The first 2-5 years of your employment can be a crucial component to the success of the rest of your career. I get the feeling that you most definitely want to be coming to work everyday. Certainly you may change tracks, jobs, or even fields down the road, but the business/social skills that you'll learn and more importantly, the relationships you will develop are very important and seem impossible to foster over the phone or a video conference. Spending time at your company's office means you are working, eating, and socializing (work and recreational) with your peers. You will undoubtedly discuss your interests both related and unrelated to your job that may lead to hundreds of different possibilites. For example, during a lunch break at the office with your friend you may have a discussion on a common interest technology that could lead to a startup. Or during an on-campus softball break you may find that a peer has a common interest or contacts in a different field altogether. Let alone the 'hands-on' communication needed to complete software projects, how in the world are you going to make these relationships and get these contacts when you are at home during the work week?
I'm not arguing that you can't be successful at your job telecommuting; certainly telecommuting may be beneficial for the truly brilliant people who can produce great code or make a sale to a client from the comfort of the home, but if you are that brilliant, imagine how much your peers would benefit from having you around more often to pick your brain?
Certainly for more veteran people who have 3 kids and live far from work, telecommuting can be a blessing and that is where telecommuting should be applied; experienced individuals who already have excellent communication skills and extensive experience in the industry. The benefits of increased productivity and the positive environmental impact are great positives.
As for disgruntled non-telecommuting employees left behind at work: I think a company that properly uses telecommuting has some sort of obligation to employees that don't telecommute to improve their office experience. The company should be saving a good amount of money from reduced operating expenses because fewer employees are on campus and increased productivity from those who telecommute. Certainly some of this savings should be put to use for those who still commute to work; improve their work experience by having more benefits on campus; drinks, food, recreation, and public transportation or company shuttles. Certainly these services should be simpler to implement on campus if more employees telecommute and would certainly be appreciated by those who still come to work.
Well for one, a TV has a set of very basic standardized inputs across all brands/models that allows any service to plug-in.
This is not the case for cell phones; there is no standardized input that a component can be plugged into for all wirless carriers to use. The SIM card would be the closest thing if all providers used it.
Also, there is a blurring of protocol layering both within and outside of the device; with a TV, its a relatively simple device inside the box, but with a cell phone there are communication specific chips inside the casing. Having only CDMA based communication chip inside the device means that, no matter what, the device will only speak with CDMA carriers. You don't really see this in TVs: you don't have a sattelite communication chip inside your TV, you have it in your set top box. Hopefully, the trend towards having multiple protocols (all in one) in the phone (GSM, WiFi, WiMax, CDMA, etc) will make it easier to avoid this technology specific barrier.
And of course, your multiple TV carriers (whether it be digital cable, IPTV, satellite) all use set top boxes to communicate through standard ports (RCA, component, etc). Well with cell phones, there is not enough physical space to have multiple ports, and it would be weird to carry around a carrier specific attachment.
So I guess the best bet is to hope phones continue to increasingly support multiple communications standards and that carriers are encouraged to move to a single standard for phone/subscriber identification.
I certainly agree that it would be cool to be able to pick up any cool looking phone at a store and be able to use it with any carrier, but alas we are probably still a ways off from that.
decided to market its own standard for built0in TV cable communication and DVR capabilities, called Memory Stick PRO-HG-DVR-SUPERDELUXE-3.0. It utilizes the widely successful Memory Stick platform to store your favorite recordings so you can take them on the go with all of your other Memory Stick enabled portable devices. Each time you see your favorite show on TV, simply insert any one of your many Memory Sticks into the slot on the TV and enjoy all the wonderful features of the world of DVR.
-----
MSDNA
"Memory stick, its in our DNA"
"I wish someone would manufacture an mp3 player with better analog output circuitry designed not for headphone / earphone listening but for hooking up to hifi components."
