Spam has rendered my hotmail address absolutely useless. I've had that address for around 4.5 years, now. It was a nice address. It was easy to remember, because it was my name@hotmail.com. No numbers, no funky underscoring, banging, etc. It was simple, elegant, and nobody ever forgot it. (My name@biggest free e-mail provider.com).
Now, however, I receive about 20 spam a day to that address. I miss messages that I should be receiving. After going two months while travelling without internet access, I returned to discover nothing *but* spam in my inbox -- hotmail had automatically deleted the older messages on the assumption that I would want to keep the newer ones.
Now, my hotmail block-list is full, and I have about another 200 addresses I would like to add to it. I cannot use that account, because it is now fundamentally useless. And spammers don't cost me money?
Spammers cost money everytime they send an ad that a distracted person clicks on, and gets shipped off to a porn site. That red-flags the corporate internet policy manager or whoever, who has to then go TALK to that employee about their going to a porn site. Sure, they just show the spam and say "Oops". It costs both of those people at least half an hour, though, and at $100 an hour, that's an expensive piece of e-mail.
The bandwidth used is not inconsiderable, either, particularly for people who are using dial-up accounts in regions where they pay-by-minute.
Spam is hardly a victimless crime, it's just a stupid one, and it's all opportunity or possible cost, so it's hard to really say "oh, that cost us money". It definitely costs money. It cost me my fucking hotmail account, and discarded my lengthy correspondence with folk hero Donovan, for Chrissakes.
I live in Canada and travel quite a lot; I have had nothing but trouble with immigration and customs agents on my returns to Canada.
I have had them refuse to consider me a landed citizen and subsequently refuse to consider me an unlanded citizen in arrivals two weeks apart (different tariffs are paid).
I've been kept in line and repeatedly searched. I've had painfully long conversations about why my camera bag can't be put through the X-Ray machine. I had four rolls of infrared film ruined, despite my protestations, because the cannisters were opened and the film exposed to light (bad for I/R).
My roommate was strip searched on entry to Canada, without anything resembling reasonable grounds. Etc.
I used to MUSH. I played Star Wars MUSHes, as well as a few generic cyberpunk and feudal ones.
Some of these MUSHes had little bits coded so that players could post logs of role-playing. These coded objects tended to exist in OOC (out of character space). Some carried meta-data about the role-playing, and most were text-searchable, at the very minimum.
New players were encouraged to read over these "classic" role-playing sections, and in this way could understand how good role-playing worked (Wizards/Admins controlled content submission), and contextualize their own character at the same time.
This would be, oh, about 10 years ago. Maybe a bit more. Some of those scenes carried some quite incredibly well written dialogue. Characters evolved constantly, their relationships changed. Much moreso than the patients involved on the Therapist.
On this site reviewed by Katz, the only axis is the "therapist", with some occasional links between patients (but not many, no no). This drags it an order of complexity below the MUSHes and what-not that I was playing well in advance of big fancy terms like "colloborative thematic fiction-based website".
If this is the best you can come up with for new and neat ideas on the internet, Katz, I'm afraid you missed the boat by about a decade. The interface may not have been so pretty, but it was all there, already.
People who understood a bit about the subculture wrote articles, back then, about MUSHing as a method of interactive, continually evolving fiction.
That was back when it was a new and interesting idea.
Yes. Sophie's World. An excellent introduction to philosophy for those that are so inclined. Required reading for all of my cousins, nieces, etc., upon attaining the age of 14.
Very puzzle/riddle/mystery-based, and it holds the attention of teenagers quite well on account of that.
Campbell, while he was alive, did indeed point that out. It's in my preface of "The Hero With A Thousand Faces".
It was the entire basis of his mythological discourse. While some stories appeared to be absolutely removed from Western experience (such as Water-Jar Boy), Campbell found several methods of linking these to both Classical and Oriental myths.
Unfortunately, Campbell may have rationalised too far the meaning of myths. Several people have spoken out against him on the basis that, while he does show parallels and connections across distinct mythologies, he formed those on the basis of the Judao-Christian philosophy.
The argument distills down to the idea that if you're following Campbell's teachings, you're missing a whole lot about what any non-Western myth means. Water-Jar boy isn't necessarily about the boys reunion with his father, and that would be considered a minor portion of the story to the people who actually tell it.
You'll figure out how to do it, implement it, and punch yourself in the head for not realizing what the problem was.
Then, you'll want to do slightly more complex along the same lines, and you'll remember your old problem, and use that to help solve the new one.
The tasks you wish to accomplish will grow increasingly complex, and your ability to handle them will also grow increasingly skilled.
With all software, you eventually reach a point where you are trying to accomplish something sufficiently complex or esoteric that it will not work "out of the box". The solution for most users is to wait until it does -- particularly with bleeding edge(tm) technology. This can be something as minor as some conditional formatting in Excel.
With open-source software, you have the option of learning for yourself, and implementing a solution *or* waiting for it out-of-the-box.
Sorry that some OSS projects lag behind in "out-of-the-box" functionality. The whole point, though, is that you can change it yourself.
And perhaps your problem with YellowDog is related to a default install that *purposefully* disallows what you're doing without hacking about some. Perhaps you're doing something that could cause other problems. At least if you fix it yourself, you'll know.
It costs them; in your helicopter example, it cost the person doing the sneaking. Unless the parking garage was subsidising it, which isn't the impression that I received.
Let us say that people wish to have no ads displayed. I do not think it is unreasonable to suggest that this applies to the majority of Slashdot users.
