I guess if I were in his situation and guilty, I'd have already taken out the NIC in the infringing computer, slapped it in another existing machine with the same OS, and dumped the NIC-less computer in the Mississippi river. The RIAA can't just sieze property, so there isn't much they can do. They call to allow you to settle, right? And you eventually get a court summons, right? You get lots of chances, just make sure they aren't following you and say that you got rid of evidence. Stick to your story. Don't screw up.
In this case it wouldn't help though, if he's allowed it to get to this point, and still has the same computer. I mean, if you're guilty of the copyright infringment listed in the suit, and you're going to take it to this level, the RIAA's lawyers will want to get your computer to get forensics evidence. Get rid of the damn computer! Stupid!
Why aren't they investing our tax dollars into an endowment and let congress just spend the interest? That would make a lot more sense than just borrow, borrow, borrow.
IANA accountant, but...
The current US government budget is $2.77 trillion USD. Assuming an annual return rate estimate of 15%, we would need about $18.46 trillion USD in an endowment just to keep the same. To account for an annual inflation rate of about 3.2% and to allow for a real annual growth of 4% (to account for possible bad years, rainy day funds, etc) we need to adjust our figures. Now, we need an endowment size of $35.51 trillion USD.
The latest M3 numbers (broadest level of measuring circulating currency) for the US dollar were estimated at $10.34 trillion USD. Even if we cleared our National Debt (somehow) of just under $9 trillion USD and returned that currency to circulation, we'd still be short by over $16 trillion USD. The GDP of the US is around $11.6 trillion USD. Sorry, we just don't have enough money to do it. Even doing something unthinkable like reducing the budget to 25% of its size now wouldn't work. We'd need around $8.8 trillion USD, and the damage done by taking that much out of circulation and the quick reduction in government size (thus increasing unemployment) would be devastating to our economy.
Governments use debt to control the currency from inflating out of control by issing treasury bonds and such, thus taking money out of circulation and cooling the economy. Amounts of money in those sizes are completely different than you or I getting a home mortgage or buying a car, and they have different effects. Check up on it here. I do agree that the national debt is out of control and needs to be drastically reduced, but I don't think we'll get out of it in time. The time will soon come to pay the piper, perhaps in a decade, and I fear the result will be an as yet unmatched global recession.
That isn't the same Roland. Whether or not that account is related or not, I don't know. In a previous post the user said that it was to fight the Real Roland Piquepaille. I don't care if that's the case or not. But it is this user that is the one submitting the stories. That user is called "rpiquepa".
Roland, Roland, Roland
Though those clicks are swollen
Keeps them blog ads rollin' Rawhide!
Through science, tech, and weather
Text rip'd together
Hopin' those geeks will see his site!
All the things he's gettin'
Good traffic, views, and bitchin'
He'll sign them checks will all of his might!
Sign 'em on, pick 'em up
Pick 'em up, sign 'em on
Sign 'em on, pick 'em up Rawhide!
Count 'em out, write 'em in
write 'em in, count 'em out
Count 'em out, write 'em in Rawhide!
Keep movin', movin', movin'
Though they're disapprovin'
Keep them nerds a movin' Rawhide!
Don't try to understand 'em
Just ropes 'em, links and lands 'em
Soon he'll be livin' without pride!
Those views, not abatin'
His visitors, a hatin'
Better keep that taser by his side!
Sign 'em on, pick 'em up
Pick 'em up, sign 'em on
Sign 'em on, pick 'em up Rawhide!
Count 'em out, write 'em in
write 'em in, count 'em out
Count 'em out, write 'em in Rawhide!
I agree that the post shouldn't be lost to below modded threshold, though I disagree with the points in the content of the post. I responded to them below. Posts like this one are why I browse with +5 to Troll. Aside from missing some truly funny posts that get modded Troll, the Slashdot groupthink beats down any that pose an alternate view to a popular opinion.
I have no idea if the poster was really trolling or not, but when something is modded Troll, people are less likely to respond with a thought out response, since they are "just wasting time responding to a troll". Then someone may come across it and agree with it at face value, regardless of the moderation, without hearing the other side. One of us being the "right one" is unimportant, since reality is probably somewhere in the middle. I dislike one-sided discussion; it reminds me of cheerleading.
I'm going to be cynical of your post here, troll, just FYI. There's a reason I view at +5 to Troll, and not just because some of them are funny. Someone might read your points and accept them at face value if there is no counter. Unlikely, but I will address them. Mods, give the parent +1 Underrated. A true +5 Troll is rare, and the points should be addressed, not lost below threshold.
