You had to go and ruin a nice pointless flame war with rational thought and a well placed e-peen reference. Jeez. I miss the old days where flames we're just read.
Re:Unfounded Criticism
on
iPods at War
·
· Score: 1
Small scale copyright infringement isn't a crime, it's a tort (IANAL, but I think that's correct). Criminal Infringement is of a much larger scale and generally for the purpose of financial gain. That would be the people selling the 3 dollar DVD's.
Your unfounded bashing of my hypothetical use of a term as the backbone for you being right is fucking lame.
If you had used context clues instead of reading flat like a good government educated idiot, you would have understood what I was saying. Don't throw your inability to comprehend onto me because you gave the post a half assed read.
Second, you can dislike someone using the term price point and price interchangably all you want. It doesn't mean shit. So you can stop with the weak ass straw man too.
Re:Unfounded Criticism
on
iPods at War
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, because rape = copyright infringement.
This is ridiculous. If you are willing to put yourself in harms way for your nation, you should probably be cut some slack on your behavior when your in a war zone. Letting soldiers share mp3 files amongs themselves and purchasing bootleg DVD's is nowhere close to rape.
Also, 100+ million wasn't accomplished at release. Thats over a lifespan. I am willing to bet that there are more than enough Japanese and American fanboys, spoiled kids, and high income/low responsibility adults out there who can allow Sony to at least match the sales for the 360 release.
While I agree that price may be a factor, it's really all speculation until the PS3 is released. Sony has won this battle two gens in a row, a feat only matched by Nintendo. And when Nintendo did it, the game market was pretty small and focused. Now there are plenty of young adults with a more substantial income who may be willing to blindly shell out the money for a PS3, they have never been disappointed by a Sony game box - so they won't chage.
I hear this too expensive mantra all the time. Hell, I even subscribe to it. Yet I have had more than one of my friends tell me they are buying a PS3 when it drops. I am also beginning to believe that this is a common opinion amongst the non hardcore.
At least the people I know and hang out with (30ish with no children, tech jobs) have the disposable income to buy one of these things no sweat. Personally, I'm waiting to see what the games play like before I choose between a 360 and a PS3.
Also, the Euro market doesn't determine a thing in video games. Japan and the US do. Thats why almost ALL games are released in Europe last.
I'm not targeting you, but I really hate the perception people have of Georgia. We are not all dumb ass rednecks and uneducated slave decendants. That is an ignorant misconception.
Anyone get a job off ComputerJobs.com? That's here.
The CDC is here.
We have the largest concentration of College educated African-Americans in the United States.
We like to design lotsa weapons at Lockheed-Martin
Hartsfield-Jackson, the worlds busiest airport is here.
Georgia Tech and Emory are no slouch schools
We are expecting 3% annual job growth through 2008
Turner Broacasting Systems, CNN, Earthlink, Coca-Cola, UPS, Manhattan Associates, Radiant Systems, Home Depot, Newell-Rubbermaid, Southern Company, Georgia-Pacific, Bell South, Convergent Media Systems, and Delta are all headquartered here.
Hell, I can go on and on - read a report here. We may not be Silcon Valley, but the tech community here is the largest in the South East. And we do regularly pull talent from out West and up North.
Being that we have such a technically savvy, young population - it makes perfect sense that we would try this( the median age here is 33). Atlanta is almost completely populated by the gamer demographic - our reps know this. Also, being a southern state, our reps have had had to deal with Federal gun control laws - they personally know what it's like to have restrictions thrown on them. They aren't to quick to do it themselves.
Oh, and I'll pit a Georgia Southern Belle against any Manhattan Socialite or West Coast hottie any day - AND rumor has it girls outnumber the guys almost 2 to 1 in Atlanta.
To be fair, Jack Thompson's military friend (that Sgt military guy... can't remember his name) said that playing Doom will turn you into a lethal killing machine just like the marines. *snickers*
Actually, Jack took that quote WAY out of context (that is unless we are talking about two different Marine drill instructors). I can't remeber the Sgt.'s name either, but he didn't say it turned you into a killing machine. He said that he could see a noticable difference in target to target movement between those who played FPSs and those who didn't.
