This is a very difficult endeavor for you but I asked my mom to leave her granddaughter videos of herself talking about her, the things she likes to do, her views on life and anything she wanted to tell her.
The most important thing was that she did this early on because your energy goes away. The videos need to be done NOW. The letters and writings can be done right up until about a week before the end.
Tell her about your childhood Tell her about your first love Tell her about your first kiss Tell her about what you thought when she came into this world Tell her about when you found out your wife was pregnant Tell her about everything you have any emotional connection to. Tell her your hopes and dreams (not of her, but yours) Tell her how much you love her and give her confidence. Tell her how you want her to make an impact on the world for the better no matter how small Tell her whatever is on your mind as you write.
The most important thing is to give her things to remember you from. A nice touch is to create a letter or video for each birthday, but keep in mind she won't be able to handle these until she's much older.
When you keep releasing a slew of poorly written movies, yet continue to demand unreasonable fees, this is the result. People aren't willing to shell out the bucks to see a B grade movie. It's just not worth it anymore.
I'm not some movie-snob either. Most of the movies released have no replay-ability or just left a bad taste in ones mouth (Ender's Game).
I'm a gamer and build my own systems over the years. Lets be clear what I consider performance.
- Smooth movement (is it jumpy or does it smoothly move the icon or view in game) - Comfort of mouse (does it feel good to my hand so my hand won't hurt later) - Buttons (Are they quality? Do they depress easily? Are they located in the right spots?) - Software (Does the software allow me set sensitivity and map keys?)
Mapping out how fast a click response rate is stupid. Of course there won't be little difference.
The purpose of getting a more expensive mouse are the additional features. If anyone purchases a mouse because "it's response rate is faster than an average mouse" is just stupid. I have a Razer mouse and it vastly exceeds in my performance criteria than the standard Microsoft Intellimouse.
I've tried about 20 different mice while gaming and coding and non perform for me as well as the $70 Razer I have. Is it right for everyone? no. But their study is flawed.
The end of the last matrix was so bad most people pretend it doesn't exist (see Jar Jar). I think they realize everyone was left with a bad taste in their mouth as if they were expecting chocolate and got Mr Hanky.
You cannot beat those who wish to share. You cannot win against the vast numbers. Take one down and 10 sprout to replace the fallen one. The harder you hunt them the more difficult it will be to find them. Stop fighting a battle you cannot win concerning control.
Instead, change your pricing structure, change your delivery methods, stop wasting money on DRM people like me bypass in mere seconds.
This is the future and you are merely in denial. Learn, adapt, and you'll be amazed at the success you will have.
Especially among fraternities and sororities. While originally these groups would keep older tests, which is NOT against the student code, access to test banks... that's all of the possible questions AND correct answers... is not only unethical... but illegal as they were obtained under false pretenses.
When I was in college I knew of two frats who had access to almost all of the test banks from the college of textiles at NC State. At the time I really didn't understand what it meant as I wasn't part of those frats. I thought that just meant they had access to older tests etc. There were several professors who didn't really care about this... because they didn't use multiple choice tests. Everything was short answer and they changed their questions every time. Sometimes they would have similar questions but different values etc.
That's the problem today with courses like this... too many people and multiple choice does equal to quality education. Students are pushed hard to memorize, not learn, information in 101 classes like these because noone wants to take the time to read answers. It's very frustrating.
I have never used a test bank to "cheat" from... but I have used older tests which some professors think was the same as cheating.
QUOTE from Article: "Ray Ozzie first appeared on my radar screen when I heard about this amazing guy who designed Lotus Notes. If you never used Notes, count yourself lucky."
Lotus notes was and still is one of the worst pieces of software to work with. From a user AND IT perspective it is utter TRASH. It's internal browser, it's internal only rules.... my god... I stopped reading at this point. Let's be clear... it's ALMOST as bad as groupwise.
You can't fail what you don't try to do
on
Desktop Linux Is Dead
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
My name is Chad and I hate using linux... however....
Linux has never tried to replace windows for the common user. It's focused on being a useful, security minded, light weight alternative for power users, IT professionals etc...
