One part resistance to change, two parts stupidity, three parts laziness, one part cheapness (don't want to dedicate time to testing and rolling out a major upgrade), and three parts apathy on the part of everyone.
It's mostly due to the relationship between the IT staff and the regular employees. In some situations, IT can dictate quite a bit and is left to make their own decisions about security, but in most situations they are essentially the servants of the employees - someone to clean malware off of their computers and be whined at. If the employee(s) doesn't/don't want IE6, then it's harder for IT to make a case to management (since they could otherwise claim that the employees also want an upgrade) to justify upgrading, and most just won't bother unless there's lots of user demand. If the users are against it, it takes either a somewhat reckless IT dept. or a tech-savvy manager to realize that this stuff needs to get done.
He had no relation to these people; he wasn't a friend, or someone who was treating them; he was just somebody they talked to. They had no reason to listen to him, and nothing was being misrepresented - he just told them to kill themselves. They didn't have to listen to them, but they chose to - which means they probably would have sooner or later anyway.
... which has nothing to do with rapists. On the other hand, you have a point - for decades there was a problem of well-connected, powerful Japanese men molesting women on subway trains that, despite the efforts of the police, was covered up by the (ashamed) women.
It also undermines the basics of capitalism; the idea that the most successful company will be the one producing the cheapest goods at the highest quality (i.e. high quality, but can sell for a low produce due to low production costs). When people think they "need" something, they will just go out and buy it without researching the price - meaning that the company that "wins" is the one that puts out the most ads and the best ads, not the best product.
You're missing the entire point. Your focus is on the company profiting from the user; theoretically, both are benefitting. The company makes money from providing the service, and the user benefits from the service. When the company tries to make more money from the service than the user gets benefit, it can tend to drive users away. That's why monopolies are discourages - because it's only ethical for companies to charge a fair price. Your argument is that companies can charge whatever price they like as long as they don't lose customers, but this is ignoring the time and money investment that players have in their characters and the incentive they have to keep playing, no matter what the company does.
That argument doesn't work. Newspapers are sold deliberately at a loss, banking on the idea that advertising will cover the lost revenue. Blizzard, however, already charges far more for World of Warcraft than any other MMO developer, and putting in ads on top of that is just blatantly screwing their users out of more money.
It also stems from the association of advertising with free or run-at-a-loss services, while services that make a profit shouldn't need to also bombard people with ads.
Speaking of TV shows... ads were the catalyst for me ditching television and just torrenting shows. A TVrip up the next night, and the size (usually 175mb for a half-hour show) is great, I can download them in an hour or two (including seeding to 100%) and I'm fine, and can watch it any time I want without having to worry about DVRs or Tivo. It's also very easy to "catch up to" shows that I haven't seen the first season(s) of, since I can just find a torrent of each season, watch it in a marathon, and then be ready for future episodes.
Despite all of this, I was lazy and still watched shows on television. Why did I stop? Networks like ABC and CBS, with their damn bars at the bottom of the screen advertising other shows. Admittedly night-after tvrips will have these (unless they're ripped from a broadcast that didn't have the bars), but the season-by-season DVD-rips don't. This was the #1 appeal of it to me - getting shows I want on demand without advertising and without annoyances. I save a good 1/4 of my entertainment time by watching ad-free television shows (usually half-hour shows are 22 minutes, hour-long shows are 42-44min) on my computer.
Indeed, it's the same issue as hotlinking images (that is, for the hotlinker, not the person whose images are being hotlinked). You're giving someone the ability to influence the way your website looks (and sometimes even how it sounds).
Unfortunately, with cases like these, the people arrested will be the footmen - the guys who did the dirty work rather than the ones that made the decision.
I would have escalated it farther. Schools must have been particularly bad in your area; in mine, people at the district level generally have advisors for that kind of stuff.
I'd understand why you'd be tired of it, though, although I would have kept fighting for the sake of it.
What I'd foresee more than outright outlawing would be hardware locks for regular consumers, while companies could use whatever OS they wanted. This would eliminate 99% of the people who weren't using it as a headless server or blade server in some way, and would thus defeat the purpose of having infringing stuff on it (no X11? No non-terminal games, no movies).
These little stories make me wonder - why didn't you appeal? Also, that feels far too extreme. The school could have the power to suspend/expel you, but not to alter your mark.
The trouble I see is that most people think that schools principals have no superior, when it's possible (although hidden and heavily discouraged by schools, obviously) to appeal just about anything and complain up to the highest level. This was done with a bad math mark on one of my exams (which the teacher, who disliked me, thought I wouldn't check after I noticed that it affected my final overall average) - the school refused to do anything, and ultimately the director of education for the district awarded me the lost marks after I had independent verification from a university math prof.
If I had to sum up my story, it'd probably be "schools suck, but they are not immune to being smacked around like a bitch if you can find someone to help you."
