Maybe we're now moving to a time when all the companies will merge together and begin concentrating on actually providing quality television, rather than scrambling for ratings.
Right. The reason they haven't been interested in "quality" thus far is that they're too busy getting the audience's attention. It has nothing at all to do with the fact that they define "quality" in a different way than a literary critic or academian might. Why would they have any incentive to start putting on programming of "real" quality once they control all the channels out there? All that would do is detract from their bottom line, which would piss off short-sighted shareholders who can't see that enriched culture benefits everyone. (And all shareholders are shortsighted.)
No matter how many times I punched that $(*&# monkey, I never did get my $20. Obviously, something here needs to be fixed.
Re:SETI is against intergalactic law
on
Optical SETI
·
· Score: 2
Just makes you think, though... What if they're using 1000 bit encryption on a scrambled frequency that changes every few nanoseconds... How would we ever detect them?
SETI is against intergalactic law
on
Optical SETI
·
· Score: 3
Earthlings:
This is the Intergalactic Police. Intercepting and attempted decoding of encoded signals is a violation of the Digital Milky Way Copyright Act (DMCA). This is a Class II Felony according in your sector according to Intergalactic Planetary Law.
We have your planet surrouned. You will agree to hand over all conspirators and contributors in this crime to our awaiting vessel.
We consider a conspirator or contributor to be:
Any scientists involved in the study of Astronomy, Cosmology, or Astrophysics.
Anyone using or distributing the Circumvention Device known as SETI-At-Home
Anyone involved in the industry which manufactures the devices which enable the SETI-At-Home program to run and function. This would include computer manufacturers, retailers, end-users, and research and design engineers.
If you do not respond and comply to this writ within 48 hours, your planet will be subject to immediate seizure for processing into raw materials according to Andromedean Law (ref. Victims of Crime Restitution Act, Article III, Section 2, Paragraph 500.23.
I was maybe 8-10 years old when Zork I was out. I remember a choose-your-own-adventure type book that came out for it, which I read and enjoyed thoroughly. I found the Zork logo (with the opening door as the letter 'O') rather inviting...
We didn't have a computer at home at that time (unless you count the Atari 2600, which I don't, though it was a lot of fun) but a friend of my mom's did. As it happened, they had Zork for their machine, which must've been an old 8086 or possibly a '286.
I couldn't get through the game to save my life. Of course, I didn't have any of the game's documentation (if there was any) but I found the game to be majorly frustrating, as the game barfed at roughly 90% of the commands I tried to give it. I could only manage to get through a very small portion of the game, and only then due to my memory of the choose-your-own-adventure, not due to any actual ability to solve problems.
I concluded that the game was a disappointment and eventually (after several days of getting nowhere) gravitated to the Space Invaders ripoff "Wavy Navy" instead. Still, I did really dig the book version...
I thought it was called the "Help Menu". It's been around for like 20+ years, people, learn to start using it. In my experience, roughtly 95% of all help desk calls could have been resolved by the user if they had bothered to consult the Help Menu on their own desktop.
The unknown quantity dilemma (how do I know if I want this information until I see it? How do I know it's worth what you're charging until I've used it?) I can flip through a magazine and put it back on the shelf if I want to.
If I click the "reload" button, do I get charged twice? What if my browser times out or doesn't render the page properly? Do I get a refund?
If I've already paid for some content once, can I save that file locally and read it again for free as much as I want? Or do I have to pay each and every time I want to read even a part of the article? If I can't pay once, use as often as I like, then forget it. (If I'm paying for a revised/updated version of something, that might be different.)
It's been free till now, so why should I suddenly start paying for it?
And if I do have to start paying for it from some sources, chances are good that some other source will offer something comparable for free. Even if yours is much better, you'll be undercut by the free sites.
I only have a limited amount of money left over in my budget anyway. Just because something may be of value and costs something to create and put out there doesn't mean that I have the money to spend on it.