Slashdot is, here, gambling that the majority of Slashdot users will:
1) Pay a site that consists of content that they and their peers create for the privilege of not having that site bombard them with ads.
2) Accept the advertisements, because it is unethical to do otherwise.
3) Accept the advertisements, because they are incapable of doing otherwise.
Considering the general disdain for banner advertisements in general, I think that their strategy has to be based on #3 and #1, both of which require some measure of stupidity or nobility (to be fair) on the part of the user.
I am an admittedly minor draw to Slashdot (I don't post much). Nonetheless, I do provide content. Now, I am required to pay Slashdot for the privilege of my providing content that will make more people read more stories, threby increasing advertising impressions, thereby increasing Slashdots profits.
This is an attempt to graft a revenue stream onto an aspect of a business that should not have one. Slashdot is one of the public faces of the Open Source movement, and this made it a valuable asset to Andover/VA. Some revenue could be generated with relatively unobtrusive banner ads. Now, Slashdot is being changed from an asset in terms of community interaction and into a revenue stream. It is being done in a pretty hackish manner.
If Slashdot couldn't pay their server bills, and they were not controlled by VA/Andover, would you expect this measure have come into place? I would have anticipated a donation box, and a plea on the front page. And I think that, hey, people would've donated to it. Enough to keep the servers up.
This could kill Slashdot. It didn't kill Salon, because Salon is a content creator. Slashdot is a content disseminator. This is what seems to have been missed -- I, and 2999 other people create the content, here.
And if the pages don't render readably through Junkbuster or Proxomitron with the ads removed, I'm going to be leaving. How many of those 2999 others are going to do the same?
Dunno. Maybe it'll just be me. It's still a.00001% (I don't post much! Lay off!) detraction from the networth of Slashdot.
I know I'm a prick and whatnot, but I do care about Slashdot a lot. I care about Sourceforge, too, and would willingly pay into it. I would have willingly paid into Slashdot, too, but these big ads will create a barrier-of-entry for new community members. Slashdot is setting itself up for a death in a few years, unless the people that buy now continue to do so for the remainder of their natural lives. If you, when you started visiting sites like Slashdot, had had the choice between one with no big ads, and one with massive ads flying at you and the possibility of paying for their obstruction, which would you have chosen?
See what I mean? People aren't going to choose Slashdot, anymore. It's not even just about the existing userbase, it's about the future userbase and the strength of the community in general.
This sucks, man. I don't care about burning Karma right now, but watching Slashdot die is a little bit painful to me. I cannot honestly understand how this site will continue to exist, because I can't make the business plan work out for longer than 5 year period -- unless that's just how long LNUX needs to hit profitability and start subsidising Slashdot. But, I can't even make that side of the plan work out.
This seems like someone is grabbing at the last straw. And piling it on is a-gonna break the Slashdot Camel's back.
You've just equalled "Those who profess to hate us the most" with "those who provide us with free content". Pause a moment, and wonder if those 3% are "those who actually care". Then, wonder if maybe their ranting against you would, in a kinder environment, have taken the form of suggestions for improvement. You can only suggest something so many times and be ignored / discarded before you start getting all jiggy with it.
You're running a site where 3% of your users provide content to the other 97%. You've just said that you doubt the 3% will ever pay. Do you think they're going to not pay, and continue to provide you with free content? Particularly taking into account the "venom posted in this discussion"?
Taco, you're running a magazine of sorts. 75% of your writers and researchers are screaming their heads off at you, and your response is that you doubt they'll pay you at all. You should probably be wondering who, exactly, is going to pay you at all if those 3% leave.
It's strange that of the 3% who make this site worth visitng, probably 20% of them are no longer allowed to moderate, and 75% of them are yelling at you right now, and you're so blase about the entire affair. Aren't you just a little bit worried? Particularly if your ads are large enough to screw page formatting and make everything ugly when filtered by proxomitron or junkbuster, those 3% might not be around for much longer.
I respect what you've done with this place (aside from $rtbl'ing me and a couple thousand others), and I know this decision is driven by your advertisers, and your corporate parent, but I can't believe that what I'm saying here passed under your radar. I assume these concerns were raised, addressed, and resolved -- so tell me, what was the resolution?
I'm worried Slashdot is going to die. Assure me that this is not the case, that these new measures are not going to cause all of your unpaid content providers to scatteron thewind.
Now that you're charging, if I donate can I expect to see a higher level of quality? Everybody has excused the typos, the factual errors, the double-postings, because, hey -- this place is free!
Now that this place ain't free, or ain't for some of us, will you be living up to a higher service level?
Oh, and if I sendja my money, will my $rtbl be removed? (Click Signature For Info)
So, those of us who read large numbers of stories, comment on them, refresh, re-read the thread, comment again, refresh, etc...
And by this I mean your content providers, since that is essentially what we are (others much more than myself), will be paying more for your service than the lurkers?
Why would the linux community need a spokesperson that we can point to? We already have hundreds. Thousands, even. They all have their niches, they can all be spokesmen for the bit of things that they handle. Other people can oppose their viewpoints.
ESR and RMS serve a purpose. They are fanatics -- that's because they're motivated by something more than a desire for a free, open-source, stable operating system that can compete in server and desktop markets. They have a belief in underlying principles of which Gnu/Linux is merely an effective example.
