Apparently the whole media blitz did not register on ratings. Target audience of 18-24 olds grew from 380000 to 386000 last week. In other words 2 million bucks bought mere 6000 of viewers. If that's not an utter disaster of ads campaign I'm sure it's very close to it. It also may mean that show has saturated its audience and no matter what they do they won't get bigger ratings. Causing such bad returns on such large involuntary investment is very upsetting and I understand why he resigned.
I know logic sometimes has very little place in law, but still. Do they claim to be the only Torrent monitors out there? If I run my own system to collect information about usage/spread of files in swarms by running similar to their client, that simply collects swarm info, without uploading/downloading, then that is illegal too? Wouldn't that be an attempt to monopolize Torrent monitoring/searching market?
How many people found out about the show that pulled this stunt? From looking at those Flickr pictures I had no idea what it was and what it was advertising. Heck, it looked like that chip Fry's Electronics uses on their in-store ads. So, another successful PR campaign, with lots of free airtime and tons of people who'll turn into it to see what the fuss was about.
If yes, then the problem is solved:) Though I suppose Apple could demand some sort of signing of widgets and/or prohibit downloading them. Otherwise that's another strike against buying it (it does not say if it supports Java apps, which probably means "no"). And I had such high hopes:(
I bet they'd get the Most Annoying One golden statue. There is no clear way to cancel on their site. Searching for Cancel in support brings up clever answer: To cancel TiVo service, contact Customer Support The "Contact Us"/Customer support page does not mention anything about where to call to cancel, just "Activation" and "Problems". I suppose inability to cancel online (activation is easy) is a problem. Calling them brings up morbid "voice activated system". Getting through it is not that bad, as it understood "Cancel" word. But then it simply tells you, that you have to speak to a human (with wait time of half an hour or so) and, if you happened to call outside of 7AM-8PM PST you are out of luck, because only human can disconnect the service ("for your convenience" of course). So many hoops for canceling so ridiculously overpriced service (with contracts and termination fees) that used to be cheap and nice.
I think his decision is what was expected. People can argue all they want about "technical compliance" and "spirit" of the license. In this case decision seem to be based on a simple fact: employer did something, that goes against employee's beliefs. Employee decided not to "live with it" and quit, as changing of employer's mind seems to be impossible. I hope he will find another job soon. I also hope that other people that may be unhappy about the situation will find courage and chance to do something about it.
Or some other type of series, based on the same idea of the Stargate but happening "back then when Goa'uld ruled the planets, and did the infighting, and were getting Jaffa to turn into their servants" and so on and so forth? Like Xena in Space with Goa'uld? Because most of other "reboots" would be more like a soft reset with similar crews and directions:)
I just wonder what will a person that lives paycheck to paycheck have to say about social justice when asked by an OSS developer that has several computers at home and perhaps can afford that nice new $550 video card. I wonder.
"Virtual Enterprise" trick will work only if you receive money in the country where it's registered. So if you have a nice little company in Germany that sells virtual stuff in US, you have to bill your customers from Germany, and receive your funds there. And if you are in US on tourist visa, you can't keep selling your virtual "German made" stuff on a regular basis, as then you are working in US, and either need to have a local branch or work visa. Japan did a normal thing in this case -- you don't have work permit, yet regularly cash in cheques? Goodbye! Otherwise anyone could work as a salesman without any visa, claiming that goods were "made in another country".
I believe in this case Mr Putin used term "nasilstvennaya smert'" which basically means someone else killed that person. While "nasilstvennaya" has the same root as "nasilie" = violence, the meaning is "forced upon someone" versus "estestvennaya" (which would mean "natural causes" i.e. old age or an illness). Means of inflicting premature death could be violet (hacked with a saw) or not-so-violent (sleeping pills poisoning) but in both cases it would be an "unnatural cause of death"/"nasilstvennaya smert'". Of course it's way more fun to use "violent" in articles, as it paints Russian President as a fierce person who doesn't think that deaths not involving excessive violence are worthy of an investigation.