Linux has never marketed itself as a gaming platform, or multimedia home system etc. There are flavors of linux USED that way, but never advertised like windows. Linux has only recently (past 5 years) reached a point where it is user friendly to new users. Fedora Core or Unbuntu really took off with the whole user experience.
"But there's no content!"... what are you smoking? Sure... your mom can't install "Couponfriend" on a linux machine but that's not what Linux as a whole is focusing on. Linux is a business grade utility. It's a solid alternative to windows that allows you to do almost everything windows can do. The limitations you encounter are what programs you use.
A company I work with recently made the push to move to linux distros instead of windows. Dear lord the users hated it at first until productivity went up, and IT costs went down after 6 months.
There were 567 LESS tickets concerning hacked machines, malware and crashes. The centralized management software they use controls what can be installed on the machine... and pushing installs works just like windows except the machine doesn't have to restart. This solved a lot of issues for the small business as they just couldn't afford the windows equivalents.
The difficulty comes in what programs are being used. Users navigate just like they used to to find files. Hell they even created "My Document" folders... except those are hosted on a SAN, but the user doesn't know.
Linux is NOT dead as a desktop OS. It just might not be at the point of a typical user who thinks Best Buy is a smart place to go for a computer.
Whoever did 10-2 should be shot... and from that point it just tanked. I'm not taking into account the MMORPG... but the normal serious completely tanked. The story was confusing, if not completely lost... and the target audience changed vastly. It's not Final Fantasy anymore... it's a Uwe Boll made movie now.
Get back to original storylines and release a game that's worth playing. Not just for cash.
It troubles me to no end the lengths people will go today in the name of religion. It's actually becoming common place for someone to have an extreme view and use the blanket of religion to protect them.
I have no problem with someone having beliefs, I too have them, but I base them off common sense, not because some book says I should do things. Questioning the institution is essential for growth. The middle east seems stuck in eternal infancy.
If I was a business who KNEW I'm fighting a world full of hackers I wouldn't fight them... I would help them. Most people wouldn't care, but those that I said "Hey, we've made it easy for you to do stuff... show me what you can do better and I'll pay you for it!
Apple instead wants to completely control how the users use their devices... and that just won't fly in today's world. That's like slapping a bull and kicking him in the balls. He's gonna ram you
While it would be lovely to have a perfect sys admin they don't exist. I would say about 1 in 10 problems in production are due to the admins not doing their part. I test like crazy but often times I find the following
- Crazy rules in production but not staging - Mapped folders on production but not in staging or development - Databases or Database permissions incorrectly configured - Caching doing wierd things one does not see in staging
This only gets worse if you have load balanced servers etc.
I believe as a rule no developer should "develop" in production but having access to the production environment depends on your work environment and who would know best. Sys admins NEVER KNOW BEST when it comes to websites. They know their hardware but rarely do they know how to troubleshoot issues and almost always blame your app. However, at the same time developers often don't know enough about the technology their applications are running on so they instantly blame the sys admin.
Ideally, in a large scale deployment you have someone with the knowledge of both (that's me) who can identify and troubleshoot common issues. That individual would have access to production. Additionally, in smaller development shops not having access to production is just stupid. It doesn't make sense.
- Source Control is a great idea, but rarely used due to difficulty of use. Sometimes its not an option because someone has to support that. - Financial limitations can reduce the ability to have shared development/staging areas. Working on your own machine is useless when testing. It does NOT test working in a production environment and thus... sometimes production is the test field.
We can play the blame game but in reality who has access to production should be limited to those trusted enough to not do stupid things without backing themselves up. Sysadmins should keep a backup of the production site at all times, developers should not mess with production unless it's urgent.
To me there is no comparison between consoles and PC's when it comes to gaming. PC gaming will ALWAYS win out to me from a performance and control standpoint.
I am a gamer... a well off gamer who likes the full gambit of experience but most importantly be able to set the controls the way I like. Halo was an excellent example for this. PC gamers wiped the floor with the xbox counterparts when xbox live allowed PC gamers to play against Xbox'ers. There wasn't a single Xboxer in the top 100 players.
PC gaming will never die. If labels leave, new competition will take up the market. Xbox's and PS3's ARE computers at this point. That's what they are. Hell both of them can run linux or windows. In fact, gaming today is heading TOWARD PC gaming, just in a controlled manner they call "consoles".