It costs $16BN a year to keep NASA running of which $3BN is political pork, and a fair bit goes towards research which is primarily for the purposes of weapons and has nothing to do with the "quest for knowledge".
Yes, $16 billion dollars is a Big number. But the total 2007 budget for the US Government is 2.77 trillion. NASA's budget is a bit under 0.6% of the total. That is nothing. The pork contained in the budget is not just NASA's problem, but is a problem across the entire US Gov budget. Fix it there. Now, can you list the research items contained in NASA's budget that go toward the sole purpose of weapons? I need sources. Besides, you can turn anything into a weapon if you try hard enough. I can give you many examples that have helped in our "quest for knowledge" if you want them.
The ISS, which this mission supports, is falling apart after just a few years in space. It was supposed to last JUST 10 years after final assembly, and it hasn't even been fully assembled. Failures have ranged from oxygen generators to basic handtools to attitude correction gyros. The price tag was $100BN; that money largely went to our nation's (and other nation's) defense contractors, which build the majority of the hardware NASA uses.
Falling apart? Sources please. As far as I know, the ISS is not falling from the sky, but has been manned and operational (albeit with a reduced crew), and construction is now moving forward. Individual component failures are not unexpected. Space is hard. People seem to have this idea that we just pop up there every once in a while, hang around for a few weeks, and come back down. We're escaping our planet's gravity well, and building a huge complex outside of it in a harsh environment. This environment is a hard vacuum, filled with radiation, and has no gravity. It's like building a cruise ship in the middle of a choppy ocean, without a dock or support, only little boats. You're upset about some repairable component failures? As to the price tag...so what? 100 billion spread out over the project timeline isn't that much. What does it matter which companies got the contract to build it, as long as it is completed to spec? It isn't like these "defense contractors" are pure evil; they employ people that build things.
The "smoke" from the solid rocket engines contains huge amounts of hydrochloric acid.
I'll give you this one. Yes, it sucks. But in the larger picture, the damage it is doing is nothing compared to the current global levels of pollution. If there was a feasible method that involved zero pollution, I'm sure we would use it. The simple fact is, any fuel we have right now that provides enough thrust to escape the gravity of Earth will give off some pollution. We'll never be able to find cleaner alternatives if we don't do this research in the first place. This actually is rocket science. (Hey, at least we don't use an Orion Drive, which is theoretically cheap by comparison, but gives off a bunch of nuclear fallout, right?)
One in five of their classmates go hungry at home or at school because their parents can't afford to give them enough food, and the government currently spends slightly more than NASA's budget to feed 7 million children a year a decent lunch. Let's not even get started about basic supply and book shortages. We're supposedly the most powerful nation in the world, but we can't but enough [food in the stomachs / textbooks in the hands] of our children so that they can recieve a sufficient education to support themselves later in life, i
anything that takes more than 30 seconds will lose the average person's attention span
October 12th, 2006.
Steve Jobs was arrested last Monday on suspicion of flooding the black market with Ritalin in anticipation of the forthcoming holiday season. Details at 11.
The section after the "ref=" is an affiliate link. The poster gets a kick-back if you buy anything in that session.
I can't believe that I missed that! Good eye!
Though it doesn't really change the fact that I think the summary was crafted to funnel people to the link. But in this case, it wasn't a shill, just someone wanting to make some cash.
Question everything. Perhaps I just have gotten so used to bias in reporting that I expect it everywhere. I instantly switch into "What's the Angle?" mode to insulate myself from being unwittingly convinced of a particular view on an issue. If subjected to rational thought, I might have a different or completely opposite opinion. Nearly everything I read is taken with a grain of salt.
I know from the context of the medium what the target audience is, so I know what starting conditions are present. After that you just see how the various elements, facts, and opinions presented will be interpreted by the audience. What will the target audience's reaction be to a given statement be? What emotions are created or subdued by the word structure or ideas? Written content, in any language can be used in fascinating ways to agressively push an agenda, influence the reader in subtle ways, or cater to a given audience. Something didn't feel right to me when I read it, so I took it to task.
As I wrote in another post, even if I'm completely wrong and way off target in my analysis, the fact still stands that the company got some fantastic PR and advertising.
The poster's inability to spell is fairly minor and actually irrelevant. If there was no intent behind it, the rest stands. I never said that the submitter actually was a shill, just that the person might be one.
Look at the submitter's posting history. It doesn't seem to match up with a "kid" mentality. Generally well informed, but no posts since January 2004? What brought on actually making an article submission? The user name does pop up on a couple other forums; motorcycle.com(0 posts) and 2CPU.com(3 posts), but no additional info can be gathered there. So we look back at the slashdot post history for comparison.
