In every discussion of KDE, there is at least one person who comments that GNOME is better, but without providing support for the statements. I'm not saying this is wrong, but I don't understand it. What about GNOME strikes you as so much more advanced than KDE?
When you run into problems with GUI speed, consider your video adapter. Most of the processing needed to make things jump onto the screen is done by the video processor.
I consider Matrox to be the best video adapter for business (non-game) use. (Hitachi monitors are very sharp.)
I have a 200 MHz Pentium II with a Matrox adapter that is acceptably fast with KDE 2.
"Integral is even talking to a provider of satellite tracking services about turning truck bumpers into giant antennas by making them out of a rubbery blend of the new material."
Although it has improved in recent years, the quality of reporting of technical issues is often very poor. Truck bumpers are already metal. Why not just insulate them from the truck body, and use that as an antenna? The article does not say.
It is my thesis that they aren't making a good profit because technical advertising is so poorly done. The one site, of the ones I know, that fixes some of the abuses of technical advertising is Google, which is making a profit.
Computing is a lucrative field. If their technical advertising were more advanced it would be no problem to make money putting informative ads on Slashdot.
I've been thinking a lot about this. I think they have an enormously broad knowledge of the computer industry. I think they are overwhelmed with the enormous effort necessary in producing Slashdot. Maybe they simply have no time for anything else.
They've done computers all their lives...
on
Slashdot IRC Forum
·
· Score: 2
Maybe the answer is this: They've done computers all their lives, and then Slashdot. They have had no time to learn any other area of life, such as business or advertising or marketing or...
Exactly. It's amazing. They are doing very well in an extraordinarily lucrative field, but they don't get the benefits because they don't know how to do business.
It's a kind of intellectual arrogance.
on
Slashdot IRC Forum
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Read the IRC Forum. Basically, they indicate that they gave all of this very little thought. They still have no idea of the complications of advertising.
It's a kind of intellectual arrogance. Because they know computer things, nothing else can be difficult.
"Average annual purchasing amount for technical products and services in
which the OSDN visitor is or will be involved $2.1 million***"
OSDN seems to be saying here that the average of the money spent by
each person who views Slashdot pages is $2,100,000. Does that include the
trolls? Does that include the ASCII art people? Does that include poor
college and high school students? If 9 out of 10 of Slashdot readers bought
almost nothing, that means that people like me supposedly bought $21 million
worth of technical products and services last year. I didn't.
"Why not ask our competitors, they'll tell you we beat them hands down.
"
Good advertising is the combination of being very creative about the big
things, and getting hundreds of small details right, also. It is best not to
use colloquial expressions in advertising, because they presume that everyone
knows the meaning. There are many people who read Slashdot for whom English is
not their native language. They cannot be expected to know the meaning of
"hands down".
Also, this same phrase demonstrates an even bigger defect. Advertising
people should read the advertising of their competition thoroughly. If OSDN
people had done this, they would have realized that "hands down" is a very
much over-used phrase in computer advertising and writing. If you don't
believe this, do a google search: hands down. When you
use such phrases, you aren't giving the reader fresh thinking.
I care very much about Slashdot, and don't want to see the site be
self-destructive. I'm trying to give you some help.
Someone corrected the misspelling of the word "political" on the OSDN
advertising page very quickly.
This suggests a game. I've saved the original HTML of the: OSDN advertising page, so I
have a record.
The game is this: I will point out the errors, one at a time, and they will
correct them, one at a time, demonstrating that they can't see their errors,
and shouldn't be in the advertising business. I'll mention the small errors
first.
So, here is the next error. The page says
"We are unique"
It is normal to put a period after every full sentence. The period is missing.
I am very much interested that OSDN be a financial success. What is needed
now, to get the job done, is a quick sober awakening about the difficulties
and complications of technical advertising.
Technical people know very easily when someone doesn't understand their field.
It is not possible to write good technical ad copy unless you have a good
technical understanding. Most advertising people do not bother to educate
themselves. The poor quality of technical advertising brings poor results.
That's why technical advertising pays as little as it does, and why it has so
many "inexplicable" failures.
You're right. I made other mistakes, too. The answer is always to have an editor, no matter how good you are at editing your own material. I interrupted writing a letter to a woman friend to write the Slashdot post, so I was too much in a hurry.
