What does a pretty traveler on the beach have to do with the story? Is it supposed to entice viewers to read it?
The main article is Slashdotted, so here's Google's text-only cached version: link
On the article, the main qualm for the author of the main article seems to be with Indonesia's inclusion into the Special 301 list. For those that didn't read the article but don't know what that list is, the Special 301 list monitors countries that are known for infringing IP rights on a wide-scale (or at least that's the jist I got from reading the articles).
If one reads at least the Executive Summary for Indonesia's report, it is made pretty clear that the analyzed paragraph is not the reason why Indonesia was included on that list. Their issues are, like many second- and third-world countries, much more far-reaching that.
Firstly, it is important to recognize that these are not governmental mandates. These are requests. While there is some legitimacy in claiming that the exclusive use of (free and) open-source software imbalances the playing field for companies looking to make a profit, it is very weak. Nobody complained when Germany or France switched over to OpenDocument format and Linux on government desktops, even though that both of those actions, according to the IIPA, would be guilty of the same thing. It should be a government's decision to determine whether they want to adopt a purely free and open-source computing environment; in fact, it is actually a pretty good decision for them since it would help them deter privacy at-home (which is ultimately what these folks want) while saving them massive dollars. I highly doubt that this will be followed through; too many questions would be raised.
Secondly, one the real reasons why Indonesia is on that list is clearly stated if one reads a bit further down into the report. They are reported as ranking in the world's top 12 countries for business software piracy. That more than likely means they get lots and lots of copies of Office from TPB or wherever. I'm not against piracy, but that would definitely be a legitimate cause for landing up on that list. They are also reported to have lots of other issues with illegal copying/selling/et al.
I am not against piracy (at least on a personal level), but I am against sensational journalism that only blows up a few pixels out of the bigger picture instead of looking at the whole image. This is hardly an attack on open-source; it's just a "thing they noticed."
I don't understand the massive criticisms Apple gets for not including Flash on the iPhone/iPad. These are not desktop computers; they are mobile devices with limited resources for limited purposes. If the iPhone came with Flash support, people would be complaining to the hills about their web surfing being SO SLOW and their batteries getting drained to the max.
Many people (I'd even bet on saying most people) use Flash for viewing video, and HTML5 + H.264 take care of that quite well and much more efficiently.
I use the same PC as my file server, and it works excellently with Windows Server 2003. I found a newer computer recently, though, so I may decommission it. (Unfortunately, the new computer uses a Celeron processor...kind of sucks, but it's probably much faster than a Pentium 3 running at 450 MHz.)
Yeah, but it's hard to game on OS X machines too, but they still sell like hotcakes. (I suppose PBR to hipsters would be more appropriate, but I digress.)
(NOTE: From this point forward, Linux is defined as the GNU/Linux kernel and its distributions.)
As an occassional Linux user (i.e. I can work with bash when I need to and can get around), there are so many issues that Linux as a whole (i.e. NOT just Ubuntu or Red Hat) need to hurdle over.
For one, Linux in itself still has a pretty geeky perception to the public, and that will hinder its penetration into the general consumer market. Sure, Asus has Xandros for the netbook and Dell sells Ubuntu machines (which has a slightly LESS geeky perception), but these are:
Not perceived as the Linux we know and love, but as the stuff that came with my PC. Some people still don't know what Windows is; they only know what came on their computer. That leads to my second point...
People don't like it. Several of those netbook users have switched to XP or Win7, as indicated by the popularity of those instructions on the Internet. I especially don't like the Xandros that comes on the EEE, as it's update mechanism is not straightforward, the standard apt-get procedure didn't work, and trying to use the F8 restore functionality that it came with turned into me (and the person who owns this book who did the same before I did) completely formatting the user partition that it said it wouldn't format with no warnings whatsoever.
Furthermore, there's really no marketing initiative for it. The marketing's completely evident on the backend side of things, as proven by the massive uptake of Linux in the server world (which is another problem), but it's practically nowhere to be seen on the consumer end. I have yet to see any mainstream advertisement, TV, radio or otherwise, for Ubuntu or its "consumer-friendly" alternatives. Google and Mozilla may have flourished even despite not doing that, but if one is going to go by empirical evidence, Microsoft invested a LOT of money marketing earlier versions of Windows before it became so ubiquitous a brand that it no longer needed that.