Look at this post. Look at this one. They are both modded Insightful or Informative. You're the one that said:
it is clear from the last word of the post, that it is some kid.
Would you have made the same assumption of the user if you had only seen those posts? I'm not taking issue whether or not the user is a kid. The person could be a bright 10 year old boy or a 70 year old woman, for all we know as fact. I myself assumed that the submitter was a male in a few of my posts, despite the fact that we have zero evidence of it. One of andrewl6097's other posts does use the "it's cool" element in it, referring to IPv6, so it may just be a favorite word. Your assumption that the submitter is a kid may also be part of the submission's aim. As people age, they wish to be young again, at least at heart. It is this wish that drives trends, most obviously in the fashion industry. If the allegedly young submitter is enamored of the service, it may drive others to emulate.
I don't take issue with every slashdot submission, but something about this one just seemed off. So I took it to task. Even if I'm completely wrong and way off target, the fact still stands that the company got some fantastic PR and advertising.
Sadly many submitters seem to rush to regurgitate press releases, only adding their own spelling mistakes, so Amazon and such don't need to conspire to get their Slashvertisements.
True. So maybe I wasn't bashing the submitter, but rather the Amazon-employed original author. That person might still be a shill.
What's ironic is that in my rush to post, I made the same stupid mistake as the submitter! Though I'd think that such submitter zealotry would employ Cut and Paste more often to avoid those pesky errors in an article submission. Assuming the source is a Press Release.
this 'locking to one machine' system is completely bass-ackwards and a non-starter...
Yeah, my DVDs aren't tied to a single DVD player (not that They don't wish it were so). Why should downloaded movies be different, especially when they cost nearly the same?
I think people have gotten too used to the portability of radios, LPs, MD players, cassettes, CDs, mp3 players, DVDs, magazines, books, soft drinks, and other smallish physical objects for there to be much traction on such a restrictive system.
slashdot is now running accolades for DRM crippled movie downloads? uncool!
The submitter might be a shill. Seems way too obvious in the cheerleading aspect, at least to me. Shall we break down the summary?
"Amazon.com has launched it's Amazon Unbox video store."
Good, if obvious, lead sentence here. It makes sure that the company name is repeated twice, and by using the word "it's" we may get a slight feeling that of "it's amazing" before we read the rest of the product, even if the thought is just subconscious. Interesting, if perhaps unintentional usage of the incorrect "it's" instead of the correct "its", we also may get the feeling doubly reinforced again with the uncontracted "it is amazing".
"Looks like about 1300 movies and 350 tv series, at $9.99 and up for movies and $1.99 per TV episode."
Here we see the information about the service and products, including numbers and prices. This is obviously something that will be brought up in the discussion below, but by introducing the readers to it in the summary, the submitter can keep the content tied to the positive aspects conveyed in the summary. This is in contrast to reading about it below where it is coupled with Slashdot users' negative responses to selection and pricing. No control over those comments, but the initial impression is made.
"Downloads come with a DVD quality version and a version more appropriate for portable players"
Again, more information about the service. Sentence structure gives us the words "quality" and "appropriate", which are rather neutral terms, but may make a positive subconscious impression on the readers. The mentioning of the generic "portable players" does not exclude any type of device on name alone, so it will not alienate potential customers.
"(using Windows DRM)."
Then we come to the most interesting part. By qualifying the "portable players" statement with the phrase "(using Windows DRM)", the submitter may actually gain a small measure of trust from us readers. It is likely based on the demographics of the users of Slashdot. As generally informed people, Slashdot users dislike DRM for both it's technical and philisophical nature. By using parentheses, the submitter seems to be imparting information that is somehow cloaked or not for general public knowledge, like a whispered secret. With these two concepts, we may actually trust the submitter more than we would a normal submission.
"Also, videos can be re-downloaded from your Amazon media library."
Here we get a bit more info on the service itself and another placement of the company name and additional product. We are still possibly affected by the subconscious trust level, so we may have an abnormally positive response to this information. Such as a "Great feature!" reaction instead of an "I should hope so!" reaction.
"Cool!"
This final statement, while seemingly out of place, may be accepted simply because the summary has been crafted to elicit a positive reponse and we may find ourselves in agreement, though there is nothing that special about this company's service. It does have the potential to backfire when the target audience is quick enough that they can pick out the strange concepts, as the other posts already show.
Overall, it's designed to give a positive spin and impression to the service, which will hopefully drive more click-throughs to the site. I've seen plenty of links to the iTunes store, but never went there. I clicked on this link, and I don't even plan to buy anything. I didn't buy anything, but I guess it worked on me to at least go there and check it out.