The Rio Karma was as close to a audiophile digital audio player as you could get when it was around. It has RCA line level outputs via its dock which is nice for hifi hookups (not to mention it also had a 5 band parametric customizable EQ):
http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/item_main_Rio.asp?model=261
Seems like this wouldn't work if you used your favortie browser for all normal activity including online shopping (say Firefox/Opera), and just retain a second browser specifically for Facebook (IE/Safari/etc). Since each browser monitors cookies independently, wouldn't this solve the problem?
Not saying this is solving the problem (Facebook is tracking your purchasing habits without telling you!), but perhaps another workaround for now. Of course if you use Opera or Firefox, you can just as easily adblock I suppose.
Ah...I didn't see this post before I replied, but it does seem that facebook does in fact keep archives of your profile.
Maybe this assumption is wrong, but I don't think Facebook would keep a full version history, but instead probably keep the latest x versions (lets say 5) of your profile. Then perhaps the best way to 'erase' most of your profile is to cycle garbage through your profile before you leave. Just fill your profile with new garbage everyday for a month or two. Hopefully by then facebook has no 'real' version of your profile in its archives.
Nevertheless, its a scary thought that one would have to do something like this before they decide to leave the site.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting post. Part of the issue here seemed to be an ongoing understanding and knowledge of the impact of new technologies. New technologies were used before their impact was really known. The debate would then lead to - should new technologies been used before any longer term tests are done, or just proceed with the best knowledge at hand. I'd imagine both sides could make a compelling argument.
Also I think you are right - common law seemed to have done the job here - initially at least. But the problem for me is that without an EPA like institute (maybe a state level one would suffice), the crime needs to be committed before the retroactive action is taken and it is fixed. Anything with that sort of feedback loop isn't very efficient [often times this is the worst cost effective approach if a long term analysis is done]. It would be better to monitor on an on-going basis these types of activities before the river was destroyed. The EPA like organization can note the environmental issue resolved by common law in this case, and make it part of its knowledge base for monitoring in the future to avoid having such a long feedback loop.
On the whole I agree though - it is very hard to compare standards now vs. a previous generation. What is acceptable changes over time. The only way a previous generation of bad decisions should be punished by law is if there is evidence supporting that the decision makers had information at the time indicating they were knowingly making a bad decision that would harm people and break the law (either a specific law or common law).
If only your grandfather had a discreet cell phone to record that event :(
Hopefully we can expose these types of events now and in the future so that companies don't get away with this anymore.
This is pretty spot on. In the grand scheme of things I would imagine a human life is worth their (average economic output due to both their labor + personal spending/yr) + (avg tax revenue generated from income/yr) + (avg tax revenue generated from purchases/yr) - (avg gov money spent on the individual due to services, etc/yr) Hard things to adjust for are how many other people connected to this human being would be affected by their loss to the point that it would hurt their own economic output profile. This could be emotional affects, loss of opportunity to work for/with or do business with them, loss of opportunity to learn/inspire for younger generation, and so on... I don't know it that amounts to 100k yr or not, but that doesn't seem wholly unreasonable. I doubt these numbers are easy to calculate at all as they have a domino affect. A human being that has passed too early has lost their ability to provide and spend on goods and services, which in turns slightly changes the numbers for each company they would do business with, which in turn changes the tax generated from those companies as well, which in turn slightly lowers the profits for that company, which in turn slightly reduces pay/benefits/shareholder worth for that company, which in turn reduces these people's ability to spend, which in turn....
Wow - posts like this are why I still love reading slashdot. There are experts in everything :D
The Opera browser (and maybe other browsers) has a 'delete cookies on exit' feature. In other words, you can accept cookies when you browse to various websites, but these cookies are not saved between browsing sessions. This is an excellent feature, because you can make it a per-site setting. e.g I'll let my cookies persist for slashdot, or other forums sites, but amazon has its cookies deleted after every browser session automagically. Another nice tactic with keeping facebook data segregated from cookie re-targeting is to have multiple browsers on your computer and dedicate one browser specifically for facebook. On my macbook, I use Opera for daily browsing, firefox for facebook, and safari for banking transactions (there isn't much rhyme or reason as to how I divided up browsers by browsing type, other than I like Opera's UI). Cookies are segregated, less vulnerability to cross site scripting, and this also forces be to copy paste urls for banking sites from emails into safari (since its not the default browser).
download versions too, or they are setting themselves up for some awkward calls :P
Ahhh....the X11 holy grail, but what about XP? Some day they'll catch up to it....someday.
