"Now we just need a viable interstellar drive, and an energy source to power it all."
We just need an interstellar drive now. Oh, that and someone to teach that pink bunny how to pilot the ship, after all, his back is going to be plugged into the warp drive.
"We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users [...] this past Wednesday we announced our strategy to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers"
I lost faith in the current airport explosives detectors when I found out that Bondo products set them off. It was a hilarious hour or so watching a broken system thrash about trying to figure out why their machine kept beeping when there were clearly no explosives in my bag.
Did I mention that this was after a Defcon in the Las Vegas airport?
I lost what little respect I had in the system (note: Not the people you would ever see on the floor, they have been pretty OK for the most part) at that point.
Between the War On Moisture, pointless shoe removal, and a TSA that can't ever answer any question with the word 'Why' in it, I have absolutely zero faith in the system any more.
I am a frequent flier, put in over 100K miles last year and am on track to do more than that this year. If you simply go through the airports enough, you can trivially avoid any security measure there is, it isn't even a trick.
So, spray on bomb detectors? Great. So? Send the bad guys through security 25 times and you will see several obvious ways to not get it checked. Game over.
The man is so obviously bad for MS that the only thing worth doing is to keep him on. I would even go as far as to say promote him, but I don't think that is possible any more.
A man with such vision should have much more day to day control over how projects go, for the good of us all. Without Me II, I would never have moved to Ubuntu full time, and I credit Ballmer for a large part of that.
The man is a genius, and we will sing his praises for years. Keep up the good work Stevie.
No, not Jackson + Hobbit, but the unnamed sequel bit. Once Hollywood and the content mafiaa get their claws into it, I can see "Hobbit: Vengance" starring Bruce Willis. The tag line, "More explosive action than any other Middle Earth movie EVER!!!!". Shudder.
That report is so misguided. Yes, Vista _IS_ slower, but think about all you get for it! You get free popups, chunks of your data archived at MS for NO added cost or CPU time other than the base Vista install, and the assurances that your software is genuine. With XP, you probably would have trouble sleeping at night not knowing for SURE if your software is genuine, or that your config and IP data wasn't safe in the hands of security conscious redmondians.
So Vista _DOES_ run slower, but the security and peace of mind is well worth it. Were it not for the added speed, you might be a victim of software WMD or something, they are out there you know. Boo.
I wrote that before batteries going boom was the latest fashion trend. The problem is simple, you have a lot of energy in a small area and people crying out for higher densities. If _ANYTHING_ goes wrong, you have a high likelihood for a lot of energy released in a short amount of time.
Couple this with reactive/flamable substance that make up batteries, and you have a lightshow. There is no magic to it all, simple physics. Lots of energy released around reactive things, you need both for a modern battery.
Some designs minimize the risk, none remove it. As always, nothing new under the sun.
They are all in freezer #4, hanger 12 in area 51. Go to the front gate and insist that they let you in. Don't be fooled by the 'go away or we will shoot you' rhetoric, it is just a bluff.
-Charlie
It has nothing to do with content protection
on
The DRM Scorecard
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It is all about enforcing a monopolistic distribution channel, a walled garden. They are trying to get all of the pie, not just a chunk. I went into more detail here: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29161
Well everything. They should have disclosed it for starters. If you see a banner, you know it is an ad, same with those noxious google and other links, there is no question that it comes from a paid source.
The bloggers are guilty of greed and ethical lapses to the point that they should be shut down. There is no excuse for doing this, period.
MS is even more guilty for paying them to do this, knowing that it was unethical to do, it is even more unethical to support. I would go on a rant about MS and unethical behavior, but that is old hat by now.
What it comes down to in the end is that MS destroyed several bloggers in a cynical attempt to subvert the journalistic process, but I am not so sure any of the blogs could be considered journalism. Those involved knew full well what they were doing, and can't hide behind any weasel words or excuses. It is greed over ethics, pure and simple.
The people who took that money can never be trusted again, they should pack up and go home. MS isn't trusted at all, and while it is wishful thinking, I hope they will pack up and go home as well for inflicting MeII on us.
As a writer myself, I would hope my boss would fire me if I ever even brought this kind of bribery up, much less did it. I am pretty sure he would which is why I work where I do (The Inquirer FWIW).
I write for the Inq, and I have seen the whole paid for journalist thing crop up time and time again, although not at the Inq. I can say with certainty that if there was even an indication of this, anyone working for us would be thrown out so fast it would astound you.
