Yeah, but you are still wrong. If you knew anything about Mormonism, especially with respect to secular law, you would realize the the "mormon" tag is not as appropriate as you assume. There are lots of conservatives in UT, yes. And lots of Mormons to be sure. But its not like UT is an island of conservatism out here in the Intermountain West. In fact, they seem to dominate until you are within sight of the Pacific.
Its one thing to point out the idiosyncrasies of a religion or group. Personally, I am not to concerned if people get angry about being stereotyped on principle, when the stereotype is largely true. There are always exceptions -- exceptional people can just get over it, for all I care.
So it doesn't bother me that you are stereotyping. It bothers me that you are making baseless statements based on ignorance.
Provide free, just aired TV shows. They can put in advertising, and even DRM to make them expire as most people don't care.
Personally, I don't care about ads either -- I would skip them if it is easy, but as it is I don't always bother to even fast forward through them. Its easier to not skip them.
However, there is a certain population that will go out of their way to remove ads from downloaded or streamed shows on "principle" and re-distribute them. I suspect that their crowing garners a disproportionate amount of paranoia from advertisers and networks have to placate them.
It is probably true that if content with ads is easy enough to obtain, only a small number of people will bother circumventing them. However, given the originality and guile present in 99% of TV ads, I wouldn't want the job of explaining this to advertisers.
. ..unless they got an animated reptile in a bikini to do it.
There is one, and exactly one, way for you to show me an ad: Some sort of automatic downloading application (Not real-time streaming crap. I don't have infinite bandwidth.) that lets me subscribe to TV shows and download and watch them. Like I do now, but legally.
That's pretty much how Tivo works, no?
I tell it what I want to watch. If I decide to watch TV I select from the accumulation of shows it has recorded based on my preferences.
Obviously you have to pay to access cable content. But you could manually program Tivo and get Lost every week with no internet connection at all, AFAIK.
Everything is somewhat vulnerable, and a determined intruder with infinite resource will almost always find a way in. The object is to make this unreasonably hard for most applications.
With the ubiquity of digital cameras, "determined intruder with infinite resource" no longer includes "scumbag with camera".
As such, this security feature seems particularly useless.
The concept of technology that can track you every move is not new. The notion that one would submit to it voluntarily, is new. See 1984, for example.
Oh right, reading is old technology that the young techno-vanguard has abandoned in favor of posting pictures of themselves doing bong-hits.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that blogging, tweeting, and doling out the right for others to track your every move is anything other than narcissism.
I think you are being too credulous in assuming that people want these technologies to record an accurate version of their petty lives.
IMO, the future is in technology that will allow people to convince others, and eventually themselves, that they are living the lives they want to live, not the lives they bother to build for themselves.
If they managed the program with a Facebook application, any user who signed up would have given the application full run of their friends list. I suspect that the application itself was used to execute the defriending.
I'll have to defer, as I have never worked for a large company.
I have always been fortunate enough to be on a first name basis with the principals of the companies I have worked for, except for a brief period between my company being sold to a large corporation and that corporation dragging it down in flames due to a culture of mediocrity and incompetence.
All I can say is that your account seems like a reasonable strategy for surviving in the environment you describe, but I sure wouldn't want any part of it.
And honestly, when your company won't actually reward you for extra effort with a raise, or even continued employment if your department is cut, then why exactly should anyone strive to be a star performer?
Because working harder for the same money is still better than living in a refrigerator box?
I see what your saying. In principle, I agree with a lot of it. But that is not the reality most people live in. Wages are stagnant, debt is rising, more hours are required to perform satisfactorily and people are still competing to participate in this rat race.
This is why we are even discussing what a company might do to incentivize its employees as if the idea of simply increasing their compensation is absurd.
At my current employer, all we get is the slap on the back. Because of the bad economy, there's no chance for a raise or bonus, but they've sent us all an email asking us to please continue working hard and coming up with innovative ideas. Yeah, right.
There is a remedy for this attitude which can be summed up as:
There were no customers though, that's the tricky bit.