The final large problem I'll mention is that Linux, at its core, is an operating system that's designed for stability and utmost performance in critical environments. While the kernel may have gotten a lot of new features added to it in recent times to make it more consumer-friendly, its identity still stands. This makes it a bit more difficult to create a consumer-oriented (or even business-oriented) operating system, as that must be designed from the ground-up. Windows is a perfect example of this, as it took them several years (and much high-profile demand) to tweak the kernel enough to make it reliable for server scenarios and several years after that to reach levels of stability on par with Linux, BSD and the like. Even with that considered, NT was a completely different kernel from 9x and it took several years to merge them in such a way that would make it compatible with the Windows non-business users know and love, and even that wasn't fully honed until the release of Windows XP just ten years ago. OS X only has a server edition to add closure to its product line; many have needed to bend over backwards to make it work or used Linux/BSD in its place. It's pure focus is on maximizing the user experience. (This doesn't consider how OS X, along with iPod, was a saving grace for Apple, since most of its core user base was introduced to Apple either through the iPod or through OS X. There are some dedicated Apple fans from the System 7, 8 or OS 9 days, but I would probably be making a safe assumption that most Apple users now would be pretty lost on those OSes.)
Linux, on the other hand, didn't really start getting serious with making a consumer-friendly distribution until Mandriva (then Mandrake) was released in 1998 (I might be wrong here), and guess where it did well? In the country that it was marketed to most
Being "smart" in a race is quite different from being "smart" overall. I know for a fact that there are quite a few accomplished cyclists (domestically) who are also accomplished in their careers. (When I was racing for my school, the kid who was top of our conference was a Princeton student, raced for Time professionally and was working on marketing bamboo bikes; wonder how he's doing with that.). However, from what I've read, the history of cycling in Europe, where most of the determining races are held, is that cycling is, and has historically been, a sport for the poor. In fact, most ProTour teams are comprised of college-age folks who had to drop out of school to ride.
I don't remember American 3 time tour winner Greg LeMond being accused of doping, but I'm sure he was.
One of the central points in Armstrong's feud with LeMond is that he DID use EPO when it got hot back in the early 90's. I think he was also openly accused of being on other types of drugs in the French press, but that may have just been Armstrong.
...and rightfully so! As others mentioned already, he bought tickets for two seats, but wanted to get on an earlier flight with one. They might be at fault for not telling him that the standby flight had one seat remaining, but they gave him $100 for the trouble and still let him board the later flight he was originally scheduled to board.
I can understand his anger, but it doesn't make it justified. Southwest was completely in the right here, and probably would've dealt with another customer similarly (sans the Relations VP call, which is only done because of the potential big-time media issue he could make of this, as he already has). This situation is similar to a passenger trying to board an earlier flight than scheduled, but discovers while trying to board that the seat he or she took was prioritized for someone who actually had a ticket.
Run 10 miles every day and eat 1500 well balanced calories a day (proteins/fats/carbs) and you will not be obese - guaranteed.
Please. All it takes to stay healthy is eating a balanced diet (pizza right before bedtime doesn't count; neither does the soda in the morning with twinkies thrown in for snack) and using one's body for a little bit every day. This might be a stretch, but most folks who are really fat get like that because they watch tons of TV and eat like crap. To make matters worse, the problem is a vicious circle because the fatter one gets, the less able he or she will be to do any sort of exercise.
The folks who are "blessed" with naturally fast-acting metabolisms aren't completely off the hook; they might stay skinny, but they fail at any physical effort and get sick more easily.
This is a good thing in the sense that it gives students an opportunity to be more productive during a time that they normally wouldn't be. However, being rowdy and stupid on the school bus is part of being a high-schooler. Kids at that age should be loud and crazy, simply because they won't get the opportunity to do that elsewhere or when they age. Sure, some people might get the short end of the stick (I did when I was in HS and middle school, though I almost always walked to school), but I always thought it was part of growing up.