I'm trying to outsource your jobs. However, I don't know all that I need to know. Would you mind providing free training in your spare time for your replacement?
I think he should insert two, four, or even eight hops in between his network and the ISP. Actually, maybe it should just be 60 extra hops, since we all know that if you exceed your TTL (stands for "Takes Too Long"), most ISPs will increase your bandwidth to compensate anyway. Go ahead, string up those routers!
Assuming it's costs $1.00/pg, you would need this to last at least 16 iterations, on average, to make it worth your investment.
Or, you don't use it as a replacement for all of your paper, but as a compliment. Imagine, for a moment, if this paper occupies one of the trays on the office printer, and your print server software knows about it. Maybe you have certain sensitive emails or other documents that are cleared for short-term print, but not to be in print forever. Have your email software, office suite, or whatever be forced to use that tray for those types of documents. Then it becomes more of a CYA thing to avoid potential costs due to the release of information in the future.
Of course, I can think of at least a dozen ways to bypass that, but it's another possible use for this tech.
Then again, it could have been a huge effort, where developers weren't allowed to go home, use the telephones, or even use the bathroom, until it was fixed.
Yeah, I hear with those new colostomy bags they get an additional man-week per year out of each developer.
I don't have a DVD burner even now. My backups are to hard disk, and if I need to go portable, I throw it on my 20GB iRiver. Why buy into it if I won't use it? All this HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/HDCP nonsense is just pointless for me.
Maybe I'll get one of these drives later, if both formats don't fail, and when they are releasing content for it. But at that point I'll just be ripping it anyway; all the winning format would be is a vector for content distribution, not a medium that I play from. And with ripping tools, HDCP-enabled hardware may not matter, since I won't be playing the content in the DRM-laden form, but on a HTPC/XBMC type device streamed from a storage server.
Other commonly accepted complaints include that someone who is harassing you is tracing you through your SSN, sequential numbers were assigned to family members, or there was a serious impact on your credit history that you've tried to clear up without success.
In all cases, the process includes an in-person interview at which you have to establish your identity and show that you are the original assignee of the number. The decision is normally made in the local office. If the problem is with a credit bureau's records, you have to show that someone else continues to use your number, and that you tried to get the credit bureau to fix your records but were not successful. When they do issue a new number, the new records are linked to the old ones.
So basically, they won't issue a new number unless credit bureaus don't fix the problems. If your identity continues to be stolen, and you are forced to keep getting the problems fixed for the rest of your life, you have no recourse. Spectacular.
And, unlike child pornographers and murderers, who tend to be insensitive to the potential penalties, companies really do respond to penalties that hurt the bottom line.
Exactly. We need a few rounds of truly hard-core lawsuits to smack these companies into line.
It isn't like your info can just be used once. It's permanent damaage that has been done. Do you get a new SSN? No. Do you get a new mother's maiden name? No. A new birth date? Obviously not. Credit cards and bank accounts can be closed, but with that information released, you have been done irreversable damage. Any schmuck identity thief can now steal your identity. These stupid companies always offer "a year of credit reporting services" to the victims, but does that really matter? Compared to the other problems that could arise, that's nothing.
The loss of the info to parties that have an interest in misusing that data, to your detriment. Damage to credit, damage to net worth, loss of peace of mind, time spent fixing problems. And this could last the rest of your life. IANAL, but here's what I figure the compensation could be:
$250,000 for each individuals' data loss
Free credit reporting service for life
The company must keep the credit reporting service active individually monitored on their own dime - they can't just reimburse you and have you keep up on it yourself. You could delegate this to someone else or to yourself if you want to be rid of the company altogether, but you would be compensated additionally for the expense of a personal credit reporting service manager. If the victim took this route, they would absolve the company from further responsibility.
Let's see, Equifax loses a computer with 2,500 individuals' personal info. That's $625 million in damages up front for the data loss. Probably another 10 people they will need to pay for another 60 years (or so) until the customers cease to exist, which we might estimate at (8 cogs @ 35,000 + 2 managers @ 50,000) x 60 years. That's another $22.8 million. Almost $650 million.
AT&T loses 19,000 customers worth of data? $4.75 billion in initial damages, and another $173 million in staff. Nearly $5 billion in the end.
Think they'd lock that info up tight then? Or would they just hush it up and try to get away with it without anyone knowing?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, well, Everybody Loves Ray.
I guess if I were in his situation and guilty, I'd have already taken out the NIC in the infringing computer, slapped it in another existing machine with the same OS, and dumped the NIC-less computer in the Mississippi river. The RIAA can't just sieze property, so there isn't much they can do. They call to allow you to settle, right? And you eventually get a court summons, right? You get lots of chances, just make sure they aren't following you and say that you got rid of evidence. Stick to your story. Don't screw up.
