Again, the newspaper analogy doesn't hold up well. I guess the biggest factor here is that you actually paid for the newspaper to begin with. They don't send everybody newspapers for free. You pay for text books to begin with as well. In addition, advertisers can know how many copies of the newspaper were sold, and pay based on that.
I don't think the comparison to newspapers is valid at all. Even if you ignore all the ads, they're still there. You can't order a copy of the newspaper with ads removed, for obvious reasons. Actually, I'd say the newspaper comparison only serves to help the case of website publishers. Websites do put in their terms of use that the content is not to be altered; they just don't have the advantage of an immutable medium that newspapers have. I'd have to disagree, then, with your argument about works of paper not having the protection--if you remove stuff from your books and newspapers, you've still had to look at it, or at the very least you'd see all the words crossed out or the clipping missing. And ignoring something is not the same as that thing never having existed to begin with.
Google and Slashdot don't block people because they can't do it without blocking a huge amount of people who don't block the ads. If they had a way to determine who was blocking ads, you'd be those people would be out in a millisecond.
Now, I don't want to be construed by any means as someone who actually likes ads. I hate them with a passion, and it pisses me off when the websites I go to have horribly programmed flash ads that cover the content and don't give up the real estate like they're supposed to, or they open a pseudo-popup window right on top of the content. But it's their right to have it there, and all it means is that my interest thresshold has to go up a bit.
I think it's pretty clear what that line is referring to. Changing the way something renders when you resize your windows is not the same as intentionally preventing something from rendering. And lawyers be damned, I don't buy the "prominence" thing. It took me only about 30 seconds to find that. Click the terms of use link, and it was near the top of the page. It wasn't hidden by any means.
No where in this equation is the user expected to do anything.
This is the problem! The user is not expected to do anything! It is the user modifying the content that is causing a problem. The website developer is not in control of "C" when the very browser they are using allows users to get the content without the ads. How are you, as a web developer, supposed to fight that?
First of all, this is from the ESPN.com terms of use:
3.
RESTRICTIONS ON USE OF MATERIALS
All information, content and materials contained on WDIG Sites are our copyrighted property or the copyrighted property of our licensors or licensees. All trademarks, service marks, trade names, and trade dress are proprietary to us and/or our licensors or licensees. No information, content or material from any WDIG Site or any Internet site owned, operated, licensed, or controlled by us may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted or distributed in any way, except that you may download one copy of the information, content or materials on any single computer for your personal, noncommercial home use only, provided that (a) you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices, (b) you make no modifications to the information, content or materials, (c) you do not use the information, content or materials in a manner that suggests an association with any of our products, services or brands, and (d) you do not download information, content or materials so as to avoid future downloads from any WDIG Site. The use of any information, content or materials on a WDIG Site on any other Web site or computer environment is prohibited.
Now, as far as "adding value" by visiting the site... Maybe in a convoluted way, if the advertisers see a higher number they might think it's better to advertise, but I think you could easily argue that any benefit in the increased hit count is offset by the bandwidth wasted on the data transfer. I think they'd be financially better off if all the people with ad blocking didn't visit the site.
So, if ESPN.com put it in their terms of use that adblocking is prohibited, would you quit visiting the site? It seems that almost all sites with free content (even *gasp* Slashdot!) have advertisements... If all of these sites expressely prohibit ad-blocking, would you no longer have any interest? I doubt it. This is all just "I want everything exactly my way" posturing.
And regardless of what you define as "stealing", I think it's hard to argue that viewing content while eliminating the means of intending compensation is not morally reprehensible.
Right, and web sites are free to redirect freeloading firefox users to a different site if they please, so they're not donating their content and bandwidth for free.
I'd like to live in a fantasy world where I'm simply entitled by default to free content, and I only have to deal with insidious "detestable advertisers" who are "actively denying" me my solid gold razor scooter. Fortunately for web developers, in the real world, a user has to earn content by being potentially interested in products that advertisers are willing to fork out cash to advertise -- not by taking it for granted that the web developers are just willing to donate their time and money in building and maintaining a web site.
For a long time, users were not able to browse a very large number of frivolous web sites, partly because there was no viable way of profitably advertising. The collapse of the dot-com bubble created a more targeted, profitable way of advertising, and now it is a multi-billion dollar industry. Popup blockers are normal mainstream software, and Google has had significant success selling all-text advertisements.
The content moochers seem to think that they've pushed back hard enough, and should be able to just not have to look at the repellant Flash banners anymore. I guess those users are wrong, because clearly there are plenty of websites who are not willing to tolerate the barrage of unethical ad-blocking techniques. We'll find a balance eventually, somewhere in between no ads at all and the websites whose masters believe they are entitled to a tithe every time their server sends a 200 status.
