Exactly...those are the 'data aggregators' I mentioned...companies work with merchants and will tie customer data together on their own systems (using the card number as an indexed value) outside of the card issuers systems. They can get data from lots of sources: rebate processors, credit agencies, other retailers, and then charge each merchant a fee to provide them with marketing data. Iv'e worked with some in the past, and it is truly a big business to be able to target marketing at the POS or in the mail based on historic purchases.
Yeah, you're right. The government should be able to indiscriminately add any kind of fees and surcharges to any product they see fit, and nobody has the right to complain; we should let them raise the prices on anything they deem to be 'discretionary', and, no-sir-ee, don't let the citizens of California sit on the committee that writes the rules on what, exactly, 'discretionary' means...they'll just fuck it up and leave their favorite stuff off of the list. Greedy bastards.
I submit that LG, Starbucks, et al, can charge what the hell ever they want for their crap, but to allow that any public entity be given carte blanche to add surcharges to whatever they decide is 'discretionary' or 'frivolous' or 'premium'...? That sounds like the very definition of 'slippery slope'
Yes, highly unlikely...the magstripe doesn't store that info, so they would have to get that info from the card issuer (not Visa or Mastercard, the issuing bank) recursively. The card acquirer isn't even privy to that info unless there is a chargeback case or something where the consumer needs to be contacted. Card-issuing banks are beholden to regulations that would make most industries not even want to get out of bed in the morning and turn on the cash register; and they are extremely careful with what they do with cardholder info (lest they lose their charter with Visa/MC and have to close shop).
Also, consider it from a business standpoint: even if you can get around the regulatory stuff, the CC issuer isn't going to pass that info along for free (they would have to have frame circuits or encrypted FTP channels or some secure way to send batches of data safely from the issuer to BB and then to Samsung--and no, it's not going over the same pipes that the authorization and capture are being passed through...that's going to be a totally different environment, likely through a third party processor; then there are operational expenses, etc...nobody does this stuff for free). How much is that data really worth to Samsung? BB has to be in that loop, because the cardhlder didn't by the device from Samsung; the issuer doesn't care that it's a Samsung device, they aren't a part of that transaction chain, so the data would have to go to BB directly. And is BB going to go through the expense to do that for just Samsung? If not, are enough companies going to want this to make it worthwhile? Again, strains credulity from a business standpoint.
And even if they did have some kind of affiliate info-sharing deal with BestBuy (which, again, is highly unlikely), they aren't going to go through he expense and trouble so that you can get firmware updates for your Blu Ray player.
Samsung got that info some other way, like a rewards card application or rebate submission that BB was able to link to an address via one of the many data aggregators out there.
All credit card industry stuff aside: yes, that is indeed scary as hell. I wouldn't be happy at all.
Nope...there are quite a few companies on record who keep the same doctrine, only for mainstream Christianity...Dominos Pizza comes to mind, and I read an article in Business 2.0 last year about a manufacturing outfit who mandate morning prayers, giving thanks before lunch, etc. It seems to be protected on some level...fucking creepy, but protected.
Point taken, and conceptually I agree (I guarantee the first class-action suit for this kind of activation scheme is less than five years away when a company fails and software dies along with it), but do you ever really go back several years later and play games again? I have hoarded everything I've ever purchased over the years (Word 2.0 on 5.25", anyone?), and they're all coasters now. For me personally, that applies wholesale to music, but not software.
Case in point: my kids have three year old hand-me-down Dells, and we tried to install Myst and Nine and Seventh Guest on them for grins...fail, fail, and fail. Having the medium in-hand didn't help...I was stabbed in the face by the progression of hardware. Hell, I even tried to install Far Cry on my 1 year old HP last summer and the GT 8500 just didn't know what to do with the texture maps.
My point is: as long as they aren't installing wormish, obscure, sinister things on my computer that I haven't authorized, I'm OK with the Steam model, because it suits my needs. Steam as DRM doesn't matter to me because I play games, and then forget about them. The days when I shared games, we never really paid for them anyway. Heavy DRM is a waste of time for all three reasons: it's going to get pirated anyway, they're running the risk of becoming Streisand-ish, and as a long-term strategy, it just doesn't matter... But, bits or plastic, they'll all be worthless long after most people care.
/ D7 - G - / A7 - D - / D7 - / GG7 E7 / A7 - / DA7 D /
Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis Isn't it frightfully good to have a dong It's swell to have a stiffy It's divine to own a dick From the tiniest little tadger To the world's biggest prick
So three cheers for your willy or John Thomas Hooray for your one-eyed trouser snake Your piece of pork, your wife's best friend Your Percy or your cock You can wrap it up in ribbons You can slip it in your sock But don't take it out in public Or they will put you in the dock And you won't come back
"I'm going to pay $13/month because some satellite radio DJ creates better iPOD playlists than me? Seriously."