While I don't regret the way my high school years panned out, some social issues I'm facing now would have certainly been made easier to deal with had I relaxed a little back then. Being quiet and structured all the time has its flaws.
All of the issues they're clamoring over are completely non-unique. The simple fact that Google is giving Yale their Google Mail service for free is an advantage that cannot be glossed over in one sentence (as these authors did) for the following reasons:
It reduces their operating costs and overhead tremendously. Reliable e-mail systems can cost tremendous amounts of money on licensing alone; removing that burden liberates a huge chip on their shoulders.
It reduces power consumption, thus reducing monthly costs and increasing eco-friendliness. Yale will probably have a local server on-site which handles backups, but switching to GMail nonetheless allows administrators to either turn off a few servers or reuse them for some other purpose.
It makes the lives of sysadmins easier. Working with Exchange, Zimbra or whichever email system they currently have on a full-time basis is not easy pickings. Many awkward things can go awry, and a transition to GMail shifts the onus of responsibility on Google's staff, not theirs.
This doesn't include the fact that no system, regardless of how well it's put together, is immune to the occassional outage. One can argue that administrators don't have much control over fixing an outage on Google's turf, but they have shown consistently that they can get everything back in working order extremely quickly. Plus, being able to manage millions of accounts (which include calendaring and contact storage for almost every account) while retaining extremely reliable levels of uptime is impressive.
I think the only reason why large-scale corporations haven't considered doing the same is to retain compliance. (Legal would never allow it).
I was in an Engineering program (Stevens Institute in Hoboken), and I would venture that at least half of homework was done in study groups, sometimes just to bounce idea off each other, sometimes as a collaborative group effort. This was part of the learning process.
I'm a Computer Engineering student at the same school, and I know for a fact that cheating was rampant in the lower-level courses. The "study groups" that you mention, or at least the ones I partook in, consisted of 85% procrastination and BS'ing and 15% work, usually on the day of. I don't think too many people got caught, but those that did went through all kinds of scrutiny and suffering. Apparently, cheating is also popular amongst grad students here, though I can't speak for them as an undergraduate.
I do agree that an effective study group anywhere can go a LONG way towards getting good marks.
I'm not stupid. I know that it can be turned off, and I know that it's an innovative approach to how people interact. I respect that. However --- and you might want to hold on; this might blow you away --- I can make opinions, and my opinion on Buzz stands: it is not what email was intended for and is a bit out-of-focus.
Now, if you email others with the expectancy of receiving status updates on their lives, or more simply put, expect to have your email work like Facebook, then this product is right up your alley. I was actually very interested in Wave and did a good bit of research to start playing around with it; the reason why I made that comment was because I thought that Wave was going to kick off the new socially-aware collaboration platform that was really supposed to give Facebook a run for its money. While we're at it:
In your opinion, the "Google Mail team" is losing touch by offering a new feature that lets people connect with each other more, in a way very similar to two other extremely popular ways to do the same... yeah, you're right, they're really out there in left field! What were those crazy loons thinking!
This new feature makes it seem like they're either (a) providing something of a teaser until Wave matures enough to take off (which I think it will when its purpose becomes clearer to people) or (b) trying to unite social networking with daily email, which I feel are pretty mutually exclusive to each other. Finally,
Wow, you've queried other Gmail users? Please publish your findings!
You'd really have to be out of it to not know how most folks interact with their e-mail.
I hear this claim made a lot, though I never see any warrants to back it up. Lots of people have expressed how Facebook is "so much harder to use," but never say where. Frankly, I think Facebook's layout is extremely clean for being as feature-rich as it is. Seriously, it takes me less than thirty seconds (not including any manual activity on my behalf) to post notes, pictures or (especially) status updates. On top of that, it's still incredibly fast and reliable, especially given its scale. (I've seen it have some downtime, but nowhere near MySpace levels.)
Facebook is going to need one really strong David to take it down, and I look very much forward to the one that does, since that only means it will be even more awesome.
