I'm a fan of your heartwarming tales, but this wasn't as good as some of your past work. My favorite is still the one where you get cancer and start abusing your daughter. Please, persevere on your fight, whatever it may be. Your fans have faith, and we are legion.
KDE 4.7.4 here. I use $menu+key>utor->down arrow->enter. Works and is a lot faster for me. Have they removed that functionality in 4.8 or are you using an older version?
Advertising is about manipulation and deception, and anytime accurate or relevant information has been imparted, it is only a consequence of law, and the minimum amount possible.
That's the whole reason we're even arguing right there. Advertising, in its purest form, is simply making people aware of what you're offering. That's the concept. What you describe is a con. Which is how the vast majority of ads is presented to us today. Mostly because it works. However, there's huge subset of people who dislike and don't fall for that crap and would be more inclined to buy things when they are objectively presented. For me, say, a good cell phone ad would be simply a spec sheet. So for people like me that's what they should serve, and in that sense targeted advertising would make it actually work as a service, not a burden. Even for someone like you, they could send offers of greatly priced earplugs and blindfolds for when you have to go out.
As for your rationale that you're winning, I can't really follow. You seem to think that, somehow, the advertising industry is keeping a score or something. They are the ones not playing, here. Not with you. You're just collateral. You know what I think is missing in your life, dude? MyCleanPC! Filter all kinds of unwanted troubles with MyCleanPC! Take control of your life! MyCleanPC will help you avoid and kill advertisers on the interwebz. MyCleanPC: For a better, easier tomorrow.
No, actually it isn't. What I'm talking about is the opportunity to turn "an affront to an advanced and intellectual society" into something actually informative. For me, the ideal advertisement is just like a tech site. Like Slashdot, for example. I learned about the Raspberry Pi here, and that's a product I'm interested in. Ideally, you'd only see advertising that you actually wanted to. And there are many that you do want to see, unless you make no monetary transactions whatsoever. I'd be interested in learning about places that offer organic vegetables nearby. I like to know which tech gizmos are being launched. Why should I shun out ads completely? Their current form is the problem. They are intrusive because they are competing with every other ad in existence, and stupid because they have little time to do so and people are plain uninterested in them (mainly because they are instrusive and stupid). I'll say it again: they can be made into something actually helpful. The fact that a lot of people can't see it says a lot about the low they have reached.
Never give up. Never surrender. Plenty of options.. including the best move... not to play.
Again: we shouldn't be declaring war on advertising. Not even in a metaphor. It's nonsensical and infeasible. Unless they simply die from continued bad of ROI due to lack of interest from the general public, you'll be fighting a useless fight. That isn't fighting, by the way, in any way, shape or form. It's just shunning out things that annoy you. Using an ad blocker, not listening to the radio, getting grumpy when you see an outdoor etc. is hardly taking arms against a sea of troubles. Actively working to make ads either better or obsolete could perhaps be viewed as a struggle of some sort, but what you're doing is more akin to a spoiled kid shutting his eyes, plugging his ears and screaming.
Well, as long as you're going to be shown ads, you might as well filter them, so you can get only the more interesting ones. While it sucks that marketers will have too much data about you, maybe then smart buyers can be treated to smart advertising, something that cannot exist in a world where ads are shown to everyone and must therefore cater to the lowest common denominator.
Some things I would not like to see anymore: perfume commercials. They are incredibly dumb. You cannot convey a sense of smell in an audiovisual medium, so your TV spot can't have relevant information about your product. Also, car commercials. They focus mainly on prettiness. I want stats. Yes, sometimes they tell you how much hp it has, but so what? What about the torque? How soon is it available, in terms of rpm? And beer ads. Oh, I could keep going all day.
Bottom line is I don't think it's that terrible. Not for ads, mind you. There's a plethora of ways in which this nifty idea can be incredibly abused. I'm thinking mostly information filtering and DRM.
Yeah. This seems like a very expensive, roundabout, complicated and technological way of creating something that's significantly worse than waving a padded stick at a similarly equipped friend. For once I agree that kids should just "get out more" (as long as they don't come play on my lawn).
I found both Kubuntu and Fedora to be incredibly bug-ridden. In my experience, the best KDE-based distros today are Arch and Debian. So I'd suggest Arch, since Debian probably won't have KDE 4.9 until 2013 or so (they just upgraded unstable/testing to 4.7 and I think 4.8 has is entering the experimental branch).
I don't want the "bad guys" to be better off. I want them to fear for their life if they break into my home, mug me, or attempt to kill me.