But I am entitled to absolutely free content whenever I want it, and I deserve to have it exactly the way I want it! How dare the websites seek profit or reimbursement!
My firefox I have running under Linux has been crashing every now and then over the last few months. It doesn't stall; the process just dies. I've rarely had it happen, but members of my family report it happening quite often. Also, it freezes on occassion as well, and I have to ps ax | grep firefox it.
See, firefox isn't as great as some people make it out to be. After encountering this site (which debunks many of the myths surrounding firefox's superiority), I decided to try Opera 9, which I quite like and now use on all my machines.
WOW! A small really small computer runs Vista! This is groundbreaking!
Seriously, though, the only "wonderous" things on there were the Voyager and the supercomputer. Most of the other stuff is not the most groundbreaking or superlative for its kind out there. I thought the idea of a "wonder" was something that we can only try and imagine how they managed to do it or how they came up with the idea.
I guess you should drop pretty much every commercial product you've ever used, because guess what? They all advertise! Since when was advertising a way of betraying the public good? Since when was it akin to selling eyeballs?
So, you want google to provide their service without making money from advertising... So, who's going to donate to them? Nobody. Running a free search engine without advertising is simply not a viable enterprise if they're interested in not going bankrupt.
This sounds like a great deal of ideological grandstanding. If you think it's possible to profitably run a search engine without advertising, have at it. Maybe I'll see you next time I volunteer at the soup kitchen.
Is it fair enough to say that if the website *requires* flash to accomplish its very aim, then go ahead and use it? In that case, the non-flash people wouldn't get the functionality either way, so there's no reason to ditch it for them. IMO, flash should be used for stuff like media, games, etc., as a way to accommodate the functionality, not for things that can be done--even if it's not as "pretty"--without flash.
Yeah, the dog thing is what actually got me to read the article. I have a chipped dog, so naturally I was interested in any potential cancer in chipped dogs. But, as it turns out, it's just alarmism, and the article really has nothing to do with dogs...
The Associated Press is reporting that microchip implants have induced cancer in laboratory animals and dogs.
TFA only mentions dogs in a few paragraphs, and only two cases of cancer near the chip have been reported in over 10,000 chipped dogs (only one of which is said to be linked in some way to the chip). It even says that the link between chips and cancer is not established in dogs, and that it is only something that should be studied more. So, yeah, the AP is not reporting that implants have induced cancer in dogs at all.
I had to embellish a little bit, it is true, but they realized the problem with sending underqualified people to work with clients. If you're looking to have repeat business, it is pretty stupid to send someone over who you claim can do everything in the book, but in reality doesn't know anything. I think it's pretty standard for clients to interview the prospective consultants now, though.
And we aren't forced to get certs, either. There's a $200 bonus, but that's not even worth the time it takes to study for it.
I don't think you can find a statistically significant difference between those with certifications and those without. I bet you could find quite a difference between those with experience and those without, though.
There is no relationship between certification and skill, positive or otherwise. If I go get a certification, am I worse than I was before? Absolutely not. We all have our reasons for getting them. I think the danger is replacing experience with certifications, or viewing certifications as anything other than rote understanding of technology.
I would also argue that it is easy enough to find someone with a great deal of experience who still sucks at the job. If you've been a bad coder for ten years, you're still a bad coder. Some people just aren't cut out to be engineers, but they still somehow manage to hold down a job for a long time.
Mind control doesn't take away free will. You can face all the propaganda in the world and still form your own opinions. If you think the fact that probably over 90% of the people buying into the propaganda means theirs no freedom of thought, I would argue that we still don't have that freedom.
I'm not in some fantasy world where every corporation is more efficient than the government. But corporations always have one advantage of the government: competition. Corporations do tend to become more and more efficient (believe me, I'm contracting for a company that is at least as inefficient as the government), but people always have the ability to ditch that corporation for another. The government is essentially a corporation with no accountability, no competition, and a virtually unlimited income source.
OK, I have a question about the stores you go to having you on film... So did you willing go in the store? Or did they tape you in your home while having private conversations?
17 years for books and songs is even a bit long. It would seem that even a decade is more than enough time for the copyright holder to have a chance to get first dibs at it. Anything else is only impeding the progress of art. Besides that, there are those who have copyrights specifically to block progress of a work of art. "Only we can release this, and we're not going to release it." How is that helping the art progress?
Slashdot Mirror
Again, the newspaper analogy doesn't hold up well. I guess the biggest factor here is that you actually paid for the newspaper to begin with. They don't send everybody newspapers for free. You pay for text books to begin with as well. In addition, advertisers can know how many copies of the newspaper were sold, and pay based on that.