He then went on to explain that one of the most difficult aspects of combat to teach is to not stop moving. Killing a person is a traumatic experience, and the usual human response after you shoot someone is to stop dead in your tracks and stare. That will get you killed real quick. The Sgt then went on to say that the new recruits who played a lot of FPS were adept at target to target movement. They didn't stop between targets, they stopped when the danger had passed.
It didn't make the recruits a better shot with a real gun.
It didn't make the recruits any more desensitized to violence. He noticed that the recruits would go through the emotions AFTER a combat action was resolved, not during it.
The final comment regarding this behavior was that it ultimately left more time to train the soldiers other aspects of combat, effectively making them better fighters. Jack dumbed it down to the barest bones.
Seriously, who else but a marketting department would think that it's a good idea to trademark a name describing everything "new" that your product does?
Three MBA's who only took a basic marketing class.
So, how many wives are either not going to be home tonight, or are going to fix hubby his very favorite dish?
You're probably just trying to be funny, but this could be a real problem. I know I have had some seriously bizarre search historys when doing research on possible articles to write in my lame ass vanity site. They could very easily be taken out of context and used to make me look like a sicko instead of a cynic who wanted some of the bizarre material that non fiction can provide.
Maybe this guy is doing some research on a book. Maybe he's an artist doing some death metal band's cover. Hell, maybe they have a socially retarded CS major for a dorm mate and are trying to freak them out.
It's the ridiculous release of this type of data and the sensationalist warping of these smallest elements that allow our privacy to get train wrecked.
Google's toolbar has click tracking functionality that you may activate. They use this click-through data to help determine the value of a page's popularity. If the warning showed on the actual results page, there would be an artificial change to the rankings based on an action they took.
Separating the "malware" message from the results still allows an accurate sampling from the initial clicks in the organic results. Also, as another poster pointed out earlier, if there is no solid definition of "Malware" - Google runs the risk of lawsuits. By not changing the rankings, but creating a notification on the way to the website - they have sidestepped possible arguments against them for Libel/Defamation. There's a big difference between showing up as number one in the Google rankings with a big ass "MALWARE! BEWARE!" flashing gif next to your listing and a go between page listing a possible problem with the site you are attempting to visit.
He prefers the term "dentifrice" and refuses to use the term toothpaste as he deems it inaccurate language. Kinda like the guys here who can't get over people using the web and Internet interchangably.
I have lived in many states in the Eastern time zone, and in all of them the legal age to sell alcohol was 18. This was by design to allow younger people who would most likely hold minimum wage jobs at grocery stores and restraunts the ability to facilitate transactions for alcohol. The list of the states I can personally attest to are:
This is not an exhaustive list, and is completely alegory by nature.
From my experience, the reason there are not many 18 year old bartenders is that they cannot be trusted with an establishments number 1 source of revenue. Bars in dining establishments have a general 300% mark-up on alcohol, and "doing the counts" is an inexact science. You don't want an irresponsible child handling the most profitable aspect of your business.
I don't think it's reasonable for society to simply tell poor parents that they are on their own when it comes to raising their children.
This is commonly refered to as "it takes a village..."
The problem is that people don't understand what that statement really means. It doesn't mean that your child is raised in an environment where everyone has to shoulder laws that are designed to protect your children. It means that you should raise your child to be self dependent and aware of the situations that exist surrounding them. The "village" is the exposure and insight that the human elements co-existing can bring. Many of these elements can contradict what you teach, and some may actually attempt to undermine what you have tried to instil in your children.
If you have done your job properly, the perversive effects of these attempts serve as examples of how not to behave, and as real life examples of their consequences. The result is a child that can negotiate the very dangerous and subtly deceptive reality that is life.
If you fail you get children that shoot up schools and hook up with sexual predators through MySpace.
The village isn't an entity that protects your child, it is the closed set of exposures that you can utilize to help guide your child. A child that lacks exposure, either through a sheltered existence or through living in a homogenized society, is one that is unprepared to handle the harsh environment that awaits them when they first strike it out on their own. Laws such as this are a disservice to this concept.
The laws against tobacco and alcohol are of a different nature entirely. There is medical proof that these substances are harmful to you. To give free access of these substances to a demographic that can be easily argued as naive is a diservice at best. This legislation is created to allow people to possibly grow into a more mature citizen before being given free pass at them. There are many laws that allow children who are underage access to substances such as alcohol under parental supervision. It may have changed, but when I lived in Connecticut - a child could have a drink in a restraunt if a parent or legal guardian ordered it for them.