This is just like the RIAA and their fight toward controlling the environment. Focus on your customers, focus on the experience and you won't have to worry about Pirating! The people who steal generally cannot afford it, or wouldn't have bought it anyway. Stop focusing on these people as you'll NEVER beat them. It's a challenge, a game... to them to break your scheme. Every single DRM has been broken within two weeks, the only exception being BlueRay which took a little bit longer. Stop wasting resources on this.
The publishers that use DRM made the mistake of declaring war on people who love the sport of breaking DRM. It's gotten to the point they create executables that let you break the DRM so anyone can do it without any tech knowledge at all.
SHOW me a single reputable study (REPUTABLE) that shows piracy is hurting publishers. This would be a study that connects pirates who would have bought it if it had DRM. Any study that it's entire source set is that of a college campus is going to have skewed results.
That's not the point... it's that it can be easily
on
Is RFID Really That Scary?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The point that's being made about RFID is that the encryption method is not good enough for most uses when it comes to private information. If it becomes mainstream someone could EASILY begin to collect this information using a remote reader and collect it later without every touching the device again.
Imagine someone takes a small box about the size of sandwich. It could hold enough battery power to collect every single RFID scan for quite some time and then come by perhaps the next day with a laptop and receive it remotely as to never touch the device again in case it was found and being watched.
RFID tags are GREAT to identify you by an ID #... not hold SS # or other private information. Keep that stuff in a more secure manner. I'm no alarmist, and not even a hacker. But this is something someone with almost no tech experience could do... and make bank.
This is just storage space, not web pages/applications, or software etc. We're talking digital assets of the company such as documents, images, videos... etc. Basic, run of the mill file storage is being priced at $30 per gig, per month. It's basically just a giant network share. It doesn't need to be co-located just your typical raid array with some method of disaster recovery.
I'm interested in what other companies charge internally for file storage.
Re:The market disagrees
on
The End of Free
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
NPR is different. They aren't demanding anything unreasonable, don't take political sides and report accurate REAL news. Use Fox News as a polar opposite.
The market disagrees
on
The End of Free
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Every single media provider who started to charge for content has lost out. New York Times is a great example. They've had to reduce prices again and again and again and still have trouble.
The second a news story is out, someone reproduces it. It's no longer about content ownership, it's who can get it out, correct and in a format people like FIRST.
Look at music... who won that one? Itunes. They got it out in a method and format faster and better than anyone. Now... admittedly there might have been better services but they didn't offer the library that itunes can. (I hate itunes before anyone passes judgment).
What the market is proving is that people have a threshold for payment on content. The majority of us it's around $10 for movies (that's when sales peak in numbers other than first release) on DVD's, for music it's around $15 for a full CD, 75 to 99 cents for an individual song... and so on. News media, it's 0. There are a small few of us that then replicate this news (to the media companies horror) to the wide audiences. The author things this will stop... and of course has no true understanding of the market.
Information is easier to share than at any other point in history. News is replicated and spread in seconds now, and people, not just the young kids, are used to it for FREE. The only way this "may" be possible is if every single news media group put up walls at the same time... AND noone found a way to bypass this. It's just not feasible.
The most impact this can possible have is a lag in news release in the hours. It's like the RIAA... it's an antiquated business model that doesn't work anymore. The times have changed so that content en masse is no longer valuable, just the content itself. Good news, strong stories... well written... that's what matters now.
In short, this is being done by a ton of really bad people on the forums. This cannot be being proposed by the upper leadership as this has all sorts of legal implications.
If you have a problem with your forums, on such a large scale... it's EASY to fix.
Step 1: Implement a ranking system. People can give you positive or negative bumps to your posts (think karma here). The longer someone holds an active rank the more "bump" they give to people. You have to be a member of the forum for at least 1 month before you can bump at all, and then give it a progressive growth scale of the strength of their "bump". (1-6 months: 1pt, 7months to 2 years: 5pt, 2+ 10pt).
Additionally, provide some incentive for activity on the forums by offering discounts of productions/services by maintaining a high activity and in good standing at certain intervals. For example "You've been active on our forums for over 6 months with a great rank! We want to thank you for contributing to our community by offering you 25% off any of our old games... or a $5 credit on your next bill!". The overall cost to blizzard is dirt cheap.