Yeah, that's actually a big part of paying for Sirius for me. I have just shy of 50GB of music on my computer, but I am constantly picking up on new stuff on stations that specialize in college-syle formats, alt rock, etc. I would spend more than $13 a month hunting and pecking through the piles of pre-determined major label crap that Amazon, Apple, et al are trying to shove down my throat on their sites to find some of the smaller, shinier gems.
Not to mention talk shows with good content and good sound quality, things that tend to come with having salaried talent. Guys like Bubba the Love Sponge and Jason Ellis aren't going to produce quality 4 hour daily shows for the luv or so they can promote their books or try to get traffic to a website...they have other things they could do for money that have nothing to do with keeping me entertained.
That was my thought as well...guessing one digit is OK, but guessing all nineteen is a brute force attack? How many digits can I guess before I am in violation of the DMCA?
Well, to a point...it may be a clever ("clever" here used sparingly) short-term ploy, but long-term you polarize your listening base: pro-censorship people will listen as much as they used to, and the rest will be turned off and route around the entertainment "damage area" you've created.
After spending years saying I'd never pay for radio, and after getting really, really burned out on songs being bleeped, long, annoying commercials, and limited playlists, I eventually broke down and bought a Sirius subscription.
I haven't looked back since...I can play the kid's channel for the little ones driving to school, and once they're gone I can pop over to Faction to listen to Jason Ellis talking in detail about getting his salad tossed on the beach, right before putting on the unedited version of NWA's "Automobile".
Or anything in between. Martha Stewart talks about tossing salads too, but I think she has a different method than what Ellis discusses.
Oh, that just makes me ill...but, it sounds accurate, which rocks my sick-feeling up from "ate a day-old meef quesarito" to "doing double shots of Drano and warm hobo snot on the Gravitron".
...because the FCC is chartered to not only protect the young'ns, but also to to ensure the wealthy <BEEP>-fearing voters aren't offended or have to hear any kind of dissenting opinions.
When I worked at the Egghead call center in Washington back in, I think, 1996-ish, we tried this out. It was a rough place to work at the time. The employees were miserable, management was ineffective and, at the executive level, absntee. Sales hated marketing, marketing hated tech, and everyone hated the executive team.
We used an o-o-old version of Notes (on our 16-20Mhz Macs with 1MB RAM and a RAM doubler, 2MB if you were buddies with the tech team)...our "database integrity" guys, who researched products and played games all day, came up with the idea of posting a "product of the day" blog. It worked great, and there was good discussion; management let it blossom. Then someone in the call center started posting general questions, insight, complaints, etc, and that became more popular than the product blogs. It became a carthartic thing; people would hate on the company and customers on the company-wide Notes databases. Management, of course, shut it down, which drove morale even lower. Soon, someone set up a rogue database, and the whole thing continued, albeit without managment knowing, and REALLY started ripping on the company. Four months later, which the whole company was shut down and sold to Surplus Direct (which was later bought by Amazon), and nobody was all that surprised.
So, I guess the point is: it can work, but figure out in advance what you want from it, and decide before implementation how far you'll let your users take it, or you run the risk of it blowing up in your face. You'll lose some productivity, but that's going to happen anyway, either at the water cooler or on Slashdot.
Freeman: Hi, I'm a Mac Pitt: And I'm a PC. Freeman: So, PC, what's in the box? Pitt: I dunno, something Linux gave me. Spacey: Hey guys. Go ahead and open it. Hope you like surprises.
It's been a while since I've used it, but if memory serves, this is the OS I put on my old 20G Ipod to turn it into a recording device to capture my band's marathon 6 hour jam sessions. Just put a mic in the headphone port, and away she ran...kept crashing my ipod, though, so it was a short-lived experiment. Hopefully it's more stable now.
I have the dubious honor of having the same name as a...um...minor celebrity who definitely outranks me in Google hits. NSFW: visit my domain below, but take out the "d". Then, go rinse your eyes.
Re:Based on the control room shot...
on
LHC Success!
·
· Score: 1
everything.pl >/dev/null
Re:More than scientific learning
on
LHC Success!
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Carrying a lawn gnome, no less...some skillz on that guy.
Slashdot Mirror
Attention:
Shitcock.
As you were.
Exactly...those are the 'data aggregators' I mentioned...companies work with merchants and will tie customer data together on their own systems (using the card number as an indexed value) outside of the card issuers systems. They can get data from lots of sources: rebate processors, credit agencies, other retailers, and then charge each merchant a fee to provide them with marketing data. Iv'e worked with some in the past, and it is truly a big business to be able to target marketing at the POS or in the mail based on historic purchases.
