Part of the issue is that small businesses may actually prefer cash, because it's easier to cheat their taxes.
And in case it wasn't clear, US retail generally doesn't take checks (or they make it such a hassle nobody pays that way), except possibly in some small towns where they still can rely on public shame.
The upshot it seems is that it's only a specific demographic blocking ads, and that doesn't really affect most sites.
If you're slashdot, you survive by selling "Windows Server 2008 R2" (my current ad) to IT guys checking the tech headlines on their lunch break. On the other hand, they're also trying to sell "ThinkGeek" t-shirts with Unix jokes on them, and the target market of college computer nerds might be ad-blocking them.
Also, where did you get the 11M figure for ABP? I've never seen any actual numbers.
The kind of person who goes onto ad-supported sites in order to endlessly bitch about ads and advocate blocking them is a tiny minority of internet users. As long as it is essentially noise traffic, it doesn't affect anyone's business model.
Even on Slashdot, I would guess the vast majority of visitors are running stock browser configs and never wade into these "below your threshold" discussion about how terrible ads are.
Well, unlike McD's, my corner coffee shop apparently does not have a dedicated T1 for credit transactions, or whatever they need. So its more like 10s vs. 45s.
The neighborhood liquor store/bodega is still on dialup, so even longer still, plus they charge you.25.
Point is that debit is still a long way from the convenience of cash outside of franchise America.
Just checked and my non-insolvent major US bank limits electronic transfers to random people's accounts to $2000. Which wouldn't even be enough to cover rent for many people, much less an car.
I was taught both ways, but placing the punctuation outside was described as "modern American" grammar, which would surely take over along with the metric system and new math. Or not.
The great thing about rules of grammar is that there's so many to choose from!:)
For whatever reason, American banks don't make this easy for you. Probably make too much money from Visa via PayPal.
The other issue is just logistics. I wouldn't transfer $10,000 to some random craigslist guy for a used car only to have him disappear before he hands me the keys and title.
If someone wanted to "Compaq" Apple, they would need to: A) Crack Apple's secret hardware encryption keys and design their own mobo to contain a SMC containing them (Intel would be no help here) B) Write an OS X-compatible EFI bootloader. C) (possibly something with the video card bios)
Of course, nothing says that Apple has to sell retail boxes of Mac OS X to anyone and everyone! They could kill any potentially legal clone market just by requiring some proof of Mac ownership.
(When Compaq reverse engineered IBM, MS-DOS was not a retail box product - the only way to get it was to deal directly with Microsoft, who was willing to provide.)
Isn't that symptomatic of how the "net culture" has changed, though? Back when Slashdot was new, being on the Internet was something few people did, even less so without inhibitions. It was the lair of tech and science geeks, and that was that.
It is symptomatic of the fact that early net culture was 20 years ago. Its not like modern science undergrads are watching "Red Dwarf". If you weren't 'there' (ie home on Saturday night watching PBS on broadcast TV in the 1980s), who cares?
And hoestly, a lot of the Monty Python/Simpsons "nerd humor" stuff was tired and worn-out even among "nerds" long before there was a Slashdot or even the WWW. There's only so many times you can beat something with your onion belt.
I could complain about moderation all day long, but the bottom line is that it generally works from the reader's standpoint.
The one thing that most/. posters don't understand is that moderation is for the general unregistered user's benefit, not your karma score. If you browse Slashdot without being logged in, the discussions are boiled down the essential gist of the issue,without hundreds of posts of nerd nonsense.
Actually, Slashdot has just the opposite problem. If you want people to read your post, you're better off replying to the GNAA First Post versus making a root-level post at the bottom of the page.
A whole lot of slashdot discussions are really only one or two root-level threads
OK. Lets say it is 1987 and you have soldered extra RAM into your Mac Plus and turned on multifinder. Except, you still have to wait 5 years before you can drag something between different programs because there's no software support.