Step 2: Ensure that someone has to been active (logging in) to keep their rank or they start over. You can figure out that time table
Step 3: If a user gets below a certain rank they are auto silenced. They cannot post anymore but can submit for a review of their "silencing" in case of some exploitation. This is highly unlikely since to even bump you have to be a member for quite some time.
BENEFITS - Trolls get silenced pretty damn quick - The community monitors itself with minimal administrative intervention - You get certain individuals who become leaders in the community from their rank - People feel rewarded for contributing
The more people are able to see the world through the internet the more freedom's they see everyone else has and the less control religion has on them. People are starting to think for themselves instead of being sheep. The method of control that has worked for centuries is starting to erode away. The fear mongering that was once possible is much more difficult and the result is outright violence.
This is a story of desperate people who hide behind religion as a method of control who are forced to control what people can read or see in order to retain that control. Unfortunately for them it's only a matter of time before it completely erodes.
People today want to follow those who make sense with their rule, not declare they are sent by God, or "chosen".
If you write any web application and any of the above 4 fail you fail. There is absolutely NO excuse for any application to fail due to a browser. 99% of the problems are CSS related and you doing something that isn't supported in slightly older browsers.
If you want to do the latest and greatest techniques for a system many people will use either do it in flash, or make sure your techniques work in all browsers. What you are doing should has no reason to be complex. Remember your audience, remember your users... I hate base text stuff... but flash and "neat" looking techniques are not needed in any ticketing system.
My sister helps run the conservators center (www.conservatorscenter.org) of North Carolina who house 40+ lions and tigers. By accident the found out how effective it is when one of their volunteers wore it. The lions were moaning trying to rub against them through the cages. Unfortunately Axe body spray didn't think it was a good marketing item as their reply to me was "We thank you for your interest but we don't accept marketing ideas from the public".
Slashdot Mirror
This is a very difficult endeavor for you but I asked my mom to leave her granddaughter videos of herself talking about her, the things she likes to do, her views on life and anything she wanted to tell her.
The most important thing was that she did this early on because your energy goes away. The videos need to be done NOW. The letters and writings can be done right up until about a week before the end.
Tell her about your childhood
Tell her about your first love
Tell her about your first kiss
Tell her about what you thought when she came into this world
Tell her about when you found out your wife was pregnant
Tell her about everything you have any emotional connection to.
Tell her your hopes and dreams (not of her, but yours)
Tell her how much you love her and give her confidence.
Tell her how you want her to make an impact on the world for the better no matter how small
Tell her whatever is on your mind as you write.
The most important thing is to give her things to remember you from. A nice touch is to create a letter or video for each birthday, but keep in mind she won't be able to handle these until she's much older.
The manual directs you how to bypass this. He's using an LG TV.
When you keep releasing a slew of poorly written movies, yet continue to demand unreasonable fees, this is the result. People aren't willing to shell out the bucks to see a B grade movie. It's just not worth it anymore.
I'm not some movie-snob either. Most of the movies released have no replay-ability or just left a bad taste in ones mouth (Ender's Game).
I'm a gamer and build my own systems over the years. Lets be clear what I consider performance.
- Smooth movement (is it jumpy or does it smoothly move the icon or view in game)
- Comfort of mouse (does it feel good to my hand so my hand won't hurt later)
- Buttons (Are they quality? Do they depress easily? Are they located in the right spots?)
- Software (Does the software allow me set sensitivity and map keys?)
Mapping out how fast a click response rate is stupid. Of course there won't be little difference.
The purpose of getting a more expensive mouse are the additional features. If anyone purchases a mouse because "it's response rate is faster than an average mouse" is just stupid. I have a Razer mouse and it vastly exceeds in my performance criteria than the standard Microsoft Intellimouse.
I've tried about 20 different mice while gaming and coding and non perform for me as well as the $70 Razer I have. Is it right for everyone? no. But their study is flawed.
Our company only cares if you use it's name and then only if you pretend to speak as a representative of it on matters. That's how it should be.
