You think they'd be so obvious as to release it in a big city such as New York or London? Of course they'd release it in a place where no-one would expect it to be released, like rural Mexico.
Now where's my tin foil hat?
Actually, "they" *would* release it in a big city like New York or London, because everyone would expect them to release it in place that nobody would expect them to, like rural Mexico, so that would be far too obvious to pin on them because of it's obvious obscurity.
Hey, you were supposed to post this as our Anonymous Coward cover-user. You've really blown it blown it for the secret movement... THEY know who to focus their MoonBeams and Photons on now!
1) Record label gets stung by not having any backups of any of it's own songs.
2) Record Label finds out that $4.95/mo "Unlimited Bandwidth" hosting only has unlimited bandwidth if you don't use too much bandwidth.
It really sounds like the host knocked them off for using too much bandwidth (reading between the lines here), and did what they normally do to sites that are hosting music files... pull the copyright card and take down the site. I'm sure that most sites that distribute music on cheap hosting are doing so illegally, so this profile is not unreasonable. It doesn't fit in this case, but the assumption on the host's part makes sense unless they actually took the time to check the facts.
Lessons learned: * Back up your mission critical data! Jeesh... * Use real hosting for real websites.
Vista 32 can only see 4 gigs MINUS memory address space reserved for hardware (video card(s) and other hardware that require reserved memory). This typically results in 3 to 3.3 gigs being available in Vista 32 with 4+ gigs of RAM installed on the computer (same thing with XP 32). To see more than this with any Windows flavor, you must use the 64 bit version (XP or Vista).
I think that this is a *critical* point that most people don't think about or even understand, therefore it is never brought up in the media. When the counted results are within the margin of error, you have a *TIE* (well actually you have a "We can't know exactly who won", but I'll call that a tie). It would be just as proper to decide who won if the voting results were within the margin of error by literally flipping a coin. Not much of a confidence builder for the citizens of any democracy, although it does have some built-in irony.
In a statistical "tie", there should be some type of re-vote, either in the "tied" states, or a new general election. But then again, if the results were just on the border of particular margin of error, you could argue about the margin of error of the margin of error... aah, a politician's & lawyer's paradise.
I know what you mean, the bang is silly and the person who came up with that idea should be taken out to a field and banged to death. The company's legal name *is* "Yahoo! Inc." however, so including the bang is technically correct, and omitting it is incorrect.
Valid points, and I agree will all but one point that I'm not so sure of:
they are hoping that customers will do their Christmas shopping on other things while in the store... but it is probably not true for the average reader of the deal websites
Sure, readers of those websites are probably a bit more computer saavy than your average walk-in customer, but that doesn't mean that they are less likely to buy "other stuff" in the store; they're human and are just as likely as the next customer to buy 500% markup "impulse items" and other random stuff that they pass while searching for that 1 item that's on sale that they want, and the goals of the loss-leader sale items are met.
Computer-saavy or not, everyone who enters a store to buy that 1 loss-leader item are equally targeted to buy extra stuff, regardless of which media format (online, mail ad, tv ad, etc.)informed them of the sale item that they seek.
So let me see if I have this business decision down, then:
a) Plan a massive sale on Black Friday in order to get customers to spend money at a specific retailer. b) Spend major $$ advertising the sale. c) Spend more major $$ on lawyers' fees and litigation costs when online consumer deals sites attempt to advertise the sale AT NO COST TO THE RETAILER. Cite the DMCA as your legal basis, because it's so broad that it must cover *any* type of content litigation, including actions against anyone who gives companies free advertising. d) Either PROFIT after the Christmas season is over and give everyone a pat on the back, or NO PROFIT and blame 9/11 and those "evil" consumer websites who ruined your sales by giving you free advertising.
A bit of sarcasm in there, but point c) is what worries me. The *only* reason I can possible see for these retail companies wanting to NOT have their sales mentioned on these sites (for free) is that they fear a sales slowdown in the few weeks prior to the Black Monday sales kick-off, due to the large discounts offered then. But a sales slowdown prior to any advertised sales period is the norm in any retail industry, and is always accounted for well ahead of time. So this reason makes no sense.