In this case it wouldn't help though, if he's allowed it to get to this point, and still has the same computer. I mean, if you're guilty of the copyright infringment listed in the suit, and you're going to take it to this level, the RIAA's lawyers will want to get your computer to get forensics evidence. Get rid of the damn computer! Stupid!
Why aren't they investing our tax dollars into an endowment and let congress just spend the interest? That would make a lot more sense than just borrow, borrow, borrow.
IANA accountant, but...
The current US government budget is $2.77 trillion USD. Assuming an annual return rate estimate of 15%, we would need about $18.46 trillion USD in an endowment just to keep the same. To account for an annual inflation rate of about 3.2% and to allow for a real annual growth of 4% (to account for possible bad years, rainy day funds, etc) we need to adjust our figures. Now, we need an endowment size of $35.51 trillion USD.
The latest M3 numbers (broadest level of measuring circulating currency) for the US dollar were estimated at $10.34 trillion USD. Even if we cleared our National Debt (somehow) of just under $9 trillion USD and returned that currency to circulation, we'd still be short by over $16 trillion USD. The GDP of the US is around $11.6 trillion USD. Sorry, we just don't have enough money to do it. Even doing something unthinkable like reducing the budget to 25% of its size now wouldn't work. We'd need around $8.8 trillion USD, and the damage done by taking that much out of circulation and the quick reduction in government size (thus increasing unemployment) would be devastating to our economy.
Governments use debt to control the currency from inflating out of control by issing treasury bonds and such, thus taking money out of circulation and cooling the economy. Amounts of money in those sizes are completely different than you or I getting a home mortgage or buying a car, and they have different effects. Check up on it here. I do agree that the national debt is out of control and needs to be drastically reduced, but I don't think we'll get out of it in time. The time will soon come to pay the piper, perhaps in a decade, and I fear the result will be an as yet unmatched global recession.
I hope I'm wrong.
That isn't the same Roland. Whether or not that account is related or not, I don't know. In a previous post the user said that it was to fight the Real Roland Piquepaille. I don't care if that's the case or not. But it is this user that is the one submitting the stories. That user is called "rpiquepa".
With apologies to Frankie Laine...
Roland, Roland, Roland
Though those clicks are swollen
Keeps them blog ads rollin'
Rawhide!
Through science, tech, and weather
Text rip'd together
Hopin' those geeks will see his site!
All the things he's gettin'
Good traffic, views, and bitchin'
He'll sign them checks will all of his might!
Sign 'em on, pick 'em up
Pick 'em up, sign 'em on
Sign 'em on, pick 'em up
Rawhide!
Count 'em out, write 'em in
write 'em in, count 'em out
Count 'em out, write 'em in
Rawhide!
Keep movin', movin', movin'
Though they're disapprovin'
Keep them nerds a movin'
Rawhide!
Don't try to understand 'em
Just ropes 'em, links and lands 'em
Soon he'll be livin' without pride!
Those views, not abatin'
His visitors, a hatin'
Better keep that taser by his side!
Sign 'em on, pick 'em up
Pick 'em up, sign 'em on
Sign 'em on, pick 'em up
Rawhide!
Count 'em out, write 'em in
write 'em in, count 'em out
Count 'em out, write 'em in
Rawhide!
Roland, Roland, Roland
Roland, Roland, Roland
Rawhide!
Rawhide!
I agree that the post shouldn't be lost to below modded threshold, though I disagree with the points in the content of the post. I responded to them below. Posts like this one are why I browse with +5 to Troll. Aside from missing some truly funny posts that get modded Troll, the Slashdot groupthink beats down any that pose an alternate view to a popular opinion.
I have no idea if the poster was really trolling or not, but when something is modded Troll, people are less likely to respond with a thought out response, since they are "just wasting time responding to a troll". Then someone may come across it and agree with it at face value, regardless of the moderation, without hearing the other side. One of us being the "right one" is unimportant, since reality is probably somewhere in the middle. I dislike one-sided discussion; it reminds me of cheerleading.
I'm going to be cynical of your post here, troll, just FYI. There's a reason I view at +5 to Troll, and not just because some of them are funny. Someone might read your points and accept them at face value if there is no counter. Unlikely, but I will address them. Mods, give the parent +1 Underrated. A true +5 Troll is rare, and the points should be addressed, not lost below threshold.
It costs $16BN a year to keep NASA running of which $3BN is political pork, and a fair bit goes towards research which is primarily for the purposes of weapons and has nothing to do with the "quest for knowledge".