The concept is controlled exposure to instigate dialog, not complete protection to supplement your lack of resources. The same people who want these laws enacted often respond with hostility when a member of "the village" makes an honest and sincere attempt at educating the child about the consequences of their current actions. I can't tell you how many times I have heard "Don't tell my child what to do" when I attempt to stop them from bullying other children.
What does it matter? The only harm my dress can inflict is on the delicate sensibilities of those who disagree with my sense of taste. There is no harm being done here. I am willing to deal with peoples reactions to me, so I can dress how I want thank you.
Why are you supporting pornography on the net?
Because nudity is nothing new. Lewdness is nothing new. There is no compelling reason not to allow it. Oh, and the porn industry has been the financial force behind most of the secure online financial transactions you enjoy on eBay and Amazon. While a lot of people denounce porn in public, the numbers don't lie. People WANT it.
Why are you using obscene language in the public?
Because obscene is a relative term. The notion that the air being raked over my vocal cords in a specific manner generating a set of noises can hurt you is ridiculous. And before you say "I don't want to hear that kind of language" as a reason why I should curb my language, I'll just say I don't want to smell you so change your perfume/soap/hair care product now.
You essentially sound like your all for a nice little dictatorship in order to get everyone to play nice instead of instilling the confidence and resilience in people that will enable them to endure in a truly free society. Way to be.
I can't tell you how true this is. I am regularly reamed here on slashdot for trying to defend ethical SEO from search zealots. Ethical SEO tries to work with the search engines to give them information the way they want it.
I don't see how throwing out 40 years of Human Computer Interaction research lowers any barriers, rather it raises them.
What part of the research are you invoking specifically? How is a magazine layout non functional?
HCI research has been largely based on application interfaces. The web has been changing so quickly that the web usage and eye scan reports I see change noticably from year to year. While the HCI may be more appropriate to the browsers design, the content on the web evolves so quickly that the users have apparently evolved along with it. While there are definitely some basic web usability best practices, these are easily incorporated into many print type layouts. This does not raise barriers, this lowers them by adding an element of familiarity.
Yes, if your website's only purpose is to reproduce a 1-page magazine ad, go nuts. Though a PDF would be more appropriate for that. If you want people to interact with your website, don't ask designers who are experts in a non-interactive media to suddenly become experts in another field.
Here I will agree with you, sort of. Print designers have the basic skills to build effective web content, they just need a little boost in the interactive area. The web is for the people, and a lot of people want their information to look pretty. Teaching the concepts of good navigation is not difficult. Plus, what if someone wants to use the web to create some type of art? Why should it attempt to follow any sort of convention? It isn't the point of the piece.
The web allows specialized content to be delivered to a very focused group. This happens at a level so granular that it is possible to create an interface for this specialized content that is intuitive for is targeted users, but vexing to anyone not in the targeted userbase. Look at MySpace.
Is this bad practice? In the sense that you may alienate some possible users, yes. But, if you don't care about alienating users who aren't already in the "club" - then no. The content is delivered to its target clearly and efficiently. The intended userbase has no problem obtaining its content from the source.
Re:Experts should be optional
on
Dvorak Rants on CSS
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That's another facet of the same problem, I think, the de-democratization of the web....but the designers certainly are doing their best to make websites into magazines rather than interactive hypermedia user interfaces. Personally I don't need random stock photos of smiling people with dreadlocks and thick rimmed plastic glasses using laptops to use a website. Or Flash.
They are making the web into something I don't want it to be, so they are wrong.
Wow, that sounds remarkably undemocratic to me. You don't need the images, use a text based browser. I would be willing to gamble that most internet users LIKE the magazine look and feel. You do realize that this is a medium that's in its infancy and the easiest way to get people to adopt it is to lower the barrier to entry, right? So a magazine type look and feel would probably work in this regard.
Plus, you are assuming your use is the use. A lot of people use the web for different things. Some people use it for straight information, others use it as a creative tool, a significant group uses it as a lab, and then there are those who just dump whatever shit they can on it. The web becomes what it needs to in the context of the user. You don't like it? Read a book or something.