The great thing about the Linux community is that there is no authority beyond the self-defined ones such as kernel maintainers, auditors, etc. We do not need, have not needed, nor will ever need a "spokesman" who can sum Free Software, Open Source, Linux and GNU up. Such a spokesman would be a farce, because so many within the community would disagree with whatever simplification or bent they spouted.
What we need are better and clearer channels of communication, but that has been getting better for quite some time now, and doesn't seem likely to stop.
It's good that there are fanatics, and moderates, and all sorts of people in the community. They're all fighting the good fight, for different reasons, and good for them.
I dunno about you, but I don't release a version 1.0 until I test the completed product for deficiencies. So, we probably won't be hitting 1.0 for at least 20 years (post-puberty functions have to be checked into).
In other words, right around the same time Mozilla and OpenOffice hit it!
1) Decide what they are trying to sell. This can be skipped if nobody really knows what they're trying to sell.
2) Brainstorm around a theme. This can be skipped if somebody dug up some really cool clipart.
3) Have someone in the art department compile artwork, while you have somebody in the copy department compile text. Do not let these two people speak to each other, as that would be counter-productive.
4) Marry the text to the design. This should be done by a senior marketer with no knowledge of layout.
5) Pass off this "Pre-layout" to one of the people in the layout department. Don't tell them what you're trying to sell. Just let them get zen with text and graphics.
6) Ooh and ahh over how pretty this piece of work is. Fix minor typos.
7) Save to a resolution higher than any printer can aspire to print to for less than $10/page, and forward it on to the printer. This step takes about 3 days, because the file is very large and usually the first time 'round, the wrong file gets sent.
Web design, as taught by graphic design / marketing / multimedia people, tends to look quite similar to the above, except step 7 is "Publish to the Web".
Yep, it takes ages. I've worked on contracts where the web component (as in just interface stuff) had a longer turn-around time than the back-end component. So, my designing, testing, and deploying a database took longer than their marking up text and aligning graphics.
Which is amazing. And scary. You have to realize there is a world of difference between function and form, though. I don't have to be anal about function because I know what works and how to make things work. Form, being more nebulous, incites and encourages anal-retentiveness. Hence, the philosophy around photoshopping a site to see the layout (You make the most attractive Photoshop image you can, like an advertisement mock-up or storyboard), and then cramming that layout into HTML/CSS/Flash.
If browsers had just refused to render non-standard, we wouldn't be in this mess. Of course, we also wouldn't have quite so big of a world-wide-web, because vanity publishing would have required synactical precision.
Personally, I could've done without all the "And this is my dog, Skippy!" pages that started showing up around 1995, blink tags and all.
I expect it's the most acceptable compromise that could be found between the "EVERYTHING MUST BE IDENTICAL IN EVERY BROWSER, AND BANDWIDTH IS NOT AN OBSTACLE" and the "My primary browser is Lynx" camps.
Not that compromises should be necessary, but hey -- this is what happens when the marketing department co-opts, for some bizarre reason, a text markup / layout language.
icky icky.
If they had put HTML in the Computer Science degree program, instead of the graphic design, we'd be oh-so-much better.
My girlfriend did HTML in her graphics design courses, and it was a rule of thumb that you would:
1) Create what you wanted the site to look like using Photoshop.
2) Force every browser to display it just like that, through the use of CSS, Flash, power drills, hammers, etc.
I prefer not to, because people who are controlling about CSS to the degree that I witness now and again forbid me from altering their fonts to ones more readable by myself. 3pt flyspeck isn't my idea of fun.
CSS has its uses, but dictatorial control of my browser shouldn't be one of them. HTML should provide the basics, my browser should define the rest. That way, I get to decide how things like frames and text will render, and have them do so in a way that I enjoy.
Being locked into other peoples ideas of design methodology isn't very cool.
Oh Crap, none of that makes any sense unless you're familiar with the MPAA and RIAA cartels, their effect on the possibility of artists making it independent of the major labels, their circle jerk with major retailers, their control or influence over every step of production to consumer purchase.
I'm sorry. I should have mentioned the rise in sales of CDs during the Napster Period and the subsequent decline after its fall, too. I think Napster just helped people find what they liked, and people bought it. I have to run right now, busy busy busy, but there should be a post in my posting history that delineates why Napster wasn't bad for the music industry. Somewhere. Unless it's been archived.
The MPAA with this legislation is targetting the home user. I do not need a 2nd or 3rd generation copy of a rental -- only a 1st. Why would I need more than that? Pirate video shops that produce on a large scale utilise technology that allows them to produce numerous acceptable-quality copies of films. They are not the targets of this legislation, as there is law in place to deal with them already.
Labour costs such as you mentioned fall under inflation -- but the cost of a CD has risen much quicker than inflation. As cost-of-living increases, so must wages, yes, and the service offerings tied to wages, such as studio time, shipping, packaging. This is acceptable, but why are prices rising, rising, rising at a much higher rate than inflation, and have historically been doing so since the advent of the Compact Disc (in fact, since the advent of factory-pressed vinyls, though at least in that case it could be argued that the increasing quality of artwork and packaging had a lot to do with it).
They are not looking to protect a healthy margin, they are looking to maintain a margin that is the highest bearable by the market. While this may seem logical, it is not. When you enforce the highest possible margin on the consumer, the consumer eventually gets fed up, and prices fall as demand decreases. The MPAA is trying to legislate away the right of the market to decide what is and is not acceptable in terms of a bearable margin. This is sneaky, underhanded, and just plain wrong.