I feel that Buzz is a sign that the Google Mail team is losing touch. Most people, myself included, use Google Mail (or at least their web interface) to check and compose e-mail. That's it. With Buzz thrown in the mix, now people can check their email as well as follow the people they're emailing through pictures, videos, status updates, etc. All of these things are way outside the realm of emailing, which is, like regular mail, to simply correspond.. Thus, I don't really see this being a threat to Facebook at all because people go on Facebook precisely for these kinds of things. It's Facebook's walled garden paradigm that makes these interactions even feasible, since friends share this kind of information in real life as well.
Additionally, whatever happened with Wave? Wasn't that platform supposed to be the springboard for this "revolutionized email?"
I disagree. For those that are somewhat social (amongst younger folk) and are meeting new people regularly, it's practically the only solid, reliable way of communicating with others initially. Calling and even e-mailing is becoming much less common amongst people in my age group (18-24) since Facebook and text messaging are the de facto communication method. It's much more impersonal (which is actually an advantage amongst this crowd, since person-to-person communication seems to be somewhat discouraged), but is also very quick and effective.
I don't really think that this is entirely progressive, but it is what it is.
This article is about the discrepancies regarding females leading tech and high-tech startups. Your example talks about Andrea Jung, who does NOT lead a tech-related startup, but an influential cosmetics company. Cosmetics, fashion and beauty are areas which have many women leading the frontlines. On top of that, it would make sense to have someone like Jung on the board of Apple, since they are as much a lifestyle and "beauty"-related company as Avon is and Avon has been incredibly successful in selling its cosmetics.
Technology has always had an issue in drawing women to the more technical sides of things, though I believe that is changing nowadays due to the increasing prevalence of technology in society and the fact that IT, like nursing, is being widely recognized as a field that has, on the average, respectable entry-level wages without the long, long process required by more "mature" professions (law, medicine, politics, etc.).
Actually, every time I wrote my notes, I was less inclined to look at them again because professors usually scribbled stuff down that didn't really amount to much. I usually included my own commentary that paraphrased whatever the professor said but didn't write, which made it difficult to catch up anyway.
In an age where more and more professors are switching to Powerpoint lectures, it makes much more sense to have a notebook ready, as it makes commenting on these and reading/studying ahead much, much easier to do. Additionally, it allows a person to write those digital notes down later for extra retention, which can be pretty effective (well..it was for me anyway).
Slashdot Mirror
If that's the case, then why is the iPhone the first mass-produced device to have this feature?
I really liked your photography. Excellent work!
A few notes:
On the article, the main qualm for the author of the main article seems to be with Indonesia's inclusion into the Special 301 list. For those that didn't read the article but don't know what that list is, the Special 301 list monitors countries that are known for infringing IP rights on a wide-scale (or at least that's the jist I got from reading the articles).
If one reads at least the Executive Summary for Indonesia's report, it is made pretty clear that the analyzed paragraph is not the reason why Indonesia was included on that list. Their issues are, like many second- and third-world countries, much more far-reaching that.
Firstly, it is important to recognize that these are not governmental mandates. These are requests. While there is some legitimacy in claiming that the exclusive use of (free and) open-source software imbalances the playing field for companies looking to make a profit, it is very weak. Nobody complained when Germany or France switched over to OpenDocument format and Linux on government desktops, even though that both of those actions, according to the IIPA, would be guilty of the same thing. It should be a government's decision to determine whether they want to adopt a purely free and open-source computing environment; in fact, it is actually a pretty good decision for them since it would help them deter privacy at-home (which is ultimately what these folks want) while saving them massive dollars. I highly doubt that this will be followed through; too many questions would be raised.
Secondly, one the real reasons why Indonesia is on that list is clearly stated if one reads a bit further down into the report. They are reported as ranking in the world's top 12 countries for business software piracy. That more than likely means they get lots and lots of copies of Office from TPB or wherever. I'm not against piracy, but that would definitely be a legitimate cause for landing up on that list. They are also reported to have lots of other issues with illegal copying/selling/et al.