Advertising is a VERY complicated business.
on
Slashdot IRC Forum Today
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I agree with Wire Tap. (See the parent post.)
Slashdot Editors: You are obviously smart people, but that doesn't
automatically mean you know everything. Advertising is a VERY complicated
business of creating a connnection between a company and prospective
customers. You are showing, very clearly, that you know NOTHING about good
advertising. That is entirely okay; no one can know everything about
everything.
But, this can have VERY unpleasant consequences for Slashdot authors and the
entire Slashdot community. Get help! If you want free help, contact me.
First, I saw the woman whose agency has the IBM advertising account
interviewed on the Charlie Rose show. She knows and cares NOTHING about
technical products. She is making fools of IBM executives with those stupid
ads of dorky-looking guys in space suits.
Slashdot editors, you can let yourselves off the hook. If IBM executives are
clueless about technical advertising, you don't need to worry that you don't
understand it either. (However, remember that IBM top management is composed
of people with no technical background, unlike Slashdot editors. At least you
have half the knowledge that is required. Remember that IBM ran OS/2 into the
ground with stupid marketing, calling it "Warp", a term for something that is
useless because it is bent.)
It may be that executives of your parent company, having failed at their own
endeavors, have a subtle desire to destroy Slashdot. Obviously they are
clueless about making Slashdot pay a reasonable return. (For example, they try
to sell us high-caffeine candy. Caffeine is a chemical made by tropical plants
to discourage insects. It interferes with the normal functioning of their
nervous systems, as it does human nervous systems. Yes, there are people who
buy such things, but those people are misguided. Using strong chemicals to
force your body to submit is not a good strategy. Trying to sell things that
are bad for the customer is not a good strategy either.
There is a HUGE need for advertising of technical products. There is money in
this field! For example, check out the hardware firewalls available, and
get advertising from the ones that are good. Plenty of us work in situations
where such products are needed. Good advertising, if properly done, is a big
help to the reader, not an annoyance.
Maybe now is the time to negotiate the sale of Slashdot to some other company
that has a better understanding of the issues. Slashdot is an extremely
valuable resource! Yes it has shortcomings (such as editors who don't
spell check), but it is extemely valuable!
Board of Directors: I hereby apply to be CEO of Slashdot's parent
company. OSDN says it is:
"#2 for delivering people who look for General / Politcal News*
"
I agree, the Chinese government is extremely arrogant, but in some ways the
U.S. government is worse. The U.S. government interferes with the governments
of other countries, and kills people with whom it disagrees. Here is a
collection of links from respected news sources that supports that assertion:
What should be the Response to
Violence?
All arrogance covers up an inability to relate. We need more socially skilled
leaders.
I should have said earlier how much I value Slashdot. That's why these issues
are important to me. I want to see Slashdot grow.
Probably partly because they are intelligent themselves, and because they have
been willing to do the work, the Slashdot editors have created an intelligent
and valuable forum, which I have often found very useful.
You said, "On Slashdot, grammar is nice, but not required. It is the openness
of the communication that makes the site interesting."
I agree that posters should not be expected to hold themselves to high editing
standards. But Slashdot editors should use high standards in stories because
poor grammar, incorrect spelling, and insufficient explanation degrade the
quality of the resulting discussion.
It amazes me that the U.S. government has done as much as it can to try to
outlaw privacy. To me, it seems that things are out of control in some parts
of the U.S. government. The U.S. spends more on surveillance of everyone
everywhere than any country ever has in the history of the world. Money is
spent on being sneaky, rather than on making good relationships.
It is futile to try to avoid the export of software, particularly when having
it is legal in other countries. Yet taxpayer money is spent on this. The U.S.
government, in my opinion, should not try to control the entire world.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone please mod up the parent post.
In every discussion of KDE, there is at least one person who comments that GNOME is better, but without providing support for the statements. I'm not saying this is wrong, but I don't understand it. What about GNOME strikes you as so much more advanced than KDE?
When you run into problems with GUI speed, consider your video adapter. Most of the processing needed to make things jump onto the screen is done by the video processor.
I consider Matrox to be the best video adapter for business (non-game) use. (Hitachi monitors are very sharp.)
