I dunno, having an advertisement drop down over the first few sentences of an article -- even if done only for a few seconds -- is enough to send me packing.
Slashdot does not fit my definition of a blog because it is maintained by a community of users. It isn't one person's list of interesting stuff. It's a juried presentation. And the fact that Slashdot received a meaningless award, is, uh, meaningless.
But that's beside the point. I said nothing about a single blog replacing Slashdot. I read several blogs and get from them more content than Slashdot provides. The small independent blogs will always be a threat to the large sites that try to aggregate news from a group of users. If small blogs get big and turn into what they once despised, well, other small blogs will arrive to take up the slack.
I'll pay for Google because it does something useful that no one else has done. Slashdot is no longer unique. It's still struggling with that reality.
Blogs will replace sites like Slashdot when Slashdot goes to a subscription model. There are still plenty of individuals willing to provide information for free. There always will be.
I won't pay for Slashdot because I can find the same articles by browsing a handful of other sites. I would pay for a unique and useful service. I would pay for Google if need be because it is above and beyond better than the rest of its competitors.
I did not say anything about pop-up ads. And I do have a pop-up killer. The advertisements in question are Flash ads. I cannot disable Flash, short of uninstalling it (which I've often wanted to do).
I am a web designer. I use the browser that the bulk of my audience uses - IE on Windows. Different browsers render pages differently. I need to know exactly how my pages render for the majority of my audience - so I use IE on Windows whether I like it or not.
Slashdot could auction the right to accept, decline and post topics on Slashdot for one day. Fark.com has done it a couple times with relative success. The auction winner obviously gets to promote himself with an article posting on that day. How much would that be worth on Slashdot? Fark got a few hundred dollars. I imaging slashdot is worth quite a bit more for the right business.
A blog, or web log, is a site (usually) run by an individual that lists links to other web sites. The blog is usually updated on a daily basis. The links are often to news articles and are selected because the blog owner finds them interesting. There are thousands of blogs today. The trick is finding a blog owner who has the same interests that you do.
A blog will have a brief description of each link, and often include commentary from the blog owner.
The big deal, for me, is that big ads detract too much from the page content. When ads get to the point where I cannot ignore them, I abandon the web site harboring the ads.
So far I've stopped reading Wired.com and the NYT because of incredibly intrusive advertising. I got tired of Wired's ads dropping down over the article text. The NYT sent me packing with a single offensive ad - it filled the screen with a fake story rotated counter-clockwise 90 degrees for 5 seconds before disappearing.
Plus, if a site's design is poor and my window width is set to around 600 pixels, those "big ads" often overlap body text - making articles impossible to read. Bottom line is that I am predisposed toward hating Slashdot once these ads appear.
When the annoyance level gets too much, I will abandon slashdot rather than give it money to stop annoying me. Asking, or even pleading, for support is one thing. Wanting people to pay you to stop being annoyed is another.
Exactly. For every piece of information being sold, there is someone in the world willing to give it to you for free. You just have to find that person.
About 3/4ths of the slashdot articles that interest me I have already seen on blogs 1-7 days earlier. Some of this is due to the review period of submitted links, and part of it is that sometimes a link is submitted multiple times before it is accepted. Regardless, if slashdot closed tomorrow, I would still get my nerd news from other sources. What's special about slashdot is that I can post comments and get modded down. If slashdot dies, blame it on the people who still want information to be free. We will always exist in small groups and keep the information flowing.
than figuring out ways to squeeze more and more money out of viewers
I've stopped giving money to the entertainment corporations. It's really not that hard. Few movies are truly interesting anymore (but there's a few indy film festivals in my area). The same with corporate music (but the local music scene has enough talent to keep my interest). Other than that, I watch a *little* television (mostly news or reruns from my youth), surf the web, and spend time with my family doing real things.
When the medic backlash hits whole hog (and believe me, it will some day), that's the time to buy stock in Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley.
Oh, don't tell me AOL/Time Warner owns those companies. Maybe they do, but you get my point.
In the United States, for individuals, copyright lasts the life of the author, plus 70 years. For corporations copyright lasts 95 years. As the Sony Bono Copyright Act illustrates, you can count on copyright being extended indefinitely for corporations. (Hey, when you run the country, you can have things your way.)
If monitoring was occurring, they would only need 7 days worth of data to have an information goldmine that is incredibly valuable today, and good for judging user behavior at least for the next year.