Let's say I cut your lawn for you in the summer. Year 1, I charge you $5 a day. Year 2, $6 a day, and so on and so on. Adjustment due to under-pricing initially caps out at $7 a day -- my margins are, at this price, secure, and need only be adjusted for inflation. And yet, I continue to raise them at 4 times the inflation rate! I do this until it hits $20 a day, at which point you tell me to fuck off.
I respond by treating your lawn with a chemical that renders your grass uncuttable, that can only be removed by Nifty Spray, a product which I and only I produce. I then make it illegal for you to purchase any sod not treated with that nefarious chemical, locking you into the maximum bearable market load, as opposed to the optimal load.
This was written in a hurry, so YMMV and I may have made a few bad points. Sorry.;)
Basically, the MPAA hit the maximum bearable load, and should suffer backlash from it, resulting in an optimal margin. But, they are trying to legislate themselves a nice, fat margin by removing the consumer backlash (piracy is a backlash -- it remains less convenient than purchasing a CD, but the price is right). If they adjusted prices downward, piracy would decrease. Amazingly, quite a lot of people view their time and convenience to be worth a lot and product packaging to boot, hence the success story of bottled water.
That same success story could apply to CDs. There might be a nastier one instead, though.
I can rent a movie from a local video store. I can then take it home, place it into my VCR, and record it to a second VCR.
The total cost to me is between $.99 and $3.99 Canadian Dollars, plus $1.99 for the blank cassette tape.
I could also record it to my computer, and eliminate the second cost.
Why do video stores exist? Shouldn't the MPAA be burning them down, or whatever it is that happens to offenders that enable piracy?
Oh, because they generate revenue. Slipped my mind. The MPAA sure are clever fellas, realizing that.
Except that they didn't realize that until after-the-fact. They had permitted rentals of BetaMax, and discovered that they could not legitimately restrict rentals on the basis of the VHS medium. They went with it because they had to, not because they wanted to.
And look at all the money!
The reason that the Internet is so scary to the MPAA and ol' Jack is because it's so big. They think, "My goodness, 400 million people can download our movie and watch it." What they fail to realize is that if they provided a service to download movies legitimately, with no worries about stripped frames or out-of-sync sound, then perhaps 40 million of those 400 million would pay a $5 service fee. Because, hey, $5 is worth saving me a half an hour of frustration. If I could pay $5 for a movie, and KNOW that it would play correctly, and have it certified to run on all hardware exceeding a specific spec, I'd pay it. My serenity in watching a movie is worth a fiver. Really, it is.
This has been said and said and said. Not everybody who downloads something off the internet ever would have purchased it. If I download a Britney Spears song because I'm having an argument over whether she's saying "My loneliness is killing me" or "Fuck me now, Tiger!" with my roommate, I'm not stealing their profit, because a stupid argument isn't worth buying a CD. Although it might be worth a micropayment, if that service existed. Of course it doesn't.
The MPAA and RIAA are both trying to take traditional bricks and mortar businesses online. But, unlike Amazon, they run into a big problem: on-line, for the media formats they're pushing, they run into competition from the illegitimate side of things (Books aren't often pirated). What they have to do is make their service offering more attractive than theft.
You'd think it wouldn't be hard to do that, except that their service offering is, and has been for about 40 years now, theft. They overcharge, they price in a predatory fashion, they artificially increase demand and artificially decrease supply. They constantly reduce production costs and yet constantly raise price tags.
Look at the computer industry: The first computer I bought and paid for with my own money was a 386 SX 20. It had a 20 meg hard drive. It cost me a fucking mint -- over $1000, and I was getting it at a discount.
Now, I can buy a 1 gigahertz computer for that price. Or, I could buy myself a K6 2/300 for $300. An increase in production efficiency coupled with a decrease in production costs resulted in a decrease of the price-to-consumer.
Well, duh.
But a CD? I bought a CD 10 years ago. It cost me $18.99 (Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense). I bought a CD yesterday, it cost me $24.99 (Kristin Hersch, Strange Angels). We all know that the price of pressable audio CDs has been decreasing, right? We all know that the methods of pressing tham have grown more efficient, right?
Q:So why did the price of my CD *increase* instead of *decreasing*?
A: Because the crooks in this equation are the RIAA.
Oh bleh. I buy CDs to support the artists I like. The more copies sold, the more important they are to the label. The more important they are, the more exposure they get. The more exposure they get, the more people listen to them. The more people listen to them, the more shows they play. The more shows they play, the better the odds that I'll get to see them -- except, of course, that the tickets will probably cost enough that I'll have to sell a kidney.
Slashdot Mirror
Spam has rendered my hotmail address absolutely useless. I've had that address for around 4.5 years, now. It was a nice address. It was easy to remember, because it was my name@hotmail.com. No numbers, no funky underscoring, banging, etc. It was simple, elegant, and nobody ever forgot it. (My name@biggest free e-mail provider.com).
Now, however, I receive about 20 spam a day to that address. I miss messages that I should be receiving. After going two months while travelling without internet access, I returned to discover nothing *but* spam in my inbox -- hotmail had automatically deleted the older messages on the assumption that I would want to keep the newer ones.
Now, my hotmail block-list is full, and I have about another 200 addresses I would like to add to it. I cannot use that account, because it is now fundamentally useless. And spammers don't cost me money?
Spammers cost money everytime they send an ad that a distracted person clicks on, and gets shipped off to a porn site. That red-flags the corporate internet policy manager or whoever, who has to then go TALK to that employee about their going to a porn site. Sure, they just show the spam and say "Oops". It costs both of those people at least half an hour, though, and at $100 an hour, that's an expensive piece of e-mail.