Right. The fun thing about fear is that it makes you react, often violently. In the position you describe, I'd rather have my assailant be completely sure that I was not a threat, so he'd concentrate on his primary financial goal and have no reason to harm me. You can't choose that sort of thing, though, and I don't think small time robbers (physical bandits, in contrast to white-collar criminals, the ones that actually rake in the big bucks) are educated enough to consider such statistics before starting their entrepreneurial venture of the day.
It has to be a joke. First because some are quite funny (my favorite is the one where the guy had cancer and his family left him, but then he found MyCleanPC and everything was dandy). Second because creating multiple accounts to post on/. is a bit time consuming, especially given that this is arguably the worst site for spamming that sort of scam - it has a very high incidence of tech-oriented nerds, way too many running OSX, Linux or something weirder, and very few grandmas.
Well, icons had a purpose. Not only screen real estate was way costlier back then (320x240 displays were the norm for Windows 3.1), but in the beginning, a novice user didn't know what the hell "saving" a file was. It still hadn't entered the common vernacular as it has today, so "save" and "save as" were actually harder to understand than a picture of a floppy ("oh, right, so that's where I click to store my work, then").
I agree that they aren't really necessary nowadays, though. Nor preferable. The most recent (and one of the worst) offender is Gmail. Really, trading a lot of easy to read text for disappearing, context-sensitive, monochromatic, hard to differentiate icons? Then they take the extra space it freed and leave it completely blank! Why? Why would you do that? It makes no sense at all unless Google found a way to exploit the angrily-shaking-fist-at-monitor market.
Too many people have little to nothing left to lose.And that number is growing despite the claims of a "recovery".
That's not what I'd call "okay". Unless by "country" you mean the land mass or the geopolitical borders.
Regarding the rest of your commentary, unfortunately I have to disagree.,Tthe US still has high standards of living when compared to most of the southern hemisphere. People usually tolerate way, way, way shittier conditions without revolting, so you still have a long way to fall before any sort of spark sets the country ablaze. Also, the larger the country, the harder it is to mobilize a significant group. That is part of why europeans have better political representation, on the whole (not to say that they don't fuck up royally on a regular basis, but nevertheless it's still better than the US).
'Any article, journalistic or scientific, that sparks a debate typically winds up looking more like a good manuscript 700 years ago than a magazine piece only 10 years ago.
Not here. Two or three lines of summary are usually enough for the equivalent in comments of a thermonuclear war.
AV software is like car insurance, most of the time you are just paying for nothing but when you actually need it, it's pretty damn helpful.
Making freqüent backups is like car insurance. AV software is more like towing a spare car behind yours - sure, it might save you from being in a tough spot in a few conceivable cases (mostly if you neglect proper maintenance and care), but usually it just degrades the performance and efficiency of your vehicle and proves worthless in a likely pinch, like an accident or hijacking.
If people fail to take seriously one a major expoent of free software solely because of an acronym that can be read as a socially stigmatized word, then I feel they don't deserve to use it in the first place. I mean, by all means, feel free to protect the children against the offensive power of the GIMP. But why stop there? Might as well censor biology classes, lest they find out about the existence of animals with names such as cock, ass, beaver, crab, peacock and sperm whale. (This was a joke, at first, but then I realized that no one calls a female dog a bitch anymore, so that sort of social censorship of animal nomenclature is not exactly unprecedented.)
I seem to recall some kind of obscure wireless technology called "books" that can deliver plenty of it. Even more than TV, in fact. Of course, it doesn't really allow you to
keep in touch with current pop-culture, and thus be able to easily relate to the common people you'll encounter day to day
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a fan of your heartwarming tales, but this wasn't as good as some of your past work. My favorite is still the one where you get cancer and start abusing your daughter. Please, persevere on your fight, whatever it may be. Your fans have faith, and we are legion.
KDE 4.7.4 here. I use $menu+key>utor->down arrow->enter. Works and is a lot faster for me. Have they removed that functionality in 4.8 or are you using an older version?
Advertising is about manipulation and deception, and anytime accurate or relevant information has been imparted, it is only a consequence of law, and the minimum amount possible.
That's the whole reason we're even arguing right there. Advertising, in its purest form, is simply making people aware of what you're offering. That's the concept. What you describe is a con. Which is how the vast majority of ads is presented to us today. Mostly because it works. However, there's huge subset of people who dislike and don't fall for that crap and would be more inclined to buy things when they are objectively presented. For me, say, a good cell phone ad would be simply a spec sheet. So for people like me that's what they should serve, and in that sense targeted advertising would make it actually work as a service, not a burden. Even for someone like you, they could send offers of greatly priced earplugs and blindfolds for when you have to go out.