The end of the last matrix was so bad most people pretend it doesn't exist (see Jar Jar). I think they realize everyone was left with a bad taste in their mouth as if they were expecting chocolate and got Mr Hanky.
You cannot beat those who wish to share. You cannot win against the vast numbers. Take one down and 10 sprout to replace the fallen one. The harder you hunt them the more difficult it will be to find them. Stop fighting a battle you cannot win concerning control.
Instead, change your pricing structure, change your delivery methods, stop wasting money on DRM people like me bypass in mere seconds.
This is the future and you are merely in denial. Learn, adapt, and you'll be amazed at the success you will have.
Of all of the auto manufacturers their parts are the worst. Don't believe me? google it.
Especially among fraternities and sororities. While originally these groups would keep older tests, which is NOT against the student code, access to test banks... that's all of the possible questions AND correct answers... is not only unethical... but illegal as they were obtained under false pretenses.
When I was in college I knew of two frats who had access to almost all of the test banks from the college of textiles at NC State. At the time I really didn't understand what it meant as I wasn't part of those frats. I thought that just meant they had access to older tests etc. There were several professors who didn't really care about this... because they didn't use multiple choice tests. Everything was short answer and they changed their questions every time. Sometimes they would have similar questions but different values etc.
That's the problem today with courses like this... too many people and multiple choice does equal to quality education. Students are pushed hard to memorize, not learn, information in 101 classes like these because noone wants to take the time to read answers. It's very frustrating.
I have never used a test bank to "cheat" from... but I have used older tests which some professors think was the same as cheating.
QUOTE from Article: "Ray Ozzie first appeared on my radar screen when I heard about this amazing guy who designed Lotus Notes. If you never used Notes, count yourself lucky."
Lotus notes was and still is one of the worst pieces of software to work with. From a user AND IT perspective it is utter TRASH. It's internal browser, it's internal only rules.... my god... I stopped reading at this point. Let's be clear... it's ALMOST as bad as groupwise.
My name is Chad and I hate using linux... however....
Linux has never tried to replace windows for the common user. It's focused on being a useful, security minded, light weight alternative for power users, IT professionals etc...
Linux has never marketed itself as a gaming platform, or multimedia home system etc. There are flavors of linux USED that way, but never advertised like windows. Linux has only recently (past 5 years) reached a point where it is user friendly to new users. Fedora Core or Unbuntu really took off with the whole user experience.
"But there's no content!"... what are you smoking? Sure... your mom can't install "Couponfriend" on a linux machine but that's not what Linux as a whole is focusing on. Linux is a business grade utility. It's a solid alternative to windows that allows you to do almost everything windows can do. The limitations you encounter are what programs you use.
A company I work with recently made the push to move to linux distros instead of windows. Dear lord the users hated it at first until productivity went up, and IT costs went down after 6 months.
There were 567 LESS tickets concerning hacked machines, malware and crashes. The centralized management software they use controls what can be installed on the machine... and pushing installs works just like windows except the machine doesn't have to restart. This solved a lot of issues for the small business as they just couldn't afford the windows equivalents.
The difficulty comes in what programs are being used. Users navigate just like they used to to find files. Hell they even created "My Document" folders... except those are hosted on a SAN, but the user doesn't know.
Linux is NOT dead as a desktop OS. It just might not be at the point of a typical user who thinks Best Buy is a smart place to go for a computer.
Whoever did 10-2 should be shot... and from that point it just tanked. I'm not taking into account the MMORPG... but the normal serious completely tanked. The story was confusing, if not completely lost... and the target audience changed vastly. It's not Final Fantasy anymore... it's a Uwe Boll made movie now.
Get back to original storylines and release a game that's worth playing. Not just for cash.
It troubles me to no end the lengths people will go today in the name of religion. It's actually becoming common place for someone to have an extreme view and use the blanket of religion to protect them.
I have no problem with someone having beliefs, I too have them, but I base them off common sense, not because some book says I should do things. Questioning the institution is essential for growth. The middle east seems stuck in eternal infancy.
1) change your skin color
2) adjust your facial features
3) buy a monkey
I don't want to even THINK about the achievements.