A while back when it got particularly bad, I wrote this up: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=30 042 And if anything, things have gotten quite a bit worse. It isn't the names you might recognize as much as tge power brokers behind the scenes, usually with a good chunk of site ownership.
All of the accused will blather on about firewalls between advertising and editorial people, but it is all a crock, usually worth the recycling value of the pixels it is printed on.
I have been offered bribes, both cash and other from people, but I have _NEVER_ gotten any pressure to change a story for content, although I have had edits made so we wouldn't get our asses sued off for libel/slander/whatnot. I agreed with these in the long run.
To put things in perspective, when I was in the process of ripping HP up and down, starting here: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=11 542 I was at the last Comdex in the press room. I was sitting beside Nathan Brookwood and a CNet guy, and had written a particularly biting piece about HP/Carly (I forget which one, there were many). and I got an email from Mike Magee saying "HP wants to.....".
Needless to say, that was an asshole pucker moment. I clicked on it ready to call my lawyer next, and it read: "....advertise with us.". I wrote him back and asked if it meant that I had to tone down the stories. I forget the exact wording of the response, but summed up it was "not a chance".
Basically, there are honest editors/owners/management and dishonest ones. The dishonest ones will lean on people to do things that they know better than to do. The honest ones will leave, the dishonest ones will stay, and you quickly get a dishonest organization. (As an aside, the same holds true for companies and PR)
Let me sum this up clearly, there are a LOT of rotten sites out there, and also a lot of good ones. The rotten ones are quite good at hiding/disguising their paid for status, you probably wouldn't recognize it if you saw it. Most people throw accusations of bias around as soon as they disagree with the conclusion a site makes, usually a fanboi-ish thing. This is wrong.
Where you get a lot of the bias is things like roundups of hardware that you can not get your product into if you do not have an advertising contract with the site. Hot samples that are not purchasable being overlooked if a banner ad is running prominently on the site, and other similar things. Things are bad out there. One great one is sites selling awards to companies, you know those logos gold/diamond/three thumbs up/whatever that you see on boxes, can be bought from a number of sites. Look for reviews where you see a mediocre review with a summation of 'Three Silver Starzzz!!!' at the end, and you can be pretty sure money changed hands.
There is also the good old fashioned sending of a review with a check, but that is less common now.
Basically, be skeptical. Read every review about a new release, and look for the one that stands out. Look for reviews that say 'kick-ass overclocking part' and the forum posts saying 'I can't get anywhere near that'. These are not 100% sure signs, but keep a tally, patterns will emerge.
In the end, things are bad. If you are moderately skeptical and have an IQ greater than a warm moist towelette, you will see the patterns. You are not imagining them.
Translation: We got this mountain of PS3s that aren't selling to save our lives, and if someone in management notices, me might get fired from our cushy jobs. It is now time to blow them out the door somehow or set the warehouse on fire.
This problem is robbing the studio execs of coke and Porsche money, how will they buy their kids a new yacht at this rate of sales? The problem is obviously piracy, so we need to ratchet up the screws on DRM and pass some new laws to make not buying enough discs a crime. 7 a day should be enough for the average person, and off to jail if they don't (1).
You guys don't get it. Hopefully MS will buy doubleclick and make them THE source for all MS based adds. Instead of the boring old flash, or worse yet, non-interactive dull jpegs, you can now get ads enhanced with all sorts of advanced features. Instead of plain old JPEGs, you can see the glory of the new MS format. You can protect your video ads so they will only play in WiMP11 with DRM user enhancements. Flash? Yestertech, MS has their newer better version.
This will be absolute nirvana! Why? Because they sure as hell won't put out those bullshit DRM infected formats for linux, and I will never have to see their ads again. I won't even have to install a plugin to avoid them. Oh happy day.
Slashdot Mirror
"Now we just need a viable interstellar drive, and an energy source to power it all."
We just need an interstellar drive now. Oh, that and someone to teach that pink bunny how to pilot the ship, after all, his back is going to be plugged into the warp drive.
-Charlie
I did. Wow, reading /. you learn something new about yourself every day. Can you tell me anything else about me I didn't know?
-Charlie
"We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users [...] this past Wednesday we announced our strategy to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers"
:)
Why is users in "Live Search Users" pleural?
-Charlie
I lost faith in the current airport explosives detectors when I found out that Bondo products set them off. It was a hilarious hour or so watching a broken system thrash about trying to figure out why their machine kept beeping when there were clearly no explosives in my bag.