The MS store was no more deserted than any of the other stores at the Metreon other than the Playstation store. Granted, there was almost never anyone buying anything, but that was a Metreon issue, not a Microsoft issue. Even still, I regularly walked through to kill time while it was open, and it was far from a ghost town.
Looking past the marketing BS, I think this is a reasonable move for MS. They will get some media buzz and some new-store-on-the-block traffic which will ultimately put Windows 7 in front of consumers on good machines in a controlled environment. If the stores close 2 years or even 6 months later, so what? People will continue to see MS as a legit software maker.
To be clear, I define "issue" as something that may have a significant impact on sales, not something deemed worth carping about on/.
Also, there is a big difference between running a popular ad campaign and converting users from Windows to OSX. I think that Apples overpriced, over-weeningly "cool" products are much more vulnerable in the current climate.
Microsoft has a PR problem on their hands, I can assure you. Doesn't mean people are going to change OS or anything. But the fact of the matter is that non-geeks distrust computers, and to them that means Windows.
I would say that non-geeks are intimidated by computers, and that drives them to forgive the flaws of well established brands like MS because they still seem like a safe bet. Apple has gained a lot on user recognition, but remain limited by their uncompetitive price point.
If MS can put consumers in front of a nice computer running Windows 7, that will go a long way towards assuaging any reservations that people have about Windows. Thus, the MS store.
Slashdot Mirror
Picking a major, especially an intensive one like CS, based on current employment statistics, that is.
Your mingling of terms like "inferiority complex" and "feel inadequate" with accusations of "idiot" and "moron" is a real tour-de-force of irony.
They're clearly out of touch with not just reality, but the rest of the country as well.
The rest of the country where almost 80% claim membership to some other form of belief in the supernatural powers of Jesus Christ?
Yeah, but you are still wrong. If you knew anything about Mormonism, especially with respect to secular law, you would realize the the "mormon" tag is not as appropriate as you assume. There are lots of conservatives in UT, yes. And lots of Mormons to be sure. But its not like UT is an island of conservatism out here in the Intermountain West. In fact, they seem to dominate until you are within sight of the Pacific.
Its one thing to point out the idiosyncrasies of a religion or group. Personally, I am not to concerned if people get angry about being stereotyped on principle, when the stereotype is largely true. There are always exceptions -- exceptional people can just get over it, for all I care.
So it doesn't bother me that you are stereotyping. It bothers me that you are making baseless statements based on ignorance.
Whereas Republicans know how to milk a good racket for campaign funds.
Provide free, just aired TV shows. They can put in advertising, and even DRM to make them expire as most people don't care.
Personally, I don't care about ads either -- I would skip them if it is easy, but as it is I don't always bother to even fast forward through them. Its easier to not skip them.
However, there is a certain population that will go out of their way to remove ads from downloaded or streamed shows on "principle" and re-distribute them. I suspect that their crowing garners a disproportionate amount of paranoia from advertisers and networks have to placate them.
It is probably true that if content with ads is easy enough to obtain, only a small number of people will bother circumventing them. However, given the originality and guile present in 99% of TV ads, I wouldn't want the job of explaining this to advertisers.
. . .unless they got an animated reptile in a bikini to do it.
There is one, and exactly one, way for you to show me an ad: Some sort of automatic downloading application (Not real-time streaming crap. I don't have infinite bandwidth.) that lets me subscribe to TV shows and download and watch them. Like I do now, but legally.
That's pretty much how Tivo works, no?
I tell it what I want to watch. If I decide to watch TV I select from the accumulation of shows it has recorded based on my preferences.
Obviously you have to pay to access cable content. But you could manually program Tivo and get Lost every week with no internet connection at all, AFAIK.
What a sell-out. . .
Everything is somewhat vulnerable, and a determined intruder with infinite resource will almost always find a way in. The object is to make this unreasonably hard for most applications.
With the ubiquity of digital cameras, "determined intruder with infinite resource" no longer includes "scumbag with camera".
As such, this security feature seems particularly useless.
The concept of technology that can track you every move is not new. The notion that one would submit to it voluntarily, is new. See 1984, for example.