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking more along the lines of Phase 4.
I get the point that your a friggin idiot. Probably lonely too.
That's funny. Your UID is close to a million and you're gonna sanction my statements. Whatever loser.
See.
You had to go and ruin a nice pointless flame war with rational thought and a well placed e-peen reference. Jeez. I miss the old days where flames we're just read.
Small scale copyright infringement isn't a crime, it's a tort (IANAL, but I think that's correct). Criminal Infringement is of a much larger scale and generally for the purpose of financial gain. That would be the people selling the 3 dollar DVD's.
That and my Cynicism detector is broken.
Your unfounded bashing of my hypothetical use of a term as the backbone for you being right is fucking lame.
If you had used context clues instead of reading flat like a good government educated idiot, you would have understood what I was saying. Don't throw your inability to comprehend onto me because you gave the post a half assed read.
Second, you can dislike someone using the term price point and price interchangably all you want. It doesn't mean shit. So you can stop with the weak ass straw man too.
Yeah, because rape = copyright infringement.
This is ridiculous. If you are willing to put yourself in harms way for your nation, you should probably be cut some slack on your behavior when your in a war zone. Letting soldiers share mp3 files amongs themselves and purchasing bootleg DVD's is nowhere close to rape.
Way to kneejerk.
Actually, drops is pretty standard terminology when speaking plainly. It's slang, get over it.
I also understand the difference between a price point and a price. Go be an asshole somewhere else.
Actually, where I live it is common.
Also, 100+ million wasn't accomplished at release. Thats over a lifespan. I am willing to bet that there are more than enough Japanese and American fanboys, spoiled kids, and high income/low responsibility adults out there who can allow Sony to at least match the sales for the 360 release.
While I agree that price may be a factor, it's really all speculation until the PS3 is released. Sony has won this battle two gens in a row, a feat only matched by Nintendo. And when Nintendo did it, the game market was pretty small and focused. Now there are plenty of young adults with a more substantial income who may be willing to blindly shell out the money for a PS3, they have never been disappointed by a Sony game box - so they won't chage.
By "drops" I mean when it initially becomes available.
I hear this too expensive mantra all the time. Hell, I even subscribe to it. Yet I have had more than one of my friends tell me they are buying a PS3 when it drops. I am also beginning to believe that this is a common opinion amongst the non hardcore.
At least the people I know and hang out with (30ish with no children, tech jobs) have the disposable income to buy one of these things no sweat. Personally, I'm waiting to see what the games play like before I choose between a 360 and a PS3.
Also, the Euro market doesn't determine a thing in video games. Japan and the US do. Thats why almost ALL games are released in Europe last.
Hell, I can go on and on - read a report here. We may not be Silcon Valley, but the tech community here is the largest in the South East. And we do regularly pull talent from out West and up North.
Being that we have such a technically savvy, young population - it makes perfect sense that we would try this( the median age here is 33). Atlanta is almost completely populated by the gamer demographic - our reps know this. Also, being a southern state, our reps have had had to deal with Federal gun control laws - they personally know what it's like to have restrictions thrown on them. They aren't to quick to do it themselves.
Oh, and I'll pit a Georgia Southern Belle against any Manhattan Socialite or West Coast hottie any day - AND rumor has it girls outnumber the guys almost 2 to 1 in Atlanta.
I LOVE it here.
To be fair, Jack Thompson's military friend (that Sgt military guy... can't remember his name) said that playing Doom will turn you into a lethal killing machine just like the marines. *snickers*
Actually, Jack took that quote WAY out of context (that is unless we are talking about two different Marine drill instructors). I can't remeber the Sgt.'s name either, but he didn't say it turned you into a killing machine. He said that he could see a noticable difference in target to target movement between those who played FPSs and those who didn't.
He then went on to explain that one of the most difficult aspects of combat to teach is to not stop moving. Killing a person is a traumatic experience, and the usual human response after you shoot someone is to stop dead in your tracks and stare. That will get you killed real quick. The Sgt then went on to say that the new recruits who played a lot of FPS were adept at target to target movement. They didn't stop between targets, they stopped when the danger had passed.
It didn't make the recruits a better shot with a real gun.