This tactic sounds like it would benefit the mentioned retailer's *competitors* more than the retailers who are threatening the "offending" websites with legal action. Well, and benefits the lawyers on all sides as well. That said, just *who's* lawyers sent the threats to the consumer websites in order to stop the free advertising?
It's absurd that a company can consider a 200 million dollar loss "acceptable" and continue operating (under the same management) with plans for expansion.
Having lots of cash != Monopoly.
Microsoft does not have anything even closely resembling a monopoly in the console gaming market. They're a distant third in that market.
Their loss is considered an investment in a new industry, aimed to gain a presence in households at a cost of losing some $ per each console sold. The payoff is seen as a long-term investment once people decide to upgrade their once "uber-cheap" X-box console platform... "Hmm, do I buy a new next-generation console that is incompatible with my current one, or do I buy a next-generation one that is compatible with all of the games I've already invested in"? It's a risky investment, from MS's point of view, but it's a reasonable one, given the Billions of $ spent on computer games every year.
I stated: "Whips + Threat of Impending Pain = Greater Productivity."
How in the *heck* was my comment moderated as a *troll*? Sure, it was terse and sarcastic, but my point was completely on-target.
I will "read between the lines" of my comment for anyone who saw a pointless troll in my comment.
Productivity can very easily be increased by applying a threat of negative consequences for lack of productivity increases. "Work harder or I kill you" will usually acheive a productivity increase. Productivity gains by negative consequence threats are hardly news, yet the story linked above makes this sound like it *is* news.
I have survived many layoff cycles, and have had the work of up to 5 "former" employees delegated to me. Did I do all of their work? Yup. At the cost of me working frantic 16 hour days for months on end, under the fear that if I didn't complete their work, I would be the next to be laid off. To report that my productivity increased while at the same time neglecting to list the true costs of my productivity increase (my personal life suffered so much that I quit, leaving all of my work to be done by several undertrained co-workers who soon quit after I did) is to tell only 1/2 the story, and makes a net loss situation sound like a net gain in terms of productivity.
Outside of Marketing meetings, I can't see how anyone would actually *want* their devices to respond to commands imbedded into audio noise. OK, a "Talking Tina" doll that acts the part during the airing of a Twilight Zone would be funny the first time around, but that's about all I can imagine the end-user wanting the technology to do (silly little tricks with "intercative" robots). I don't think that ANY consumer would want their cells to ring with the "ad of the day" transmitted over the air muzak at their favorite retailer.
Wait, I just thought of a use... a prankster's dream come true. Imagine 40,000 cells all ringing at the same time during the playing of a *special* version of "Black in Black" during a major sports event. Or even playing a *special* CD in a boombox, laughing as everyone within listening range has their cell ring and deliver them a message that has been imbedded into the CD sound. Good luck tracing that obscene phone message.
The copy protection schemes are created to force consumers to *buy* legit copies of the CDs, as opposed to stealing the MP3 versions. So Mr. Honest Consumer with lots of discretionary income:
1) Goes to the store and buys a new copy of some Top-40 Fluff band of the minute. 2) Tries to play it in his new "Super Fancy 500 feature Play-Any-Format CD player", but it can't play the new CD because the CD thinks his player is a PC player. 3)Tries it in his similar car CD player, with similar results. 4) Says "screw this", D/Ls his favorite songs for free, burns them to CD, and lives happily ever after, perfectingly *WILLING* to pay for new CDs, but he can't, because they won't work with any of his "Advanced" stereo eqpt.
Hats off to the file sharing companies for coming up with this brilliant scheme to deprive record companies of their most secure source of income, the Honest Customer! Wait, they ARE the ones who came up with this copy protection scheme, aren't they? No? Hmmm.....
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Now if they could just get some **decent** drivers to go with this card (catalyst is a great step towards the goal, dont get me wrong, but ATI has always been a little weak in driver field)
Some may call the above post Flamebait, but it is true. Jeesh, I remember this same complaint being lodged against ATI back in 1992. Apparently, they are doing something right to still be alive today, despite this constant driver criticism.