Our economy is still by and large shaped for buying and selling things, not information. There's a certain amount of space for purchasing information, mostly for entertainment, but also for research and news. But that niche is already pretty-well filled by traditional print and broadcast media.
Internet media has to wedge its way in to this segment of the economy. It can do so in numerous ways -- unfortunately the quickest and easiest "in" -- offering free content -- is only the quickest and easiest way to generate an audience, not the quickest and easiest way to generating revenue.
Of course, advertising would have been just fine as a method for generating revenue had it not been for the idiotic notion that an advertisement should directly generate sales. If it weren't for this idea, web sites that produced content wouldn't have had the carpet yanked from beneath their feet. Maybe the e-commerce sites would still have crashed and burned, but advertising revenue from non-web-only companies should have still been sufficient to fund sites that were geared for providing informational content, not serving as high-tech mail-order catalogs.
I think it is interesting to speculate as to whether the Internet revolution couldn't have been done better (at least economically) by being more elitist and charging for content from the beginning. True, I know this approach was tried, and it was quickly undercut by services that offered free content by charged for connectivity. But much of the price resistance encountered today is due to the fact that from day one things had been free. All I know is I miss the old pre-web days, when extremely narrow bandwidth ruled, there was hardly anyone online, just about everything out there was a labor of love, and the signal-to-noise ratios were by and large excellent. Even though we have streaming audio and video, java, flash, and everything else, I don't really know how "better" the web is today.
Yeah, my local merchants tried that drive by shooting service... I told my dealer that if he kept doing drive-bys in my neighborhood I would just have to take my smack-addiction elsewhere. They've cut down a bit, but you know they just like to see what they can do with those well-oiled instruments they like to buy and show off...
Timothy must've put on his JonKatz pants on when he wrote:
Will this marginalize freelance writers in favor of staff flacks more interested in the company line than the truth...
Why should we assume that freelance writers are any more interested than the truth than a staff writer?
*Both* are going to be concerned with their careers. The staff writer's career is more tied to the bottom line of the company he works for, but the freelance writer's bottom line is tied to his career, which is dependent not just on truthful and accurate reporting, but also such corrupting factors as sensationalism, bias, and pandering (either to advertising sponsors or to the audience they're trying to reach.)
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that freelance writing tends to be of a somewhat higher quality than staff writing (Why would you buy an article from an outside source if your own staff could do it just as good or better? How could a freelance writer manage to have a career if he could do no better than a staff writer tied to a [sometimes marginally] more stable job?)
But freelancing is not a quick-fix, magic-pill guarantee that reporting/writing will be accurate, free of bias or misleading omissions or disortions. There is nothing that can guarantee that.
You have to actually go in and read each article and judge it for yourself, testing the claims, assertions, judgments, and conclusions.
It takes real work, and there are no non-trivial generalized solutions. Sorry to burst your bubble.
I still play Ms. Pac Man, but I hardly ever play games from just five years ago.
Graphics are cool and all, but they're essentially just pornographic. Not in the sexual sense, but pretty graphics just sit there vacuously to amuse your eyes. As has been said long and loud, game developers should strive to focus at least as much on gameplay as they do on making their graphics cutting edge. Give the user an elegant interface, something fun to interact with, something new, and something challenging.
We don't want to look at advertising. We're trying to conduct our business and our lives here.
Seriously, all this is going to do is force me to use up more hard drive space for archiving my old mail messages. I'm still not going to actually read these ads. I've already mastered the art of skimming, honed through years of websurfing on sites where the signal to noise ratio is pathetically low.
I guess I can only look forward to the day where instead of receiving your email, you get a ransom note, saying that if you don't buy products from Company X right now, you'll never see your messages again.
Hey, I know! How about developing a system which shows you an advertisement which covers up the real content of the email message, and in order to unlock it, you have to score above a certain threshold on a reading comprehension exam. I can see it now...
How long does this great offer last? (Click on the appropriate answer):
[ ] 3 days, but act now!
[ ] 7 days, but act now!
[ ] Offer subject to change or withdrawal with or without notice, so act now!