Yes, $16 billion dollars is a Big number. But the total 2007 budget for the US Government is 2.77 trillion. NASA's budget is a bit under 0.6% of the total. That is nothing. The pork contained in the budget is not just NASA's problem, but is a problem across the entire US Gov budget. Fix it there. Now, can you list the research items contained in NASA's budget that go toward the sole purpose of weapons? I need sources. Besides, you can turn anything into a weapon if you try hard enough. I can give you many examples that have helped in our "quest for knowledge" if you want them.
The ISS, which this mission supports, is falling apart after just a few years in space. It was supposed to last JUST 10 years after final assembly, and it hasn't even been fully assembled. Failures have ranged from oxygen generators to basic handtools to attitude correction gyros. The price tag was $100BN; that money largely went to our nation's (and other nation's) defense contractors, which build the majority of the hardware NASA uses.
Falling apart? Sources please. As far as I know, the ISS is not falling from the sky, but has been manned and operational (albeit with a reduced crew), and construction is now moving forward. Individual component failures are not unexpected. Space is hard. People seem to have this idea that we just pop up there every once in a while, hang around for a few weeks, and come back down. We're escaping our planet's gravity well, and building a huge complex outside of it in a harsh environment. This environment is a hard vacuum, filled with radiation, and has no gravity. It's like building a cruise ship in the middle of a choppy ocean, without a dock or support, only little boats. You're upset about some repairable component failures? As to the price tag...so what? 100 billion spread out over the project timeline isn't that much. What does it matter which companies got the contract to build it, as long as it is completed to spec? It isn't like these "defense contractors" are pure evil; they employ people that build things.
The "smoke" from the solid rocket engines contains huge amounts of hydrochloric acid.
I'll give you this one. Yes, it sucks. But in the larger picture, the damage it is doing is nothing compared to the current global levels of pollution. If there was a feasible method that involved zero pollution, I'm sure we would use it. The simple fact is, any fuel we have right now that provides enough thrust to escape the gravity of Earth will give off some pollution. We'll never be able to find cleaner alternatives if we don't do this research in the first place. This actually is rocket science. (Hey, at least we don't use an Orion Drive, which is theoretically cheap by comparison, but gives off a bunch of nuclear fallout, right?)
One in five of their classmates go hungry at home or at school because their parents can't afford to give them enough food, and the government currently spends slightly more than NASA's budget to feed 7 million children a year a decent lunch. Let's not even get started about basic supply and book shortages. We're supposedly the most powerful nation in the world, but we can't but enough [food in the stomachs / textbooks in the hands] of our children so that they can recieve a sufficient education to support themselves later in life, i
anything that takes more than 30 seconds will lose the average person's attention span
October 12th, 2006.
Steve Jobs was arrested last Monday on suspicion of flooding the black market with Ritalin in anticipation of the forthcoming holiday season. Details at 11.
The section after the "ref=" is an affiliate link. The poster gets a kick-back if you buy anything in that session.
I can't believe that I missed that! Good eye!
Though it doesn't really change the fact that I think the summary was crafted to funnel people to the link. But in this case, it wasn't a shill, just someone wanting to make some cash.
Question everything. Perhaps I just have gotten so used to bias in reporting that I expect it everywhere. I instantly switch into "What's the Angle?" mode to insulate myself from being unwittingly convinced of a particular view on an issue. If subjected to rational thought, I might have a different or completely opposite opinion. Nearly everything I read is taken with a grain of salt.
I know from the context of the medium what the target audience is, so I know what starting conditions are present. After that you just see how the various elements, facts, and opinions presented will be interpreted by the audience. What will the target audience's reaction be to a given statement be? What emotions are created or subdued by the word structure or ideas? Written content, in any language can be used in fascinating ways to agressively push an agenda, influence the reader in subtle ways, or cater to a given audience. Something didn't feel right to me when I read it, so I took it to task.
As I wrote in another post, even if I'm completely wrong and way off target in my analysis, the fact still stands that the company got some fantastic PR and advertising.
The poster's inability to spell is fairly minor and actually irrelevant. If there was no intent behind it, the rest stands. I never said that the submitter actually was a shill, just that the person might be one.
Look at the submitter's posting history. It doesn't seem to match up with a "kid" mentality. Generally well informed, but no posts since January 2004? What brought on actually making an article submission? The user name does pop up on a couple other forums; motorcycle.com(0 posts) and 2CPU.com(3 posts), but no additional info can be gathered there. So we look back at the slashdot post history for comparison.
Look at this post. Look at this one. They are both modded Insightful or Informative. You're the one that said:
it is clear from the last word of the post, that it is some kid.