Frankly I personally don't know what to think about this whole story. It's some sort of James Bond in real life. If it was really an evil plot, why did they use highly exotic means? Why not just shoot him during "robbery" or "accidentally" run him over with a car? To give him enough time to make an accusation? Did perpetrators they take into account his hate toward Russian government and simply used him for their own purposes? Or they knew we'd think that and reality is even more twisted? I don't think he'd do it on purpose -- sacrificing one's life is a very high price for a political statement to make. So my only option is to wait for the final results of the autopsy and then hope that source of the radioactive material will be found quickly, to prevent any other radiation poisonings.
All they have to do is release some sort of SDK that allows programming for Zune. There will be a ton of gadgets in a matter of weeks, "fixing" shortcomings.
With a big fat dialog, that says "This URL will be sent to Microsoft". With option to cancel. With no mandatory option to check all URLs (unless you say that you want to). In other words, yeah, if you say "Do that automatically" it will do exactly what you asked it to. Duh
What can hurt business is a technical site that is
on
Slashdot's Vastu
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Relying on someone whose design is somewhat scary and made in glaring colors only (yes, there is an audience for sites like that, no, I don't think tech people would be fond of permanently blazing colors), has no sense of space and prefers to mush things together and applying arbitrary set of rules to all sites no matter what the target audience is. It's like asking Paris Hilton to design work clothes for a fireman. Plus, even that short recommendation is full off weirdness.
A) Instability of "horizontal layout" is stupid. Put the pencil down horizontally. Is it unstable? How about standing on it's end?
B) In case of established site URL does not matter, so this point does not apply. If people know that site has interesting stuff on it, they will put a bookmark or remember the address. Easy to type ones are good for radio/tv commercials
C) Yellow? Even CNET toned down their yellow colors lately. Say hello to the world of Taxi Web sites? Green and blue are present as main elements. So... off the point
D) What little graphics there is it's actually not the best feature of the Slashdot:) Logo is squished, icons are a bit scary, though been around for so long people are used to them
E) I wonder if she never reads anything that is more than 2-3 pages long. Or has that obsessive clicky-clicky-syndrome where person wants, no, needs to click on something NOW! Hence desire to split everything into tiny pages and users that have to use tricks (such as "Print this page") to re-assemble stuff back. Again, technical field pretty much demands more text than, say, some short poems collections
F) About the footer... She has to wear bell-bottoms then;) ALWAYS! Because footer needs to be thick. Frankly many pages have no footer at all. Footer and footnotes can't be overloaded as that means "footnote" becomes primary content. These days footers are pretty much reserved for stuff that makes legal department happy. Of course Slashdot has links in the footer too;)
Conclusion: more bullshit than usual, less design and pretty things than one'd think. Slow news day at Wired. Slashdot is not for the customers of Vastu-fied sites (but *gasp!* you already know that;) )
Hm... release day is Tuesday. How soon there will be a little piece of spyware attached to Bookmarks via Microsummaries? Yet I can't seem to find the way to turn it off:(
I copied 53 documents from one folder to the other, but that little dialog box showed that only 12 flied from one folder to the other. Where did the other ones go?
People who chose to use them for filtering will just as easily update their configs to a new domain. Those who can't because they did it "automatically" probably shouldn't have as they need to understand how it works and how to balance black listing with other ways to control spam.
I don't see how "verifying story" is applicable to, say, AP or Reuters newsfeeds. Those are pretty much blasted equally by small, medium and large newspapers as is (even though they need verification and oh boy, if you ever saw how they castrate content to make 10-sentence detail-less snippet out of interesting 10 paragraph story...). And for those news it does not really matter where you go, you read identical content (hence 50+ articles that start with exactly the same words). For those, the newspaper that will be smart enough to allow indexing and provide access, there will be a windfall of visitors (what they do with them is another matter, but at least they can try to recoup their bandwidth investments through ads). Heck, Reuters has its own web site, and I bet it'll be happy enough to allow indexing. For local news you pretty much have to go to small sites. The Washington Post for some strange reason does not cover news of, say, Hell, Michigan. So it goes back to local news provider. Which would like to have more visitors, not less. So... big media entities will keep out of the way of small entities. Users would be able to find pretty much the same content. Where's the down side? If the whole "don't index me, I want to charge for my content" thing leads to growth in small news provider niche, will you really object? Because even if you don't trust your local News 59 Hometown tv newscrew or Mournful Examiner newspaper, being able to read multiple reports on the same event beats one "trusted" source any day.