What is the cost of this service?
[ ] Not $100!
[ ] No, not even $50!
[ ] The low, low price of $19.95!
How can you reap profits AND corrupt research?
I mean, if you get some students to develop something for you, if their research is bogus, then the product's not going to work, is it?
Or are corporations actually going so far as to force universities to stifle their discoveries that would revolutionize an industry and allow real innovation to take place, thereby obsoleting the considerable investment made in older, inferior technologies?
Slashdot Mirror
"Star Wars: Episode II: Worst Episode Ever"
Oh, those zigs know what they doing. I'm sure it'll all get straightened out in the end.
Scientists have announced that Schrodinger's cat is dead. Oh wait, he's fine. No, he's not; he's dead. Er, now he's alive again...
Light Sabre, and be done with it.
"Easy as pi" takes on new meaning...
No matter how many times I punched that $(*&# monkey, I never did get my $20. Obviously, something here needs to be fixed.
Just makes you think, though... What if they're using 1000 bit encryption on a scrambled frequency that changes every few nanoseconds... How would we ever detect them?
Earthlings:
This is the Intergalactic Police. Intercepting and attempted decoding of encoded signals is a violation of the Digital Milky Way Copyright Act (DMCA). This is a Class II Felony according in your sector according to Intergalactic Planetary Law.
We have your planet surrouned. You will agree to hand over all conspirators and contributors in this crime to our awaiting vessel.
We consider a conspirator or contributor to be:
If you do not respond and comply to this writ within 48 hours, your planet will be subject to immediate seizure for processing into raw materials according to Andromedean Law (ref. Victims of Crime Restitution Act, Article III, Section 2, Paragraph 500.23.
You have no chance to live. Make your time.
And a hoverboard from Back to the Future Part II. My life would be complete.
----jjjiii
I was maybe 8-10 years old when Zork I was out. I remember a choose-your-own-adventure type book that came out for it, which I read and enjoyed thoroughly. I found the Zork logo (with the opening door as the letter 'O') rather inviting...
We didn't have a computer at home at that time (unless you count the Atari 2600, which I don't, though it was a lot of fun) but a friend of my mom's did. As it happened, they had Zork for their machine, which must've been an old 8086 or possibly a '286.
I couldn't get through the game to save my life. Of course, I didn't have any of the game's documentation (if there was any) but I found the game to be majorly frustrating, as the game barfed at roughly 90% of the commands I tried to give it. I could only manage to get through a very small portion of the game, and only then due to my memory of the choose-your-own-adventure, not due to any actual ability to solve problems.
I concluded that the game was a disappointment and eventually (after several days of getting nowhere) gravitated to the Space Invaders ripoff "Wavy Navy" instead. Still, I did really dig the book version...
----jjjiii
Smarter... faster reflexes... and deadlier :)
I thought it was called the "Help Menu". It's been around for like 20+ years, people, learn to start using it. In my experience, roughtly 95% of all help desk calls could have been resolved by the user if they had bothered to consult the Help Menu on their own desktop.
I think all of three people saw Waterworld. Costner, the director, and Dennis Hopper.
Off the top of my head...
Our economy is still by and large shaped for buying and selling things, not information. There's a certain amount of space for purchasing information, mostly for entertainment, but also for research and news. But that niche is already pretty-well filled by traditional print and broadcast media.
Internet media has to wedge its way in to this segment of the economy. It can do so in numerous ways -- unfortunately the quickest and easiest "in" -- offering free content -- is only the quickest and easiest way to generate an audience, not the quickest and easiest way to generating revenue.
Of course, advertising would have been just fine as a method for generating revenue had it not been for the idiotic notion that an advertisement should directly generate sales. If it weren't for this idea, web sites that produced content wouldn't have had the carpet yanked from beneath their feet. Maybe the e-commerce sites would still have crashed and burned, but advertising revenue from non-web-only companies should have still been sufficient to fund sites that were geared for providing informational content, not serving as high-tech mail-order catalogs.
