You ignore the fact that they earned income on it in the meantime. Revenue in 2008 was $900 million (I don't know what the profit was). I believe that News Corp's investment in MySpace may have been quite profitable, even if they had only a stub left at the end.
I think if it were profitable, they'd be selling it for more than 6% of what they paid for it.
Did something happen at E3 to convince people of the wisdom of giving more of your aging game for free to get new income? Did WOW see that more people are excited about TF2 since it went free and realize maybe they could hook some new players if they followed suit?
Maybe XBOX live will give a little bit more functionality to the free "silver" membership? The two things I'm assuming most people use paid live for are netflix and multiplayer. Someone at MS should consider making the lesser-used one available to free memberships with some limits. You can watch one netflix movie a week or play 1 hour multiplayer? At the very least, make it work with paid hulu plus accounts.
Probably not though. According to wiki, xbox premium can work with twitter, but not the free one. I guess someone thought twitter on xbox would be a good thing to reserve for the gold members, so that to me says whoever is in charge of that is a moron.
My guess is they did this because of the rampant spamming problems they used to have
I'd guess that they would point to that as the reason, but the real reason is they don't want to give the milk away for free. It seems like you could pretty easily make sure the free players weren't spamming or gold farming. I'm not familiar with WOW, but it seems like you could do -something- that's between "Allow spamming" and "Block all chat."
How is not allowing them to use the auction house or guilds in any way related to spamming? Again, not familiar with WOW so maybe there is a reason, but it doesn't sound like there would be.
Yep...any bar that has this tech and uses it that I know of.....loses MY business, and I will pass the word around not to go to those either
I'm guessing this will be utilized mainly by the "clubs" that have lines of undesirables waiting outside for a chance to get in. To make two generalizations that I think most people will agree with:
1. The jersey-shore types who wait in line for an hour to get into the "hottest" club and pay a 300% markup for a tiny fruity drink are the type who would look at you like you were talking about space aliens if you started talking about privacy. They're the ones who will find this just OMGF AMAZING!!1! They're the type who will be using this service and who will be abused by this service.
2. Slashdotters and most of their friends who -do- see this as an idiotic thing aren't going to be going to bars that would even consider this. If they go to any bar aside from the fridge in their parents' basement anyway. We already weren't going to those bars, or if we were, it's because we were forced to by a significant other or sheer desperation out of not having a significant other, and this won't change that.
Now that minors can go behind their parents' backs and buy the games, parents' role in "taking responsibility for their kids" has become that much more difficult.
What the hell does that matter? Be more concerned about drugs or alchohol, both of which are easier to obtain (no videogame store in the US sell to minors without a parent there, even without the law) and both of which are worse for kids than violent games.
If your kid is getting ahold of a violent game and playing it, you've failed. And it is a minor failure, but that's no one's business but you and your kids. Hands off the law book.
Back in MY day, we only had myspace. Instead of yer "farmville" we had REAL farms (in civ) and instead of "poke wars" we had "annoying music blaring anytime you load someone's profile."
Instead of friend requests, we had annoying garage bands from New Jersey constantly urging us to check out their new hip hop album.
And we liked it! We loved it! You had exactly 10 friends that mattered and everyone else knew you didn't like them, and you got on with your life rather than wasting time posting cute animal pictures from the huffington post!
Bob the Super Hamste's great great grandfather once said to the Wright Brothers: "It's not that impressive. It's just a motorized bike that doesn't need to be on the ground."
Indeed, though by that definition, I have never left the west. I was stunned to learn that Native Americans did not actually use all parts of the buffalo, that they actually ran whole herds off cliffs and left most of the carcasses there rotting.
Why I ever thought that an entire race of people could all fit the saintly/disney descriptions I got taught in grade school is beyond me.
Can't say I didn't get what I came for, but I do feel disappointed. Kind of like going to a Rick Astley concert, and you show up, and it's just a low-quality youtube video of "Never Gonna Let You Down" on repeat on a TV.
It's clear where the problem really lies -- in the idiots who insist that we should suddenly kowtow to the rights of dumb animals.
Animal rights activists are not the same thing as "treehuggers." It's kind of like confusing small government conservatives with gun rights activists. The two sets overlap quite a bit, but there are important distinctions.
I only point this out because I like trees but hate animal rights nuts. Don't lump us in with those idiots.
The point of a Chihuahua is that is just the right size to boil in a pot and make a single family meal without having to take the time and effort to butcher it and preserve the left over meat.
From Descartes on up, in the Western mindset, fish and other nonhuman animals don't have feelings, they don't have emotions, we can do whatever we want to them,' says Philip Gerrie, coauthor of the proposal.