Running a show for 4 years with virtually no promotion (oh yeah, like anyone can remember the last Futurama commercial they saw!) and pre-empting it for sports events on a whim... well, it's amazing Futurama has such a faithful audience to begin with. Fox has put roadblock and roadblock in front of Futurama and I somehow still managed to catch it every Sunday (at least the Sundays when Fox actually aired it).
The Comedy Channel or SciFi Channel better pick this puppy up.
Hmm, we can harness the unrealized potential of millions of desktop PCs. Ummm, why would we - the users and owners of the computers - want to do that?
How does it benefit me as a user, aside from #1 increasing my energy bill by encouraging me to leave my PC on, #2 increasing wear and tear on my PC as my hard drive is accessed repeatedly, and #3 increasing my vulnerability to hackers? Oh, and #4 - sucking up the bandwidth of my ISP because of all of these always-on computers, thus trashing any hope of decent pings for my first-person shooters.
More than anything else, the user cares about the OS interface. How does it work?
The user doesn't give a damn about where a file is stored. He just wants to launch his programs quickly and locate his files fast. Why can't we do some thinking on this basic issue (and not have the end result be some bulky goofy 3-D environment)?
At a time when cities are striving for a 50 or 75 percent reduction in waste going to landfills it is downright disgusting to be engineering throw-away technology. We have enough AOL CDs occupying our landfills. We don't need DVDs there too, especially when the consumer doesn't even want limited-use tech.
I bet within 5 years there is a special "waste tax" on every unit manufacturered (sorta like tax on soda cans) because we know the items will end up in the landfill.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh, but if you moved to California you couldn't vote in this election. You had to register by February 19, 2002.
Find a big ol' picture of this guy at his web site.
I dunno, having an advertisement drop down over the first few sentences of an article -- even if done only for a few seconds -- is enough to send me packing.
Slashdot does not fit my definition of a blog because it is maintained by a community of users. It isn't one person's list of interesting stuff. It's a juried presentation. And the fact that Slashdot received a meaningless award, is, uh, meaningless.
But that's beside the point. I said nothing about a single blog replacing Slashdot. I read several blogs and get from them more content than Slashdot provides. The small independent blogs will always be a threat to the large sites that try to aggregate news from a group of users. If small blogs get big and turn into what they once despised, well, other small blogs will arrive to take up the slack.
I'll pay for Google because it does something useful that no one else has done. Slashdot is no longer unique. It's still struggling with that reality.
Blogs will replace sites like Slashdot when Slashdot goes to a subscription model. There are still plenty of individuals willing to provide information for free. There always will be.
I won't pay for Slashdot because I can find the same articles by browsing a handful of other sites. I would pay for a unique and useful service. I would pay for Google if need be because it is above and beyond better than the rest of its competitors.
I did not say anything about pop-up ads. And I do have a pop-up killer. The advertisements in question are Flash ads. I cannot disable Flash, short of uninstalling it (which I've often wanted to do).
I am a web designer. I use the browser that the bulk of my audience uses - IE on Windows. Different browsers render pages differently. I need to know exactly how my pages render for the majority of my audience - so I use IE on Windows whether I like it or not.
Slashdot could auction the right to accept, decline and post topics on Slashdot for one day. Fark.com has done it a couple times with relative success. The auction winner obviously gets to promote himself with an article posting on that day. How much would that be worth on Slashdot? Fark got a few hundred dollars. I imaging slashdot is worth quite a bit more for the right business.
A blog, or web log, is a site (usually) run by an individual that lists links to other web sites. The blog is usually updated on a daily basis. The links are often to news articles and are selected because the blog owner finds them interesting. There are thousands of blogs today. The trick is finding a blog owner who has the same interests that you do.
A blog will have a brief description of each link, and often include commentary from the blog owner.
Read this article, How weblogs influence a billion Google searches a week that I found on one of my favorite blogs, WebWord.com.
The big deal, for me, is that big ads detract too much from the page content. When ads get to the point where I cannot ignore them, I abandon the web site harboring the ads.
So far I've stopped reading Wired.com and the NYT because of incredibly intrusive advertising. I got tired of Wired's ads dropping down over the article text. The NYT sent me packing with a single offensive ad - it filled the screen with a fake story rotated counter-clockwise 90 degrees for 5 seconds before disappearing.
