Everyone, repeat after me - CORRELATION is NOT CAUSATION.
Some other contributing factors: The dramatic increase in the suckiness of corporate rock, a stagnant economy, a war, general bad blood between consumers and the RIAA, and, uh, I dunno, iTunes?. I'd like to see a more detailed study that also tracks smaller, independent labels and/or simply non-RIAA-aligned labels, not to mention tracking iTunes purchases.
Personally, I think the decreasing number of pirates at sea is causing a parallel reduction in CD purchasing as well as global warming. I mean, look at the correlations there!!!
Nine times out of ten, the biggest problem a computer has that I'm helping repair is a huge glom of spyware, crap plugins, and mismatched file associations, takeovers, and hassle. I explain the problems and the underlying roots (IE, WiMP/Real/etc.) and so on, and offer various solutions, such as paying me to come back about monthly to do cleanings, or you could just install this set of software and it'll not be a hassle... Seriously, a firefox+adblock plus + filterset.g updater does WONDERS.
Not necessarily. Presuming 100% of them cheat (the/are/ business students) and only 56% report their cheating, that still means 44% lied about cheating.
Actually, at the level of this insanity, I think it's great. Fast forward a few years to when people want to, I dunno, upgrade to a new computer? Or maybe their Windows crashed and needs re-installation, and they lose all access to their digital library they spent days ripping. While I'm not about to say that this will cause a massive run for the pleasant and free hills of Linux, it will be eye-opening to the world they're in of user-hating DRM and sneaky OS lock-in. At least people might move to CDEx..?
Yeah, I see DRM newspapers, magazines, and the like coming soon. Oh, sorry, did you want to clip that article to save? You'll have to purchase an archival copy for $2.95/page
Good point. Really, if/. cared about the net community, it would balance this increased load on the DNS servers by pointing the article links directly to their IP addresses. As the geeks who surf slashdot hopefully outnumber the dweebs who'll be "upgrading" to Vista, it should more than balance out the problems.
Definitely! One thing that is endlessly frustrating about the e-journal phenomenon is that instead of your library being your one-stop-shop for all journals (and they could inter-library-loan it or similar if it wasn't available), now you have all these different online portals which carry different collections in some of the most horrendous user interfaces I've ever come across. I'd love for Google to tackle this, and even better, to go through the pain of OCR'ing them...
hear hear. The US has been spreading democracy since WWII (before, too, just not as well marketed). We've had some great successes! I mean, just think of the democratic governments we've replaced with dictators in such culturally diverse locations as the Philippines, Nicaragua, San Salvador...
Oh, wait. We're supposed to be doing that the other way, right?
I'm certainly biased, but has there ever been a case where the US has muddled around in the affairs of another nation's government and had it turn into a flowering democracy? Do any of the Marshall Plan "graduates" count?
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain
Guys, relax. If you're working in such a horrible environment, you seriously need to put your resume back on the market. But before that, check to make sure that it's not you who are creating the environment through your presumptions that you'll get hit with some HR silliness for being nice. Your posts sound pretty incredibly misogynistic to start with.
That's kinda a chicken-and-egg argument; people aren't setting up BT servers on their own, therefore we don't need software to make it easy? If something's overly complicated, people will do it less. This lowers the barriers to setting up your own tracker. Now, hosting your own tracker on your website or personal system is not something you want to do in the current situation with RIAA and MPAA - if you're sharing music/movies/etc. - but if you're sharing things, like, say, your remastered Knoppix project, or you want to give your friend a CD of photos and not sneakernet it, or, say, you're a renegade record label trying to get buzz and distribute some promotional tracks, and don't like having to pay for insane bandwidth for song and/or video downloads; this is a much better solution that most current methods - setting up a private folder on a web server (best), trying to email or IM the file (prolly will break, and is 1:1).
I think the more end-user tools we have available for p2p, the more legitimate uses will crop up.
Good change is good. Changing your document format and shuffling your menus around is forcing people through an upgrade cycle via lock-in. Remember Word 6 -> Word2k? 2k->XP? Have there been any functional improvements in these upgrades? (OK, better style support if you're dedicated to applying it, which is good for us style geeks, but still).
I'd like a word processor that doesn't crash, hog resources, or take forever to load on anything but the newest and shiniest computer.
So, we all know that as the user-base increases in size and diversifies, the code tends towards bloat, but really, do you have to make it a 1:1 ratio??
Ah, but verbing the "right" words is important. To express that you were staring at a computer monitor all day, you could not say you were "monitoring" all day. If I said I was booking it all day, I probably never had the chance to sit down and read my book. Sure it's a flexible language, but it requires a lot of instinct that most easily comes from being a native speaker to take advantage of it.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair though, I don't think anyone has a trademark or patent on "12V", unlike getting USB/USB2 certification, PCI Express, etc. etc. etc.
Exactly.
Everyone, repeat after me - CORRELATION is NOT CAUSATION.
Some other contributing factors: The dramatic increase in the suckiness of corporate rock, a stagnant economy, a war, general bad blood between consumers and the RIAA, and, uh, I dunno, iTunes?. I'd like to see a more detailed study that also tracks smaller, independent labels and/or simply non-RIAA-aligned labels, not to mention tracking iTunes purchases.
Personally, I think the decreasing number of pirates at sea is causing a parallel reduction in CD purchasing as well as global warming. I mean, look at the correlations there!!!