It didn't make the recruits any more desensitized to violence. He noticed that the recruits would go through the emotions AFTER a combat action was resolved, not during it.
The final comment regarding this behavior was that it ultimately left more time to train the soldiers other aspects of combat, effectively making them better fighters. Jack dumbed it down to the barest bones.
Doom = Universal Soldier.
Seriously, who else but a marketting department would think that it's a good idea to trademark a name describing everything "new" that your product does?
Three MBA's who only took a basic marketing class.
So, how many wives are either not going to be home tonight, or are going to fix hubby his very favorite dish?
You're probably just trying to be funny, but this could be a real problem. I know I have had some seriously bizarre search historys when doing research on possible articles to write in my lame ass vanity site. They could very easily be taken out of context and used to make me look like a sicko instead of a cynic who wanted some of the bizarre material that non fiction can provide.
Maybe this guy is doing some research on a book. Maybe he's an artist doing some death metal band's cover. Hell, maybe they have a socially retarded CS major for a dorm mate and are trying to freak them out.
It's the ridiculous release of this type of data and the sensationalist warping of these smallest elements that allow our privacy to get train wrecked.
There is a reason for this.
Google's toolbar has click tracking functionality that you may activate. They use this click-through data to help determine the value of a page's popularity. If the warning showed on the actual results page, there would be an artificial change to the rankings based on an action they took.
Separating the "malware" message from the results still allows an accurate sampling from the initial clicks in the organic results. Also, as another poster pointed out earlier, if there is no solid definition of "Malware" - Google runs the risk of lawsuits. By not changing the rankings, but creating a notification on the way to the website - they have sidestepped possible arguments against them for Libel/Defamation. There's a big difference between showing up as number one in the Google rankings with a big ass "MALWARE! BEWARE!" flashing gif next to your listing and a go between page listing a possible problem with the site you are attempting to visit.
He prefers the term "dentifrice" and refuses to use the term toothpaste as he deems it inaccurate language. Kinda like the guys here who can't get over people using the web and Internet interchangably.
I have lived in many states in the Eastern time zone, and in all of them the legal age to sell alcohol was 18. This was by design to allow younger people who would most likely hold minimum wage jobs at grocery stores and restraunts the ability to facilitate transactions for alcohol. The list of the states I can personally attest to are:
Tennesse
Georgia
Florida
Alabama
Connecticut
Texas
This is not an exhaustive list, and is completely alegory by nature.
From my experience, the reason there are not many 18 year old bartenders is that they cannot be trusted with an establishments number 1 source of revenue. Bars in dining establishments have a general 300% mark-up on alcohol, and "doing the counts" is an inexact science. You don't want an irresponsible child handling the most profitable aspect of your business.
I don't think it's reasonable for society to simply tell poor parents that they are on their own when it comes to raising their children.
This is commonly refered to as "it takes a village..."
The problem is that people don't understand what that statement really means. It doesn't mean that your child is raised in an environment where everyone has to shoulder laws that are designed to protect your children. It means that you should raise your child to be self dependent and aware of the situations that exist surrounding them. The "village" is the exposure and insight that the human elements co-existing can bring. Many of these elements can contradict what you teach, and some may actually attempt to undermine what you have tried to instil in your children.
If you have done your job properly, the perversive effects of these attempts serve as examples of how not to behave, and as real life examples of their consequences. The result is a child that can negotiate the very dangerous and subtly deceptive reality that is life.
If you fail you get children that shoot up schools and hook up with sexual predators through MySpace.
The village isn't an entity that protects your child, it is the closed set of exposures that you can utilize to help guide your child. A child that lacks exposure, either through a sheltered existence or through living in a homogenized society, is one that is unprepared to handle the harsh environment that awaits them when they first strike it out on their own. Laws such as this are a disservice to this concept.
The laws against tobacco and alcohol are of a different nature entirely. There is medical proof that these substances are harmful to you. To give free access of these substances to a demographic that can be easily argued as naive is a diservice at best. This legislation is created to allow people to possibly grow into a more mature citizen before being given free pass at them. There are many laws that allow children who are underage access to substances such as alcohol under parental supervision. It may have changed, but when I lived in Connecticut - a child could have a drink in a restraunt if a parent or legal guardian ordered it for them.
