AOL bought Time Warner, and it shows in the corporate strategy. Business 2.0 is owned by Warner Bros., part of AOL Time Warner. This article could appear in Time, ALSO owned by AOL Time Warner.
Realize that AOL is a content and bandwidth player. They sell things online. They acquired Time Warner since their problem FOR YEARS had been a lack of content. Even Compuserve and Prodigy had internal content. Time Warner provides a wealth of content that AOL can sell through to their members.
AOL wants to drive people onto their network and have them buy Time Warner content. MPAA/RIAA garbage that causes people to lose interest in doing so is not in their interest.
Remember, AOL Time Warner has a great Internet distribution mechanism in place, AOL.
AOL's unique position as a tech/content company puts them in the position of OFTEN being on our side. Nevermind that their network isn't for users like us, they are putting money into Linux servers (with likely Redhat support contracts), Mozilla (and AOL's use of Mozilla is going to force everyone into standards compliance), etc.
This story makes these guys look like total assholes. What the fuck.
If someone deep links to one of my pages that somehow screwed up navigation, and I asked them to redo the link elsewhere, I would expect them to either comply or remove the link.
Sometimes it isn't what you HAVE to do, but what is polite. Of course one can do it with referrers, but why can't people be nice regardless.
Deep linking to an image is REALLY poor... <IMG SRC> directly to an image on my server is REALLY rude. Not only do you effectively steal bandwidth and copyrighted work (blah blah blah, letting anonymous access, etc., blah blah blah) you REALLY fuck up our ability to understand what is going on on our sites.
I have a CD changer, and I really enjoy have 100+ CDs at my disposal. However, needing to sit down every 2 weeks and enter the data from the new CDs in is kinda annoying. It is slow and tedious.
I've been considering setting up my computer to easily make a copy of the CDs while using CDDB to fill in CD Text on the copies. Then I could put the original in the album for car trips, and the copy in the CD Jukebox, complete with CD text.
If I were to copy CDs from other people, I would save all the money. For the copy in the car, I like having the real CD. I can flip through pages quickly and pick a CD, something I can't do with the burned copies as nicely. So I can buy CDs and make a copy for either the jukebox or the car, or I can buy 2 copies and have an inferior copy.
I won't do MP3->CD Audio conversion, because they sound awful on a real system. However, I have a mid-range audio solution, if I had a boom box or only my computer to listen on, I probably wouldn't care... What do you think is more common among teenagers/college students, the target market for pop music?
Most of my accounting is in Quickbooks and somewhat self learned. There are two parts to my comment, which I believe is what confused you.
If you buy software, you acquire assets. That's fine on the balance sheet, cash goes down, assets go up. This is neat in that it doesn't show a cost, but bad in that you lost cash. Companies can show profits each quarter and go bankrupt, or lose money each quarter and do fine. All that really matters is the cash. The rest of that statement is for figuring out what is going on. The depreciation issue is mostly a tax issue. If I spend $20k on software licenses that I need to depreciate over 5 years, I lose $4k in assets each year and get to reduce them from my tax burden. This is fine, except that the $20k is gone now, but I pay taxes on it. This can create a situation where a company is paying taxes on cash that is gone, and if you don't have the cash for the tax bill... again, cash is king. Capital expenditures are bad from a cash and tax perspective, they aren't fundamentally evil.:)
The reason you that you mess with these issues is a desire to minimize your tax burden. Getting a tax writeoff in the same year that you spent the money isn't dot-com accounting, its trying to minimize the tax burden.
The whole asset accounting is relatively worthless. It makes sense in certain industrial applications where the assets are machinery where there REALLY IS a market for second-hand equipment (unlike computers that lose 50% when you drive them off the lot), or land which doesn't depreciate, even though you write off the building over 10 years.
Keep in mind with software licenses, you can't really sell them, so you make your balance sheets look artificial when you show these terrific assets...
I figure this is a joke, but far too many slashdot posters seem to think they understand accounting.
When you purchase software licenses, you are making a capital purchase, that will take at least 3 (and often 5) to depreciate. So the cash all flows out at once, but you have to write it out over 3 years.
Money spent on consultants look great on the balancesheet because they are expenses (and therefore written off immediately), plus they are considered one-time costs for public companies, and don't count as operating expenses. By creating permenant one-time costs (each one one-time of course), they are able to make their financials look better than they are.
With free software, your costs may be the same, but they are billed as consulting fees or maintenance agreements. All of those costs are easily considered either one-time costs or as regular costs. There are no capital expenses that need to be depreciated.
You mean that an ad targetting Unix users isn't pushing IE but rather Netscape? It is showing the ability to run a full suite of software including Unix CLI, X11, Office, and other applications? They are showing 3 Microsoft products whose availability caters to everyone while also showing another company's icon... WOW! I'm shocked...
Do realize that something like 30% of businesses are corporations, another 10% of partnerships, and 60% or so are sole proprietorships that pay taxes at their owners rate. The lower 50% of the population pays 4% of the INCOME tax.
Those corporations pay 10% of the taxes at 30%, pretty reasonable. Remember those same corporations are paying out salaries to the executives and programmers that pay taxes. They are also paying payroll taxes, etc.
Corporations pay a lot, especially when you factor in their management.