Sigh.
Nine times out of ten, the biggest problem a computer has that I'm helping repair is a huge glom of spyware, crap plugins, and mismatched file associations, takeovers, and hassle. I explain the problems and the underlying roots (IE, WiMP/Real/etc.) and so on, and offer various solutions, such as paying me to come back about monthly to do cleanings, or you could just install this set of software and it'll not be a hassle... Seriously, a firefox+adblock plus + filterset.g updater does WONDERS.
Not necessarily. Presuming 100% of them cheat (the /are/ business students) and only 56% report their cheating, that still means 44% lied about cheating.
Actually, at the level of this insanity, I think it's great. Fast forward a few years to when people want to, I dunno, upgrade to a new computer? Or maybe their Windows crashed and needs re-installation, and they lose all access to their digital library they spent days ripping. While I'm not about to say that this will cause a massive run for the pleasant and free hills of Linux, it will be eye-opening to the world they're in of user-hating DRM and sneaky OS lock-in. At least people might move to CDEx..?
Does this mean we can carry water bottles on planes again -- if they have bluefish swimming in them?
No, the spec was for cobol, but he chose to write it in Intercal.
Doesn't the State of California consider mucking with URLs to be hacking? ;)
Fred... Fred... He wrote that big thing with no documentation, right? Man, do you have his contact info?
Yee fuckin' haw, time to move back home. Judge, that spammer needed some killin'.
Has anybody exhaustively explored the concept?
Not counting Arthur C. Clark in 2010?
Yeah, I see DRM newspapers, magazines, and the like coming soon. Oh, sorry, did you want to clip that article to save? You'll have to purchase an archival copy for $2.95/page
Good point. Really, if /. cared about the net community, it would balance this increased load on the DNS servers by pointing the article links directly to their IP addresses. As the geeks who surf slashdot hopefully outnumber the dweebs who'll be "upgrading" to Vista, it should more than balance out the problems.
Definitely! One thing that is endlessly frustrating about the e-journal phenomenon is that instead of your library being your one-stop-shop for all journals (and they could inter-library-loan it or similar if it wasn't available), now you have all these different online portals which carry different collections in some of the most horrendous user interfaces I've ever come across. I'd love for Google to tackle this, and even better, to go through the pain of OCR'ing them...
Oh yeah? yeah? well, you forgot Poland!!!
(I know, I'm sure there are many more still left out of this list.)
hear hear. The US has been spreading democracy since WWII (before, too, just not as well marketed). We've had some great successes! I mean, just think of the democratic governments we've replaced with dictators in such culturally diverse locations as the Philippines, Nicaragua, San Salvador...
Oh, wait. We're supposed to be doing that the other way, right?
I'm certainly biased, but has there ever been a case where the US has muddled around in the affairs of another nation's government and had it turn into a flowering democracy? Do any of the Marshall Plan "graduates" count?
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain
You left out movies and even more pornography.
Also, you forgot Poland.
I dunno, I never got that much out of learning BASIC or any of the "Educational" languages... ;)
Guys, relax. If you're working in such a horrible environment, you seriously need to put your resume back on the market. But before that, check to make sure that it's not you who are creating the environment through your presumptions that you'll get hit with some HR silliness for being nice. Your posts sound pretty incredibly misogynistic to start with.
That's kinda a chicken-and-egg argument; people aren't setting up BT servers on their own, therefore we don't need software to make it easy? If something's overly complicated, people will do it less. This lowers the barriers to setting up your own tracker. Now, hosting your own tracker on your website or personal system is not something you want to do in the current situation with RIAA and MPAA - if you're sharing music/movies/etc. - but if you're sharing things, like, say, your remastered Knoppix project, or you want to give your friend a CD of photos and not sneakernet it, or, say, you're a renegade record label trying to get buzz and distribute some promotional tracks, and don't like having to pay for insane bandwidth for song and/or video downloads; this is a much better solution that most current methods - setting up a private folder on a web server (best), trying to email or IM the file (prolly will break, and is 1:1).
I think the more end-user tools we have available for p2p, the more legitimate uses will crop up.
Good change is good. Changing your document format and shuffling your menus around is forcing people through an upgrade cycle via lock-in. Remember Word 6 -> Word2k? 2k->XP? Have there been any functional improvements in these upgrades? (OK, better style support if you're dedicated to applying it, which is good for us style geeks, but still).
I'd like a word processor that doesn't crash, hog resources, or take forever to load on anything but the newest and shiniest computer.
ODF as the native format might be nice too.
So, we all know that as the user-base increases in size and diversifies, the code tends towards bloat, but really, do you have to make it a 1:1 ratio??
Apparently, some of us have elevated levels of a cellular enzyme, monoamine oxidase A, and are more in need of stimulation from new things.
Oh man, I want to get me some elevated levels of monoamine oxidase A!!! Anyone know of a providor???
What I wanna know is if it'll overheat in your pocket and cause sterility :)
If so, they could make great gifts!
Ah, but verbing the "right" words is important. To express that you were staring at a computer monitor all day, you could not say you were "monitoring" all day. If I said I was booking it all day, I probably never had the chance to sit down and read my book. Sure it's a flexible language, but it requires a lot of instinct that most easily comes from being a native speaker to take advantage of it.