The concept is controlled exposure to instigate dialog, not complete protection to supplement your lack of resources. The same people who want these laws enacted often respond with hostility when a member of "the village" makes an honest and sincere attempt at educating the child about the consequences of their current actions. I can't tell you how many times I have heard "Don't tell my child what to do" when I attempt to stop them from bullying other children.
Why are you dressed like punk?
What does it matter? The only harm my dress can inflict is on the delicate sensibilities of those who disagree with my sense of taste. There is no harm being done here. I am willing to deal with peoples reactions to me, so I can dress how I want thank you.
Why are you supporting pornography on the net?
Because nudity is nothing new. Lewdness is nothing new. There is no compelling reason not to allow it. Oh, and the porn industry has been the financial force behind most of the secure online financial transactions you enjoy on eBay and Amazon. While a lot of people denounce porn in public, the numbers don't lie. People WANT it.
Why are you using obscene language in the public?
Because obscene is a relative term. The notion that the air being raked over my vocal cords in a specific manner generating a set of noises can hurt you is ridiculous. And before you say "I don't want to hear that kind of language" as a reason why I should curb my language, I'll just say I don't want to smell you so change your perfume/soap/hair care product now.
You essentially sound like your all for a nice little dictatorship in order to get everyone to play nice instead of instilling the confidence and resilience in people that will enable them to endure in a truly free society. Way to be.
I can't tell you how true this is. I am regularly reamed here on slashdot for trying to defend ethical SEO from search zealots. Ethical SEO tries to work with the search engines to give them information the way they want it.
I don't see how throwing out 40 years of Human Computer Interaction research lowers any barriers, rather it raises them.
What part of the research are you invoking specifically? How is a magazine layout non functional?
HCI research has been largely based on application interfaces. The web has been changing so quickly that the web usage and eye scan reports I see change noticably from year to year. While the HCI may be more appropriate to the browsers design, the content on the web evolves so quickly that the users have apparently evolved along with it. While there are definitely some basic web usability best practices, these are easily incorporated into many print type layouts. This does not raise barriers, this lowers them by adding an element of familiarity.
Yes, if your website's only purpose is to reproduce a 1-page magazine ad, go nuts. Though a PDF would be more appropriate for that. If you want people to interact with your website, don't ask designers who are experts in a non-interactive media to suddenly become experts in another field.
Here I will agree with you, sort of. Print designers have the basic skills to build effective web content, they just need a little boost in the interactive area. The web is for the people, and a lot of people want their information to look pretty. Teaching the concepts of good navigation is not difficult. Plus, what if someone wants to use the web to create some type of art? Why should it attempt to follow any sort of convention? It isn't the point of the piece.
The web allows specialized content to be delivered to a very focused group. This happens at a level so granular that it is possible to create an interface for this specialized content that is intuitive for is targeted users, but vexing to anyone not in the targeted userbase. Look at MySpace.
Is this bad practice? In the sense that you may alienate some possible users, yes. But, if you don't care about alienating users who aren't already in the "club" - then no. The content is delivered to its target clearly and efficiently. The intended userbase has no problem obtaining its content from the source.
That's another facet of the same problem, I think, the de-democratization of the web. ...but the designers certainly are doing their best to make websites into magazines rather than interactive hypermedia user interfaces. Personally I don't need random stock photos of smiling people with dreadlocks and thick rimmed plastic glasses using laptops to use a website. Or Flash.
They are making the web into something I don't want it to be, so they are wrong.
Wow, that sounds remarkably undemocratic to me. You don't need the images, use a text based browser. I would be willing to gamble that most internet users LIKE the magazine look and feel. You do realize that this is a medium that's in its infancy and the easiest way to get people to adopt it is to lower the barrier to entry, right? So a magazine type look and feel would probably work in this regard.
Plus, you are assuming your use is the use. A lot of people use the web for different things. Some people use it for straight information, others use it as a creative tool, a significant group uses it as a lab, and then there are those who just dump whatever shit they can on it. The web becomes what it needs to in the context of the user. You don't like it? Read a book or something.
Sorry, that is incorrect.
I don't know about other states, but in Florida if you want to be a police officer you have to get a polygraphed interview.
The lever?