It was about your choice of words: "choose" to live. I'm just saying that many people who live rurally have important reasons that they perhaps don't have the most control over, such as their job.
I see this sentiment again and again. Most people make the assumption that, if someone does any serious work, it is done in a city. This is ignoring people like hydrological engineers, who do a lot of their work around hydro dams - which are most often in the middle of the wilderness. If someone lives rurally, they have their reasons, and they shouldn't have to move just to get something other than dialup.
It's making certain assumptions as to how long the user will be online and how much bandwidth they will use. ISPs are cheap, and depend on people only using the internet occasionally, and for very low-bandwidth activites. Despite many people using video services, streaming video, and filesharing, they stubbornly insist that what is now the minority is still their dominant customer group - the old people who check their email once a week. They do this because the occasional-use customers are the most profitable for them. It's the fundamental rationale behind insurance - try to insure the healthiest people possible so they will make payments and never need to use the insurance.
Might be a good designer, but definitely isn't a good artist. Either that or she thought the astronaut's legs were the same length as the rest of her body.
I just use a wireless keyboard and have hotkeys for various things. It works fine, and is much better than those PC remotes people sell (poor Linux support, bad signal, never work properly, cost way too much).
Yes, but this was in the context of your original statement:
Running a 50-foot cable from the PC room to the TV room and an equally long USB cable is still a pain in the neck, especially if you have to go through doorways. And if you're using the PC to watch video or play games, someone else can't use it for Facebook.
If your PC (well, minicomputer, since it's no longer personal) is communal, then running a cable is fairly efficient, since then people won't need to ask for permission just to play a movie on your television screen.
Also, I don't see why a USB cable would be necessary.
Yes. If it's a question of preservation, many private collectors will do an equal or better job. They have a personal vested interest in preserving it, and there's less of a chance of it being stolen (not on public display). Of course, the public won't be able to see it themselves, but all they need to do is scan it once.
That doesn't make sense to me. It might be fine for small children to share a computer, but if I were a parent I'd definitely get them some form of computer of their own at age 12, if not earlier (if they showed interest in hobbyism). Having adults share a computer just seems awful, especially if someone needs it for school or work.
Qualifications: has used his own computer since age 3 rather than sharing (it was one of my father's older PC clones).
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One part resistance to change, two parts stupidity, three parts laziness, one part cheapness (don't want to dedicate time to testing and rolling out a major upgrade), and three parts apathy on the part of everyone.
In other words, Microsoft stops issuing any patches for IE6 and warns everyone against using it for any reason.
Somehow, I doubt somebody who is still running IE6 will care (or maybe even know) what the recommended best practice is.
It's mostly due to the relationship between the IT staff and the regular employees. In some situations, IT can dictate quite a bit and is left to make their own decisions about security, but in most situations they are essentially the servants of the employees - someone to clean malware off of their computers and be whined at. If the employee(s) doesn't/don't want IE6, then it's harder for IT to make a case to management (since they could otherwise claim that the employees also want an upgrade) to justify upgrading, and most just won't bother unless there's lots of user demand. If the users are against it, it takes either a somewhat reckless IT dept. or a tech-savvy manager to realize that this stuff needs to get done.
He had no relation to these people; he wasn't a friend, or someone who was treating them; he was just somebody they talked to. They had no reason to listen to him, and nothing was being misrepresented - he just told them to kill themselves. They didn't have to listen to them, but they chose to - which means they probably would have sooner or later anyway.
... which has nothing to do with rapists. On the other hand, you have a point - for decades there was a problem of well-connected, powerful Japanese men molesting women on subway trains that, despite the efforts of the police, was covered up by the (ashamed) women.
It also undermines the basics of capitalism; the idea that the most successful company will be the one producing the cheapest goods at the highest quality (i.e. high quality, but can sell for a low produce due to low production costs). When people think they "need" something, they will just go out and buy it without researching the price - meaning that the company that "wins" is the one that puts out the most ads and the best ads, not the best product.
You're missing the entire point. Your focus is on the company profiting from the user; theoretically, both are benefitting. The company makes money from providing the service, and the user benefits from the service. When the company tries to make more money from the service than the user gets benefit, it can tend to drive users away. That's why monopolies are discourages - because it's only ethical for companies to charge a fair price. Your argument is that companies can charge whatever price they like as long as they don't lose customers, but this is ignoring the time and money investment that players have in their characters and the incentive they have to keep playing, no matter what the company does.
That argument doesn't work. Newspapers are sold deliberately at a loss, banking on the idea that advertising will cover the lost revenue. Blizzard, however, already charges far more for World of Warcraft than any other MMO developer, and putting in ads on top of that is just blatantly screwing their users out of more money.
It also stems from the association of advertising with free or run-at-a-loss services, while services that make a profit shouldn't need to also bombard people with ads.
Indeed, my complaint with advertising is that much of it is designed to make people want to buy things they would not have bought otherwise.