Yeah, you're right. The government should be able to indiscriminately add any kind of fees and surcharges to any product they see fit, and nobody has the right to complain; we should let them raise the prices on anything they deem to be 'discretionary', and, no-sir-ee, don't let the citizens of California sit on the committee that writes the rules on what, exactly, 'discretionary' means...they'll just fuck it up and leave their favorite stuff off of the list. Greedy bastards.
I submit that LG, Starbucks, et al, can charge what the hell ever they want for their crap, but to allow that any public entity be given carte blanche to add surcharges to whatever they decide is 'discretionary' or 'frivolous' or 'premium'...? That sounds like the very definition of 'slippery slope'
Yes, highly unlikely...the magstripe doesn't store that info, so they would have to get that info from the card issuer (not Visa or Mastercard, the issuing bank) recursively. The card acquirer isn't even privy to that info unless there is a chargeback case or something where the consumer needs to be contacted. Card-issuing banks are beholden to regulations that would make most industries not even want to get out of bed in the morning and turn on the cash register; and they are extremely careful with what they do with cardholder info (lest they lose their charter with Visa/MC and have to close shop).
Also, consider it from a business standpoint: even if you can get around the regulatory stuff, the CC issuer isn't going to pass that info along for free (they would have to have frame circuits or encrypted FTP channels or some secure way to send batches of data safely from the issuer to BB and then to Samsung--and no, it's not going over the same pipes that the authorization and capture are being passed through...that's going to be a totally different environment, likely through a third party processor; then there are operational expenses, etc...nobody does this stuff for free). How much is that data really worth to Samsung? BB has to be in that loop, because the cardhlder didn't by the device from Samsung; the issuer doesn't care that it's a Samsung device, they aren't a part of that transaction chain, so the data would have to go to BB directly. And is BB going to go through the expense to do that for just Samsung? If not, are enough companies going to want this to make it worthwhile? Again, strains credulity from a business standpoint.
And even if they did have some kind of affiliate info-sharing deal with BestBuy (which, again, is highly unlikely), they aren't going to go through he expense and trouble so that you can get firmware updates for your Blu Ray player.
Samsung got that info some other way, like a rewards card application or rebate submission that BB was able to link to an address via one of the many data aggregators out there.
All credit card industry stuff aside: yes, that is indeed scary as hell. I wouldn't be happy at all.
Flying Spaghetti Monster wags his noodle in your general direction.
Nope...there are quite a few companies on record who keep the same doctrine, only for mainstream Christianity...Dominos Pizza comes to mind, and I read an article in Business 2.0 last year about a manufacturing outfit who mandate morning prayers, giving thanks before lunch, etc. It seems to be protected on some level...fucking creepy, but protected.
Point taken, and conceptually I agree (I guarantee the first class-action suit for this kind of activation scheme is less than five years away when a company fails and software dies along with it), but do you ever really go back several years later and play games again? I have hoarded everything I've ever purchased over the years (Word 2.0 on 5.25", anyone?), and they're all coasters now. For me personally, that applies wholesale to music, but not software.
Case in point: my kids have three year old hand-me-down Dells, and we tried to install Myst and Nine and Seventh Guest on them for grins...fail, fail, and fail. Having the medium in-hand didn't help...I was stabbed in the face by the progression of hardware. Hell, I even tried to install Far Cry on my 1 year old HP last summer and the GT 8500 just didn't know what to do with the texture maps.
My point is: as long as they aren't installing wormish, obscure, sinister things on my computer that I haven't authorized, I'm OK with the Steam model, because it suits my needs. Steam as DRM doesn't matter to me because I play games, and then forget about them. The days when I shared games, we never really paid for them anyway. Heavy DRM is a waste of time for all three reasons: it's going to get pirated anyway, they're running the risk of becoming Streisand-ish, and as a long-term strategy, it just doesn't matter... But, bits or plastic, they'll all be worthless long after most people care.
Yeah, and who the hell hired that Bob Cratchit anyway...? Always bitching about overtime...bah...
(puts pinky up to corner of mouth and looks into camera #2):
You mean...yule.log...?
Mwa ha...mwa ha ha...mwah ha ha ha! MWAH HA HA HA!
Sorry, running low on caffeine...going back to my cave now.
/ D7 - G - / A7 - D - / D7 - / GG7 E7 / A7 - / DA7 D /
Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis
Isn't it frightfully good to have a dong
It's swell to have a stiffy
It's divine to own a dick
From the tiniest little tadger
To the world's biggest prick
So three cheers for your willy or John Thomas
Hooray for your one-eyed trouser snake
Your piece of pork, your wife's best friend
Your Percy or your cock
You can wrap it up in ribbons
You can slip it in your sock
But don't take it out in public
Or they will put you in the dock
And you won't come back
Looks like an interesting site...I'll check it out. Thanks
Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out...