As for your rationale that you're winning, I can't really follow. You seem to think that, somehow, the advertising industry is keeping a score or something. They are the ones not playing, here. Not with you. You're just collateral. You know what I think is missing in your life, dude? MyCleanPC! Filter all kinds of unwanted troubles with MyCleanPC! Take control of your life! MyCleanPC will help you avoid and kill advertisers on the interwebz. MyCleanPC: For a better, easier tomorrow.
That's a defeatist attitude.
No, actually it isn't. What I'm talking about is the opportunity to turn "an affront to an advanced and intellectual society" into something actually informative. For me, the ideal advertisement is just like a tech site. Like Slashdot, for example. I learned about the Raspberry Pi here, and that's a product I'm interested in. Ideally, you'd only see advertising that you actually wanted to. And there are many that you do want to see, unless you make no monetary transactions whatsoever. I'd be interested in learning about places that offer organic vegetables nearby. I like to know which tech gizmos are being launched. Why should I shun out ads completely? Their current form is the problem. They are intrusive because they are competing with every other ad in existence, and stupid because they have little time to do so and people are plain uninterested in them (mainly because they are instrusive and stupid). I'll say it again: they can be made into something actually helpful. The fact that a lot of people can't see it says a lot about the low they have reached.
Never give up. Never surrender. Plenty of options.. including the best move... not to play.
Again: we shouldn't be declaring war on advertising. Not even in a metaphor. It's nonsensical and infeasible. Unless they simply die from continued bad of ROI due to lack of interest from the general public, you'll be fighting a useless fight. That isn't fighting, by the way, in any way, shape or form. It's just shunning out things that annoy you. Using an ad blocker, not listening to the radio, getting grumpy when you see an outdoor etc. is hardly taking arms against a sea of troubles. Actively working to make ads either better or obsolete could perhaps be viewed as a struggle of some sort, but what you're doing is more akin to a spoiled kid shutting his eyes, plugging his ears and screaming.
In my experience with TV, no one should watch it.
Well, as long as you're going to be shown ads, you might as well filter them, so you can get only the more interesting ones. While it sucks that marketers will have too much data about you, maybe then smart buyers can be treated to smart advertising, something that cannot exist in a world where ads are shown to everyone and must therefore cater to the lowest common denominator.
Some things I would not like to see anymore: perfume commercials. They are incredibly dumb. You cannot convey a sense of smell in an audiovisual medium, so your TV spot can't have relevant information about your product. Also, car commercials. They focus mainly on prettiness. I want stats. Yes, sometimes they tell you how much hp it has, but so what? What about the torque? How soon is it available, in terms of rpm? And beer ads. Oh, I could keep going all day.
Bottom line is I don't think it's that terrible. Not for ads, mind you. There's a plethora of ways in which this nifty idea can be incredibly abused. I'm thinking mostly information filtering and DRM.
Yeah. Also, noticing that you're getting ads for depressed people can be quite depressing.
Yeah. This seems like a very expensive, roundabout, complicated and technological way of creating something that's significantly worse than waving a padded stick at a similarly equipped friend. For once I agree that kids should just "get out more" (as long as they don't come play on my lawn).
KDE developers must sure have it easy, then...
I found both Kubuntu and Fedora to be incredibly bug-ridden. In my experience, the best KDE-based distros today are Arch and Debian. So I'd suggest Arch, since Debian probably won't have KDE 4.9 until 2013 or so (they just upgraded unstable/testing to 4.7 and I think 4.8 has is entering the experimental branch).
I don't want the "bad guys" to be better off. I want them to fear for their life if they break into my home, mug me, or attempt to kill me.
Right. The fun thing about fear is that it makes you react, often violently. In the position you describe, I'd rather have my assailant be completely sure that I was not a threat, so he'd concentrate on his primary financial goal and have no reason to harm me. You can't choose that sort of thing, though, and I don't think small time robbers (physical bandits, in contrast to white-collar criminals, the ones that actually rake in the big bucks) are educated enough to consider such statistics before starting their entrepreneurial venture of the day.
And our reward is lazy, Wine-based "ports".
I was going to say the same about Amnesia. A spetacular game that doubles as a very potent laxative. Really, this bundle seems to be the best yet.