What is "Real"? How do you define "real"? If real is what you can see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. Now click on that Youtube play button, and I'll show you how deep their budget hole goes...:) And so on, and so forth:)
The only "cover" story I'd expect is of her being kicked off the board and position. Of course I bet other board members will not do that fearing some retaliation from her. How stupid should one be to claim ignorance of methods of information gathering after requesting investigation of leaks (and phone calls)? Did she subcontracted a group of mediums, who could read everyone's phone bills remotely? Or hoped that investigative company will promise to kill a puppy unless board leaker comes forward or gives a copy of all phone bills, personal and cell included? Just for that she should be excluded from the board and fired as a director. Because stupid people should not be allowed to ruin companies (no matter the size). If she did know and lied about it, she should be fired too, because lying evil people should not be allowed on the board either (hey, I am saying "shouldn't", I am sure there are plenty of those, as it's easier for them to claw their way to the top). I so hope that CA AG will file charges against her personally, as everything started with her decision. So she will not be able to perform as an executive officer of any company. At least not for a while. I mean if the whole investigation wouldn't blow up into this scandal, she would reap the reward of being "the one who got rid of the leaks from the board"? Only logical she'd get punished for what was done to do it.
Seriously. I'd think that everyone who could possibly have liked the series already seen it. Those who are fans have bought the DVD sets too. Is there really a big turf to expand the number of fans? Or could they have asked for the same "promotional mini-series" 3-4 minutes each, just like what they did with BG?
So that's the new sparkly type of humor that's supposed to have all programmers giggle of joy and sell mainframe products? Or not sell mainframes? I mean what was the purpose of it? Everyone pretty much knows about IBM anyways, and those stupid printed ads for servers are all over the IT press (also not so funny, though once in a while that little chubby guy does something funny, say one out of 10 of those I saw).
I am so out of touch with the funny bone in this type of humor. I had to google for Ricky Gervais to find out who he is. I know some of my friends love the Office but... I tried to watch that "Microsoft video" and wanted to snooze after five minutes. The IBM one was even faster.
I suppose marketing material is not to be funny, but this... Not sure what they try to accomplish.
In the article author writes mostly about "content creating customers" on Mac, which, true enough, can eat up as much CPU as available. Those users will easily buy new two dual-core CPU pro version of Mac -- they don't pay for it themselves, or write it off as business expense. Other users (Computer Klutz kind) don't care about speed and paying premium for Apple Pixie Dust, that gets sprinkled on top of new stuff. They swallowed transition from the "superior platform" to something that was boo-booed by them for years, because it got magic sauce of apple logo on it. They run old applications on old machine because it's "good enough" (and it's true, word processing on G3 is fast enough). And they won't upgrade until their old computer dies or they suddenly get a thousand bucks gift from Santa they can throw at new machine. Question is what is the ratio of klutzes to pros. All pros will upgrade to new platform when applications are there. Will all klutzes upgrade? I doubt it. Magical Torrent of Upgrades in this case is solely rests on new Intel platform's shoulders, that should invite "switchers" (I keep seeing ads for Mac with big "NOW RUNS WINDOWS!" stickers on top), which makes me think it won't be a "torrent", it will be a stream. And Vista and Mac OS X mean very little for this stream
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently the whole media blitz did not register on ratings.
Target audience of 18-24 olds grew from 380000 to 386000 last week. In other words 2 million bucks bought mere 6000 of viewers. If that's not an utter disaster of ads campaign I'm sure it's very close to it.