The bandwidth used is not inconsiderable, either, particularly for people who are using dial-up accounts in regions where they pay-by-minute.
Spam is hardly a victimless crime, it's just a stupid one, and it's all opportunity or possible cost, so it's hard to really say "oh, that cost us money". It definitely costs money. It cost me my fucking hotmail account, and discarded my lengthy correspondence with folk hero Donovan, for Chrissakes.
Bah.
l
You can catch the bus from North Sydney up to Halifax, and then it's only about a 10-15 minute walk to the train station, if you're vigorous.
Or a $6 cab ride.
Let's talk local geography, baby!
I live in Canada and travel quite a lot; I have had nothing but trouble with immigration and customs agents on my returns to Canada.
I have had them refuse to consider me a landed citizen and subsequently refuse to consider me an unlanded citizen in arrivals two weeks apart (different tariffs are paid).
I've been kept in line and repeatedly searched. I've had painfully long conversations about why my camera bag can't be put through the X-Ray machine. I had four rolls of infrared film ruined, despite my protestations, because the cannisters were opened and the film exposed to light (bad for I/R).
My roommate was strip searched on entry to Canada, without anything resembling reasonable grounds. Etc.
l
I used to MUSH. I played Star Wars MUSHes, as well as a few generic cyberpunk and feudal ones.
Some of these MUSHes had little bits coded so that players could post logs of role-playing. These coded objects tended to exist in OOC (out of character space). Some carried meta-data about the role-playing, and most were text-searchable, at the very minimum.
New players were encouraged to read over these "classic" role-playing sections, and in this way could understand how good role-playing worked (Wizards/Admins controlled content submission), and contextualize their own character at the same time.
This would be, oh, about 10 years ago. Maybe a bit more. Some of those scenes carried some quite incredibly well written dialogue. Characters evolved constantly, their relationships changed. Much moreso than the patients involved on the Therapist.
On this site reviewed by Katz, the only axis is the "therapist", with some occasional links between patients (but not many, no no). This drags it an order of complexity below the MUSHes and what-not that I was playing well in advance of big fancy terms like "colloborative thematic fiction-based website".
If this is the best you can come up with for new and neat ideas on the internet, Katz, I'm afraid you missed the boat by about a decade. The interface may not have been so pretty, but it was all there, already.
People who understood a bit about the subculture wrote articles, back then, about MUSHing as a method of interactive, continually evolving fiction.
That was back when it was a new and interesting idea.
-leem
Yes. Sophie's World. An excellent introduction to philosophy for those that are so inclined. Required reading for all of my cousins, nieces, etc., upon attaining the age of 14.
Very puzzle/riddle/mystery-based, and it holds the attention of teenagers quite well on account of that.
l
Campbell, while he was alive, did indeed point that out. It's in my preface of "The Hero With A Thousand Faces".
It was the entire basis of his mythological discourse. While some stories appeared to be absolutely removed from Western experience (such as Water-Jar Boy), Campbell found several methods of linking these to both Classical and Oriental myths.
Unfortunately, Campbell may have rationalised too far the meaning of myths. Several people have spoken out against him on the basis that, while he does show parallels and connections across distinct mythologies, he formed those on the basis of the Judao-Christian philosophy.
The argument distills down to the idea that if you're following Campbell's teachings, you're missing a whole lot about what any non-Western myth means. Water-Jar boy isn't necessarily about the boys reunion with his father, and that would be considered a minor portion of the story to the people who actually tell it.
leem
Defense: Your honor, our client committed no crime.
DOJ: Yes, he did. He committed lots. Look, we have evidence.
Defense: Your honor, our client has committed crimes and is sorry.
Judge: Oh, well, in that case.
DOJ: Your honor! We demand a punishment!
Defense: A punishment? Are you some sort of barbarian, with your "punishing"?
DOJ: Your client will be punished!
Defense: Will not!
DOJ: Will too!
Defense: Will not!
[...3 hours later]
DOJ: Will not! I mean! Wait, that was no fair I...
Defense: Ha! Sucka!
Judge: Case dismissed!
-l
You'll figure out how to do it, implement it, and punch yourself in the head for not realizing what the problem was.
Then, you'll want to do slightly more complex along the same lines, and you'll remember your old problem, and use that to help solve the new one.
The tasks you wish to accomplish will grow increasingly complex, and your ability to handle them will also grow increasingly skilled.
With all software, you eventually reach a point where you are trying to accomplish something sufficiently complex or esoteric that it will not work "out of the box". The solution for most users is to wait until it does -- particularly with bleeding edge(tm) technology. This can be something as minor as some conditional formatting in Excel.
With open-source software, you have the option of learning for yourself, and implementing a solution *or* waiting for it out-of-the-box.
Sorry that some OSS projects lag behind in "out-of-the-box" functionality. The whole point, though, is that you can change it yourself.
And perhaps your problem with YellowDog is related to a default install that *purposefully* disallows what you're doing without hacking about some. Perhaps you're doing something that could cause other problems. At least if you fix it yourself, you'll know.
-l
It costs them; in your helicopter example, it cost the person doing the sneaking. Unless the parking garage was subsidising it, which isn't the impression that I received.
.00001% (I don't post much! Lay off!) detraction from the networth of Slashdot.
Let us say that people wish to have no ads displayed. I do not think it is unreasonable to suggest that this applies to the majority of Slashdot users.