I am not a hardware junkie, but I have been following recent "build your own home theater in a PC" sites, and the jury says: build your system around the limitations of your chosen graphics card. The ATI line of "do everything" cards offers unmatched versitility in the home theater PC market, yet you have to carefully match your requirements with your choice of hardware and software (and driver capabilities).
IOW, do your homework, build for today, and don't expect your ATI card to do anything wonderful outside of the scope of your current DIY project.
You don't need a checks-and-balances system if everyone in the field is always going to be a good boy at all times. What happened here is that someone wasn't, and the scientific process caught him at it.
Agreed. But what I don't grok is how he, or any hard-science researcher, can even think for a second that they will get away with BSing data to support bogus claims. Sure, they can get away with it in the short term, but eventually when nobody can reproduce the results, the data will be scrubbed to prove the results... bogus data = bogus results. Game over.
This is as shortsighted as creating an executable that apparently does something amazing, like predicting the last 20 years of winners in a tri-state lottery (the assumption being that if you can predict past winning lottery numbers, then you can predict future winning numbers as well). The author gets the "XYZ...Profit" treatment... until someone looks at the source code, which won't even compile, nor does it contain any code that could reasonably predict past lottery winning numbers, let alone future winning numbers. The obvious conclusion is that the executable contains the lottery historical data, and is therefore not predicting anything at all. How could that programmer not expect anyone to look at the source code, let alone a researcher not expect their unreproducable results not have the associated supporting data scrubbed?
Slashdot Mirror
You think they'd be so obvious as to release it in a big city such as New York or London? Of course they'd release it in a place where no-one would expect it to be released, like rural Mexico.
Now where's my tin foil hat?
Actually, "they" *would* release it in a big city like New York or London, because everyone would expect them to release it in place that nobody would expect them to, like rural Mexico, so that would be far too obvious to pin on them because of it's obvious obscurity.
[/recursion]
Hey, you were supposed to post this as our Anonymous Coward cover-user. You've really blown it blown it for the secret movement... THEY know who to focus their MoonBeams and Photons on now!
"Who the hell their base belong to?"
Us.
Don't you worry about the details there, Sparky.
Actually, to stay out of trouble, they'd be safer knowing every location that it is NOT at, and extrapolating from there.
Tongue, cheek, and all that.
No doubt. Don't lick the paint!
I think that this is really two stories:
1) Record label gets stung by not having any backups of any of it's own songs.
2) Record Label finds out that $4.95/mo "Unlimited Bandwidth" hosting only has unlimited bandwidth if you don't use too much bandwidth.
It really sounds like the host knocked them off for using too much bandwidth (reading between the lines here), and did what they normally do to sites that are hosting music files... pull the copyright card and take down the site. I'm sure that most sites that distribute music on cheap hosting are doing so illegally, so this profile is not unreasonable. It doesn't fit in this case, but the assumption on the host's part makes sense unless they actually took the time to check the facts.
Lessons learned:
* Back up your mission critical data! Jeesh...
* Use real hosting for real websites.
Vista 32 can only see 4 gigs MINUS memory address space reserved for hardware (video card(s) and other hardware that require reserved memory). This typically results in 3 to 3.3 gigs being available in Vista 32 with 4+ gigs of RAM installed on the computer (same thing with XP 32). To see more than this with any Windows flavor, you must use the 64 bit version (XP or Vista).
I think that this is a *critical* point that most people don't think about or even understand, therefore it is never brought up in the media. When the counted results are within the margin of error, you have a *TIE* (well actually you have a "We can't know exactly who won", but I'll call that a tie). It would be just as proper to decide who won if the voting results were within the margin of error by literally flipping a coin. Not much of a confidence builder for the citizens of any democracy, although it does have some built-in irony.
In a statistical "tie", there should be some type of re-vote, either in the "tied" states, or a new general election. But then again, if the results were just on the border of particular margin of error, you could argue about the margin of error of the margin of error... aah, a politician's & lawyer's paradise.
Let's see... in the early/mid 80s we had the beginning of Goth, so the next phase after that back then was Grunge.
So I suppose in a few years we'll start having "Slacker Galaxies" and "Flannel Matter".
Aah, little did young William know how much success he would have later in life with a career that started with a magnifying glass and an ant hill...