It also may mean that show has saturated its audience and no matter what they do they won't get bigger ratings.
Causing such bad returns on such large involuntary investment is very upsetting and I understand why he resigned.
I know logic sometimes has very little place in law, but still.
Do they claim to be the only Torrent monitors out there? If I run my own system to collect information about usage/spread of files in swarms by running similar to their client, that simply collects swarm info, without uploading/downloading, then that is illegal too? Wouldn't that be an attempt to monopolize Torrent monitoring/searching market?
How many people found out about the show that pulled this stunt? From looking at those Flickr pictures I had no idea what it was and what it was advertising. Heck, it looked like that chip Fry's Electronics uses on their in-store ads.
So, another successful PR campaign, with lots of free airtime and tons of people who'll turn into it to see what the fuss was about.
If yes, then the problem is solved :) Though I suppose Apple could demand some sort of signing of widgets and/or prohibit downloading them. :(
Otherwise that's another strike against buying it (it does not say if it supports Java apps, which probably means "no"). And I had such high hopes
I bet they'd get the Most Annoying One golden statue. There is no clear way to cancel on their site. Searching for Cancel in support brings up clever answer:
To cancel TiVo service, contact Customer Support
The "Contact Us"/Customer support page does not mention anything about where to call to cancel, just "Activation" and "Problems". I suppose inability to cancel online (activation is easy) is a problem. Calling them brings up morbid "voice activated system". Getting through it is not that bad, as it understood "Cancel" word. But then it simply tells you, that you have to speak to a human (with wait time of half an hour or so) and, if you happened to call outside of 7AM-8PM PST you are out of luck, because only human can disconnect the service ("for your convenience" of course). So many hoops for canceling so ridiculously overpriced service (with contracts and termination fees) that used to be cheap and nice.
I think his decision is what was expected. People can argue all they want about "technical compliance" and "spirit" of the license. In this case decision seem to be based on a simple fact: employer did something, that goes against employee's beliefs. Employee decided not to "live with it" and quit, as changing of employer's mind seems to be impossible.
I hope he will find another job soon. I also hope that other people that may be unhappy about the situation will find courage and chance to do something about it.
Or some other type of series, based on the same idea of the Stargate but happening "back then when Goa'uld ruled the planets, and did the infighting, and were getting Jaffa to turn into their servants" and so on and so forth? Like Xena in Space with Goa'uld? :)
Because most of other "reboots" would be more like a soft reset with similar crews and directions
I just wonder what will a person that lives paycheck to paycheck have to say about social justice when asked by an OSS developer that has several computers at home and perhaps can afford that nice new $550 video card.
I wonder.
"Virtual Enterprise" trick will work only if you receive money in the country where it's registered. So if you have a nice little company in Germany that sells virtual stuff in US, you have to bill your customers from Germany, and receive your funds there.
And if you are in US on tourist visa, you can't keep selling your virtual "German made" stuff on a regular basis, as then you are working in US, and either need to have a local branch or work visa.
Japan did a normal thing in this case -- you don't have work permit, yet regularly cash in cheques? Goodbye!
Otherwise anyone could work as a salesman without any visa, claiming that goods were "made in another country".
I believe in this case Mr Putin used term "nasilstvennaya smert'" which basically means someone else killed that person. While "nasilstvennaya" has the same root as "nasilie" = violence, the meaning is "forced upon someone" versus "estestvennaya" (which would mean "natural causes" i.e. old age or an illness). Means of inflicting premature death could be violet (hacked with a saw) or not-so-violent (sleeping pills poisoning) but in both cases it would be an "unnatural cause of death"/"nasilstvennaya smert'".
Of course it's way more fun to use "violent" in articles, as it paints Russian President as a fierce person who doesn't think that deaths not involving excessive violence are worthy of an investigation.