Doesn't matter if it was a long time ago, if the argument is "got it right the first time", you don't have a decade of wiggle room. The point was actually more "got it right eventually".
I would argue that the WEB influenced both GUIs more since Windows 98 than they did each other. The convergence is the web to them and them to the web.
An excellent point.
However, you may be ignoring the broader implications. A "web-like" UI is much closer to the application model than the document model, as the web generally relies on navigation paths rather than layered windows.
And some of your post is argument from definition: Apple has "document" APIs therefore it must be document-oriented. Nope - iTunes is still basically MS Access for Music.
If iTunes were designed like a classic Mac-style program it would be structured around multiple floating windows, playlist window, song window, store windows, and so on. Of course that 1984 style is considered obsolete even for first-rate Mac apps.
Only point being that the "purity" argument is so much bullshit - the best UIs are what works in context, which IMO iTunes does well despite being "Windowsy"
Mac windows are DOCUMENT centric; Windows is application centric.
IMO this statement is either a vast oversimpification, or sorely outdated at the very least.
Just as a prominent example, iTunes has a very "application-centric" UI. If iTunes followed the oldschool Mac style, each different function (store, ipod management, etc) would be in separate windows rather than in panes.
Both OSes have a blend of application- and document-specific functionality, depending on the task and the app's UI design. Windows in particular actually is "windows-centric", the contents of those windows is very much up to the app.
Instead I agree with those old Ars Technica articles about the Old Mac UI being "spatial" -- the idea was that you would have to navigate in 2 dimensions with the mouse. (The Dock and the modern Finder have softened that though.) Windows was always more 'one dimensional' in how it switched tasks (taskbar, alt-tab), although that too has softened over the years.
Either way, both Windows and Mac have converged quite a bit and are closer in operation today than in say 1990.
Only problem with your theory is that none of that worked on the original Macintosh. It was a single tasking OS, and the desktop was inaccessible while running an app. And "clippings" didn't appear until System 7.something.
The original intent was probably to enable window switching within an application.
Also I've noticed that a lot of Mac blowhards on this site love to frame these things in terms of the "original Mac" or "since 1984", when it is clear they probably have never used anything under MacOS 8.
I have personal knowledge of ASS/400 systems which have been infiltrated from ye olde dot com days, so phooey. Just like anything else, you can have the greatest security system in the world, but if you put some dumbshit FTP server on top, people will find their way in.
I think if you actually talked to anyone who works with these, they would tell you to firewall them way way off. Not that Linux/Apache is perfect, but lots of people generally understand it, which is more than you can say for IBM PTF6893QT.5 or whatever their webserver software is called nowdays.
The google ads on this very page are in iframes. You may be correct about the flyouts, but using javascript to write out iframe tags is the common way of doing things, in my experience.
You don't speak for the average Slashdot commenter, Mr. ViralMeme. People here object to almost all web advertising, and are incredibly smug that they mustered the nerd powers to figure out how to click a button and install a ad-blocker.
Which is OK, because the vast majority of eyeballs on this site never even see the unmoderated comments. Plus the typical "information wants to be free" linux hippie isn't a good demographic target anyway. We're down here in the comments threads talking to ourselves.
Haha, slashbots are actually dumb enough to think that selecting that option subtracts the hosting fees from KDawson's salary or something.
No, your moronic ramblings are still paid for the by advertising to the huge number of unregistered users hitting slashdot's home page. Slashdot's parent corporation is listed on NASDAQ, this place ain't no charity.
Slashdot Mirror
Part of the issue is that small businesses may actually prefer cash, because it's easier to cheat their taxes.
And in case it wasn't clear, US retail generally doesn't take checks (or they make it such a hassle nobody pays that way), except possibly in some small towns where they still can rely on public shame.
The upshot it seems is that it's only a specific demographic blocking ads, and that doesn't really affect most sites.
If you're slashdot, you survive by selling "Windows Server 2008 R2" (my current ad) to IT guys checking the tech headlines on their lunch break. On the other hand, they're also trying to sell "ThinkGeek" t-shirts with Unix jokes on them, and the target market of college computer nerds might be ad-blocking them.