Hey, uh, Mr. Gerrie... that is the western mindset, yes, but, uh... look where you are buddy.
Multiple choice: In terms of which hemisphere it is, what the mindset is there, where it is in the US, and which coast it is on, where is San Francisco?
A. North B. South C.East D. West
Is this guy so loony that to him "Western mindset" is an indictment of some thought in and of itself? "Oh that's how we think in the UNITED STATES, so obviously that's the dumbest possible mindset." Is that what's going on here? "If we considered them living beings, we would deal with them differently." Yeah, but we don't, so why are you acting like we do or should?
Re:Fuck that, I've created Upsilon!
on
Happy Tau Day
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· Score: 1
Ah, you went the other direction with that. I invented "Pie day." It has less to do with numbers or greek letters and more to do with pastry and delicious.
I taught myself to not use the mouse after my laptop came without a mouse. It was hard for about 10 minutes, but there's this space under the spacebar that seems to work pretty well.
It is a bit of PR or wishful thinking, yes, but if they were to annouce it as a "middle tier" or "We'll take whatever," then that would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the other hand, overhyping your new journal has very little downside.
Anonymity is an important part of the peer review process, else everybody would be too busy worrying about their reputations and careers to be honest.
Honesty is apparently a small part of those reputations then.
Different categories. You want to have a reputation as an honest researcher, you want people to know that the results you say you got are valid. A reputation for being honest as a reviewer on the other hand would have far less value to you individually.
Many research communities are small. You come across a paper by a researcher who did you a favor. Maybe they were even your adviser at some point. Maybe they're an occasional collaborator that you were thinking of working with again. The paper is garbage even though the lab is capable of doing great work. If they don't know who you are, you can call it garbage and reject it. You may feel guilty for stabbing them in the back, but you know it's not really stabbing them in the back, the system has to work like that, and you can continue to have a working relationship with them. You won't have to risk their being offended, you won't have to risk being unable to collaborate with them again. You'll be sure your papers won't be rejected by them out of spite. Science continues.
Without anonymity, there -won't- be honesty from reviewers, and that's just the way it is. Look down your nose at the whole industry with your little bit of fortune-cookie wisdom there if you want, but that's how it has to work.
The last article talks about how difficult it is to get back reviewer's comments demanding additional work, and says that is a problem.
The thing is, I don't see "Nature" or other top-tier journals hurting for lack of submissions. If reviewers are being unreasonably critical, then why are people still submitting there? It's because they're willing to work hard to get a nature paper on their CV. Blaming top-tier journals for being choosy when researchers are willing to to go through it at any cost is a bit backwards.
In my opinion, the better approach would be for researchers to put less emphasis on top-tier publications. It's a piss-poor way of judging how good a researcher is. That has more to do with politics, funding, the number of people willing to work on your project, and ultimately luck than it does with hard work or good results. If you're working in a lab by yourself, doing the whole project by yourself, and publish valid results in a 3rd tier journal, that's a more impressive individual than if you had an army of people doing all the hard work, get stunning results, and publish in a first tier journal. I think that author dilution is under estimated.
It is of course simpler to say "Oh, that's a good journal, he must be a good scientist" than it is to judge that researcher's research as a whole, which is the only reason people do it.
And most of the folks on/. are people who are competent. Competent and or self-reliant people do not feel the need for government to protect them from themselves or imaginary threats.
Imaginary threats, yes, but competence and self-reliance alone won't get you to realize that foreign terrorism is an imaginary threat. Most competent people I know don't care too much about it, it's an inconvenience when they want to fly somewhere, and if they're not busy thinking of other things, they might realize the line they're in to go through security is more vulnerable and has more bodies in it than the plane would. Even many of the incompetents I know laugh about fingernail clippers being banned. Still, that doesn't automatically translate into a realization that "TSA is just wasting time and taxes."
And if you don't get to the realization that it's an imaginary threat, there's nothing illogical about wanting the government to deal with it.
Umm, but that's all done on purpose. And the reason we're anti-illegal-immigrant is that illegal immigrants subvert that purpose. Is it that complicated??
The purpose being to keep out ALL immigrants: my point was that the laws are anti-immigrant, not just anti-illegal immigrant. It was that simple. You might not like the illegals, but you're trying to keep the number of legals to damn near zero, the laws are against immigrants in general.
Slashdot Mirror
The only long term solution is to infect the infected with something that low level formats their HDD.
That's not true, there are plenty of long term solutions. We got -plenty- of nukes.
You ignore the fact that they earned income on it in the meantime. Revenue in 2008 was $900 million (I don't know what the profit was). I believe that News Corp's investment in MySpace may have been quite profitable, even if they had only a stub left at the end.
