I agree, this would most likely only pose much of a thread to people like celebrities, where the potential gain is very high.
For the average person it's much more likely that the burglar is just using opportunity. For example they saw you leave shortly before 9:00 or your house just happens to look empty during the day.
That's by no means to say that this project is a bad idea. I think anything that attempts to teach people to be more careful about the information they put out there in public online is absolutely a good idea as this kind of information could be used for purposes other than burglary.
I doubt I would use it personally. It's not something I would use often enough to justify adding another icon on my phone. Especially when I can just look on google for movie quotes. If it added functionality to find quotes by actors or attempt to find quotes from an incomplete quote (I forgot the actual quote but know the gist) and the ability to drill down by quote subject I might use it but I'd likely still prefer it to be a website.
I don't know that lazy is the right word. If he moves to a more modern system and then turns off all of the modern automatic features and has no use for anything his current setup doesn't offer it's not really an efficient use of his time to learn a new system. It's only lazy if we assume there is some feature that would make him drastically more efficient but the fact is we don't really know his workflow. Besides, I seriously doubt his word processing time is the bottleneck in the writing process.
My guess (with nothing to back it up) is people will start moving into paterns of 963 852 741 or the reverse since they're easy to type on the numpad without really remembering the values.
edit: On second look, that's exactly what you did in your example.
You seem to be making the erroneous assumption that everyone is motivated in the same way as you. Personally, if someone embarrasses me in a conversation in this way I'm going to feel like an idiot and resent them for making me feel that way. When this kind of thing happens it feels to me like they'd rather have someone to laugh at and feel superior to than help that person better their skills. I don't have much respect for that.
If they point me in the direction of some resources or help me learn it I'm going to respect them more because it makes it clear they care about their craft. They don't feel the need to feel superior, they'd rather have a peer on their level.
My point really is just that different people are motivated in different ways and what may motivate you has the opposite effect on others.
I see what you're getting at and agree it could be offensive but it could also be Charles Spears. At the same time someone could name an account CharlesSpears and probably no one would find it offensive.
It is interesting to think about where the line should be drawn. Especially in human moderated cases.
Agreed. Personally, whenever I study or do work in a coffee shop I try to regularly make purchases.
I usually end up averaging between $1 and $2 per hour which I think is completely reasonable for the space, drinks, snacks, and internet access. I'll ramp it up a bit if they get busy and if they stay busy for very long (30 min. or longer) I will usually leave.
Technical issues aside, the way AOL implemented poses some issues from SPAM I think.
With AOL I could check and if I can't unsend I know they opened the email. If this worked across all email and I wanted to use email for nefarious purposes I could use this to see, with great accuracy, exactly which email address that I've sent to were active and opened the message. I can then target these accounts more.
In general, I agree with this. I speak to someone that's younger in a different manner than I do someone who is an adult.
Not only that, I feel like someone starting out stands to be affected a lot more by negative feedback. In this case knowing the experience level gives me a chance to word my advice in such a manner as to help them improve while also encouraging them.
I'm sort of torn on this issue. In a lot of ways I really agree with this article. On the other hand, with my experience helping with a first-year college programming course I care, in a way, about the age/level of experience.
I might tailor, not my advice, but my manner of communicating to the age and experience level of the individual.
I really see both sides of this argument but would err on the side of preferring that people not mention their age. This is simply because it does always seem to devolve into an argument on whether or not they should have posted their age.
I agree with this but it shows an even bigger problem in my mind. It seems to me that the author has decided that employees attempting to automate bureaucratic tasks is worse than just doing it himself. This seems like a wildly inefficient way to manage. Maybe I'm missing something though.
For example, regarding the time sheets, if I could write a quick script that automates the process of filling it out (correctly) in three hours and it would have taken me twenty minutes to fill it out by hand, what's the problem? after only nine weeks I have earned back that three hours in productive time. If I were to distribute it to the entire team of fifteen people and they each take a similar amount of time to fill out the sheets then we are already ahead.
I agree on the marketing point. They could have one magazine with everything in it.
It seems like, and forgive me if I inferred the wrong thing from your comment, that you are implying that some of the toys aren't gender neutral. I don't have a problem with they beauty bar and things like that. Some girls like those things. So do some boys.
The marketing side I totally agree with though. For whatever reason when I was around 8 I wanted a Barbie. I can't tell you how much I got made fun of and picked on for that. I remember hiding it when friends came over so I wouldn't get made fun of. To my mother's credit though, she didn't really even bat an eye at the thought of me playing with a girl toy.
I totally agree with these points. Especially regarding unsubscribe. For whatever reason a LOT of online business seem to think, "Hey if we make it a pain in the ass to unsubscribe they'll just keep reading our mailings." This is wrong and, at least in the case of anyone I've talked to, just fosters ill-will and eliminates any possibility of retaining that customer.
I've resigned myself to automatically being signed up even though I think it's a shady business practice. These mailing lists should always be opt-in not opt-out. I shouldn't have to scour the checkout page to find the box I need to click that says, "No thanks, I don't want crap in my inbox every day."
Regarding the iPad thing, I rather dislike anything web-oriented, or anything for that matter, that requires I have a specific resolution. I keep my browser as a half-screen always and generally speaking if I have to resize it to read content I just don't bother.
Lastly, I sort of disagree with the use of the word cost in this context. This isn't really a cost, at least not in the way I think of the word cost. Unless they're paying out this money for infrastructure, wages, etc. to process unsubscribes it's not a cost.
This could come with the same concern. If a lot of these Windows 8 installs are new machines or clean installs there may not be as much third-party software installed so crashes that happen are more likely to occur in Windows components.
This looks really interesting to me. Fascinating to see more augmented reality concepts being pushed out. I am interested to see if this will eventually be tied in with glass. Google really seems to be pushing towards ubiquitous computing lately.
Can't wait to try it out if I get an invite from them.
For the average person it's much more likely that the burglar is just using opportunity. For example they saw you leave shortly before 9:00 or your house just happens to look empty during the day.
That's by no means to say that this project is a bad idea. I think anything that attempts to teach people to be more careful about the information they put out there in public online is absolutely a good idea as this kind of information could be used for purposes other than burglary.