Ok smart alics, insert witty response after this...
and if I'm bi-curious...?
I have 3 friends that decided to escape the IT induced dementia by planting a very clever money making scheme based off Superman III that deposits small amounts of money that would otherwise be rounded off. Try installing it on your company's mainframe and see what happens. If something goes wrong, find the weird guy in the basement and steal his red Swingline. Two of 'em ended back in IT, the other is construction. Isn't that the standard prescription to IT induced dementia? Every 3-6 months take an unplanned day off, pig out, stay in bed, and watch Office Space with buddies?
You are right, it isn't necessarily a moral question. Obviously, the researchers are trying to do a good thing, and their good intentions are good and correct.
It is more of a legal/tehcnical question. Are you legally allowed to do this? And the major problem for researchers is that they have no cloak of anonymity like the bad guys do: they are easily linked/traced to all their actions by the mere fact that they publish their work and share their results. If anything goes wrong, or even if an overzealous user just wants to sue/go to court for the sake of suing, then the researchers are SOL.
It IS a gray area, even if you are morally correct.
I think its a vareity of alternative revenue streams that are often overlooked.
1. Advertising (in two forms - being exposed to revenue generating targeted advertising as well as the free promotion/advertising a band can achieve through internet music sharing)
2. Concert tickets
3. Merchandise (like t-shirts, posters)
4. List probably continues, please add your thoughts here
I have been exposed to many bands through word of mouth from friends, streaming radio, sites like pandora or last.fm, etc. I also don't buy CD's. What the music industry doesn't consider is that I have paid lots of money over the last 5 years to go see bands I've discovered through non-traditional means that I would otherwise never even heard of live in concert, purchased their t-shirts and posters, and been exposed to targeted advertising and other bands similar to the bands I like through the internet and concerts. Recently, I have even started buying custom remix tracks a la carte from Amazon from some of my favorite bands because they are unqiue and hard to find otherwise. If you ask the record industry, I'm just another unpaying music listener since I don't go to Walmart and buy 5 CDs a month. If you ask me, the record industry doesn't even have a clue as to how I spend my money on music.
Well certainly having hardware assisted decode with the new Intel chipsets will be a great improvement.
From a recent anandtech review (http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3246&p=2):
"The Mobile GM45/47 chipsets are an integral part of Montevina and will feature the new GMA X4500HD graphics core. The X4500HD will add full hardware H.264 decode acceleration, so Apple could begin shipping MacBook Pros with Blu-ray drives after the Montevina upgrade without them being a futile addition. With full hardware H.264 decode acceleration your CPU would be somewhere in the 0 - 10% range of utilization while watching a high definition movie, allowing you to watch a 1080p movie while on battery power . The new graphics core will also add integrated HDMI and DisplayPort support."
However, there is going to have to be some sacrifice on the user experience. I mean you can't really expect to watch 30-40gb of data in 2 hours and expect battery life not to take a hit. What would be ideal is if a single blu-ray discs had both an H.264 and a lower quality MPEG-2/mpeg-4 version of the video. If I am watching on a laptop screen (hooking the laptop to a HDTV would be another story), I don't really need to see 1080p resolution.
Haven't read through everything, so I apologize in advance if this is redundant:
1) Graphical passwords (might be easier, fun for yougner ones) for authentication. Example: PassFaces (http://www.realuser.com/). There are many options in research, however, I don't know how many of them have a downloadable product.
2) As already mentioned, a fingerprint reader might be a good option as well.
that has been explored in previous research covering similar ideas (they used a stylus input and pressure to hide input): http://www.discover.uottawa.ca/publications/EH2006.pdf
I think the principle of this CMU system is sound. Obfuscating the output and the input for an authentication system is a good approach to limit vulnerabilities to observation. The key is to be able to do it without annoying the user. This scheme seems to be able to make some headway in this regard. However, one aspect I don't like is that it requires a separate hardware solution (i.e. all ATMs would have to have this trackball). If such an investment is going to be made by banks, I figure they would be more inclined to try something else like biometrics. I personally believe this type of input obfuscation can be accomplished with the devices we already have (keypads) and software (I am currently researching this), and thus there would be no added costs (at least additional hardware costs) to implement such a system.