Regardless, you should have EQUAL rights to the government's work, not more.
8% means thousands of dollars a week (it's a small site). We can't just ignore that.
Blander = better for these sites, convey information, push product.
Besides, you can always return different stuff to Netscape 4.x than IE, we already do that. When we break standards to enhance on IE, we only return that to IE users. It's minor stuff, some of their Javascript.
People aren't suffering, I'm just being careful with the code. The "shiny objects" of the site are always graphics and Flash.
A certain percentage of my users are on Netscape 4.x, and I need to make the site viewable to them. Therefore, I will make certain that the siet works for them.
For everyone else, HTML 4.01 and CSS 1.0 should work fine. If they don't understand a tag, they ignore it. Netscape 4.x has some cascading and inheritance issues, so we need to work around them. After you've done it a bit, you get the hang of it.
Of course I'll test the site on IE, you think that I'm an idiot?
I won't, however, bother with Konqueror, Opera, OmniWeb, or other "fringe" browsers. They can take my compliant web sites and deal with them or not.
I am coding to the standards because its the best approach. Search engine spiders will understand the code, fringe browsers will understand the code, and anyone that writes a user agent that understands the standard will understand the code.
I need to meet business needs, and that requires the site being usable under IE and Netscape, so I'll do so.
If I'm coding to HTML 4.01 Transitional (with the DocType) AND CSS 1.0 to the standard, why the hell do you care that I'm ignoring certain CSS options? I'm giving you a standard document, I really don't understand your hostility to my approach?
The IE only days are now over. Anyone that realizes what is going on is scrambling to get compliant pages up. My main client was willing to ignore Netscape originally, then when we determined that Netscape 4.x was 6-8% of the audience for his site, he wanted the next version to support Netscape 4.x.
The site sorta works in Mozilla, but not terrifically. We're busting ass to redo the site with full HTML 4.01 compliance, CSS 1.0 compliance, and verifying everything in Netscape 4.7. Once you know Netscape's quirks, you can avoid using CSS features that confuse it.
We'll stay away from XHTML until Netscape 4.x is dead, and a properly working Netscape 6.5 will go a long way towards that. It's mostly corporate users, and they'll migrate when something better is available. In about 2 years, I'd expect Netscape 4.x to be dead, and we can all move on to XHTML.
Of course, there is always the option of doing two renderers, one for Netscape 4.x in HTML 4.01 and CSS 1, and one for IE 5+, NS 6+ in XHTML + CSS 2.0...
You're insane. They both have tremendous areas of disagreement. Their areas of agreement are largely to product businesses that America dominates despite Slashdot users desires to get for free.
Areas of disagreement: abortion, affirmative action, tax policies, UN funding, and some disagreements on trade policies.
Sometimes they put aside ideology when they pragmatically believe that they are doing what is in the best interest of the Republic.
At least is was last time I looked. 20% of the chamber can challenge a voice vote, it's pretty small. In the House isn't done by electronic ballot, in the Senate it's a Roll Call.
However, his point is valid, Congress as a whole can do unpopular things that way, but you really need Congress to ALL want political cover.
This is a few days later, maybe you'll notice the response.
Broadcasting 200+ locals costs more than 12 locals. Sure the spot beams are already there (sunk cost) but they need to transmit all the locals up to the Satellites and down to the area.
Additionally, they could use the spot beams for other pay services. For example, many areas have a local sports network (S. Florida had the Sunshine Network, New York has YES or something similar), New England has NESN, that may not necessarily get into the must cover situations, many are local cable networks, etc.
If you move the networks onto 12 general purpose channels, that frees up room for 200 channels for spot beaming. You could carry regionally attractive programming that would be more beneficial than the local network affiliates (that sometimes preempt shows).
My point: legally they need to do spot coverage, so they do it. Once they don't have to, they can give consumers something they'd prefer (east coast and west coast feeds with no preempting).
Once that requirement goes away, I don't think that they would carry the locals, as people would rather get a separate East and West coast feed (part of the old appeal of DirecTV 4 years or so ago) in case shows conflict. Then they redirect those spot-beam satellite service to more profitable persuits.
I think that eliminating local news would have implications that we need to consider. Sure its mostly crappy fluff, but at least it gets SOME coverage to the masses about what is going on locally.
The purpose of campaign money is to buy ads, primarily television ads. Television ads are done to influence voters.
Politicians mostly run for office to make a difference. They believe that they can make things better. Most contributions come from people that simply LIKE where the Congressman stands. Those that believe in strong IP laws are likely to get lots of money from industry leaders that want strong IP laws. Why? Because they need 51 (really 60) Senators to support strong IP laws, and losing 1 is a mistake. Sure when you give money to the Ted Kennedy's or other shoe-ins its really about saying you care, not about office, but even there the corruption is less than you think. When you give money to the big boy's campaigns, they don't have to listen to you, as you have nothing on them. All donations REALLY do is buy access, the Senator NEEDS to take the call from the big money people. He doesn't need to vote their way (but if he angers them, he won't get money next time), but he needs to listen.
The most important thing for a congressman or senator to do is please the people. The Presidency is about mobilizing the party, but congressional elections can swing on the silliest things. Realize that only 50% of the registered voters vote in presidential elections, what percentage votes in Congressional elections? 30%? 45? Particularly midterm elections.