I know what you mean, the bang is silly and the person who came up with that idea should be taken out to a field and banged to death. The company's legal name *is* "Yahoo! Inc." however, so including the bang is technically correct, and omitting it is incorrect.
That's pretty confusing. I just store most of my music in a directory called /crap .
Valid points, and I agree will all but one point that I'm not so sure of:
... but it is probably not true for the average reader of the deal websites
they are hoping that customers will do their Christmas shopping on other things while in the store
Sure, readers of those websites are probably a bit more computer saavy than your average walk-in customer, but that doesn't mean that they are less likely to buy "other stuff" in the store; they're human and are just as likely as the next customer to buy 500% markup "impulse items" and other random stuff that they pass while searching for that 1 item that's on sale that they want, and the goals of the loss-leader sale items are met.
Computer-saavy or not, everyone who enters a store to buy that 1 loss-leader item are equally targeted to buy extra stuff, regardless of which media format (online, mail ad, tv ad, etc.)informed them of the sale item that they seek.
So let me see if I have this business decision down, then:
a) Plan a massive sale on Black Friday in order to get customers to spend money at a specific retailer.
b) Spend major $$ advertising the sale.
c) Spend more major $$ on lawyers' fees and litigation costs when online consumer deals sites attempt to advertise the sale AT NO COST TO THE RETAILER. Cite the DMCA as your legal basis, because it's so broad that it must cover *any* type of content litigation, including actions against anyone who gives companies free advertising.
d) Either PROFIT after the Christmas season is over and give everyone a pat on the back, or NO PROFIT and blame 9/11 and those "evil" consumer websites who ruined your sales by giving you free advertising.
A bit of sarcasm in there, but point c) is what worries me. The *only* reason I can possible see for these retail companies wanting to NOT have their sales mentioned on these sites (for free) is that they fear a sales slowdown in the few weeks prior to the Black Monday sales kick-off, due to the large discounts offered then. But a sales slowdown prior to any advertised sales period is the norm in any retail industry, and is always accounted for well ahead of time. So this reason makes no sense.
This tactic sounds like it would benefit the mentioned retailer's *competitors* more than the retailers who are threatening the "offending" websites with legal action. Well, and benefits the lawyers on all sides as well. That said, just *who's* lawyers sent the threats to the consumer websites in order to stop the free advertising?
Not to mention redefine "Monopoly".
It's absurd that a company can consider a 200 million dollar loss "acceptable" and continue operating (under the same management) with plans for expansion.
Having lots of cash != Monopoly.
Microsoft does not have anything even closely resembling a monopoly in the console gaming market. They're a distant third in that market.
Their loss is considered an investment in a new industry, aimed to gain a presence in households at a cost of losing some $ per each console sold. The payoff is seen as a long-term investment once people decide to upgrade their once "uber-cheap" X-box console platform... "Hmm, do I buy a new next-generation console that is incompatible with my current one, or do I buy a next-generation one that is compatible with all of the games I've already invested in"? It's a risky investment, from MS's point of view, but it's a reasonable one, given the Billions of $ spent on computer games every year.
I stated: "Whips + Threat of Impending Pain = Greater Productivity."
How in the *heck* was my comment moderated as a *troll*? Sure, it was terse and sarcastic, but my point was completely on-target.
I will "read between the lines" of my comment for anyone who saw a pointless troll in my comment.
Productivity can very easily be increased by applying a threat of negative consequences for lack of productivity increases. "Work harder or I kill you" will usually acheive a productivity increase. Productivity gains by negative consequence threats are hardly news, yet the story linked above makes this sound like it *is* news.
I have survived many layoff cycles, and have had the work of up to 5 "former" employees delegated to me. Did I do all of their work? Yup. At the cost of me working frantic 16 hour days for months on end, under the fear that if I didn't complete their work, I would be the next to be laid off. To report that my productivity increased while at the same time neglecting to list the true costs of my productivity increase (my personal life suffered so much that I quit, leaving all of my work to be done by several undertrained co-workers who soon quit after I did) is to tell only 1/2 the story, and makes a net loss situation sound like a net gain in terms of productivity.
Whips + Threat of Impending Pain = Greater Productivity.