I have a 200 MHz Pentium II with a Matrox adapter that is acceptably fast with KDE 2.
It IS sad, and that's it for Netscape. I'm removing all Netscape versions from the computers under my control.
From the article:
"Integral is even talking to a provider of satellite tracking services about turning truck bumpers into giant antennas by making them out of a rubbery blend of the new material."
Although it has improved in recent years, the quality of reporting of technical issues is often very poor. Truck bumpers are already metal. Why not just insulate them from the truck body, and use that as an antenna? The article does not say.
It is my thesis that they aren't making a good profit because technical advertising is so poorly done. The one site, of the ones I know, that fixes some of the abuses of technical advertising is Google, which is making a profit.
Computing is a lucrative field. If their technical advertising were more advanced it would be no problem to make money putting informative ads on Slashdot.
I've been thinking a lot about this. I think they have an enormously broad knowledge of the computer industry. I think they are overwhelmed with the enormous effort necessary in producing Slashdot. Maybe they simply have no time for anything else.
Maybe the answer is this: They've done computers all their lives, and then Slashdot. They have had no time to learn any other area of life, such as business or advertising or marketing or
Exactly. It's amazing. They are doing very well in an extraordinarily lucrative field, but they don't get the benefits because they don't know how to do business.
Read the IRC Forum. Basically, they indicate that they gave all of this very little thought. They still have no idea of the complications of advertising.
It's a kind of intellectual arrogance. Because they know computer things, nothing else can be difficult.
Thought number 5 about OSDN advertising: Be believable.
The OSDN advertising page, says,
"Average annual purchasing amount for technical products and services in which the OSDN visitor is or will be involved $2.1 million***"
OSDN seems to be saying here that the average of the money spent by each person who views Slashdot pages is $2,100,000. Does that include the trolls? Does that include the ASCII art people? Does that include poor college and high school students? If 9 out of 10 of Slashdot readers bought almost nothing, that means that people like me supposedly bought $21 million worth of technical products and services last year. I didn't.
Thank you, Monkeyman334. I had forgotten about Google caches.
Advertising lessons 3 and 4 (Otherwise known as "How not to go broke running Slashdot."):
At the bottom of the OSDN advertising page, it says,
"Why not ask our competitors, they'll tell you we beat them hands down. "
Good advertising is the combination of being very creative about the big things, and getting hundreds of small details right, also. It is best not to use colloquial expressions in advertising, because they presume that everyone knows the meaning. There are many people who read Slashdot for whom English is not their native language. They cannot be expected to know the meaning of "hands down".
Also, this same phrase demonstrates an even bigger defect. Advertising people should read the advertising of their competition thoroughly. If OSDN people had done this, they would have realized that "hands down" is a very much over-used phrase in computer advertising and writing. If you don't believe this, do a google search: hands down. When you use such phrases, you aren't giving the reader fresh thinking.
I care very much about Slashdot, and don't want to see the site be self-destructive. I'm trying to give you some help.
LOL
Someone corrected the misspelling of the word "political" on the OSDN advertising page very quickly.
This suggests a game. I've saved the original HTML of the: OSDN advertising page, so I have a record.
The game is this: I will point out the errors, one at a time, and they will correct them, one at a time, demonstrating that they can't see their errors, and shouldn't be in the advertising business. I'll mention the small errors first.
So, here is the next error. The page says
"We are unique"
It is normal to put a period after every full sentence. The period is missing.
I am very much interested that OSDN be a financial success. What is needed now, to get the job done, is a quick sober awakening about the difficulties and complications of technical advertising.
Technical people know very easily when someone doesn't understand their field. It is not possible to write good technical ad copy unless you have a good technical understanding. Most advertising people do not bother to educate themselves. The poor quality of technical advertising brings poor results. That's why technical advertising pays as little as it does, and why it has so many "inexplicable" failures.
That was quick. Now "political" is spelled correctly. They can't hide that they don't know what they are doing, however.
You're right. I made other mistakes, too. The answer is always to have an editor, no matter how good you are at editing your own material. I interrupted writing a letter to a woman friend to write the Slashdot post, so I was too much in a hurry.
I agree with Wire Tap. (See the parent post.)