Oh right, reading is old technology that the young techno-vanguard has abandoned in favor of posting pictures of themselves doing bong-hits.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that blogging, tweeting, and doling out the right for others to track your every move is anything other than narcissism.
Time to retire to a remote cave in an uncharted region of the world, then.
It's amusing that techies can be luddites too.
Time to stop wearing pants in public. Also amusing that naifs can be bleeding edge technophiles.
I may not be the most up to date, but come on, I've never heard about google doing something questionable with your data.
Gathering it in the first place is questionable.
I think you are being too credulous in assuming that people want these technologies to record an accurate version of their petty lives.
IMO, the future is in technology that will allow people to convince others, and eventually themselves, that they are living the lives they want to live, not the lives they bother to build for themselves.
Why the heck are we getting a story posted on this almost daily? Who cares?
WTF? This is like Y2K, except TV is actually important!
Cynics with few friends and seething disdain for for people in general are not Facebook's target audience.
If they managed the program with a Facebook application, any user who signed up would have given the application full run of their friends list. I suspect that the application itself was used to execute the defriending.
I'll have to defer, as I have never worked for a large company.
I have always been fortunate enough to be on a first name basis with the principals of the companies I have worked for, except for a brief period between my company being sold to a large corporation and that corporation dragging it down in flames due to a culture of mediocrity and incompetence.
All I can say is that your account seems like a reasonable strategy for surviving in the environment you describe, but I sure wouldn't want any part of it.
And honestly, when your company won't actually reward you for extra effort with a raise, or even continued employment if your department is cut, then why exactly should anyone strive to be a star performer?
Because working harder for the same money is still better than living in a refrigerator box?
I see what your saying. In principle, I agree with a lot of it. But that is not the reality most people live in. Wages are stagnant, debt is rising, more hours are required to perform satisfactorily and people are still competing to participate in this rat race.
This is why we are even discussing what a company might do to incentivize its employees as if the idea of simply increasing their compensation is absurd.
At my current employer, all we get is the slap on the back. Because of the bad economy, there's no chance for a raise or bonus, but they've sent us all an email asking us to please continue working hard and coming up with innovative ideas. Yeah, right.
There is a remedy for this attitude which can be summed up as:
"Third place is you're fired"
So I come up with an idea that could save the company thousands, or even millions of dollars. and, I get a toaster oven. nice incentive.
Not quite. Its a raffle, so you might get a toaster oven. Or you might not. Nobody knows! You're intrigued -- I can tell.
Do they raffle off other benefits, like health care?
It has already been said -- if you want something of value from your employees, pay them for it. Thats how the whole "work" thing works.
Either pony up the cash or let them use the time they are already paid for to think about how to innovate.
There were no customers though, that's the tricky bit.
The MS store was no more deserted than any of the other stores at the Metreon other than the Playstation store. Granted, there was almost never anyone buying anything, but that was a Metreon issue, not a Microsoft issue. Even still, I regularly walked through to kill time while it was open, and it was far from a ghost town.
Looking past the marketing BS, I think this is a reasonable move for MS. They will get some media buzz and some new-store-on-the-block traffic which will ultimately put Windows 7 in front of consumers on good machines in a controlled environment. If the stores close 2 years or even 6 months later, so what? People will continue to see MS as a legit software maker.
Most of the 8,500 sq ft was dedicated to "an interactive environment" to display Microsoft's vision of software.
Unlike the Apple store?
To be clear, I define "issue" as something that may have a significant impact on sales, not something deemed worth carping about on /.
Also, there is a big difference between running a popular ad campaign and converting users from Windows to OSX. I think that Apples overpriced, over-weeningly "cool" products are much more vulnerable in the current climate.
Microsoft has a PR problem on their hands, I can assure you. Doesn't mean people are going to change OS or anything. But the fact of the matter is that non-geeks distrust computers, and to them that means Windows.
I would say that non-geeks are intimidated by computers, and that drives them to forgive the flaws of well established brands like MS because they still seem like a safe bet. Apple has gained a lot on user recognition, but remain limited by their uncompetitive price point.
If MS can put consumers in front of a nice computer running Windows 7, that will go a long way towards assuaging any reservations that people have about Windows. Thus, the MS store.