Did I mention that this was after a Defcon in the Las Vegas airport?
I lost what little respect I had in the system (note: Not the people you would ever see on the floor, they have been pretty OK for the most part) at that point.
Between the War On Moisture, pointless shoe removal, and a TSA that can't ever answer any question with the word 'Why' in it, I have absolutely zero faith in the system any more.
I am a frequent flier, put in over 100K miles last year and am on track to do more than that this year. If you simply go through the airports enough, you can trivially avoid any security measure there is, it isn't even a trick.
So, spray on bomb detectors? Great. So? Send the bad guys through security 25 times and you will see several obvious ways to not get it checked. Game over.
-Charlie
The man is so obviously bad for MS that the only thing worth doing is to keep him on. I would even go as far as to say promote him, but I don't think that is possible any more.
A man with such vision should have much more day to day control over how projects go, for the good of us all. Without Me II, I would never have moved to Ubuntu full time, and I credit Ballmer for a large part of that.
The man is a genius, and we will sing his praises for years. Keep up the good work Stevie.
-Charlie
Netbooks/Nettops sounds so sterile and focus grouped. How about Crotchtops?
-Charlie
Or not.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/06/07/via-mobo-is-smaller-than-a-business-card
-Charlie
No, not Jackson + Hobbit, but the unnamed sequel bit. Once Hollywood and the content mafiaa get their claws into it, I can see "Hobbit: Vengance" starring Bruce Willis. The tag line, "More explosive action than any other Middle Earth movie EVER!!!!". Shudder.
-Charlie
That report is so misguided. Yes, Vista _IS_ slower, but think about all you get for it! You get free popups, chunks of your data archived at MS for NO added cost or CPU time other than the base Vista install, and the assurances that your software is genuine. With XP, you probably would have trouble sleeping at night not knowing for SURE if your software is genuine, or that your config and IP data wasn't safe in the hands of security conscious redmondians.
So Vista _DOES_ run slower, but the security and peace of mind is well worth it. Were it not for the added speed, you might be a victim of software WMD or something, they are out there you know. Boo.
-Charlie
"Who would have thought that light could travel such a long distance?"
Who would have though the Canary Islands are that big?
-Charlie
How about disk-free?
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/10/04/vista-details-emerge
-Charlie
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2003/09/15/hp-buys--two-new-gulfstream-vs
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2003/09/20/hp-covers-up-gulfstream-buys
But sadly I can't claim this piece of genius.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2003/10/28/hps-carly-fiorina-hates-fags
-Charlie
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14417
I wrote that before batteries going boom was the latest fashion trend. The problem is simple, you have a lot of energy in a small area and people crying out for higher densities. If _ANYTHING_ goes wrong, you have a high likelihood for a lot of energy released in a short amount of time.
Couple this with reactive/flamable substance that make up batteries, and you have a lightshow. There is no magic to it all, simple physics. Lots of energy released around reactive things, you need both for a modern battery.
Some designs minimize the risk, none remove it. As always, nothing new under the sun.
-Charlie
They are all in freezer #4, hanger 12 in area 51. Go to the front gate and insist that they let you in. Don't be fooled by the 'go away or we will shoot you' rhetoric, it is just a bluff.
-Charlie
It is all about enforcing a monopolistic distribution channel, a walled garden. They are trying to get all of the pie, not just a chunk. I went into more detail here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29161
-Charlie
"What's wrong with that?"
Well everything. They should have disclosed it for starters. If you see a banner, you know it is an ad, same with those noxious google and other links, there is no question that it comes from a paid source.
The bloggers are guilty of greed and ethical lapses to the point that they should be shut down. There is no excuse for doing this, period.
MS is even more guilty for paying them to do this, knowing that it was unethical to do, it is even more unethical to support. I would go on a rant about MS and unethical behavior, but that is old hat by now.
What it comes down to in the end is that MS destroyed several bloggers in a cynical attempt to subvert the journalistic process, but I am not so sure any of the blogs could be considered journalism. Those involved knew full well what they were doing, and can't hide behind any weasel words or excuses. It is greed over ethics, pure and simple.
The people who took that money can never be trusted again, they should pack up and go home. MS isn't trusted at all, and while it is wishful thinking, I hope they will pack up and go home as well for inflicting MeII on us.
As a writer myself, I would hope my boss would fire me if I ever even brought this kind of bribery up, much less did it. I am pretty sure he would which is why I work where I do (The Inquirer FWIW).