I am not against piracy (at least on a personal level), but I am against sensational journalism that only blows up a few pixels out of the bigger picture instead of looking at the whole image. This is hardly an attack on open-source; it's just a "thing they noticed."
I don't understand the massive criticisms Apple gets for not including Flash on the iPhone/iPad. These are not desktop computers; they are mobile devices with limited resources for limited purposes. If the iPhone came with Flash support, people would be complaining to the hills about their web surfing being SO SLOW and their batteries getting drained to the max.
Many people (I'd even bet on saying most people) use Flash for viewing video, and HTML5 + H.264 take care of that quite well and much more efficiently.
Darn; I didn't mean to post that as AC. That was me.
I use the same PC as my file server, and it works excellently with Windows Server 2003. I found a newer computer recently, though, so I may decommission it. (Unfortunately, the new computer uses a Celeron processor...kind of sucks, but it's probably much faster than a Pentium 3 running at 450 MHz.)
Yeah, but it's hard to game on OS X machines too, but they still sell like hotcakes. (I suppose PBR to hipsters would be more appropriate, but I digress.)
(NOTE: From this point forward, Linux is defined as the GNU/Linux kernel and its distributions.)
As an occassional Linux user (i.e. I can work with bash when I need to and can get around), there are so many issues that Linux as a whole (i.e. NOT just Ubuntu or Red Hat) need to hurdle over.
For one, Linux in itself still has a pretty geeky perception to the public, and that will hinder its penetration into the general consumer market. Sure, Asus has Xandros for the netbook and Dell sells Ubuntu machines (which has a slightly LESS geeky perception), but these are:
Furthermore, there's really no marketing initiative for it. The marketing's completely evident on the backend side of things, as proven by the massive uptake of Linux in the server world (which is another problem), but it's practically nowhere to be seen on the consumer end. I have yet to see any mainstream advertisement, TV, radio or otherwise, for Ubuntu or its "consumer-friendly" alternatives. Google and Mozilla may have flourished even despite not doing that, but if one is going to go by empirical evidence, Microsoft invested a LOT of money marketing earlier versions of Windows before it became so ubiquitous a brand that it no longer needed that.
The final large problem I'll mention is that Linux, at its core, is an operating system that's designed for stability and utmost performance in critical environments. While the kernel may have gotten a lot of new features added to it in recent times to make it more consumer-friendly, its identity still stands. This makes it a bit more difficult to create a consumer-oriented (or even business-oriented) operating system, as that must be designed from the ground-up. Windows is a perfect example of this, as it took them several years (and much high-profile demand) to tweak the kernel enough to make it reliable for server scenarios and several years after that to reach levels of stability on par with Linux, BSD and the like. Even with that considered, NT was a completely different kernel from 9x and it took several years to merge them in such a way that would make it compatible with the Windows non-business users know and love, and even that wasn't fully honed until the release of Windows XP just ten years ago. OS X only has a server edition to add closure to its product line; many have needed to bend over backwards to make it work or used Linux/BSD in its place. It's pure focus is on maximizing the user experience. (This doesn't consider how OS X, along with iPod, was a saving grace for Apple, since most of its core user base was introduced to Apple either through the iPod or through OS X. There are some dedicated Apple fans from the System 7, 8 or OS 9 days, but I would probably be making a safe assumption that most Apple users now would be pretty lost on those OSes.)
Linux, on the other hand, didn't really start getting serious with making a consumer-friendly distribution until Mandriva (then Mandrake) was released in 1998 (I might be wrong here), and guess where it did well? In the country that it was marketed to most
Being "smart" in a race is quite different from being "smart" overall. I know for a fact that there are quite a few accomplished cyclists (domestically) who are also accomplished in their careers. (When I was racing for my school, the kid who was top of our conference was a Princeton student, raced for Time professionally and was working on marketing bamboo bikes; wonder how he's doing with that.). However, from what I've read, the history of cycling in Europe, where most of the determining races are held, is that cycling is, and has historically been, a sport for the poor. In fact, most ProTour teams are comprised of college-age folks who had to drop out of school to ride.