Speaking of TV shows... ads were the catalyst for me ditching television and just torrenting shows. A TVrip up the next night, and the size (usually 175mb for a half-hour show) is great, I can download them in an hour or two (including seeding to 100%) and I'm fine, and can watch it any time I want without having to worry about DVRs or Tivo. It's also very easy to "catch up to" shows that I haven't seen the first season(s) of, since I can just find a torrent of each season, watch it in a marathon, and then be ready for future episodes.
Despite all of this, I was lazy and still watched shows on television. Why did I stop? Networks like ABC and CBS, with their damn bars at the bottom of the screen advertising other shows. Admittedly night-after tvrips will have these (unless they're ripped from a broadcast that didn't have the bars), but the season-by-season DVD-rips don't. This was the #1 appeal of it to me - getting shows I want on demand without advertising and without annoyances. I save a good 1/4 of my entertainment time by watching ad-free television shows (usually half-hour shows are 22 minutes, hour-long shows are 42-44min) on my computer.
Indeed, it's the same issue as hotlinking images (that is, for the hotlinker, not the person whose images are being hotlinked). You're giving someone the ability to influence the way your website looks (and sometimes even how it sounds).
Unfortunately, with cases like these, the people arrested will be the footmen - the guys who did the dirty work rather than the ones that made the decision.
I would have escalated it farther. Schools must have been particularly bad in your area; in mine, people at the district level generally have advisors for that kind of stuff.
I'd understand why you'd be tired of it, though, although I would have kept fighting for the sake of it.
What I'd foresee more than outright outlawing would be hardware locks for regular consumers, while companies could use whatever OS they wanted. This would eliminate 99% of the people who weren't using it as a headless server or blade server in some way, and would thus defeat the purpose of having infringing stuff on it (no X11? No non-terminal games, no movies).
These little stories make me wonder - why didn't you appeal? Also, that feels far too extreme. The school could have the power to suspend/expel you, but not to alter your mark.
The trouble I see is that most people think that schools principals have no superior, when it's possible (although hidden and heavily discouraged by schools, obviously) to appeal just about anything and complain up to the highest level. This was done with a bad math mark on one of my exams (which the teacher, who disliked me, thought I wouldn't check after I noticed that it affected my final overall average) - the school refused to do anything, and ultimately the director of education for the district awarded me the lost marks after I had independent verification from a university math prof.
If I had to sum up my story, it'd probably be "schools suck, but they are not immune to being smacked around like a bitch if you can find someone to help you."
Now we'll have to jump through even more hoops while banking.
It was about your choice of words: "choose" to live. I'm just saying that many people who live rurally have important reasons that they perhaps don't have the most control over, such as their job.
In my area, many of the telephone lines are from the 1920s and have never been upgraded. They aren't capable of carrying anything higher than 56kbit.
I see this sentiment again and again. Most people make the assumption that, if someone does any serious work, it is done in a city. This is ignoring people like hydrological engineers, who do a lot of their work around hydro dams - which are most often in the middle of the wilderness. If someone lives rurally, they have their reasons, and they shouldn't have to move just to get something other than dialup.
It's making certain assumptions as to how long the user will be online and how much bandwidth they will use. ISPs are cheap, and depend on people only using the internet occasionally, and for very low-bandwidth activites. Despite many people using video services, streaming video, and filesharing, they stubbornly insist that what is now the minority is still their dominant customer group - the old people who check their email once a week. They do this because the occasional-use customers are the most profitable for them. It's the fundamental rationale behind insurance - try to insure the healthiest people possible so they will make payments and never need to use the insurance.
Might be a good designer, but definitely isn't a good artist. Either that or she thought the astronaut's legs were the same length as the rest of her body.
I just use a wireless keyboard and have hotkeys for various things. It works fine, and is much better than those PC remotes people sell (poor Linux support, bad signal, never work properly, cost way too much).
Running a 50-foot cable from the PC room to the TV room and an equally long USB cable is still a pain in the neck, especially if you have to go through doorways. And if you're using the PC to watch video or play games, someone else can't use it for Facebook.
If your PC (well, minicomputer, since it's no longer personal) is communal, then running a cable is fairly efficient, since then people won't need to ask for permission just to play a movie on your television screen.
Also, I don't see why a USB cable would be necessary.
Yes. If it's a question of preservation, many private collectors will do an equal or better job. They have a personal vested interest in preserving it, and there's less of a chance of it being stolen (not on public display). Of course, the public won't be able to see it themselves, but all they need to do is scan it once.
That doesn't make sense to me. It might be fine for small children to share a computer, but if I were a parent I'd definitely get them some form of computer of their own at age 12, if not earlier (if they showed interest in hobbyism). Having adults share a computer just seems awful, especially if someone needs it for school or work.
Qualifications: has used his own computer since age 3 rather than sharing (it was one of my father's older PC clones).