Assuming that the party bases are equally energized, they wash, leaving you to win or lose based upon the whims of those few independants. Angering people to get dollars isn't the good plan.
Close elections are REALLY close when you realize that about 2/3s of the voters are members of a party and vote mostly for their party... a 3% margin is a lot more significant when you realize that only 30% - 45% of the vote is in play.
The original generation Atari 5200 had 4 ports, N-64 was second.:)
Granted only Super Breakout supported it, and the second round of Atari 5200s only had two ports (had to replace my machine when it died, played a nice backup machine to the NES, different types of games).
During the multimedia hype days, Nintendo wanted to get on board, so they were working with Sony to develop a Multimedia system. The system would play Multimedia titles licensed by Sony on CD format, and SNES games licensed by Nintendo on cartridge format.
Nintendo realized that this deal would leave Sony holding all the cards, as the SNES titles would sell the system, then new games would be Nintendo Play Station games, licensed by Sony.
So Nintendo cut a deal with Phillips and left Sony holding the bag. Sony then renegotiated with Nintendo, and Nintendo would license all games, Sony could only license non-games. In fact, Nintendo would have the final decision on if something was a game. However, Nintendo stuck with Phillips, and allowed their franchises (Mario and Zelda) to go on the CD-i.
Sony decided to limit their losses, and sell the Playstation. They didn't have a marketing budget, but they had plowed money into R&D (up until the Playstation, consoles used off-the shelf processors from electronics companies), and they cut deals with the third parties that were getting squeezed by Nintendo. Nintendo's policies were designed to keep the third parties weak, and while some bolted to Genesis, Nintendo was always too big to alienate. When the PSX started selling, Sony manuevered to push the product line.
The N64 being cartridge based is rumored to be a result of the Sony deal. They probably had a 5 or 6 year commitment to only support the Play Station CD-ROM system, keeping them off the discs. However, there is a lot of evidence to support that their in house developers hated load times and wanted the system to be kid friendly. Personally, I liked the cartridges, including the memory on the cartridge. I don't like needing to be careful with the discs so I don't scratch them, and FMV bored me.
Microsoft beat Netscape because they were able to bankrupt them before Netscape's cash streams (servers) got offline. They also capitalized on SEVERAL boneheaded moves by Netscape.
Microsoft beat Wordperfect by bringing out an entire office suite and charging about the same as Wordperfect. Then Wordperfect got itself acquired by multiple people and went down the drain. The real difference WAS Microsoft's ability to leverage Windows 95 and have Office 95 (pretty much a straight port of Office to Win32) out... Office was a bit player until Office 95. They leveraged Windows.
Visual Studio beat Borland when Borland stopped innovating, though scummy business tactics (like offering $1m/yr offers to top people, knowing Borland can't match it everywhere and you just need 1-2 to jump) helped.
Microsoft is GOOD at keeping a market, but their winning of markets isn't inevitable.
MS Money vs. Intuit Quicken - Intuit OWNS this space MS Box - nuff said MSN Messenger vs. AOL AIM MSN vs. AOL UltimateTV vs. Tivo
Microsoft has bean beaten, and I think that the game console busienss will likely stay elusive.
Microsoft is really only at their best leveraging Windows, they had some good luck 20 years ago, and they build an empire leveraging that good luck into a giant business. However, Sony learned and understood the market before hopping in, Microsoft didn't. Sony saw how shady Nintendo the monopolist was (and Sega aspired to be), read Game Over if you want details, a good business read. The third parties were mad, and Sony gave them an opportunity to jump ship.
Microsoft can't make a profitable play to own the Console world, and lack of interesting games for children will hurt. Better to get yourself into families and then sell your adult titles to parents and family titles for the kids then to just be able to market to 20-something computer geeks.
Font tags are ugly, I never use em. However, what is the problem with CSS? If your browser can't handle them (The Nescape 3.0 and 2.0 hits I still get, maybe WebTV which is close to 1% on one site), it doesn't. No harm, no foul.
Given different pixel sizes? No biggie, I look at the user agent, Netscape and Mac users get different font sizes, not a big deal. We're not talking about a complicated switch statement. IE users get the default.
I mean, writing your pages as HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS 1.0 isn't that hard. If you must do XHTML, CSS 2.0, or other "newer" technologies, just keep a Netscape 4.x browser with you. Look at the page, make sure it works.
Sure some of your CSS formatting won't be there, but the site should be usable and its content all gets across. The problem is you guys being lazy, this isn't rocket science.
If you have issues maintaining it, do XSLT or use a database to power the site. The "pages" can all be a collection of paragraphs with the occaisional class declaration, do everything else in your programming logic.
The terms are strange here, but assuming opt-out means that you took action (normally opt-in) to get out of data collection, that is better than opt-in (which would mean you sign a form allowing them to sell your data).
Think about it. If you could just file a form with the state government, its pretty easy for anyone that cares to do so.
If you need to be careful that you NEVER consent to the information, we're screwed. How carefully do you read everything? Ever miss a sentance in boiler plate agreements?
My concern with the default being privacy, IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE, is that you'll get tricked into giving up your privacy. You'll have to watch every click, etc. I'd rather just have a form (online or offline) for people that care to fill out than to have to make certain that you never screw up.