-Charlie
I write for the Inq, and I have seen the whole paid for journalist thing crop up time and time again, although not at the Inq. I can say with certainty that if there was even an indication of this, anyone working for us would be thrown out so fast it would astound you.
0 042
1 542
A while back when it got particularly bad, I wrote this up:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3
And if anything, things have gotten quite a bit worse. It isn't the names you might recognize as much as tge power brokers behind the scenes, usually with a good chunk of site ownership.
All of the accused will blather on about firewalls between advertising and editorial people, but it is all a crock, usually worth the recycling value of the pixels it is printed on.
I have been offered bribes, both cash and other from people, but I have _NEVER_ gotten any pressure to change a story for content, although I have had edits made so we wouldn't get our asses sued off for libel/slander/whatnot. I agreed with these in the long run.
To put things in perspective, when I was in the process of ripping HP up and down, starting here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=1
I was at the last Comdex in the press room. I was sitting beside Nathan Brookwood and a CNet guy, and had written a particularly biting piece about HP/Carly (I forget which one, there were many). and I got an email from Mike Magee saying "HP wants to.....".
Needless to say, that was an asshole pucker moment. I clicked on it ready to call my lawyer next, and it read:
"....advertise with us.". I wrote him back and asked if it meant that I had to tone down the stories. I forget the exact wording of the response, but summed up it was "not a chance".
Basically, there are honest editors/owners/management and dishonest ones. The dishonest ones will lean on people to do things that they know better than to do. The honest ones will leave, the dishonest ones will stay, and you quickly get a dishonest organization. (As an aside, the same holds true for companies and PR)
Let me sum this up clearly, there are a LOT of rotten sites out there, and also a lot of good ones. The rotten ones are quite good at hiding/disguising their paid for status, you probably wouldn't recognize it if you saw it. Most people throw accusations of bias around as soon as they disagree with the conclusion a site makes, usually a fanboi-ish thing. This is wrong.
Where you get a lot of the bias is things like roundups of hardware that you can not get your product into if you do not have an advertising contract with the site. Hot samples that are not purchasable being overlooked if a banner ad is running prominently on the site, and other similar things. Things are bad out there. One great one is sites selling awards to companies, you know those logos gold/diamond/three thumbs up/whatever that you see on boxes, can be bought from a number of sites. Look for reviews where you see a mediocre review with a summation of 'Three Silver Starzzz!!!' at the end, and you can be pretty sure money changed hands.
There is also the good old fashioned sending of a review with a check, but that is less common now.
Basically, be skeptical. Read every review about a new release, and look for the one that stands out. Look for reviews that say 'kick-ass overclocking part' and the forum posts saying 'I can't get anywhere near that'. These are not 100% sure signs, but keep a tally, patterns will emerge.
In the end, things are bad. If you are moderately skeptical and have an IQ greater than a warm moist towelette, you will see the patterns. You are not imagining them.
-Charlie
Translation:
We got this mountain of PS3s that aren't selling to save our lives, and if someone in management notices, me might get fired from our cushy jobs. It is now time to blow them out the door somehow or set the warehouse on fire.
-Charlie
This problem is robbing the studio execs of coke and Porsche money, how will they buy their kids a new yacht at this rate of sales? The problem is obviously piracy, so we need to ratchet up the screws on DRM and pass some new laws to make not buying enough discs a crime. 7 a day should be enough for the average person, and off to jail if they don't (1).
-Charlie
(1) At full retail, sales don't count.
N00B: How do I get feature X to work in this chat room?
Clued in 1: Try +++ATH
N00B: Than......(N00B has left the chat)
-Charlie
You guys don't get it. Hopefully MS will buy doubleclick and make them THE source for all MS based adds. Instead of the boring old flash, or worse yet, non-interactive dull jpegs, you can now get ads enhanced with all sorts of advanced features. Instead of plain old JPEGs, you can see the glory of the new MS format. You can protect your video ads so they will only play in WiMP11 with DRM user enhancements. Flash? Yestertech, MS has their newer better version.
This will be absolute nirvana! Why? Because they sure as hell won't put out those bullshit DRM infected formats for linux, and I will never have to see their ads again. I won't even have to install a plugin to avoid them. Oh happy day.
-Charlie
Boob isn't British though, try git or wanker.
-Charlie
Does BitTorrent over 802.11x count as OTA? :)
-Charlie
(NT)
Sorry, it needed to be said.
-Charlie
(once again, sarcasm)