I don't remember American 3 time tour winner Greg LeMond being accused of doping, but I'm sure he was.
One of the central points in Armstrong's feud with LeMond is that he DID use EPO when it got hot back in the early 90's. I think he was also openly accused of being on other types of drugs in the French press, but that may have just been Armstrong.
...and rightfully so! As others mentioned already, he bought tickets for two seats, but wanted to get on an earlier flight with one. They might be at fault for not telling him that the standby flight had one seat remaining, but they gave him $100 for the trouble and still let him board the later flight he was originally scheduled to board.
I can understand his anger, but it doesn't make it justified. Southwest was completely in the right here, and probably would've dealt with another customer similarly (sans the Relations VP call, which is only done because of the potential big-time media issue he could make of this, as he already has). This situation is similar to a passenger trying to board an earlier flight than scheduled, but discovers while trying to board that the seat he or she took was prioritized for someone who actually had a ticket.
Run 10 miles every day and eat 1500 well balanced calories a day (proteins/fats/carbs) and you will not be obese - guaranteed.
Please. All it takes to stay healthy is eating a balanced diet (pizza right before bedtime doesn't count; neither does the soda in the morning with twinkies thrown in for snack) and using one's body for a little bit every day. This might be a stretch, but most folks who are really fat get like that because they watch tons of TV and eat like crap. To make matters worse, the problem is a vicious circle because the fatter one gets, the less able he or she will be to do any sort of exercise.
The folks who are "blessed" with naturally fast-acting metabolisms aren't completely off the hook; they might stay skinny, but they fail at any physical effort and get sick more easily.
Why is it stupid, reckless and irresponsible?
This is a good thing in the sense that it gives students an opportunity to be more productive during a time that they normally wouldn't be. However, being rowdy and stupid on the school bus is part of being a high-schooler. Kids at that age should be loud and crazy, simply because they won't get the opportunity to do that elsewhere or when they age. Sure, some people might get the short end of the stick (I did when I was in HS and middle school, though I almost always walked to school), but I always thought it was part of growing up.
While I don't regret the way my high school years panned out, some social issues I'm facing now would have certainly been made easier to deal with had I relaxed a little back then. Being quiet and structured all the time has its flaws.
I agree that it's not hard, but it is one less thing admins have to worry about if Google's willing to pick up the slack.
All of the issues they're clamoring over are completely non-unique. The simple fact that Google is giving Yale their Google Mail service for free is an advantage that cannot be glossed over in one sentence (as these authors did) for the following reasons:
This doesn't include the fact that no system, regardless of how well it's put together, is immune to the occassional outage. One can argue that administrators don't have much control over fixing an outage on Google's turf, but they have shown consistently that they can get everything back in working order extremely quickly. Plus, being able to manage millions of accounts (which include calendaring and contact storage for almost every account) while retaining extremely reliable levels of uptime is impressive.
I think the only reason why large-scale corporations haven't considered doing the same is to retain compliance. (Legal would never allow it).
I was in an Engineering program (Stevens Institute in Hoboken), and I would venture that at least half of homework was done in study groups, sometimes just to bounce idea off each other, sometimes as a collaborative group effort. This was part of the learning process.
I'm a Computer Engineering student at the same school, and I know for a fact that cheating was rampant in the lower-level courses. The "study groups" that you mention, or at least the ones I partook in, consisted of 85% procrastination and BS'ing and 15% work, usually on the day of. I don't think too many people got caught, but those that did went through all kinds of scrutiny and suffering. Apparently, cheating is also popular amongst grad students here, though I can't speak for them as an undergraduate.
I do agree that an effective study group anywhere can go a LONG way towards getting good marks.
You're right; that was kind of dumb. I'll keep this in mind for next time. Thanks!
I don't really like crying for trolls, honestly.
I'm not stupid. I know that it can be turned off, and I know that it's an innovative approach to how people interact. I respect that. However --- and you might want to hold on; this might blow you away --- I can make opinions, and my opinion on Buzz stands: it is not what email was intended for and is a bit out-of-focus.