Slashdot Editors: You are obviously smart people, but that doesn't automatically mean you know everything. Advertising is a VERY complicated business of creating a connnection between a company and prospective customers. You are showing, very clearly, that you know NOTHING about good advertising. That is entirely okay; no one can know everything about everything.
But, this can have VERY unpleasant consequences for Slashdot authors and the entire Slashdot community. Get help! If you want free help, contact me.
First, I saw the woman whose agency has the IBM advertising account interviewed on the Charlie Rose show. She knows and cares NOTHING about technical products. She is making fools of IBM executives with those stupid ads of dorky-looking guys in space suits.
Slashdot editors, you can let yourselves off the hook. If IBM executives are clueless about technical advertising, you don't need to worry that you don't understand it either. (However, remember that IBM top management is composed of people with no technical background, unlike Slashdot editors. At least you have half the knowledge that is required. Remember that IBM ran OS/2 into the ground with stupid marketing, calling it "Warp", a term for something that is useless because it is bent.)
It may be that executives of your parent company, having failed at their own endeavors, have a subtle desire to destroy Slashdot. Obviously they are clueless about making Slashdot pay a reasonable return. (For example, they try to sell us high-caffeine candy. Caffeine is a chemical made by tropical plants to discourage insects. It interferes with the normal functioning of their nervous systems, as it does human nervous systems. Yes, there are people who buy such things, but those people are misguided. Using strong chemicals to force your body to submit is not a good strategy. Trying to sell things that are bad for the customer is not a good strategy either.
There is a HUGE need for advertising of technical products. There is money in this field! For example, check out the hardware firewalls available, and get advertising from the ones that are good. Plenty of us work in situations where such products are needed. Good advertising, if properly done, is a big help to the reader, not an annoyance.
Maybe now is the time to negotiate the sale of Slashdot to some other company that has a better understanding of the issues. Slashdot is an extremely valuable resource! Yes it has shortcomings (such as editors who don't spell check), but it is extemely valuable!
Board of Directors: I hereby apply to be CEO of Slashdot's parent company. OSDN says it is:
"#2 for delivering people who look for General / Politcal News* "
I kid you not! That's what it says! See the Advertising page.
My first qualification is that I know how to spell the word political.
Slashdot editors: I recommend "Confessions of an Adverising Man" by David Ogilvy. It's an old book, but good. It's a difficult field. Learn it.
The U.S. government kills people all over the world. The Chinese government kills its own people. They are both terrible.
I agree, the Chinese government is extremely arrogant, but in some ways the U.S. government is worse. The U.S. government interferes with the governments of other countries, and kills people with whom it disagrees. Here is a collection of links from respected news sources that supports that assertion: What should be the Response to Violence?
All arrogance covers up an inability to relate. We need more socially skilled leaders.
The above link logs off Windows XP users, demonstrating once again the quality of Microsoft code.
"I developed a helpdesk call logger and resources page in a day using Zope."
Would it be acceptable to you to share that work? It sounds close to what I need.
It is very painful for me to realize this, but the U.S. government is corrupt.
More about U.S. government corruption: What should be the Response to Violence?
I should have said earlier how much I value Slashdot. That's why these issues are important to me. I want to see Slashdot grow.
Probably partly because they are intelligent themselves, and because they have been willing to do the work, the Slashdot editors have created an intelligent and valuable forum, which I have often found very useful.
You said, "On Slashdot, grammar is nice, but not required. It is the openness of the communication that makes the site interesting."
I agree that posters should not be expected to hold themselves to high editing standards. But Slashdot editors should use high standards in stories because poor grammar, incorrect spelling, and insufficient explanation degrade the quality of the resulting discussion.
It amazes me that the U.S. government has done as much as it can to try to outlaw privacy. To me, it seems that things are out of control in some parts of the U.S. government. The U.S. spends more on surveillance of everyone everywhere than any country ever has in the history of the world. Money is spent on being sneaky, rather than on making good relationships.
It is futile to try to avoid the export of software, particularly when having it is legal in other countries. Yet taxpayer money is spent on this. The U.S. government, in my opinion, should not try to control the entire world.
More on the extremes of U.S. government policy: What should be the Response to Violence?