If I was a business who KNEW I'm fighting a world full of hackers I wouldn't fight them... I would help them. Most people wouldn't care, but those that I said "Hey, we've made it easy for you to do stuff... show me what you can do better and I'll pay you for it!
Apple instead wants to completely control how the users use their devices... and that just won't fly in today's world. That's like slapping a bull and kicking him in the balls. He's gonna ram you
While it would be lovely to have a perfect sys admin they don't exist. I would say about 1 in 10 problems in production are due to the admins not doing their part. I test like crazy but often times I find the following
- Crazy rules in production but not staging
- Mapped folders on production but not in staging or development
- Databases or Database permissions incorrectly configured
- Caching doing wierd things one does not see in staging
This only gets worse if you have load balanced servers etc.
I believe as a rule no developer should "develop" in production but having access to the production environment depends on your work environment and who would know best. Sys admins NEVER KNOW BEST when it comes to websites. They know their hardware but rarely do they know how to troubleshoot issues and almost always blame your app. However, at the same time developers often don't know enough about the technology their applications are running on so they instantly blame the sys admin.
Ideally, in a large scale deployment you have someone with the knowledge of both (that's me) who can identify and troubleshoot common issues. That individual would have access to production. Additionally, in smaller development shops not having access to production is just stupid. It doesn't make sense.
- Source Control is a great idea, but rarely used due to difficulty of use. Sometimes its not an option because someone has to support that.
- Financial limitations can reduce the ability to have shared development/staging areas. Working on your own machine is useless when testing. It does NOT test working in a production environment and thus... sometimes production is the test field.
We can play the blame game but in reality who has access to production should be limited to those trusted enough to not do stupid things without backing themselves up. Sysadmins should keep a backup of the production site at all times, developers should not mess with production unless it's urgent.
To me there is no comparison between consoles and PC's when it comes to gaming. PC gaming will ALWAYS win out to me from a performance and control standpoint.
I am a gamer... a well off gamer who likes the full gambit of experience but most importantly be able to set the controls the way I like. Halo was an excellent example for this. PC gamers wiped the floor with the xbox counterparts when xbox live allowed PC gamers to play against Xbox'ers. There wasn't a single Xboxer in the top 100 players.
PC gaming will never die. If labels leave, new competition will take up the market. Xbox's and PS3's ARE computers at this point. That's what they are. Hell both of them can run linux or windows. In fact, gaming today is heading TOWARD PC gaming, just in a controlled manner they call "consoles".
This is just like the RIAA and their fight toward controlling the environment. Focus on your customers, focus on the experience and you won't have to worry about Pirating! The people who steal generally cannot afford it, or wouldn't have bought it anyway. Stop focusing on these people as you'll NEVER beat them. It's a challenge, a game... to them to break your scheme. Every single DRM has been broken within two weeks, the only exception being BlueRay which took a little bit longer. Stop wasting resources on this.
The publishers that use DRM made the mistake of declaring war on people who love the sport of breaking DRM. It's gotten to the point they create executables that let you break the DRM so anyone can do it without any tech knowledge at all.
SHOW me a single reputable study (REPUTABLE) that shows piracy is hurting publishers. This would be a study that connects pirates who would have bought it if it had DRM. Any study that it's entire source set is that of a college campus is going to have skewed results.
The point that's being made about RFID is that the encryption method is not good enough for most uses when it comes to private information. If it becomes mainstream someone could EASILY begin to collect this information using a remote reader and collect it later without every touching the device again.
Imagine someone takes a small box about the size of sandwich. It could hold enough battery power to collect every single RFID scan for quite some time and then come by perhaps the next day with a laptop and receive it remotely as to never touch the device again in case it was found and being watched.
RFID tags are GREAT to identify you by an ID #... not hold SS # or other private information. Keep that stuff in a more secure manner. I'm no alarmist, and not even a hacker. But this is something someone with almost no tech experience could do... and make bank.
This is just storage space, not web pages/applications, or software etc. We're talking digital assets of the company such as documents, images, videos... etc. Basic, run of the mill file storage is being priced at $30 per gig, per month. It's basically just a giant network share. It doesn't need to be co-located just your typical raid array with some method of disaster recovery.
I'm interested in what other companies charge internally for file storage.