Also, where did you get the 11M figure for ABP? I've never seen any actual numbers.
The official response seems to be "Who cares?"
The kind of person who goes onto ad-supported sites in order to endlessly bitch about ads and advocate blocking them is a tiny minority of internet users. As long as it is essentially noise traffic, it doesn't affect anyone's business model.
Even on Slashdot, I would guess the vast majority of visitors are running stock browser configs and never wade into these "below your threshold" discussion about how terrible ads are.
Well, unlike McD's, my corner coffee shop apparently does not have a dedicated T1 for credit transactions, or whatever they need. So its more like 10s vs. 45s.
The neighborhood liquor store/bodega is still on dialup, so even longer still, plus they charge you .25.
Point is that debit is still a long way from the convenience of cash outside of franchise America.
Just checked and my non-insolvent major US bank limits electronic transfers to random people's accounts to $2000. Which wouldn't even be enough to cover rent for many people, much less an car.
I was taught both ways, but placing the punctuation outside was described as "modern American" grammar, which would surely take over along with the metric system and new math. Or not.
The great thing about rules of grammar is that there's so many to choose from! :)
For whatever reason, American banks don't make this easy for you. Probably make too much money from Visa via PayPal.
The other issue is just logistics. I wouldn't transfer $10,000 to some random craigslist guy for a used car only to have him disappear before he hands me the keys and title.
Disagree. My observations of the coffee line indicate that cash is much quicker than cards.
Exception being those women with gigantic purses that contain pennies buried somewhere deep inside.
In my experience, people generally will not accept a personal check for an automobile. Cashier Check or Money Order.
Yeah, you have that backwards.
If someone wanted to "Compaq" Apple, they would need to:
A) Crack Apple's secret hardware encryption keys and design their own mobo to contain a SMC containing them (Intel would be no help here)
B) Write an OS X-compatible EFI bootloader.
C) (possibly something with the video card bios)
Of course, nothing says that Apple has to sell retail boxes of Mac OS X to anyone and everyone! They could kill any potentially legal clone market just by requiring some proof of Mac ownership.
(When Compaq reverse engineered IBM, MS-DOS was not a retail box product - the only way to get it was to deal directly with Microsoft, who was willing to provide.)
Isn't that symptomatic of how the "net culture" has changed, though? Back when Slashdot was new, being on the Internet was something few people did, even less so without inhibitions. It was the lair of tech and science geeks, and that was that.
It is symptomatic of the fact that early net culture was 20 years ago. Its not like modern science undergrads are watching "Red Dwarf". If you weren't 'there' (ie home on Saturday night watching PBS on broadcast TV in the 1980s), who cares?
And hoestly, a lot of the Monty Python/Simpsons "nerd humor" stuff was tired and worn-out even among "nerds" long before there was a Slashdot or even the WWW. There's only so many times you can beat something with your onion belt.
The moderation system is awesome.
I could complain about moderation all day long, but the bottom line is that it generally works from the reader's standpoint.
The one thing that most /. posters don't understand is that moderation is for the general unregistered user's benefit, not your karma score. If you browse Slashdot without being logged in, the discussions are boiled down the essential gist of the issue,without hundreds of posts of nerd nonsense.
Actually, Slashdot has just the opposite problem. If you want people to read your post, you're better off replying to the GNAA First Post versus making a root-level post at the bottom of the page.
A whole lot of slashdot discussions are really only one or two root-level threads
OK. Lets say it is 1987 and you have soldered extra RAM into your Mac Plus and turned on multifinder. Except, you still have to wait 5 years before you can drag something between different programs because there's no software support.
Doesn't matter if it was a long time ago, if the argument is "got it right the first time", you don't have a decade of wiggle room. The point was actually more "got it right eventually".
Yeah, sorry you got modded down, because your core point about a drag-n-drop-based "spatial" classic Mac environment is essentially correct.