Slashdot is, here, gambling that the majority of Slashdot users will:
1) Pay a site that consists of content that they and their peers create for the privilege of not having that site bombard them with ads.
2) Accept the advertisements, because it is unethical to do otherwise.
3) Accept the advertisements, because they are incapable of doing otherwise.
Considering the general disdain for banner advertisements in general, I think that their strategy has to be based on #3 and #1, both of which require some measure of stupidity or nobility (to be fair) on the part of the user.
I am an admittedly minor draw to Slashdot (I don't post much). Nonetheless, I do provide content. Now, I am required to pay Slashdot for the privilege of my providing content that will make more people read more stories, threby increasing advertising impressions, thereby increasing Slashdots profits.
This is an attempt to graft a revenue stream onto an aspect of a business that should not have one. Slashdot is one of the public faces of the Open Source movement, and this made it a valuable asset to Andover/VA. Some revenue could be generated with relatively unobtrusive banner ads. Now, Slashdot is being changed from an asset in terms of community interaction and into a revenue stream. It is being done in a pretty hackish manner.
If Slashdot couldn't pay their server bills, and they were not controlled by VA/Andover, would you expect this measure have come into place? I would have anticipated a donation box, and a plea on the front page. And I think that, hey, people would've donated to it. Enough to keep the servers up.
This could kill Slashdot. It didn't kill Salon, because Salon is a content creator. Slashdot is a content disseminator. This is what seems to have been missed -- I, and 2999 other people create the content, here.
And if the pages don't render readably through Junkbuster or Proxomitron with the ads removed, I'm going to be leaving. How many of those 2999 others are going to do the same?
Dunno. Maybe it'll just be me. It's still a
I know I'm a prick and whatnot, but I do care about Slashdot a lot. I care about Sourceforge, too, and would willingly pay into it. I would have willingly paid into Slashdot, too, but these big ads will create a barrier-of-entry for new community members. Slashdot is setting itself up for a death in a few years, unless the people that buy now continue to do so for the remainder of their natural lives. If you, when you started visiting sites like Slashdot, had had the choice between one with no big ads, and one with massive ads flying at you and the possibility of paying for their obstruction, which would you have chosen?
See what I mean? People aren't going to choose Slashdot, anymore. It's not even just about the existing userbase, it's about the future userbase and the strength of the community in general.
This sucks, man. I don't care about burning Karma right now, but watching Slashdot die is a little bit painful to me. I cannot honestly understand how this site will continue to exist, because I can't make the business plan work out for longer than 5 year period -- unless that's just how long LNUX needs to hit profitability and start subsidising Slashdot. But, I can't even make that side of the plan work out.
This seems like someone is grabbing at the last straw. And piling it on is a-gonna break the Slashdot Camel's back.
Too bad.
leem
You've just equalled "Those who profess to hate us the most" with "those who provide us with free content". Pause a moment, and wonder if those 3% are "those who actually care". Then, wonder if maybe their ranting against you would, in a kinder environment, have taken the form of suggestions for improvement. You can only suggest something so many times and be ignored / discarded before you start getting all jiggy with it.
You're running a site where 3% of your users provide content to the other 97%. You've just said that you doubt the 3% will ever pay. Do you think they're going to not pay, and continue to provide you with free content? Particularly taking into account the "venom posted in this discussion"?
Taco, you're running a magazine of sorts. 75% of your writers and researchers are screaming their heads off at you, and your response is that you doubt they'll pay you at all. You should probably be wondering who, exactly, is going to pay you at all if those 3% leave.
It's strange that of the 3% who make this site worth visitng, probably 20% of them are no longer allowed to moderate, and 75% of them are yelling at you right now, and you're so blase about the entire affair. Aren't you just a little bit worried? Particularly if your ads are large enough to screw page formatting and make everything ugly when filtered by proxomitron or junkbuster, those 3% might not be around for much longer.
I respect what you've done with this place (aside from $rtbl'ing me and a couple thousand others), and I know this decision is driven by your advertisers, and your corporate parent, but I can't believe that what I'm saying here passed under your radar. I assume these concerns were raised, addressed, and resolved -- so tell me, what was the resolution?
I'm worried Slashdot is going to die. Assure me that this is not the case, that these new measures are not going to cause all of your unpaid content providers to scatter on the wind.
-l
I would pay $5 to post my trolls visibly (+2 bonus?) much sooner than I would pay $5 to filter out ads that...er... I'm already filtering out.
leem
Build another strawman. Filtering ads costs nothing, and takes about 2 minutes to do.
Please compare apples to apples, your oranges aren't welcome here.
Now that you're charging, if I donate can I expect to see a higher level of quality? Everybody has excused the typos, the factual errors, the double-postings, because, hey -- this place is free!
Now that this place ain't free, or ain't for some of us, will you be living up to a higher service level?
Oh, and if I sendja my money, will my $rtbl be removed? (Click Signature For Info)
leem
Basing a business plan around the stupidity of your audience, after all, never fails.
So, those of us who read large numbers of stories, comment on them, refresh, re-read the thread, comment again, refresh, etc...
And by this I mean your content providers, since that is essentially what we are (others much more than myself), will be paying more for your service than the lurkers?
Hm. Flaw spotted.
-l
124, actually. :P I just have a distorted sense of time.
leem
Why would the linux community need a spokesperson that we can point to? We already have hundreds. Thousands, even. They all have their niches, they can all be spokesmen for the bit of things that they handle. Other people can oppose their viewpoints.