No. We'd call Dolby a Special Interest Group, and call the money a "campaign contribution".
Same thing, different labels.
Outside of Marketing meetings, I can't see how anyone would actually *want* their devices to respond to commands imbedded into audio noise. OK, a "Talking Tina" doll that acts the part during the airing of a Twilight Zone would be funny the first time around, but that's about all I can imagine the end-user wanting the technology to do (silly little tricks with "intercative" robots). I don't think that ANY consumer would want their cells to ring with the "ad of the day" transmitted over the air muzak at their favorite retailer.
Wait, I just thought of a use... a prankster's dream come true. Imagine 40,000 cells all ringing at the same time during the playing of a *special* version of "Black in Black" during a major sports event. Or even playing a *special* CD in a boombox, laughing as everyone within listening range has their cell ring and deliver them a message that has been imbedded into the CD sound. Good luck tracing that obscene phone message.
The copy protection schemes are created to force consumers to *buy* legit copies of the CDs, as opposed to stealing the MP3 versions. So Mr. Honest Consumer with lots of discretionary income:
1) Goes to the store and buys a new copy of some Top-40 Fluff band of the minute.
2) Tries to play it in his new "Super Fancy 500 feature Play-Any-Format CD player", but it can't play the new CD because the CD thinks his player is a PC player.
3)Tries it in his similar car CD player, with similar results.
4) Says "screw this", D/Ls his favorite songs for free, burns them to CD, and lives happily ever after, perfectingly *WILLING* to pay for new CDs, but he can't, because they won't work with any of his "Advanced" stereo eqpt.
Hats off to the file sharing companies for coming up with this brilliant scheme to deprive record companies of their most secure source of income, the Honest Customer! Wait, they ARE the ones who came up with this copy protection scheme, aren't they? No? Hmmm.....
Item #12043: CellCam Background Stand
This background stand holds any of our 214 standard backgrounds, emulating scenes from a lonely hotel room to a custom poster-sized picture of your living room. Includes popular scrips like:
"No honey, I'm really in the French hotel room, that's just a strip show on TV that you hear"
and:
"I'm in my living room; why did you think I was in an hourly motel room?"
We present our newest featured title "Power Photography Techniques: Maximizing your AmIHotOrNot Rating"
You too can be popular!
Learn the secrets that the pros use to maximize their own ratings. Incledes 10 PowerTips and a bonus chapter entitled "Maximum Exposure".
Well, they at least passed the first question:
1) Can you use a computer well enough to share information?
Some may call the above post Flamebait, but it is true. Jeesh, I remember this same complaint being lodged against ATI back in 1992. Apparently, they are doing something right to still be alive today, despite this constant driver criticism.
I am not a hardware junkie, but I have been following recent "build your own home theater in a PC" sites, and the jury says: build your system around the limitations of your chosen graphics card. The ATI line of "do everything" cards offers unmatched versitility in the home theater PC market, yet you have to carefully match your requirements with your choice of hardware and software (and driver capabilities).
IOW, do your homework, build for today, and don't expect your ATI card to do anything wonderful outside of the scope of your current DIY project.
You don't need a checks-and-balances system if everyone in the field is always going to be a good boy at all times. What happened here is that someone wasn't, and the scientific process caught him at it.
Agreed. But what I don't grok is how he, or any hard-science researcher, can even think for a second that they will get away with BSing data to support bogus claims. Sure, they can get away with it in the short term, but eventually when nobody can reproduce the results, the data will be scrubbed to prove the results... bogus data = bogus results. Game over.
This is as shortsighted as creating an executable that apparently does something amazing, like predicting the last 20 years of winners in a tri-state lottery (the assumption being that if you can predict past winning lottery numbers, then you can predict future winning numbers as well). The author gets the "XYZ...Profit" treatment... until someone looks at the source code, which won't even compile, nor does it contain any code that could reasonably predict past lottery winning numbers, let alone future winning numbers. The obvious conclusion is that the executable contains the lottery historical data, and is therefore not predicting anything at all. How could that programmer not expect anyone to look at the source code, let alone a researcher not expect their unreproducable results not have the associated supporting data scrubbed?
*Boggles*