With Tivo, you are still a viewer (which is what the station is paid for) and you still get the ads. Hell, I've "rewound" (ReplayTV, not Tivo though) to watch ads that looked funny.
The comparison would be to a television viewer that lies about what they watch to the Nielsons so that the shows they watch aren't compensated.
Realize that they are paid for airing the advertisement on television. The payment is based upon viewers. With banner ads, they are often paid by impression, don't download the image, no impression.
I personally feel that pop-ups, pop-unders, exit-pops, and back-button disabling are all immoral behavior that the web browser should stop by default. A pop-up in response to a click is acceptable, on-load is abusive.
However, if you block the banners or ads from the site itself, I feel that you have crossed a line. Receiving the ads is the price of visiting the site. While you are welcome to receive the site's content in any way that you want, blocking banners, etc., is essentially the same as shoplifting. You are taking what you want without paying the costs.
Justify it however you want, you've chosen to take the site's content without paying the cost.
However, I feel that the Javascript ads are abusive of the users. Web sites should stay in the browser that called them, no turning the web into "push" technology.
Take MAS.100, commonly called Pizza for Credit (if its still offered), which was a 6 unit (2 credit) course where you would eat Pizza and listen to people in the Media Lab explain what they do. One year it was dropped from a 3 hour class to a 2 hour class because the money for pizza wasn't there, yet the course was still a "3 hour classtime" class. You'd be floored at what gets funded there.
Have a friend who works in the Media Lab take you on a tour (not the official one) and see what really goes on. Go in before 9 (I've been there on middle of the night reuse runs when I was an undergrad... don't ask, but I have some 15 year old Decstations to show for it), it's empty. Show up after 5, find a professor that is working.
The Media Lab gets a lot of money from some corporations who can't cooperate on some of the research so they all chip in to the Media Lab. 20%-25% of the Media Lab produces stuff, the rest just plays with expensive toys to stroke their own ego... Don't worry, within a few years the new researchers will learn how to play with toys, then crank out another stupid demo right before the corporate donors come on a tour. It's a really sad organization.
CMU is a very different school from The Institute.
BTW: The fact that your friends are business majors and want a cushy job doesn't mean that they will graduate and get a cushy job. I mean, I wanted to graduate and get a cush job that pays a lot, I also want a million dollars, and a pony. You don't get things just for wanting them, you inherit them, marry into them, or earn them.
Management is hard, middle management is easy. The fact that you report to a middle manager that is a 9-5er doesn't mean they all are. Once you find senior managers that are successful, they work like dogs. Most are out at a reasonable hour because they are in by 7. Want to reach the CEO of a major corporation without being intercepted by his secretary? Call before 8 AM, after 6 PM, or Saturday morning (before their golf game, most are at their desks).
Outside of being born rich, there is no shortcut. Those that go into management as the easy route become middle managers where they stay for the rest of their lives. Even the cookie cutters work hard, they dog for 60-75 hour weeks for 3 years to get into a top MBA program. If they rock a top MBA program, they graduate and are 6-8 years away from financial success, but they bust ass to get there.
Sure, these guys may appear like spoiled children, but ask their families how often they are at the office. The fact that slashdot says it doesn't make it true. I've worked at startups where management has their act together, we all bust ass for a common vision. When management doesn't put in the hours or effort, I was out early. Now that I have my own business, I try to lead by example and bust ass all the time. And if you think that lunch meetings or weekend meetings are taking a vacation, you're a fool. I think about my company from the time I wake up till I go to bed.
The MIT media lab is a joke, great on spin, low on anything. No one puts in a full day of work, the PhD students sometimes work. The undergrads that work their suck down free money. It's an overfunded lab, they by toys to play with and make silly demos. They are mostly smoke-and-mirrors, with the job of spinning things for MIT's PR game.
The problem is when they step out of the box you gave them. If you want to load their page in a frame, it should show up and not throw a tempertantrum.
Look, I hate the intrusive, large ads, but fine. I choose to view a site our not, they are welcome to do whatever they want within the window.
However, do NOT try to disable my backbutton with screwy redirects that mess up my history (do a server-side 301 or 302 if you need to bounce me around, it's not my problem that you suck).
Do not do pop-ups, I gave you a window, use it. If you want more space, ask me to click on something. Pop unders, that's abusive. You don't get to hide ads for me, that's outrageous. Exit-pops are worse. If I hit back, go to another url, or close my browser, you're done. You have no right to harass me.
It's really a shame that MS and Netscape never really worked to make Javascript respect the user, but then, Microsoft has never shown any respect for their customers. Look at the recent Looksmart thing, the thread on webmasterworld shows what their puppet Looksmart is doing to screw over webmasters that paid $300 in good faith for a service that the two of them are rendering worthless.
Until this solution, DirectTV had channels NBC and NBC-W, which were the NY and LA channels. They weren't allowed to do it, and they either needed a solution (like this that they came up with) or to tell subscribers to get cable or antennae as well.
You don't think that they would drop 34 of those stations in a heart beat? I understand how the technology works, why don't you try understanding the business and legal case.
Slashdot Mirror
AOL bought Time Warner, and it shows in the corporate strategy. Business 2.0 is owned by Warner Bros., part of AOL Time Warner. This article could appear in Time, ALSO owned by AOL Time Warner.