Would you have made the same assumption of the user if you had only seen those posts? I'm not taking issue whether or not the user is a kid. The person could be a bright 10 year old boy or a 70 year old woman, for all we know as fact. I myself assumed that the submitter was a male in a few of my posts, despite the fact that we have zero evidence of it. One of andrewl6097's other posts does use the "it's cool" element in it, referring to IPv6, so it may just be a favorite word. Your assumption that the submitter is a kid may also be part of the submission's aim. As people age, they wish to be young again, at least at heart. It is this wish that drives trends, most obviously in the fashion industry. If the allegedly young submitter is enamored of the service, it may drive others to emulate.
I don't take issue with every slashdot submission, but something about this one just seemed off. So I took it to task. Even if I'm completely wrong and way off target, the fact still stands that the company got some fantastic PR and advertising.
Kwisatz Haderach!
I was halfway thinking that, but it seems rather vain and a bit blasphemous to give oneself messianic title, even if it is fictional.
Sadly many submitters seem to rush to regurgitate press releases, only adding their own spelling mistakes, so Amazon and such don't need to conspire to get their Slashvertisements.
True. So maybe I wasn't bashing the submitter, but rather the Amazon-employed original author. That person might still be a shill.
What's ironic is that in my rush to post, I made the same stupid mistake as the submitter! Though I'd think that such submitter zealotry would employ Cut and Paste more often to avoid those pesky errors in an article submission. Assuming the source is a Press Release.
Yes, yes, you pointed out my egregious typo and horribly confusing sentence structure. Have a cookie.
It's a slashdot post, not a thesis paper. I'll post the corrected version in my blog. Happy?
On one hand, the Tleilaxu are a little dark for my taste, and certain aspects of my own ideology line up more with the later Bene Gesserit.
On the other hand, I'm a guy.
You see my predicament? I'm rather torn.
this 'locking to one machine' system is completely bass-ackwards and a non-starter...
Yeah, my DVDs aren't tied to a single DVD player (not that They don't wish it were so). Why should downloaded movies be different, especially when they cost nearly the same?
I think people have gotten too used to the portability of radios, LPs, MD players, cassettes, CDs, mp3 players, DVDs, magazines, books, soft drinks, and other smallish physical objects for there to be much traction on such a restrictive system.
slashdot is now running accolades for DRM crippled movie downloads? uncool!
The submitter might be a shill. Seems way too obvious in the cheerleading aspect, at least to me. Shall we break down the summary?
"Amazon.com has launched it's Amazon Unbox video store."
Good, if obvious, lead sentence here. It makes sure that the company name is repeated twice, and by using the word "it's" we may get a slight feeling that of "it's amazing" before we read the rest of the product, even if the thought is just subconscious. Interesting, if perhaps unintentional usage of the incorrect "it's" instead of the correct "its", we also may get the feeling doubly reinforced again with the uncontracted "it is amazing".
"Looks like about 1300 movies and 350 tv series, at $9.99 and up for movies and $1.99 per TV episode."
Here we see the information about the service and products, including numbers and prices. This is obviously something that will be brought up in the discussion below, but by introducing the readers to it in the summary, the submitter can keep the content tied to the positive aspects conveyed in the summary. This is in contrast to reading about it below where it is coupled with Slashdot users' negative responses to selection and pricing. No control over those comments, but the initial impression is made.
"Downloads come with a DVD quality version and a version more appropriate for portable players"
Again, more information about the service. Sentence structure gives us the words "quality" and "appropriate", which are rather neutral terms, but may make a positive subconscious impression on the readers. The mentioning of the generic "portable players" does not exclude any type of device on name alone, so it will not alienate potential customers.
"(using Windows DRM)."
Then we come to the most interesting part. By qualifying the "portable players" statement with the phrase "(using Windows DRM)", the submitter may actually gain a small measure of trust from us readers. It is likely based on the demographics of the users of Slashdot. As generally informed people, Slashdot users dislike DRM for both it's technical and philisophical nature. By using parentheses, the submitter seems to be imparting information that is somehow cloaked or not for general public knowledge, like a whispered secret. With these two concepts, we may actually trust the submitter more than we would a normal submission.
"Also, videos can be re-downloaded from your Amazon media library."
Here we get a bit more info on the service itself and another placement of the company name and additional product. We are still possibly affected by the subconscious trust level, so we may have an abnormally positive response to this information. Such as a "Great feature!" reaction instead of an "I should hope so!" reaction.
"Cool!"
This final statement, while seemingly out of place, may be accepted simply because the summary has been crafted to elicit a positive reponse and we may find ourselves in agreement, though there is nothing that special about this company's service. It does have the potential to backfire when the target audience is quick enough that they can pick out the strange concepts, as the other posts already show.