I don't think the comparison to newspapers is valid at all. Even if you ignore all the ads, they're still there. You can't order a copy of the newspaper with ads removed, for obvious reasons. Actually, I'd say the newspaper comparison only serves to help the case of website publishers. Websites do put in their terms of use that the content is not to be altered; they just don't have the advantage of an immutable medium that newspapers have. I'd have to disagree, then, with your argument about works of paper not having the protection--if you remove stuff from your books and newspapers, you've still had to look at it, or at the very least you'd see all the words crossed out or the clipping missing. And ignoring something is not the same as that thing never having existed to begin with.
Google and Slashdot don't block people because they can't do it without blocking a huge amount of people who don't block the ads. If they had a way to determine who was blocking ads, you'd be those people would be out in a millisecond.
Now, I don't want to be construed by any means as someone who actually likes ads. I hate them with a passion, and it pisses me off when the websites I go to have horribly programmed flash ads that cover the content and don't give up the real estate like they're supposed to, or they open a pseudo-popup window right on top of the content. But it's their right to have it there, and all it means is that my interest thresshold has to go up a bit.
I think it's pretty clear what that line is referring to. Changing the way something renders when you resize your windows is not the same as intentionally preventing something from rendering. And lawyers be damned, I don't buy the "prominence" thing. It took me only about 30 seconds to find that. Click the terms of use link, and it was near the top of the page. It wasn't hidden by any means.
No where in this equation is the user expected to do anything.
This is the problem! The user is not expected to do anything! It is the user modifying the content that is causing a problem. The website developer is not in control of "C" when the very browser they are using allows users to get the content without the ads. How are you, as a web developer, supposed to fight that?
Also, my reply was a spoof on the parent post.
First of all, this is from the ESPN.com terms of use:
3.
All information, content and materials contained on WDIG Sites are our copyrighted property or the copyrighted property of our licensors or licensees. All trademarks, service marks, trade names, and trade dress are proprietary to us and/or our licensors or licensees. No information, content or material from any WDIG Site or any Internet site owned, operated, licensed, or controlled by us may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted or distributed in any way, except that you may download one copy of the information, content or materials on any single computer for your personal, noncommercial home use only, provided that (a) you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices, (b) you make no modifications to the information, content or materials, (c) you do not use the information, content or materials in a manner that suggests an association with any of our products, services or brands, and (d) you do not download information, content or materials so as to avoid future downloads from any WDIG Site. The use of any information, content or materials on a WDIG Site on any other Web site or computer environment is prohibited.
Now, as far as "adding value" by visiting the site... Maybe in a convoluted way, if the advertisers see a higher number they might think it's better to advertise, but I think you could easily argue that any benefit in the increased hit count is offset by the bandwidth wasted on the data transfer. I think they'd be financially better off if all the people with ad blocking didn't visit the site.
So, if ESPN.com put it in their terms of use that adblocking is prohibited, would you quit visiting the site? It seems that almost all sites with free content (even *gasp* Slashdot!) have advertisements... If all of these sites expressely prohibit ad-blocking, would you no longer have any interest? I doubt it. This is all just "I want everything exactly my way" posturing.
And regardless of what you define as "stealing", I think it's hard to argue that viewing content while eliminating the means of intending compensation is not morally reprehensible.
Right, and web sites are free to redirect freeloading firefox users to a different site if they please, so they're not donating their content and bandwidth for free.
I'd like to live in a fantasy world where I'm simply entitled by default to free content, and I only have to deal with insidious "detestable advertisers" who are "actively denying" me my solid gold razor scooter. Fortunately for web developers, in the real world, a user has to earn content by being potentially interested in products that advertisers are willing to fork out cash to advertise -- not by taking it for granted that the web developers are just willing to donate their time and money in building and maintaining a web site.
For a long time, users were not able to browse a very large number of frivolous web sites, partly because there was no viable way of profitably advertising. The collapse of the dot-com bubble created a more targeted, profitable way of advertising, and now it is a multi-billion dollar industry. Popup blockers are normal mainstream software, and Google has had significant success selling all-text advertisements.
The content moochers seem to think that they've pushed back hard enough, and should be able to just not have to look at the repellant Flash banners anymore. I guess those users are wrong, because clearly there are plenty of websites who are not willing to tolerate the barrage of unethical ad-blocking techniques. We'll find a balance eventually, somewhere in between no ads at all and the websites whose masters believe they are entitled to a tithe every time their server sends a 200 status.