Realize that AOL is a content and bandwidth player. They sell things online. They acquired Time Warner since their problem FOR YEARS had been a lack of content. Even Compuserve and Prodigy had internal content. Time Warner provides a wealth of content that AOL can sell through to their members.
AOL wants to drive people onto their network and have them buy Time Warner content. MPAA/RIAA garbage that causes people to lose interest in doing so is not in their interest.
Remember, AOL Time Warner has a great Internet distribution mechanism in place, AOL.
AOL's unique position as a tech/content company puts them in the position of OFTEN being on our side. Nevermind that their network isn't for users like us, they are putting money into Linux servers (with likely Redhat support contracts), Mozilla (and AOL's use of Mozilla is going to force everyone into standards compliance), etc.
We have a strange friend here...
Alex
This story makes these guys look like total assholes. What the fuck.
If someone deep links to one of my pages that somehow screwed up navigation, and I asked them to redo the link elsewhere, I would expect them to either comply or remove the link.
Sometimes it isn't what you HAVE to do, but what is polite. Of course one can do it with referrers, but why can't people be nice regardless.
Deep linking to an image is REALLY poor... <IMG SRC> directly to an image on my server is REALLY rude. Not only do you effectively steal bandwidth and copyrighted work (blah blah blah, letting anonymous access, etc., blah blah blah) you REALLY fuck up our ability to understand what is going on on our sites.
Alex
I have a CD changer, and I really enjoy have 100+ CDs at my disposal. However, needing to sit down every 2 weeks and enter the data from the new CDs in is kinda annoying. It is slow and tedious.
I've been considering setting up my computer to easily make a copy of the CDs while using CDDB to fill in CD Text on the copies. Then I could put the original in the album for car trips, and the copy in the CD Jukebox, complete with CD text.
If I were to copy CDs from other people, I would save all the money. For the copy in the car, I like having the real CD. I can flip through pages quickly and pick a CD, something I can't do with the burned copies as nicely. So I can buy CDs and make a copy for either the jukebox or the car, or I can buy 2 copies and have an inferior copy.
I won't do MP3->CD Audio conversion, because they sound awful on a real system. However, I have a mid-range audio solution, if I had a boom box or only my computer to listen on, I probably wouldn't care... What do you think is more common among teenagers/college students, the target market for pop music?
Alex
Most of my accounting is in Quickbooks and somewhat self learned. There are two parts to my comment, which I believe is what confused you.
:)
If you buy software, you acquire assets. That's fine on the balance sheet, cash goes down, assets go up. This is neat in that it doesn't show a cost, but bad in that you lost cash. Companies can show profits each quarter and go bankrupt, or lose money each quarter and do fine. All that really matters is the cash. The rest of that statement is for figuring out what is going on. The depreciation issue is mostly a tax issue. If I spend $20k on software licenses that I need to depreciate over 5 years, I lose $4k in assets each year and get to reduce them from my tax burden. This is fine, except that the $20k is gone now, but I pay taxes on it. This can create a situation where a company is paying taxes on cash that is gone, and if you don't have the cash for the tax bill... again, cash is king. Capital expenditures are bad from a cash and tax perspective, they aren't fundamentally evil.
The reason you that you mess with these issues is a desire to minimize your tax burden. Getting a tax writeoff in the same year that you spent the money isn't dot-com accounting, its trying to minimize the tax burden.
The whole asset accounting is relatively worthless. It makes sense in certain industrial applications where the assets are machinery where there REALLY IS a market for second-hand equipment (unlike computers that lose 50% when you drive them off the lot), or land which doesn't depreciate, even though you write off the building over 10 years.
Keep in mind with software licenses, you can't really sell them, so you make your balance sheets look artificial when you show these terrific assets...
Alex
I figure this is a joke, but far too many slashdot posters seem to think they understand accounting.
When you purchase software licenses, you are making a capital purchase, that will take at least 3 (and often 5) to depreciate. So the cash all flows out at once, but you have to write it out over 3 years.
Money spent on consultants look great on the balancesheet because they are expenses (and therefore written off immediately), plus they are considered one-time costs for public companies, and don't count as operating expenses. By creating permenant one-time costs (each one one-time of course), they are able to make their financials look better than they are.
With free software, your costs may be the same, but they are billed as consulting fees or maintenance agreements. All of those costs are easily considered either one-time costs or as regular costs. There are no capital expenses that need to be depreciated.
Alex
You mean that an ad targetting Unix users isn't pushing IE but rather Netscape? It is showing the ability to run a full suite of software including Unix CLI, X11, Office, and other applications? They are showing 3 Microsoft products whose availability caters to everyone while also showing another company's icon... WOW! I'm shocked...
Sometimes the rubish shown here is impressive...
Do realize that something like 30% of businesses are corporations, another 10% of partnerships, and 60% or so are sole proprietorships that pay taxes at their owners rate. The lower 50% of the population pays 4% of the INCOME tax.
Those corporations pay 10% of the taxes at 30%, pretty reasonable. Remember those same corporations are paying out salaries to the executives and programmers that pay taxes. They are also paying payroll taxes, etc.
Corporations pay a lot, especially when you factor in their management.
Regardless, you should have EQUAL rights to the government's work, not more.