"I'm going to pay $13/month because some satellite radio DJ creates better iPOD playlists than me? Seriously."
Yeah, that's actually a big part of paying for Sirius for me. I have just shy of 50GB of music on my computer, but I am constantly picking up on new stuff on stations that specialize in college-syle formats, alt rock, etc. I would spend more than $13 a month hunting and pecking through the piles of pre-determined major label crap that Amazon, Apple, et al are trying to shove down my throat on their sites to find some of the smaller, shinier gems.
Not to mention talk shows with good content and good sound quality, things that tend to come with having salaried talent. Guys like Bubba the Love Sponge and Jason Ellis aren't going to produce quality 4 hour daily shows for the luv or so they can promote their books or try to get traffic to a website...they have other things they could do for money that have nothing to do with keeping me entertained.
I can't think of anything positive to say about them.
I can think of one, but that's it: they have the hottest women on TV news, and Murdoch insists that they wear skirts.
That was my thought as well...guessing one digit is OK, but guessing all nineteen is a brute force attack? How many digits can I guess before I am in violation of the DMCA?
Well, to a point...it may be a clever ("clever" here used sparingly) short-term ploy, but long-term you polarize your listening base: pro-censorship people will listen as much as they used to, and the rest will be turned off and route around the entertainment "damage area" you've created.
After spending years saying I'd never pay for radio, and after getting really, really burned out on songs being bleeped, long, annoying commercials, and limited playlists, I eventually broke down and bought a Sirius subscription.
I haven't looked back since...I can play the kid's channel for the little ones driving to school, and once they're gone I can pop over to Faction to listen to Jason Ellis talking in detail about getting his salad tossed on the beach, right before putting on the unedited version of NWA's "Automobile".
Or anything in between. Martha Stewart talks about tossing salads too, but I think she has a different method than what Ellis discusses.
He was just describing Osama Bin Learjet, the cybernetic post-911 supervillain in the upcoming "Ironman II: WTF?". Haven't you heard...?
Oh, that just makes me ill...but, it sounds accurate, which rocks my sick-feeling up from "ate a day-old meef quesarito" to "doing double shots of Drano and warm hobo snot on the Gravitron".
"MY BEDPOST UP MY The above is far And she ran the numbers"
Good point...I couldn't agree more.
I, too, don't Took precedence marketing surveys to avoid so as to little-known that *BSD 0wned.
When I worked at the Egghead call center in Washington back in, I think, 1996-ish, we tried this out. It was a rough place to work at the time. The employees were miserable, management was ineffective and, at the executive level, absntee. Sales hated marketing, marketing hated tech, and everyone hated the executive team.
We used an o-o-old version of Notes (on our 16-20Mhz Macs with 1MB RAM and a RAM doubler, 2MB if you were buddies with the tech team)...our "database integrity" guys, who researched products and played games all day, came up with the idea of posting a "product of the day" blog. It worked great, and there was good discussion; management let it blossom. Then someone in the call center started posting general questions, insight, complaints, etc, and that became more popular than the product blogs. It became a carthartic thing; people would hate on the company and customers on the company-wide Notes databases. Management, of course, shut it down, which drove morale even lower. Soon, someone set up a rogue database, and the whole thing continued, albeit without managment knowing, and REALLY started ripping on the company. Four months later, which the whole company was shut down and sold to Surplus Direct (which was later bought by Amazon), and nobody was all that surprised.
So, I guess the point is: it can work, but figure out in advance what you want from it, and decide before implementation how far you'll let your users take it, or you run the risk of it blowing up in your face. You'll lose some productivity, but that's going to happen anyway, either at the water cooler or on Slashdot.
Oh, that's good...
Freeman: Hi, I'm a Mac
Pitt: And I'm a PC.
Freeman: So, PC, what's in the box?
Pitt: I dunno, something Linux gave me.
Spacey: Hey guys. Go ahead and open it. Hope you like surprises.
It's been a while since I've used it, but if memory serves, this is the OS I put on my old 20G Ipod to turn it into a recording device to capture my band's marathon 6 hour jam sessions. Just put a mic in the headphone port, and away she ran...kept crashing my ipod, though, so it was a short-lived experiment. Hopefully it's more stable now.
I have the dubious honor of having the same name as a...um...minor celebrity who definitely outranks me in Google hits. NSFW: visit my domain below, but take out the "d". Then, go rinse your eyes.
everything.pl > /dev/null
Carrying a lawn gnome, no less...some skillz on that guy.