But I am entitled to absolutely free content whenever I want it, and I deserve to have it exactly the way I want it! How dare the websites seek profit or reimbursement!
My firefox I have running under Linux has been crashing every now and then over the last few months. It doesn't stall; the process just dies. I've rarely had it happen, but members of my family report it happening quite often. Also, it freezes on occassion as well, and I have to ps ax | grep firefox it.
See, firefox isn't as great as some people make it out to be. After encountering this site (which debunks many of the myths surrounding firefox's superiority), I decided to try Opera 9, which I quite like and now use on all my machines.
Who is going to make the official Nobel nomination?
I don't know, do magic Christmas reindeer fart alot?
Alternate response: OMG Global Warming!!
WOW! A small really small computer runs Vista! This is groundbreaking!
Seriously, though, the only "wonderous" things on there were the Voyager and the supercomputer. Most of the other stuff is not the most groundbreaking or superlative for its kind out there. I thought the idea of a "wonder" was something that we can only try and imagine how they managed to do it or how they came up with the idea.
I guess you should drop pretty much every commercial product you've ever used, because guess what? They all advertise! Since when was advertising a way of betraying the public good? Since when was it akin to selling eyeballs?
So, you want google to provide their service without making money from advertising... So, who's going to donate to them? Nobody. Running a free search engine without advertising is simply not a viable enterprise if they're interested in not going bankrupt.
This sounds like a great deal of ideological grandstanding. If you think it's possible to profitably run a search engine without advertising, have at it. Maybe I'll see you next time I volunteer at the soup kitchen.
So you want google to donate their time and resources as a public service?
Is it fair enough to say that if the website *requires* flash to accomplish its very aim, then go ahead and use it? In that case, the non-flash people wouldn't get the functionality either way, so there's no reason to ditch it for them. IMO, flash should be used for stuff like media, games, etc., as a way to accommodate the functionality, not for things that can be done--even if it's not as "pretty"--without flash.
Really, really long statements. I'm no python expert, but is there a way to do multi-line statements?
Yeah, the dog thing is what actually got me to read the article. I have a chipped dog, so naturally I was interested in any potential cancer in chipped dogs. But, as it turns out, it's just alarmism, and the article really has nothing to do with dogs...
The Associated Press is reporting that microchip implants have induced cancer in laboratory animals and dogs.
TFA only mentions dogs in a few paragraphs, and only two cases of cancer near the chip have been reported in over 10,000 chipped dogs (only one of which is said to be linked in some way to the chip). It even says that the link between chips and cancer is not established in dogs, and that it is only something that should be studied more. So, yeah, the AP is not reporting that implants have induced cancer in dogs at all.
Sounds like a heck of a consulting company.
I had to embellish a little bit, it is true, but they realized the problem with sending underqualified people to work with clients. If you're looking to have repeat business, it is pretty stupid to send someone over who you claim can do everything in the book, but in reality doesn't know anything. I think it's pretty standard for clients to interview the prospective consultants now, though.
And we aren't forced to get certs, either. There's a $200 bonus, but that's not even worth the time it takes to study for it.
I don't think you can find a statistically significant difference between those with certifications and those without. I bet you could find quite a difference between those with experience and those without, though.
There is no relationship between certification and skill, positive or otherwise. If I go get a certification, am I worse than I was before? Absolutely not. We all have our reasons for getting them. I think the danger is replacing experience with certifications, or viewing certifications as anything other than rote understanding of technology.
I would also argue that it is easy enough to find someone with a great deal of experience who still sucks at the job. If you've been a bad coder for ten years, you're still a bad coder. Some people just aren't cut out to be engineers, but they still somehow manage to hold down a job for a long time.
Mind control doesn't take away free will. You can face all the propaganda in the world and still form your own opinions. If you think the fact that probably over 90% of the people buying into the propaganda means theirs no freedom of thought, I would argue that we still don't have that freedom.
I'm not in some fantasy world where every corporation is more efficient than the government. But corporations always have one advantage of the government: competition. Corporations do tend to become more and more efficient (believe me, I'm contracting for a company that is at least as inefficient as the government), but people always have the ability to ditch that corporation for another. The government is essentially a corporation with no accountability, no competition, and a virtually unlimited income source.
OK, I have a question about the stores you go to having you on film... So did you willing go in the store? Or did they tape you in your home while having private conversations?
17 years for books and songs is even a bit long. It would seem that even a decade is more than enough time for the copyright holder to have a chance to get first dibs at it. Anything else is only impeding the progress of art. Besides that, there are those who have copyrights specifically to block progress of a work of art. "Only we can release this, and we're not going to release it." How is that helping the art progress?