It has to be a joke. First because some are quite funny (my favorite is the one where the guy had cancer and his family left him, but then he found MyCleanPC and everything was dandy). Second because creating multiple accounts to post on /. is a bit time consuming, especially given that this is arguably the worst site for spamming that sort of scam - it has a very high incidence of tech-oriented nerds, way too many running OSX, Linux or something weirder, and very few grandmas.
you morons aren't actually assuming that a radio button has anything to do with an actual radio are you? that would be just sad
Great, then "read and weep" works doubly in this case: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/tfmb4/til_why_radio_buttons_are_called_radio_buttons/
Well, icons had a purpose. Not only screen real estate was way costlier back then (320x240 displays were the norm for Windows 3.1), but in the beginning, a novice user didn't know what the hell "saving" a file was. It still hadn't entered the common vernacular as it has today, so "save" and "save as" were actually harder to understand than a picture of a floppy ("oh, right, so that's where I click to store my work, then").
I agree that they aren't really necessary nowadays, though. Nor preferable. The most recent (and one of the worst) offender is Gmail. Really, trading a lot of easy to read text for disappearing, context-sensitive, monochromatic, hard to differentiate icons? Then they take the extra space it freed and leave it completely blank! Why? Why would you do that? It makes no sense at all unless Google found a way to exploit the angrily-shaking-fist-at-monitor market.
Too hard. Why not just update the devices icons allude to, as to avoid any confusion?
file save: => microSD card
radio buttons -> monolith-shaped smartphone
clipboards -> monolith-shaped tablet
bookmarks -> monolith-shaped... eReader?
Address books -> monolith-shaped smartphone
Calendars -> monolith-shaped smartphone
Voicemail -> monolith-shaped smartphone
Manila folder -> microSD card
Handset phone -> monolith-shaped smartphone
Magnifying glass -> that one is still ok
Binoculars -> also ok
Envelopes -> microSD card
Wrenches -> drawing of a $company employee
Gears -> drawing of a $company employee
Microphones -> monolith-shaped smartphone
Photography -> monolith-shaped smartphone
Televisions -> monolith-shaped tablet
Carbon Copies -> microSD card
Blueprints -> open source monolith-shaped smartphone/tablet
The country is doing okay.
Too many people have little to nothing left to lose.And that number is growing despite the claims of a "recovery".
That's not what I'd call "okay". Unless by "country" you mean the land mass or the geopolitical borders.
Regarding the rest of your commentary, unfortunately I have to disagree.,Tthe US still has high standards of living when compared to most of the southern hemisphere. People usually tolerate way, way, way shittier conditions without revolting, so you still have a long way to fall before any sort of spark sets the country ablaze. Also, the larger the country, the harder it is to mobilize a significant group. That is part of why europeans have better political representation, on the whole (not to say that they don't fuck up royally on a regular basis, but nevertheless it's still better than the US).
'Any article, journalistic or scientific, that sparks a debate typically winds up looking more like a good manuscript 700 years ago than a magazine piece only 10 years ago.
Not here. Two or three lines of summary are usually enough for the equivalent in comments of a thermonuclear war.
AV software is like car insurance, most of the time you are just paying for nothing but when you actually need it, it's pretty damn helpful.
Making freqüent backups is like car insurance. AV software is more like towing a spare car behind yours - sure, it might save you from being in a tough spot in a few conceivable cases (mostly if you neglect proper maintenance and care), but usually it just degrades the performance and efficiency of your vehicle and proves worthless in a likely pinch, like an accident or hijacking.
Nobody is going to install PENIS in a professional environment.
Really? And how do you think politicians are made?
If people fail to take seriously one a major expoent of free software solely because of an acronym that can be read as a socially stigmatized word, then I feel they don't deserve to use it in the first place. I mean, by all means, feel free to protect the children against the offensive power of the GIMP. But why stop there? Might as well censor biology classes, lest they find out about the existence of animals with names such as cock, ass, beaver, crab, peacock and sperm whale. (This was a joke, at first, but then I realized that no one calls a female dog a bitch anymore, so that sort of social censorship of animal nomenclature is not exactly unprecedented.)
Jimmy Wales? The guy where people paid millions every year
Dear lord, how big is he?
(please do not follow with a sexual innuendo, if possible)
Right. Does this "outside" you speak of have Mad Men Breaking Bad The Good Wife In Plain Sight?
To keep in touch with culture
I seem to recall some kind of obscure wireless technology called "books" that can deliver plenty of it. Even more than TV, in fact. Of course, it doesn't really allow you to
keep in touch with current pop-culture, and thus be able to easily relate to the common people you'll encounter day to day
so it wins on all three counts.