NPR is different. They aren't demanding anything unreasonable, don't take political sides and report accurate REAL news. Use Fox News as a polar opposite.
Every single media provider who started to charge for content has lost out. New York Times is a great example. They've had to reduce prices again and again and again and still have trouble.
The second a news story is out, someone reproduces it. It's no longer about content ownership, it's who can get it out, correct and in a format people like FIRST.
Look at music... who won that one? Itunes. They got it out in a method and format faster and better than anyone. Now... admittedly there might have been better services but they didn't offer the library that itunes can. (I hate itunes before anyone passes judgment).
What the market is proving is that people have a threshold for payment on content. The majority of us it's around $10 for movies (that's when sales peak in numbers other than first release) on DVD's, for music it's around $15 for a full CD, 75 to 99 cents for an individual song... and so on. News media, it's 0. There are a small few of us that then replicate this news (to the media companies horror) to the wide audiences. The author things this will stop... and of course has no true understanding of the market.
Information is easier to share than at any other point in history. News is replicated and spread in seconds now, and people, not just the young kids, are used to it for FREE. The only way this "may" be possible is if every single news media group put up walls at the same time... AND noone found a way to bypass this. It's just not feasible.
The most impact this can possible have is a lag in news release in the hours. It's like the RIAA... it's an antiquated business model that doesn't work anymore. The times have changed so that content en masse is no longer valuable, just the content itself. Good news, strong stories... well written... that's what matters now.
Welcome to the 21st century.
In short, this is being done by a ton of really bad people on the forums. This cannot be being proposed by the upper leadership as this has all sorts of legal implications.
If you have a problem with your forums, on such a large scale... it's EASY to fix.
Step 1:
Implement a ranking system. People can give you positive or negative bumps to your posts (think karma here). The longer someone holds an active rank the more "bump" they give to people. You have to be a member of the forum for at least 1 month before you can bump at all, and then give it a progressive growth scale of the strength of their "bump". (1-6 months: 1pt, 7months to 2 years: 5pt, 2+ 10pt).
Additionally, provide some incentive for activity on the forums by offering discounts of productions/services by maintaining a high activity and in good standing at certain intervals. For example "You've been active on our forums for over 6 months with a great rank! We want to thank you for contributing to our community by offering you 25% off any of our old games... or a $5 credit on your next bill!". The overall cost to blizzard is dirt cheap.
Step 2:
Ensure that someone has to been active (logging in) to keep their rank or they start over. You can figure out that time table
Step 3:
If a user gets below a certain rank they are auto silenced. They cannot post anymore but can submit for a review of their "silencing" in case of some exploitation. This is highly unlikely since to even bump you have to be a member for quite some time.
BENEFITS
- Trolls get silenced pretty damn quick
- The community monitors itself with minimal administrative intervention
- You get certain individuals who become leaders in the community from their rank
- People feel rewarded for contributing
The more people are able to see the world through the internet the more freedom's they see everyone else has and the less control religion has on them. People are starting to think for themselves instead of being sheep. The method of control that has worked for centuries is starting to erode away. The fear mongering that was once possible is much more difficult and the result is outright violence.
This is a story of desperate people who hide behind religion as a method of control who are forced to control what people can read or see in order to retain that control. Unfortunately for them it's only a matter of time before it completely erodes.
People today want to follow those who make sense with their rule, not declare they are sent by God, or "chosen".
If you write any web application and any of the above 4 fail you fail. There is absolutely NO excuse for any application to fail due to a browser. 99% of the problems are CSS related and you doing something that isn't supported in slightly older browsers.
If you want to do the latest and greatest techniques for a system many people will use either do it in flash, or make sure your techniques work in all browsers. What you are doing should has no reason to be complex. Remember your audience, remember your users... I hate base text stuff... but flash and "neat" looking techniques are not needed in any ticketing system.
KISS - Keep it simple stupid.
My sister helps run the conservators center (www.conservatorscenter.org) of North Carolina who house 40+ lions and tigers. By accident the found out how effective it is when one of their volunteers wore it. The lions were moaning trying to rub against them through the cages. Unfortunately Axe body spray didn't think it was a good marketing item as their reply to me was "We thank you for your interest but we don't accept marketing ideas from the public".