ESR and RMS serve a purpose. They are fanatics -- that's because they're motivated by something more than a desire for a free, open-source, stable operating system that can compete in server and desktop markets. They have a belief in underlying principles of which Gnu/Linux is merely an effective example.
The great thing about the Linux community is that there is no authority beyond the self-defined ones such as kernel maintainers, auditors, etc. We do not need, have not needed, nor will ever need a "spokesman" who can sum Free Software, Open Source, Linux and GNU up. Such a spokesman would be a farce, because so many within the community would disagree with whatever simplification or bent they spouted.
What we need are better and clearer channels of communication, but that has been getting better for quite some time now, and doesn't seem likely to stop.
It's good that there are fanatics, and moderates, and all sorts of people in the community. They're all fighting the good fight, for different reasons, and good for them.
l
I dunno about you, but I don't release a version 1.0 until I test the completed product for deficiencies. So, we probably won't be hitting 1.0 for at least 20 years (post-puberty functions have to be checked into).
In other words, right around the same time Mozilla and OpenOffice hit it!
Here is how someone designs a successful ad:
1) Decide what they are trying to sell. This can be skipped if nobody really knows what they're trying to sell.
2) Brainstorm around a theme. This can be skipped if somebody dug up some really cool clipart.
3) Have someone in the art department compile artwork, while you have somebody in the copy department compile text. Do not let these two people speak to each other, as that would be counter-productive.
4) Marry the text to the design. This should be done by a senior marketer with no knowledge of layout.
5) Pass off this "Pre-layout" to one of the people in the layout department. Don't tell them what you're trying to sell. Just let them get zen with text and graphics.
6) Ooh and ahh over how pretty this piece of work is. Fix minor typos.
7) Save to a resolution higher than any printer can aspire to print to for less than $10/page, and forward it on to the printer. This step takes about 3 days, because the file is very large and usually the first time 'round, the wrong file gets sent.
Web design, as taught by graphic design / marketing / multimedia people, tends to look quite similar to the above, except step 7 is "Publish to the Web".
Yep, it takes ages. I've worked on contracts where the web component (as in just interface stuff) had a longer turn-around time than the back-end component. So, my designing, testing, and deploying a database took longer than their marking up text and aligning graphics.
Which is amazing. And scary. You have to realize there is a world of difference between function and form, though. I don't have to be anal about function because I know what works and how to make things work. Form, being more nebulous, incites and encourages anal-retentiveness. Hence, the philosophy around photoshopping a site to see the layout (You make the most attractive Photoshop image you can, like an advertisement mock-up or storyboard), and then cramming that layout into HTML/CSS/Flash.
If browsers had just refused to render non-standard, we wouldn't be in this mess. Of course, we also wouldn't have quite so big of a world-wide-web, because vanity publishing would have required synactical precision.
Personally, I could've done without all the "And this is my dog, Skippy!" pages that started showing up around 1995, blink tags and all.
-l
I expect it's the most acceptable compromise that could be found between the "EVERYTHING MUST BE IDENTICAL IN EVERY BROWSER, AND BANDWIDTH IS NOT AN OBSTACLE" and the "My primary browser is Lynx" camps.
Not that compromises should be necessary, but hey -- this is what happens when the marketing department co-opts, for some bizarre reason, a text markup / layout language.
icky icky.
If they had put HTML in the Computer Science degree program, instead of the graphic design, we'd be oh-so-much better.
My girlfriend did HTML in her graphics design courses, and it was a rule of thumb that you would:
1) Create what you wanted the site to look like using Photoshop.
2) Force every browser to display it just like that, through the use of CSS, Flash, power drills, hammers, etc.
Ick.
-l
I prefer not to, because people who are controlling about CSS to the degree that I witness now and again forbid me from altering their fonts to ones more readable by myself. 3pt flyspeck isn't my idea of fun.
CSS has its uses, but dictatorial control of my browser shouldn't be one of them. HTML should provide the basics, my browser should define the rest. That way, I get to decide how things like frames and text will render, and have them do so in a way that I enjoy.
Being locked into other peoples ideas of design methodology isn't very cool.
l
1) Do not attempt to control every aspect of the display of the site in the browser of your visitors. This is not the purpose of HTML.
2) Create a site that is standards compliant. Please note that doing this requires adherence to 1.
3) Hypertext is an excellent manner of displaying and linking information. Keep that in mind. Information.
4) Proprietary inclusions such as Flash should be segregated from the main of your site, and identifiable as what they are.
5) There's not much that Javascript does that you really need. Honest.
6) Newspapers use narrow columns for a reason.
7) Sarif fonts are easier to read in column-form than sansarif fonts.
l
Oh Crap, none of that makes any sense unless you're familiar with the MPAA and RIAA cartels, their effect on the possibility of artists making it independent of the major labels, their circle jerk with major retailers, their control or influence over every step of production to consumer purchase.
I'm sorry. I should have mentioned the rise in sales of CDs during the Napster Period and the subsequent decline after its fall, too. I think Napster just helped people find what they liked, and people bought it. I have to run right now, busy busy busy, but there should be a post in my posting history that delineates why Napster wasn't bad for the music industry. Somewhere. Unless it's been archived.
Only have a minute, but:
;)
The MPAA with this legislation is targetting the home user. I do not need a 2nd or 3rd generation copy of a rental -- only a 1st. Why would I need more than that? Pirate video shops that produce on a large scale utilise technology that allows them to produce numerous acceptable-quality copies of films. They are not the targets of this legislation, as there is law in place to deal with them already.