I think it is interesting to speculate as to whether the Internet revolution couldn't have been done better (at least economically) by being more elitist and charging for content from the beginning. True, I know this approach was tried, and it was quickly undercut by services that offered free content by charged for connectivity. But much of the price resistance encountered today is due to the fact that from day one things had been free. All I know is I miss the old pre-web days, when extremely narrow bandwidth ruled, there was hardly anyone online, just about everything out there was a labor of love, and the signal-to-noise ratios were by and large excellent. Even though we have streaming audio and video, java, flash, and everything else, I don't really know how "better" the web is today.
Yeah, my local merchants tried that drive by shooting service... I told my dealer that if he kept doing drive-bys in my neighborhood I would just have to take my smack-addiction elsewhere. They've cut down a bit, but you know they just like to see what they can do with those well-oiled instruments they like to buy and show off...
To conceal the age of the actors. Will Indy turn in his whip for a cane? I guess Connery will have to turn in his cane for a walker.
Maybe the villains in this installment can all be members of the Rolling Stones...
So long, and thanks for all the pr0n
Timothy must've put on his JonKatz pants on when he wrote:
Why should we assume that freelance writers are any more interested than the truth than a staff writer?
*Both* are going to be concerned with their careers. The staff writer's career is more tied to the bottom line of the company he works for, but the freelance writer's bottom line is tied to his career, which is dependent not just on truthful and accurate reporting, but also such corrupting factors as sensationalism, bias, and pandering (either to advertising sponsors or to the audience they're trying to reach.)
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that freelance writing tends to be of a somewhat higher quality than staff writing (Why would you buy an article from an outside source if your own staff could do it just as good or better? How could a freelance writer manage to have a career if he could do no better than a staff writer tied to a [sometimes marginally] more stable job?)
But freelancing is not a quick-fix, magic-pill guarantee that reporting/writing will be accurate, free of bias or misleading omissions or disortions. There is nothing that can guarantee that.
You have to actually go in and read each article and judge it for yourself, testing the claims, assertions, judgments, and conclusions.
It takes real work, and there are no non-trivial generalized solutions. Sorry to burst your bubble.
I still play Ms. Pac Man, but I hardly ever play games from just five years ago.
Graphics are cool and all, but they're essentially just pornographic. Not in the sexual sense, but pretty graphics just sit there vacuously to amuse your eyes. As has been said long and loud, game developers should strive to focus at least as much on gameplay as they do on making their graphics cutting edge. Give the user an elegant interface, something fun to interact with, something new, and something challenging.
Hey dumbass marketing people, get a clue.
We don't want to look at advertising. We're trying to conduct our business and our lives here.
Seriously, all this is going to do is force me to use up more hard drive space for archiving my old mail messages. I'm still not going to actually read these ads. I've already mastered the art of skimming, honed through years of websurfing on sites where the signal to noise ratio is pathetically low.
I guess I can only look forward to the day where instead of receiving your email, you get a ransom note, saying that if you don't buy products from Company X right now, you'll never see your messages again.
Hey, I know! How about developing a system which shows you an advertisement which covers up the real content of the email message, and in order to unlock it, you have to score above a certain threshold on a reading comprehension exam. I can see it now...
[ ] 3 days, but act now!
[ ] 7 days, but act now!
[ ] Offer subject to change or withdrawal with or without notice, so act now!
[ ] Not $100!
[ ] No, not even $50!
[ ] The low, low price of $19.95!
Etc. Anyone else feel like puking?
Do viable, yet ungerminated, seeds count as an extant tree? Or does there need to be a growing specimen in order for a plant to count as still extant?
I would have come up with a better synopsis, but I got bored about halfway through and decided to read something more worth my while...
How can you reap profits AND corrupt research? I mean, if you get some students to develop something for you, if their research is bogus, then the product's not going to work, is it?
Or are corporations actually going so far as to force universities to stifle their discoveries that would revolutionize an industry and allow real innovation to take place, thereby obsoleting the considerable investment made in older, inferior technologies?