Alex
8% means thousands of dollars a week (it's a small site). We can't just ignore that.
Blander = better for these sites, convey information, push product.
Besides, you can always return different stuff to Netscape 4.x than IE, we already do that. When we break standards to enhance on IE, we only return that to IE users. It's minor stuff, some of their Javascript.
People aren't suffering, I'm just being careful with the code. The "shiny objects" of the site are always graphics and Flash.
Alex
A certain percentage of my users are on Netscape 4.x, and I need to make the site viewable to them. Therefore, I will make certain that the siet works for them.
For everyone else, HTML 4.01 and CSS 1.0 should work fine. If they don't understand a tag, they ignore it. Netscape 4.x has some cascading and inheritance issues, so we need to work around them. After you've done it a bit, you get the hang of it.
Of course I'll test the site on IE, you think that I'm an idiot?
I won't, however, bother with Konqueror, Opera, OmniWeb, or other "fringe" browsers. They can take my compliant web sites and deal with them or not.
I am coding to the standards because its the best approach. Search engine spiders will understand the code, fringe browsers will understand the code, and anyone that writes a user agent that understands the standard will understand the code.
I need to meet business needs, and that requires the site being usable under IE and Netscape, so I'll do so.
If I'm coding to HTML 4.01 Transitional (with the DocType) AND CSS 1.0 to the standard, why the hell do you care that I'm ignoring certain CSS options? I'm giving you a standard document, I really don't understand your hostility to my approach?
Alex
Why are you offended
The IE only days are now over. Anyone that realizes what is going on is scrambling to get compliant pages up. My main client was willing to ignore Netscape originally, then when we determined that Netscape 4.x was 6-8% of the audience for his site, he wanted the next version to support Netscape 4.x.
The site sorta works in Mozilla, but not terrifically. We're busting ass to redo the site with full HTML 4.01 compliance, CSS 1.0 compliance, and verifying everything in Netscape 4.7. Once you know Netscape's quirks, you can avoid using CSS features that confuse it.
We'll stay away from XHTML until Netscape 4.x is dead, and a properly working Netscape 6.5 will go a long way towards that. It's mostly corporate users, and they'll migrate when something better is available. In about 2 years, I'd expect Netscape 4.x to be dead, and we can all move on to XHTML.
Of course, there is always the option of doing two renderers, one for Netscape 4.x in HTML 4.01 and CSS 1, and one for IE 5+, NS 6+ in XHTML + CSS 2.0...
Alex
You're insane. They both have tremendous areas of disagreement. Their areas of agreement are largely to product businesses that America dominates despite Slashdot users desires to get for free.
Areas of disagreement: abortion, affirmative action, tax policies, UN funding, and some disagreements on trade policies.
Sometimes they put aside ideology when they pragmatically believe that they are doing what is in the best interest of the Republic.
Give me a break.
Alex
At least is was last time I looked. 20% of the chamber can challenge a voice vote, it's pretty small. In the House isn't done by electronic ballot, in the Senate it's a Roll Call.
However, his point is valid, Congress as a whole can do unpopular things that way, but you really need Congress to ALL want political cover.
Alex
This is a few days later, maybe you'll notice the response.
Broadcasting 200+ locals costs more than 12 locals. Sure the spot beams are already there (sunk cost) but they need to transmit all the locals up to the Satellites and down to the area.
Additionally, they could use the spot beams for other pay services. For example, many areas have a local sports network (S. Florida had the Sunshine Network, New York has YES or something similar), New England has NESN, that may not necessarily get into the must cover situations, many are local cable networks, etc.
If you move the networks onto 12 general purpose channels, that frees up room for 200 channels for spot beaming. You could carry regionally attractive programming that would be more beneficial than the local network affiliates (that sometimes preempt shows).
My point: legally they need to do spot coverage, so they do it. Once they don't have to, they can give consumers something they'd prefer (east coast and west coast feeds with no preempting).
Once that requirement goes away, I don't think that they would carry the locals, as people would rather get a separate East and West coast feed (part of the old appeal of DirecTV 4 years or so ago) in case shows conflict. Then they redirect those spot-beam satellite service to more profitable persuits.
I think that eliminating local news would have implications that we need to consider. Sure its mostly crappy fluff, but at least it gets SOME coverage to the masses about what is going on locally.
Alex
The purpose of campaign money is to buy ads, primarily television ads. Television ads are done to influence voters.
Politicians mostly run for office to make a difference. They believe that they can make things better. Most contributions come from people that simply LIKE where the Congressman stands. Those that believe in strong IP laws are likely to get lots of money from industry leaders that want strong IP laws. Why? Because they need 51 (really 60) Senators to support strong IP laws, and losing 1 is a mistake. Sure when you give money to the Ted Kennedy's or other shoe-ins its really about saying you care, not about office, but even there the corruption is less than you think. When you give money to the big boy's campaigns, they don't have to listen to you, as you have nothing on them. All donations REALLY do is buy access, the Senator NEEDS to take the call from the big money people. He doesn't need to vote their way (but if he angers them, he won't get money next time), but he needs to listen.
The most important thing for a congressman or senator to do is please the people. The Presidency is about mobilizing the party, but congressional elections can swing on the silliest things. Realize that only 50% of the registered voters vote in presidential elections, what percentage votes in Congressional elections? 30%? 45? Particularly midterm elections.