Frankly I personally don't know what to think about this whole story. It's some sort of James Bond in real life. If it was really an evil plot, why did they use highly exotic means? Why not just shoot him during "robbery" or "accidentally" run him over with a car? To give him enough time to make an accusation? Did perpetrators they take into account his hate toward Russian government and simply used him for their own purposes? Or they knew we'd think that and reality is even more twisted? I don't think he'd do it on purpose -- sacrificing one's life is a very high price for a political statement to make.
So my only option is to wait for the final results of the autopsy and then hope that source of the radioactive material will be found quickly, to prevent any other radiation poisonings.
Do we really want "hunting robots"? :)
:)
100% success rate in hide and seek today -- 100% kill rate tomorrow!
Robots will kill you
All they have to do is release some sort of SDK that allows programming for Zune. There will be a ton of gadgets in a matter of weeks, "fixing" shortcomings.
With a big fat dialog, that says "This URL will be sent to Microsoft". With option to cancel. With no mandatory option to check all URLs (unless you say that you want to). In other words, yeah, if you say "Do that automatically" it will do exactly what you asked it to. Duh
Relying on someone whose design is somewhat scary and made in glaring colors only (yes, there is an audience for sites like that, no, I don't think tech people would be fond of permanently blazing colors), has no sense of space and prefers to mush things together and applying arbitrary set of rules to all sites no matter what the target audience is. It's like asking Paris Hilton to design work clothes for a fireman.
:) Logo is squished, icons are a bit scary, though been around for so long people are used to them
;) ALWAYS! Because footer needs to be thick. Frankly many pages have no footer at all. Footer and footnotes can't be overloaded as that means "footnote" becomes primary content. These days footers are pretty much reserved for stuff that makes legal department happy. Of course Slashdot has links in the footer too ;)
;) )
Plus, even that short recommendation is full off weirdness.
A) Instability of "horizontal layout" is stupid. Put the pencil down horizontally. Is it unstable? How about standing on it's end?
B) In case of established site URL does not matter, so this point does not apply. If people know that site has interesting stuff on it, they will put a bookmark or remember the address. Easy to type ones are good for radio/tv commercials
C) Yellow? Even CNET toned down their yellow colors lately. Say hello to the world of Taxi Web sites? Green and blue are present as main elements. So... off the point
D) What little graphics there is it's actually not the best feature of the Slashdot
E) I wonder if she never reads anything that is more than 2-3 pages long. Or has that obsessive clicky-clicky-syndrome where person wants, no, needs to click on something NOW! Hence desire to split everything into tiny pages and users that have to use tricks (such as "Print this page") to re-assemble stuff back. Again, technical field pretty much demands more text than, say, some short poems collections
F) About the footer... She has to wear bell-bottoms then
Conclusion: more bullshit than usual, less design and pretty things than one'd think. Slow news day at Wired. Slashdot is not for the customers of Vastu-fied sites (but *gasp!* you already know that
Hm... release day is Tuesday. How soon there will be a little piece of spyware attached to Bookmarks via Microsummaries? :(
Yet I can't seem to find the way to turn it off
Don't you think it's the same kind of situation?
:)
A small number of shipped product managed to get shipped infected with E.Coli.
The spinach company regrets that certain people were not more hardy to E.Coli infestation and regrets them not figuring it out before it happened.
Yet for some reason I don't see people defend them. I wonder why. Maybe because love for Mac stuff is bigger than love for Spinach
People who chose to use them for filtering will just as easily update their configs to a new domain. Those who can't because they did it "automatically" probably shouldn't have as they need to understand how it works and how to balance black listing with other ways to control spam.
I don't see how "verifying story" is applicable to, say, AP or Reuters newsfeeds. Those are pretty much blasted equally by small, medium and large newspapers as is (even though they need verification and oh boy, if you ever saw how they castrate content to make 10-sentence detail-less snippet out of interesting 10 paragraph story...). And for those news it does not really matter where you go, you read identical content (hence 50+ articles that start with exactly the same words). For those, the newspaper that will be smart enough to allow indexing and provide access, there will be a windfall of visitors (what they do with them is another matter, but at least they can try to recoup their bandwidth investments through ads). Heck, Reuters has its own web site, and I bet it'll be happy enough to allow indexing.