Plus, if a site's design is poor and my window width is set to around 600 pixels, those "big ads" often overlap body text - making articles impossible to read. Bottom line is that I am predisposed toward hating Slashdot once these ads appear.
When the annoyance level gets too much, I will abandon slashdot rather than give it money to stop annoying me. Asking, or even pleading, for support is one thing. Wanting people to pay you to stop being annoyed is another.
Exactly. For every piece of information being sold, there is someone in the world willing to give it to you for free. You just have to find that person.
About 3/4ths of the slashdot articles that interest me I have already seen on blogs 1-7 days earlier. Some of this is due to the review period of submitted links, and part of it is that sometimes a link is submitted multiple times before it is accepted. Regardless, if slashdot closed tomorrow, I would still get my nerd news from other sources. What's special about slashdot is that I can post comments and get modded down. If slashdot dies, blame it on the people who still want information to be free. We will always exist in small groups and keep the information flowing.
Welcome to the world of civil disobedience. Not just for activists anymore.
than figuring out ways to squeeze more and more money out of viewers
I've stopped giving money to the entertainment corporations. It's really not that hard. Few movies are truly interesting anymore (but there's a few indy film festivals in my area). The same with corporate music (but the local music scene has enough talent to keep my interest). Other than that, I watch a *little* television (mostly news or reruns from my youth), surf the web, and spend time with my family doing real things.
When the medic backlash hits whole hog (and believe me, it will some day), that's the time to buy stock in Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley.
Oh, don't tell me AOL/Time Warner owns those companies. Maybe they do, but you get my point.
That's like saying... "I like carrots, therefore I must like all vegetables."
Whatever school you went to, ask for a refund.
Uh, are you seriously asking that question or just trying to flame? All or nothing? Nice way to couch your arguments.
Uh, take Logic 101. That's a classic straw man argument. Flamebait material.
In the United States, for individuals, copyright lasts the life of the author, plus 70 years. For corporations copyright lasts 95 years. As the Sony Bono Copyright Act illustrates, you can count on copyright being extended indefinitely for corporations. (Hey, when you run the country, you can have things your way.)
I prefer to abide by the intent of the original framers of the constitution. Copyright should last only fourteen years.
IMHO, any game made before 1988 should be up for grabs.
The more important question is... now that Slashdot has served its purpose (the wedding proposal), will CmdrTaco let us stay?
Imagine starting a web site and building it up to be incredibly popular - taking almost 5 years - just to propose to your girlfriend. Now that's love.
If monitoring was occurring, they would only need 7 days worth of data to have an information goldmine that is incredibly valuable today, and good for judging user behavior at least for the next year.
Running a show for 4 years with virtually no promotion (oh yeah, like anyone can remember the last Futurama commercial they saw!) and pre-empting it for sports events on a whim... well, it's amazing Futurama has such a faithful audience to begin with. Fox has put roadblock and roadblock in front of Futurama and I somehow still managed to catch it every Sunday (at least the Sundays when Fox actually aired it).
The Comedy Channel or SciFi Channel better pick this puppy up.
Hmm, we can harness the unrealized potential of millions of desktop PCs. Ummm, why would we - the users and owners of the computers - want to do that?
How does it benefit me as a user, aside from #1 increasing my energy bill by encouraging me to leave my PC on, #2 increasing wear and tear on my PC as my hard drive is accessed repeatedly, and #3 increasing my vulnerability to hackers? Oh, and #4 - sucking up the bandwidth of my ISP because of all of these always-on computers, thus trashing any hope of decent pings for my first-person shooters.
Gee, where do I sign up?
That's fine, but what does it look like?
More than anything else, the user cares about the OS interface. How does it work?
The user doesn't give a damn about where a file is stored. He just wants to launch his programs quickly and locate his files fast. Why can't we do some thinking on this basic issue (and not have the end result be some bulky goofy 3-D environment)?
Like I care about a cooked Palm Pilot. Where's the photo of the pizza???
At a time when cities are striving for a 50 or 75 percent reduction in waste going to landfills it is downright disgusting to be engineering throw-away technology. We have enough AOL CDs occupying our landfills. We don't need DVDs there too, especially when the consumer doesn't even want limited-use tech.
I bet within 5 years there is a special "waste tax" on every unit manufacturered (sorta like tax on soda cans) because we know the items will end up in the landfill.
Funny, I am a journalist and I use the Archos. It is everything you say it isn't.