Segmentation and intersecting arcs can be difficult for automated attacks: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1054972.1055070
You know those annoying flash advertisement games (shoot the monkey for a free iPod)? Well, they could potentially be adapted for CAPTCHAs as well: http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2006/posters/misra-poster_abstract.pdf
thread. Are people really OK with caps and/or metering?
I think the last thing I want to think about is how much the next byte of usage is going to change my bill. My internet usage habits would change dramatically under such a plan; I would do far less browsing, do less syncing with my computers remotely, etc.
There are completely legitimate methods of using your connection BW; if you use Remote Desktop or VNC to manage or use a computer remotely while traveling, you can quickly use up your caps.
I'm not saying that having tiered internet service is completely wrong . Certainly if it was applied correctly where exceeding BW caps just put you in the next tier for that month (as the article states), that is not a horrible approach. BUT, the REAL QUESTION is will TW actually pass on the savings for those in the lowest tier. In other words for those who really don't use that much BW on their cable line and fall into the lowest tier, what would their bill for the month be? If you are under 6GB lets say (I can use that much up in a couple days just using my computer remotely and browsing the internet), I really don't think you should be paying anymore than $5 - $15 a month. Do you really TRUST TW to pass on this kind of savings to these customers? I doubt it...I bet they still charge $25+/mo and just pocket the savings. And how ridiculous would the prices be for the heavy hitters $40/mo? Yeah right! My guess is TW would charge them $80/mo or more.
Just because it is a good idea in theory, doesn't necessarily mean TW will pass all the savings back to the consumer.
Hehe...can't argue with that. I guess I didn't close a tag, DOH! Although this just goes to show that some formatted ASCII characters on a screen reflects little about the person behind it :)
Sorry if my post came out the wrong way. It sounds like your wife IS the ideal candidate for telecommunication. She is good at what she does, already has a good relationship with her boss, and is saving both herself and the company a lot of money and resources (and being environment friendly). I think that is great.
My post was more geared at new employees and people early in their careers; I think some decent amount of facetime during the beginning of a career and for new-hires is probably a good thing in the long run and sometimes people overlook that.
As for the last part of my post (which I accidently made entirely bold), it was more geared at those who don't telecommute. Both the telecommuter and the company save a lot of money and resources; it makes sense that if a large amount of people telecommute, then a small bit of the large amount of money saved would be well served providing some very small and inexpensive perks for the employees who are able to make it to the office. Nothing big...just stuff like food, drinks, and transportation (simple things so life can be made easier for everyone).
As a new-grad entering the workforce I have mixed feelings over telecommuting.
The first 2-5 years of your employment can be a crucial component to the success of the rest of your career. I get the feeling that you most definitely want to be coming to work everyday. Certainly you may change tracks, jobs, or even fields down the road, but the business/social skills that you'll learn and more importantly, the relationships you will develop are very important and seem impossible to foster over the phone or a video conference. Spending time at your company's office means you are working, eating, and socializing (work and recreational) with your peers. You will undoubtedly discuss your interests both related and unrelated to your job that may lead to hundreds of different possibilites. For example, during a lunch break at the office with your friend you may have a discussion on a common interest technology that could lead to a startup. Or during an on-campus softball break you may find that a peer has a common interest or contacts in a different field altogether. Let alone the 'hands-on' communication needed to complete software projects, how in the world are you going to make these relationships and get these contacts when you are at home during the work week?
I'm not arguing that you can't be successful at your job telecommuting; certainly telecommuting may be beneficial for the truly brilliant people who can produce great code or make a sale to a client from the comfort of the home, but if you are that brilliant, imagine how much your peers would benefit from having you around more often to pick your brain?