Now, if you email others with the expectancy of receiving status updates on their lives, or more simply put, expect to have your email work like Facebook, then this product is right up your alley. I was actually very interested in Wave and did a good bit of research to start playing around with it; the reason why I made that comment was because I thought that Wave was going to kick off the new socially-aware collaboration platform that was really supposed to give Facebook a run for its money. While we're at it:
In your opinion, the "Google Mail team" is losing touch by offering a new feature that lets people connect with each other more, in a way very similar to two other extremely popular ways to do the same... yeah, you're right, they're really out there in left field! What were those crazy loons thinking!
This new feature makes it seem like they're either (a) providing something of a teaser until Wave matures enough to take off (which I think it will when its purpose becomes clearer to people) or (b) trying to unite social networking with daily email, which I feel are pretty mutually exclusive to each other. Finally,
Wow, you've queried other Gmail users? Please publish your findings!
You'd really have to be out of it to not know how most folks interact with their e-mail.
I hear this claim made a lot, though I never see any warrants to back it up. Lots of people have expressed how Facebook is "so much harder to use," but never say where. Frankly, I think Facebook's layout is extremely clean for being as feature-rich as it is. Seriously, it takes me less than thirty seconds (not including any manual activity on my behalf) to post notes, pictures or (especially) status updates. On top of that, it's still incredibly fast and reliable, especially given its scale. (I've seen it have some downtime, but nowhere near MySpace levels.)
Facebook is going to need one really strong David to take it down, and I look very much forward to the one that does, since that only means it will be even more awesome.
I feel that Buzz is a sign that the Google Mail team is losing touch. Most people, myself included, use Google Mail (or at least their web interface) to check and compose e-mail. That's it. With Buzz thrown in the mix, now people can check their email as well as follow the people they're emailing through pictures, videos, status updates, etc. All of these things are way outside the realm of emailing, which is, like regular mail, to simply correspond.. Thus, I don't really see this being a threat to Facebook at all because people go on Facebook precisely for these kinds of things. It's Facebook's walled garden paradigm that makes these interactions even feasible, since friends share this kind of information in real life as well.
Additionally, whatever happened with Wave? Wasn't that platform supposed to be the springboard for this "revolutionized email?"
I disagree. For those that are somewhat social (amongst younger folk) and are meeting new people regularly, it's practically the only solid, reliable way of communicating with others initially. Calling and even e-mailing is becoming much less common amongst people in my age group (18-24) since Facebook and text messaging are the de facto communication method. It's much more impersonal (which is actually an advantage amongst this crowd, since person-to-person communication seems to be somewhat discouraged), but is also very quick and effective.
I don't really think that this is entirely progressive, but it is what it is.
This article is about the discrepancies regarding females leading tech and high-tech startups. Your example talks about Andrea Jung, who does NOT lead a tech-related startup, but an influential cosmetics company. Cosmetics, fashion and beauty are areas which have many women leading the frontlines. On top of that, it would make sense to have someone like Jung on the board of Apple, since they are as much a lifestyle and "beauty"-related company as Avon is and Avon has been incredibly successful in selling its cosmetics.
Technology has always had an issue in drawing women to the more technical sides of things, though I believe that is changing nowadays due to the increasing prevalence of technology in society and the fact that IT, like nursing, is being widely recognized as a field that has, on the average, respectable entry-level wages without the long, long process required by more "mature" professions (law, medicine, politics, etc.).
Actually, every time I wrote my notes, I was less inclined to look at them again because professors usually scribbled stuff down that didn't really amount to much. I usually included my own commentary that paraphrased whatever the professor said but didn't write, which made it difficult to catch up anyway.
In an age where more and more professors are switching to Powerpoint lectures, it makes much more sense to have a notebook ready, as it makes commenting on these and reading/studying ahead much, much easier to do. Additionally, it allows a person to write those digital notes down later for extra retention, which can be pretty effective (well..it was for me anyway).
...which is a terrible example because, as your link points out, she heads Avon, which is in an industry that's very well-suited for women.
Innovation != invention.