Labour costs such as you mentioned fall under inflation -- but the cost of a CD has risen much quicker than inflation. As cost-of-living increases, so must wages, yes, and the service offerings tied to wages, such as studio time, shipping, packaging. This is acceptable, but why are prices rising, rising, rising at a much higher rate than inflation, and have historically been doing so since the advent of the Compact Disc (in fact, since the advent of factory-pressed vinyls, though at least in that case it could be argued that the increasing quality of artwork and packaging had a lot to do with it).
They are not looking to protect a healthy margin, they are looking to maintain a margin that is the highest bearable by the market. While this may seem logical, it is not. When you enforce the highest possible margin on the consumer, the consumer eventually gets fed up, and prices fall as demand decreases. The MPAA is trying to legislate away the right of the market to decide what is and is not acceptable in terms of a bearable margin. This is sneaky, underhanded, and just plain wrong.
Let's say I cut your lawn for you in the summer. Year 1, I charge you $5 a day. Year 2, $6 a day, and so on and so on. Adjustment due to under-pricing initially caps out at $7 a day -- my margins are, at this price, secure, and need only be adjusted for inflation. And yet, I continue to raise them at 4 times the inflation rate! I do this until it hits $20 a day, at which point you tell me to fuck off.
I respond by treating your lawn with a chemical that renders your grass uncuttable, that can only be removed by Nifty Spray, a product which I and only I produce. I then make it illegal for you to purchase any sod not treated with that nefarious chemical, locking you into the maximum bearable market load, as opposed to the optimal load.
This was written in a hurry, so YMMV and I may have made a few bad points. Sorry.
Basically, the MPAA hit the maximum bearable load, and should suffer backlash from it, resulting in an optimal margin. But, they are trying to legislate themselves a nice, fat margin by removing the consumer backlash (piracy is a backlash -- it remains less convenient than purchasing a CD, but the price is right). If they adjusted prices downward, piracy would decrease. Amazingly, quite a lot of people view their time and convenience to be worth a lot and product packaging to boot, hence the success story of bottled water.
That same success story could apply to CDs. There might be a nastier one instead, though.
I can rent a movie from a local video store. I can then take it home, place it into my VCR, and record it to a second VCR.
The total cost to me is between $.99 and $3.99 Canadian Dollars, plus $1.99 for the blank cassette tape.
I could also record it to my computer, and eliminate the second cost.
Why do video stores exist? Shouldn't the MPAA be burning them down, or whatever it is that happens to offenders that enable piracy?
Oh, because they generate revenue. Slipped my mind. The MPAA sure are clever fellas, realizing that.
Except that they didn't realize that until after-the-fact. They had permitted rentals of BetaMax, and discovered that they could not legitimately restrict rentals on the basis of the VHS medium. They went with it because they had to, not because they wanted to.
And look at all the money!
The reason that the Internet is so scary to the MPAA and ol' Jack is because it's so big. They think, "My goodness, 400 million people can download our movie and watch it." What they fail to realize is that if they provided a service to download movies legitimately, with no worries about stripped frames or out-of-sync sound, then perhaps 40 million of those 400 million would pay a $5 service fee. Because, hey, $5 is worth saving me a half an hour of frustration. If I could pay $5 for a movie, and KNOW that it would play correctly, and have it certified to run on all hardware exceeding a specific spec, I'd pay it. My serenity in watching a movie is worth a fiver. Really, it is.
This has been said and said and said. Not everybody who downloads something off the internet ever would have purchased it. If I download a Britney Spears song because I'm having an argument over whether she's saying "My loneliness is killing me" or "Fuck me now, Tiger!" with my roommate, I'm not stealing their profit, because a stupid argument isn't worth buying a CD. Although it might be worth a micropayment, if that service existed. Of course it doesn't.
The MPAA and RIAA are both trying to take traditional bricks and mortar businesses online. But, unlike Amazon, they run into a big problem: on-line, for the media formats they're pushing, they run into competition from the illegitimate side of things (Books aren't often pirated). What they have to do is make their service offering more attractive than theft.
You'd think it wouldn't be hard to do that, except that their service offering is, and has been for about 40 years now, theft. They overcharge, they price in a predatory fashion, they artificially increase demand and artificially decrease supply. They constantly reduce production costs and yet constantly raise price tags.
Look at the computer industry: The first computer I bought and paid for with my own money was a 386 SX 20. It had a 20 meg hard drive. It cost me a fucking mint -- over $1000, and I was getting it at a discount.
Now, I can buy a 1 gigahertz computer for that price. Or, I could buy myself a K6 2/300 for $300. An increase in production efficiency coupled with a decrease in production costs resulted in a decrease of the price-to-consumer.
Well, duh.
But a CD? I bought a CD 10 years ago. It cost me $18.99 (Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense). I bought a CD yesterday, it cost me $24.99 (Kristin Hersch, Strange Angels). We all know that the price of pressable audio CDs has been decreasing, right? We all know that the methods of pressing tham have grown more efficient, right?
Q:So why did the price of my CD *increase* instead of *decreasing*?
A: Because the crooks in this equation are the RIAA.
Oh bleh. I buy CDs to support the artists I like. The more copies sold, the more important they are to the label. The more important they are, the more exposure they get. The more exposure they get, the more people listen to them. The more people listen to them, the more shows they play. The more shows they play, the better the odds that I'll get to see them -- except, of course, that the tickets will probably cost enough that I'll have to sell a kidney.
Fuckers.
-l