I think if it were profitable, they'd be selling it for more than 6% of what they paid for it.
Did something happen at E3 to convince people of the wisdom of giving more of your aging game for free to get new income? Did WOW see that more people are excited about TF2 since it went free and realize maybe they could hook some new players if they followed suit?
Maybe XBOX live will give a little bit more functionality to the free "silver" membership? The two things I'm assuming most people use paid live for are netflix and multiplayer. Someone at MS should consider making the lesser-used one available to free memberships with some limits. You can watch one netflix movie a week or play 1 hour multiplayer? At the very least, make it work with paid hulu plus accounts.
Probably not though. According to wiki, xbox premium can work with twitter, but not the free one. I guess someone thought twitter on xbox would be a good thing to reserve for the gold members, so that to me says whoever is in charge of that is a moron.
My guess is they did this because of the rampant spamming problems they used to have
I'd guess that they would point to that as the reason, but the real reason is they don't want to give the milk away for free. It seems like you could pretty easily make sure the free players weren't spamming or gold farming. I'm not familiar with WOW, but it seems like you could do -something- that's between "Allow spamming" and "Block all chat."
How is not allowing them to use the auction house or guilds in any way related to spamming? Again, not familiar with WOW so maybe there is a reason, but it doesn't sound like there would be.
News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005, sold it for $35 million. 6% eh? Always nice when nice things happen to nice people.
Yep...any bar that has this tech and uses it that I know of.....loses MY business, and I will pass the word around not to go to those either
I'm guessing this will be utilized mainly by the "clubs" that have lines of undesirables waiting outside for a chance to get in. To make two generalizations that I think most people will agree with:
1. The jersey-shore types who wait in line for an hour to get into the "hottest" club and pay a 300% markup for a tiny fruity drink are the type who would look at you like you were talking about space aliens if you started talking about privacy. They're the ones who will find this just OMGF AMAZING!!1! They're the type who will be using this service and who will be abused by this service.
2. Slashdotters and most of their friends who -do- see this as an idiotic thing aren't going to be going to bars that would even consider this. If they go to any bar aside from the fridge in their parents' basement anyway. We already weren't going to those bars, or if we were, it's because we were forced to by a significant other or sheer desperation out of not having a significant other, and this won't change that.
Now that minors can go behind their parents' backs and buy the games, parents' role in "taking responsibility for their kids" has become that much more difficult.
What the hell does that matter? Be more concerned about drugs or alchohol, both of which are easier to obtain (no videogame store in the US sell to minors without a parent there, even without the law) and both of which are worse for kids than violent games.
If your kid is getting ahold of a violent game and playing it, you've failed. And it is a minor failure, but that's no one's business but you and your kids. Hands off the law book.
Don't feel too old, that was half the joke, it's only been about 5 years since I switched.
It couldn't possibly be worse than Facebook.
Back in MY day, we only had myspace. Instead of yer "farmville" we had REAL farms (in civ) and instead of "poke wars" we had "annoying music blaring anytime you load someone's profile."
Instead of friend requests, we had annoying garage bands from New Jersey constantly urging us to check out their new hip hop album.
And we liked it! We loved it! You had exactly 10 friends that mattered and everyone else knew you didn't like them, and you got on with your life rather than wasting time posting cute animal pictures from the huffington post!
Bob the Super Hamste's great great grandfather once said to the Wright Brothers: "It's not that impressive. It's just a motorized bike that doesn't need to be on the ground."
You're a pretty bright fellow to come up with that pun. Really bring a light to these dark interwebs.
Indeed, though by that definition, I have never left the west. I was stunned to learn that Native Americans did not actually use all parts of the buffalo, that they actually ran whole herds off cliffs and left most of the carcasses there rotting.
Why I ever thought that an entire race of people could all fit the saintly/disney descriptions I got taught in grade school is beyond me.
Can't say I didn't get what I came for, but I do feel disappointed. Kind of like going to a Rick Astley concert, and you show up, and it's just a low-quality youtube video of "Never Gonna Let You Down" on repeat on a TV.
It's clear where the problem really lies -- in the idiots who insist that we should suddenly kowtow to the rights of dumb animals.
Animal rights activists are not the same thing as "treehuggers." It's kind of like confusing small government conservatives with gun rights activists. The two sets overlap quite a bit, but there are important distinctions.
I only point this out because I like trees but hate animal rights nuts. Don't lump us in with those idiots.
The point of a Chihuahua is that is just the right size to boil in a pot and make a single family meal without having to take the time and effort to butcher it and preserve the left over meat.