Assuming that the party bases are equally energized, they wash, leaving you to win or lose based upon the whims of those few independants. Angering people to get dollars isn't the good plan.
Close elections are REALLY close when you realize that about 2/3s of the voters are members of a party and vote mostly for their party... a 3% margin is a lot more significant when you realize that only 30% - 45% of the vote is in play.
Alex
The original generation Atari 5200 had 4 ports, N-64 was second. :)
Granted only Super Breakout supported it, and the second round of Atari 5200s only had two ports (had to replace my machine when it died, played a nice backup machine to the NES, different types of games).
Alex
During the multimedia hype days, Nintendo wanted to get on board, so they were working with Sony to develop a Multimedia system. The system would play Multimedia titles licensed by Sony on CD format, and SNES games licensed by Nintendo on cartridge format.
Nintendo realized that this deal would leave Sony holding all the cards, as the SNES titles would sell the system, then new games would be Nintendo Play Station games, licensed by Sony.
So Nintendo cut a deal with Phillips and left Sony holding the bag. Sony then renegotiated with Nintendo, and Nintendo would license all games, Sony could only license non-games. In fact, Nintendo would have the final decision on if something was a game. However, Nintendo stuck with Phillips, and allowed their franchises (Mario and Zelda) to go on the CD-i.
Sony decided to limit their losses, and sell the Playstation. They didn't have a marketing budget, but they had plowed money into R&D (up until the Playstation, consoles used off-the shelf processors from electronics companies), and they cut deals with the third parties that were getting squeezed by Nintendo. Nintendo's policies were designed to keep the third parties weak, and while some bolted to Genesis, Nintendo was always too big to alienate. When the PSX started selling, Sony manuevered to push the product line.
The N64 being cartridge based is rumored to be a result of the Sony deal. They probably had a 5 or 6 year commitment to only support the Play Station CD-ROM system, keeping them off the discs. However, there is a lot of evidence to support that their in house developers hated load times and wanted the system to be kid friendly. Personally, I liked the cartridges, including the memory on the cartridge. I don't like needing to be careful with the discs so I don't scratch them, and FMV bored me.
Alex
Microsoft beat Netscape because they were able to bankrupt them before Netscape's cash streams (servers) got offline. They also capitalized on SEVERAL boneheaded moves by Netscape.
Microsoft beat Wordperfect by bringing out an entire office suite and charging about the same as Wordperfect. Then Wordperfect got itself acquired by multiple people and went down the drain. The real difference WAS Microsoft's ability to leverage Windows 95 and have Office 95 (pretty much a straight port of Office to Win32) out... Office was a bit player until Office 95. They leveraged Windows.
Visual Studio beat Borland when Borland stopped innovating, though scummy business tactics (like offering $1m/yr offers to top people, knowing Borland can't match it everywhere and you just need 1-2 to jump) helped.
Microsoft is GOOD at keeping a market, but their winning of markets isn't inevitable.
MS Money vs. Intuit Quicken - Intuit OWNS this space
MS Box - nuff said
MSN Messenger vs. AOL AIM
MSN vs. AOL
UltimateTV vs. Tivo
Microsoft has bean beaten, and I think that the game console busienss will likely stay elusive.
Microsoft is really only at their best leveraging Windows, they had some good luck 20 years ago, and they build an empire leveraging that good luck into a giant business. However, Sony learned and understood the market before hopping in, Microsoft didn't. Sony saw how shady Nintendo the monopolist was (and Sega aspired to be), read Game Over if you want details, a good business read. The third parties were mad, and Sony gave them an opportunity to jump ship.
Microsoft can't make a profitable play to own the Console world, and lack of interesting games for children will hurt. Better to get yourself into families and then sell your adult titles to parents and family titles for the kids then to just be able to market to 20-something computer geeks.
Alex
Font tags are ugly, I never use em. However, what is the problem with CSS? If your browser can't handle them (The Nescape 3.0 and 2.0 hits I still get, maybe WebTV which is close to 1% on one site), it doesn't. No harm, no foul.
Given different pixel sizes? No biggie, I look at the user agent, Netscape and Mac users get different font sizes, not a big deal. We're not talking about a complicated switch statement. IE users get the default.
I mean, writing your pages as HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS 1.0 isn't that hard. If you must do XHTML, CSS 2.0, or other "newer" technologies, just keep a Netscape 4.x browser with you. Look at the page, make sure it works.
Sure some of your CSS formatting won't be there, but the site should be usable and its content all gets across. The problem is you guys being lazy, this isn't rocket science.
If you have issues maintaining it, do XSLT or use a database to power the site. The "pages" can all be a collection of paragraphs with the occaisional class declaration, do everything else in your programming logic.
Alex
The terms are strange here, but assuming opt-out means that you took action (normally opt-in) to get out of data collection, that is better than opt-in (which would mean you sign a form allowing them to sell your data).
Think about it. If you could just file a form with the state government, its pretty easy for anyone that cares to do so.
If you need to be careful that you NEVER consent to the information, we're screwed. How carefully do you read everything? Ever miss a sentance in boiler plate agreements?