My only complaint was that you can't argue 'original intent' when it took them 10 years to implement the actual functionality.
I would argue that the WEB influenced both GUIs more since Windows 98 than they did each other. The convergence is the web to them and them to the web.
An excellent point.
However, you may be ignoring the broader implications. A "web-like" UI is much closer to the application model than the document model, as the web generally relies on navigation paths rather than layered windows.
And some of your post is argument from definition: Apple has "document" APIs therefore it must be document-oriented. Nope - iTunes is still basically MS Access for Music.
If iTunes were designed like a classic Mac-style program it would be structured around multiple floating windows, playlist window, song window, store windows, and so on. Of course that 1984 style is considered obsolete even for first-rate Mac apps.
Only point being that the "purity" argument is so much bullshit - the best UIs are what works in context, which IMO iTunes does well despite being "Windowsy"
Mac windows are DOCUMENT centric; Windows is application centric.
IMO this statement is either a vast oversimpification, or sorely outdated at the very least.
Just as a prominent example, iTunes has a very "application-centric" UI. If iTunes followed the oldschool Mac style, each different function (store, ipod management, etc) would be in separate windows rather than in panes.
Both OSes have a blend of application- and document-specific functionality, depending on the task and the app's UI design. Windows in particular actually is "windows-centric", the contents of those windows is very much up to the app.
Instead I agree with those old Ars Technica articles about the Old Mac UI being "spatial" -- the idea was that you would have to navigate in 2 dimensions with the mouse. (The Dock and the modern Finder have softened that though.) Windows was always more 'one dimensional' in how it switched tasks (taskbar, alt-tab), although that too has softened over the years.
Either way, both Windows and Mac have converged quite a bit and are closer in operation today than in say 1990.
Only problem with your theory is that none of that worked on the original Macintosh. It was a single tasking OS, and the desktop was inaccessible while running an app. And "clippings" didn't appear until System 7.something.
The original intent was probably to enable window switching within an application.
Also I've noticed that a lot of Mac blowhards on this site love to frame these things in terms of the "original Mac" or "since 1984", when it is clear they probably have never used anything under MacOS 8.
Curious that you didn't name what these sites are. I've never see Linux web metric numbers over about 1%
There are no error bars. This is a straight dump from their collected information on web traffic.
You sure about that? This article indicates they have some form of weighting:
http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/08/02/net-applications-apple-just-lost-half-its-market-share/
I have personal knowledge of ASS/400 systems which have been infiltrated from ye olde dot com days, so phooey. Just like anything else, you can have the greatest security system in the world, but if you put some dumbshit FTP server on top, people will find their way in.
I think if you actually talked to anyone who works with these, they would tell you to firewall them way way off. Not that Linux/Apache is perfect, but lots of people generally understand it, which is more than you can say for IBM PTF6893QT.5 or whatever their webserver software is called nowdays.
The google ads on this very page are in iframes. You may be correct about the flyouts, but using javascript to write out iframe tags is the common way of doing things, in my experience.
You don't speak for the average Slashdot commenter, Mr. ViralMeme. People here object to almost all web advertising, and are incredibly smug that they mustered the nerd powers to figure out how to click a button and install a ad-blocker.
Which is OK, because the vast majority of eyeballs on this site never even see the unmoderated comments. Plus the typical "information wants to be free" linux hippie isn't a good demographic target anyway. We're down here in the comments threads talking to ourselves.
Haha, slashbots are actually dumb enough to think that selecting that option subtracts the hosting fees from KDawson's salary or something.
No, your moronic ramblings are still paid for the by advertising to the huge number of unregistered users hitting slashdot's home page. Slashdot's parent corporation is listed on NASDAQ, this place ain't no charity.
Only the web admins that are too stupid to realized the ads are paying his salary.
Come to think of it, that might actually be "most" of them ... IT guys can be pretty oblivious to why they are there in the first place.