Overall, it's designed to give a positive spin and impression to the service, which will hopefully drive more click-throughs to the site. I've seen plenty of links to the iTunes store, but never went there. I clicked on this link, and I don't even plan to buy anything. I didn't buy anything, but I guess it worked on me to at least go there and check it out.
I'm currently for hire.
It's hard to use a scroll mouse when you're using a tablet in the field. Part of the whole point of having a stylus is to not use a mouse.
16 hours to get to a Kinko's! What ever will I do?
I'm trying to outsource your jobs. However, I don't know all that I need to know. Would you mind providing free training in your spare time for your replacement?
I think he should insert two, four, or even eight hops in between his network and the ISP. Actually, maybe it should just be 60 extra hops, since we all know that if you exceed your TTL (stands for "Takes Too Long"), most ISPs will increase your bandwidth to compensate anyway. Go ahead, string up those routers!
Assuming it's costs $1.00/pg, you would need this to last at least 16 iterations, on average, to make it worth your investment.
Or, you don't use it as a replacement for all of your paper, but as a compliment. Imagine, for a moment, if this paper occupies one of the trays on the office printer, and your print server software knows about it. Maybe you have certain sensitive emails or other documents that are cleared for short-term print, but not to be in print forever. Have your email software, office suite, or whatever be forced to use that tray for those types of documents. Then it becomes more of a CYA thing to avoid potential costs due to the release of information in the future.
Of course, I can think of at least a dozen ways to bypass that, but it's another possible use for this tech.
Then again, it could have been a huge effort, where developers weren't allowed to go home, use the telephones, or even use the bathroom, until it was fixed.
Yeah, I hear with those new colostomy bags they get an additional man-week per year out of each developer.
I don't have a DVD burner even now. My backups are to hard disk, and if I need to go portable, I throw it on my 20GB iRiver. Why buy into it if I won't use it? All this HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/HDCP nonsense is just pointless for me.
Maybe I'll get one of these drives later, if both formats don't fail, and when they are releasing content for it. But at that point I'll just be ripping it anyway; all the winning format would be is a vector for content distribution, not a medium that I play from. And with ripping tools, HDCP-enabled hardware may not matter, since I won't be playing the content in the DRM-laden form, but on a HTPC/XBMC type device streamed from a storage server.
Can you just get one though? It isn't like you can write up the SSA and request it.
From here:
Other commonly accepted complaints include that someone who is harassing you is tracing you through your SSN, sequential numbers were assigned to family members, or there was a serious impact on your credit history that you've tried to clear up without success.
In all cases, the process includes an in-person interview at which you have to establish your identity and show that you are the original assignee of the number. The decision is normally made in the local office. If the problem is with a credit bureau's records, you have to show that someone else continues to use your number, and that you tried to get the credit bureau to fix your records but were not successful. When they do issue a new number, the new records are linked to the old ones.
So basically, they won't issue a new number unless credit bureaus don't fix the problems. If your identity continues to be stolen, and you are forced to keep getting the problems fixed for the rest of your life, you have no recourse. Spectacular.
And, unlike child pornographers and murderers, who tend to be insensitive to the potential penalties, companies really do respond to penalties that hurt the bottom line.
Exactly. We need a few rounds of truly hard-core lawsuits to smack these companies into line.
It isn't like your info can just be used once. It's permanent damaage that has been done. Do you get a new SSN? No. Do you get a new mother's maiden name? No. A new birth date? Obviously not. Credit cards and bank accounts can be closed, but with that information released, you have been done irreversable damage. Any schmuck identity thief can now steal your identity. These stupid companies always offer "a year of credit reporting services" to the victims, but does that really matter? Compared to the other problems that could arise, that's nothing.
The loss of the info to parties that have an interest in misusing that data, to your detriment. Damage to credit, damage to net worth, loss of peace of mind, time spent fixing problems. And this could last the rest of your life. IANAL, but here's what I figure the compensation could be:
Let's see, Equifax loses a computer with 2,500 individuals' personal info. That's $625 million in damages up front for the data loss. Probably another 10 people they will need to pay for another 60 years (or so) until the customers cease to exist, which we might estimate at (8 cogs @ 35,000 + 2 managers @ 50,000) x 60 years. That's another $22.8 million. Almost $650 million.
AT&T loses 19,000 customers worth of data? $4.75 billion in initial damages, and another $173 million in staff. Nearly $5 billion in the end.
Think they'd lock that info up tight then? Or would they just hush it up and try to get away with it without anyone knowing?