For local news you pretty much have to go to small sites. The Washington Post for some strange reason does not cover news of, say, Hell, Michigan. So it goes back to local news provider. Which would like to have more visitors, not less.
So... big media entities will keep out of the way of small entities. Users would be able to find pretty much the same content. Where's the down side? If the whole "don't index me, I want to charge for my content" thing leads to growth in small news provider niche, will you really object? Because even if you don't trust your local News 59 Hometown tv newscrew or Mournful Examiner newspaper, being able to read multiple reports on the same event beats one "trusted" source any day.
What is "Real"? How do you define "real"? :) And so on, and so forth :)
If real is what you can see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
Now click on that Youtube play button, and I'll show you how deep their budget hole goes...
The only "cover" story I'd expect is of her being kicked off the board and position. Of course I bet other board members will not do that fearing some retaliation from her.
How stupid should one be to claim ignorance of methods of information gathering after requesting investigation of leaks (and phone calls)? Did she subcontracted a group of mediums, who could read everyone's phone bills remotely? Or hoped that investigative company will promise to kill a puppy unless board leaker comes forward or gives a copy of all phone bills, personal and cell included?
Just for that she should be excluded from the board and fired as a director. Because stupid people should not be allowed to ruin companies (no matter the size). If she did know and lied about it, she should be fired too, because lying evil people should not be allowed on the board either (hey, I am saying "shouldn't", I am sure there are plenty of those, as it's easier for them to claw their way to the top).
I so hope that CA AG will file charges against her personally, as everything started with her decision. So she will not be able to perform as an executive officer of any company. At least not for a while. I mean if the whole investigation wouldn't blow up into this scandal, she would reap the reward of being "the one who got rid of the leaks from the board"? Only logical she'd get punished for what was done to do it.
Seriously. I'd think that everyone who could possibly have liked the series already seen it.
Those who are fans have bought the DVD sets too.
Is there really a big turf to expand the number of fans?
Or could they have asked for the same "promotional mini-series" 3-4 minutes each, just like what they did with BG?
So that's the new sparkly type of humor that's supposed to have all programmers giggle of joy and sell mainframe products? Or not sell mainframes? I mean what was the purpose of it? Everyone pretty much knows about IBM anyways, and those stupid printed ads for servers are all over the IT press (also not so funny, though once in a while that little chubby guy does something funny, say one out of 10 of those I saw).
I am so out of touch with the funny bone in this type of humor. I had to google for Ricky Gervais to find out who he is. I know some of my friends love the Office but... I tried to watch that "Microsoft video" and wanted to snooze after five minutes. The IBM one was even faster.
I suppose marketing material is not to be funny, but this... Not sure what they try to accomplish.
Confusing...
I wonder since when Real Player got so bloated that whole FireFox can be neatly tucked into distribution without users noticing it :)
In the article author writes mostly about "content creating customers" on Mac, which, true enough, can eat up as much CPU as available. Those users will easily buy new two dual-core CPU pro version of Mac -- they don't pay for it themselves, or write it off as business expense. Other users (Computer Klutz kind) don't care about speed and paying premium for Apple Pixie Dust, that gets sprinkled on top of new stuff. They swallowed transition from the "superior platform" to something that was boo-booed by them for years, because it got magic sauce of apple logo on it. They run old applications on old machine because it's "good enough" (and it's true, word processing on G3 is fast enough). And they won't upgrade until their old computer dies or they suddenly get a thousand bucks gift from Santa they can throw at new machine. Question is what is the ratio of klutzes to pros. All pros will upgrade to new platform when applications are there. Will all klutzes upgrade? I doubt it.
Magical Torrent of Upgrades in this case is solely rests on new Intel platform's shoulders, that should invite "switchers" (I keep seeing ads for Mac with big "NOW RUNS WINDOWS!" stickers on top), which makes me think it won't be a "torrent", it will be a stream. And Vista and Mac OS X mean very little for this stream