Would have made a much better Beverly Hills Chihuahua if you ask me...
Because you don't hear about feral fish attacks when a child wanders down the wrong alley.
...with the possible exception of Venice.
From Descartes on up, in the Western mindset, fish and other nonhuman animals don't have feelings, they don't have emotions, we can do whatever we want to them,' says Philip Gerrie, coauthor of the proposal.
Hey, uh, Mr. Gerrie... that is the western mindset, yes, but, uh... look where you are buddy.
Multiple choice: In terms of which hemisphere it is, what the mindset is there, where it is in the US, and which coast it is on, where is San Francisco?
A. North B. South C.East D. West
Is this guy so loony that to him "Western mindset" is an indictment of some thought in and of itself? "Oh that's how we think in the UNITED STATES, so obviously that's the dumbest possible mindset." Is that what's going on here? "If we considered them living beings, we would deal with them differently." Yeah, but we don't, so why are you acting like we do or should?
Ah, you went the other direction with that. I invented "Pie day." It has less to do with numbers or greek letters and more to do with pastry and delicious.
I taught myself to not use the mouse after my laptop came without a mouse. It was hard for about 10 minutes, but there's this space under the spacebar that seems to work pretty well.
It is a bit of PR or wishful thinking, yes, but if they were to annouce it as a "middle tier" or "We'll take whatever," then that would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the other hand, overhyping your new journal has very little downside.
Anonymity is an important part of the peer review process, else everybody would be too busy worrying about their reputations and careers to be honest.
Honesty is apparently a small part of those reputations then.
Different categories. You want to have a reputation as an honest researcher, you want people to know that the results you say you got are valid. A reputation for being honest as a reviewer on the other hand would have far less value to you individually.
Many research communities are small. You come across a paper by a researcher who did you a favor. Maybe they were even your adviser at some point. Maybe they're an occasional collaborator that you were thinking of working with again. The paper is garbage even though the lab is capable of doing great work. If they don't know who you are, you can call it garbage and reject it. You may feel guilty for stabbing them in the back, but you know it's not really stabbing them in the back, the system has to work like that, and you can continue to have a working relationship with them. You won't have to risk their being offended, you won't have to risk being unable to collaborate with them again. You'll be sure your papers won't be rejected by them out of spite. Science continues.
Without anonymity, there -won't- be honesty from reviewers, and that's just the way it is. Look down your nose at the whole industry with your little bit of fortune-cookie wisdom there if you want, but that's how it has to work.
The last article talks about how difficult it is to get back reviewer's comments demanding additional work, and says that is a problem.
The thing is, I don't see "Nature" or other top-tier journals hurting for lack of submissions. If reviewers are being unreasonably critical, then why are people still submitting there? It's because they're willing to work hard to get a nature paper on their CV. Blaming top-tier journals for being choosy when researchers are willing to to go through it at any cost is a bit backwards.
In my opinion, the better approach would be for researchers to put less emphasis on top-tier publications. It's a piss-poor way of judging how good a researcher is. That has more to do with politics, funding, the number of people willing to work on your project, and ultimately luck than it does with hard work or good results. If you're working in a lab by yourself, doing the whole project by yourself, and publish valid results in a 3rd tier journal, that's a more impressive individual than if you had an army of people doing all the hard work, get stunning results, and publish in a first tier journal. I think that author dilution is under estimated.
It is of course simpler to say "Oh, that's a good journal, he must be a good scientist" than it is to judge that researcher's research as a whole, which is the only reason people do it.
And most of the folks on /. are people who are competent. Competent and or self-reliant people do not feel the need for government to protect them from themselves or imaginary threats.
Imaginary threats, yes, but competence and self-reliance alone won't get you to realize that foreign terrorism is an imaginary threat. Most competent people I know don't care too much about it, it's an inconvenience when they want to fly somewhere, and if they're not busy thinking of other things, they might realize the line they're in to go through security is more vulnerable and has more bodies in it than the plane would. Even many of the incompetents I know laugh about fingernail clippers being banned. Still, that doesn't automatically translate into a realization that "TSA is just wasting time and taxes."
And if you don't get to the realization that it's an imaginary threat, there's nothing illogical about wanting the government to deal with it.
The Veterinary And Geriatric Investigator National Association (VAGINA) suggested it actually, why?
Umm, but that's all done on purpose. And the reason we're anti-illegal-immigrant is that illegal immigrants subvert that purpose. Is it that complicated??
The purpose being to keep out ALL immigrants: my point was that the laws are anti-immigrant, not just anti-illegal immigrant. It was that simple. You might not like the illegals, but you're trying to keep the number of legals to damn near zero, the laws are against immigrants in general.