My concern with the default being privacy, IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE, is that you'll get tricked into giving up your privacy. You'll have to watch every click, etc. I'd rather just have a form (online or offline) for people that care to fill out than to have to make certain that you never screw up.
Alex
With Tivo, you are still a viewer (which is what the station is paid for) and you still get the ads. Hell, I've "rewound" (ReplayTV, not Tivo though) to watch ads that looked funny.
The comparison would be to a television viewer that lies about what they watch to the Nielsons so that the shows they watch aren't compensated.
Realize that they are paid for airing the advertisement on television. The payment is based upon viewers. With banner ads, they are often paid by impression, don't download the image, no impression.
That's the difference.
Alex
I personally feel that pop-ups, pop-unders, exit-pops, and back-button disabling are all immoral behavior that the web browser should stop by default. A pop-up in response to a click is acceptable, on-load is abusive.
However, if you block the banners or ads from the site itself, I feel that you have crossed a line. Receiving the ads is the price of visiting the site. While you are welcome to receive the site's content in any way that you want, blocking banners, etc., is essentially the same as shoplifting. You are taking what you want without paying the costs.
Justify it however you want, you've chosen to take the site's content without paying the cost.
However, I feel that the Javascript ads are abusive of the users. Web sites should stay in the browser that called them, no turning the web into "push" technology.
Alex
Take MAS.100, commonly called Pizza for Credit (if its still offered), which was a 6 unit (2 credit) course where you would eat Pizza and listen to people in the Media Lab explain what they do. One year it was dropped from a 3 hour class to a 2 hour class because the money for pizza wasn't there, yet the course was still a "3 hour classtime" class. You'd be floored at what gets funded there.
Have a friend who works in the Media Lab take you on a tour (not the official one) and see what really goes on. Go in before 9 (I've been there on middle of the night reuse runs when I was an undergrad... don't ask, but I have some 15 year old Decstations to show for it), it's empty. Show up after 5, find a professor that is working.
The Media Lab gets a lot of money from some corporations who can't cooperate on some of the research so they all chip in to the Media Lab. 20%-25% of the Media Lab produces stuff, the rest just plays with expensive toys to stroke their own ego... Don't worry, within a few years the new researchers will learn how to play with toys, then crank out another stupid demo right before the corporate donors come on a tour. It's a really sad organization.
CMU is a very different school from The Institute.
BTW: The fact that your friends are business majors and want a cushy job doesn't mean that they will graduate and get a cushy job. I mean, I wanted to graduate and get a cush job that pays a lot, I also want a million dollars, and a pony. You don't get things just for wanting them, you inherit them, marry into them, or earn them.
Management is hard, middle management is easy. The fact that you report to a middle manager that is a 9-5er doesn't mean they all are. Once you find senior managers that are successful, they work like dogs. Most are out at a reasonable hour because they are in by 7. Want to reach the CEO of a major corporation without being intercepted by his secretary? Call before 8 AM, after 6 PM, or Saturday morning (before their golf game, most are at their desks).
Outside of being born rich, there is no shortcut. Those that go into management as the easy route become middle managers where they stay for the rest of their lives. Even the cookie cutters work hard, they dog for 60-75 hour weeks for 3 years to get into a top MBA program. If they rock a top MBA program, they graduate and are 6-8 years away from financial success, but they bust ass to get there.
Sure, these guys may appear like spoiled children, but ask their families how often they are at the office. The fact that slashdot says it doesn't make it true. I've worked at startups where management has their act together, we all bust ass for a common vision. When management doesn't put in the hours or effort, I was out early. Now that I have my own business, I try to lead by example and bust ass all the time. And if you think that lunch meetings or weekend meetings are taking a vacation, you're a fool. I think about my company from the time I wake up till I go to bed.
The MIT media lab is a joke, great on spin, low on anything. No one puts in a full day of work, the PhD students sometimes work. The undergrads that work their suck down free money. It's an overfunded lab, they by toys to play with and make silly demos. They are mostly smoke-and-mirrors, with the job of spinning things for MIT's PR game.
Alex
The problem is when they step out of the box you gave them. If you want to load their page in a frame, it should show up and not throw a tempertantrum.
Look, I hate the intrusive, large ads, but fine. I choose to view a site our not, they are welcome to do whatever they want within the window.
However, do NOT try to disable my backbutton with screwy redirects that mess up my history (do a server-side 301 or 302 if you need to bounce me around, it's not my problem that you suck).
Do not do pop-ups, I gave you a window, use it. If you want more space, ask me to click on something. Pop unders, that's abusive. You don't get to hide ads for me, that's outrageous. Exit-pops are worse. If I hit back, go to another url, or close my browser, you're done. You have no right to harass me.
It's really a shame that MS and Netscape never really worked to make Javascript respect the user, but then, Microsoft has never shown any respect for their customers. Look at the recent Looksmart thing, the thread on webmasterworld shows what their puppet Looksmart is doing to screw over webmasters that paid $300 in good faith for a service that the two of them are rendering worthless.
Alex
Until this solution, DirectTV had channels NBC and NBC-W, which were the NY and LA channels. They weren't allowed to do it, and they either needed a solution (like this that they came up with) or to tell subscribers to get cable or antennae as well.
You don't think that they would drop 34 of those stations in a heart beat? I understand how the technology works, why don't you try understanding the business and legal case.
Alex