Certainly for more veteran people who have 3 kids and live far from work, telecommuting can be a blessing and that is where telecommuting should be applied; experienced individuals who already have excellent communication skills and extensive experience in the industry. The benefits of increased productivity and the positive environmental impact are great positives.
As for disgruntled non-telecommuting employees left behind at work: I think a company that properly uses telecommuting has some sort of obligation to employees that don't telecommute to improve their office experience. The company should be saving a good amount of money from reduced operating expenses because fewer employees are on campus and increased productivity from those who telecommute. Certainly some of this savings should be put to use for those who still commute to work; improve their work experience by having more benefits on campus; drinks, food, recreation, and public transportation or company shuttles. Certainly these services should be simpler to implement on campus if more employees telecommute and would certainly be appreciated by those who still come to work.
Well for one, a TV has a set of very basic standardized inputs across all brands/models that allows any service to plug-in. This is not the case for cell phones; there is no standardized input that a component can be plugged into for all wirless carriers to use. The SIM card would be the closest thing if all providers used it.
Also, there is a blurring of protocol layering both within and outside of the device; with a TV, its a relatively simple device inside the box, but with a cell phone there are communication specific chips inside the casing. Having only CDMA based communication chip inside the device means that, no matter what, the device will only speak with CDMA carriers. You don't really see this in TVs: you don't have a sattelite communication chip inside your TV, you have it in your set top box. Hopefully, the trend towards having multiple protocols (all in one) in the phone (GSM, WiFi, WiMax, CDMA, etc) will make it easier to avoid this technology specific barrier.
And of course, your multiple TV carriers (whether it be digital cable, IPTV, satellite) all use set top boxes to communicate through standard ports (RCA, component, etc). Well with cell phones, there is not enough physical space to have multiple ports, and it would be weird to carry around a carrier specific attachment.
So I guess the best bet is to hope phones continue to increasingly support multiple communications standards and that carriers are encouraged to move to a single standard for phone/subscriber identification.
I certainly agree that it would be cool to be able to pick up any cool looking phone at a store and be able to use it with any carrier, but alas we are probably still a ways off from that.
decided to market its own standard for built0in TV cable communication and DVR capabilities, called Memory Stick PRO-HG-DVR-SUPERDELUXE-3.0. It utilizes the widely successful Memory Stick platform to store your favorite recordings so you can take them on the go with all of your other Memory Stick enabled portable devices. Each time you see your favorite show on TV, simply insert any one of your many Memory Sticks into the slot on the TV and enjoy all the wonderful features of the world of DVR. ----- MSDNA "Memory stick, its in our DNA"
"I wish someone would manufacture an mp3 player with better analog output circuitry designed not for headphone / earphone listening but for hooking up to hifi components."
The Rio Karma was as close to a audiophile digital audio player as you could get when it was around. It has RCA line level outputs via its dock which is nice for hifi hookups (not to mention it also had a 5 band parametric customizable EQ): http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/item_main_Rio.asp?model=261
Lol...only on the pr0n hungry, male dominated, slashdot would the parent post be modded "5 - insightful" instead of "5 - funny". :)
Seems like this wouldn't work if you used your favortie browser for all normal activity including online shopping (say Firefox/Opera), and just retain a second browser specifically for Facebook (IE/Safari/etc). Since each browser monitors cookies independently, wouldn't this solve the problem? Not saying this is solving the problem (Facebook is tracking your purchasing habits without telling you!), but perhaps another workaround for now. Of course if you use Opera or Firefox, you can just as easily adblock I suppose.
Ah...I didn't see this post before I replied, but it does seem that facebook does in fact keep archives of your profile.
Maybe this assumption is wrong, but I don't think Facebook would keep a full version history, but instead probably keep the latest x versions (lets say 5) of your profile. Then perhaps the best way to 'erase' most of your profile is to cycle garbage through your profile before you leave. Just fill your profile with new garbage everyday for a month or two. Hopefully by then facebook has no 'real' version of your profile in its archives.
Nevertheless, its a scary thought that one would have to do something like this before they decide to leave the site.