...it's rarely started by 'grumpy flight attendant'. The rules are the rules, and obviously the flight attendant isn't making them,. (I don't object to people being sticklers for safety - even if the rules are dubious.)
No, more frequently it's 'asshole passenger who doesn't think the rule needs to apply to him' that *makes* the flight attendant 'grumpy'.
Personally, I wish they were far MORE draconian: "Sir, turn off the phone in the next 10 seconds or we kick you off the plane, period, no appeals, no refund."
I'm sure the fact that Pres Obama has deliberately snubbed Israel several times, as well as offering perhaps the most-obviously-lukewarm support of any US president for our sole worthwhile ally in the region...has nothing at all to do with this "oops".
The electoral vote was 301-191-46...not really even close. The subsequent election in 1972 for Nixon was (I believe) the greatest electoral landslide in US history - 520:17 for Nixon, which would suggest it was a pretty strong confirmation of the 1968 results.
The difference between Nixon and Humphrey 1968 was 110 electoral votes, not significantly less than the 126 between Obama/Romney in 2012, and that's considered a pretty clear mandate for Obama.
Ah, historical memory is so conveniently short. I'd like to review this on multiple levels: first, the simplest, legal level. The ceasefire at the end of the 1993 Gulf War had a number of terms that Saddam routinely and casually violated. This ALONE legally justifies any US resumption of combat operations.
Second, Saddam was our tool, and thus our problem 'to fix'. From a Cold War era where finding proxies to fight on 'our side' was more important than considering they were brutal sociopaths, he'd also proved useful to us in countering Iranian regional power in the 1980s. To ignore that he was our creature is almost as bad as ignoring the routine brutalities he exercised against his own peoples - to fault both Conservatives and Liberals on this issue, respectively.
Thirdly, and I think most important, were the geopolitical realities. By the time of the 2nd Gulf War, there was widespread clamor from the Left to end the 'cruel' sanctions that 'were only hurting schoolchildren'. Nobody seems to remember this? (And this setting aside the regular and systemic violations of the sanctions that were taking place by European firms in probable collusion with some governments.) Saddam was politically isolated, he was a pariah, his military was decrepit. We had (criminally, in my view) allowed him to crush his opposition in the southern Marshes over the 1990s without objecting. It was a perfect opportunity to get rid of him, try to restore some American military credibility (badly soiled since Mogadishu), and likely to be limited in duration.
Not to mention, and this may be distressingly amoral/utilitarian for some, US casualties WERE LOW. 5000 dead, 50,000 injured isn't trivial by any measure, but for a war against a nation of 22 million and a 10-year resisted occupation, it's small. When your opponent is reduced to planting bombs in trash cans, you've essentially won.
Personally, I never gave a shit about the "WMD" or "Al Qaeda" stories, they were fairy-tale sound bites useful for convincing the naive and ignorant too stupid to understand the geopolitical rationale behind the US's actions in the Gulf.
Was the invasion botched? Yep. I think we went into it entirely undergunned even recalling that the main invasion force - 4ID - was blocked from planned deployment by last-minute Turkish qualms, and the invasion plan (originally planned to be a 'demonstration' in the south, with the real invasion coming from the undefended north through the sympathetic Kurdish regions) essentially completely reversed at the last moment. I'm not sure I understand the parsimony in deployments, unless there was a hope that - given the political and public antiwar repercussions that were growing - this could be as 'light' as an invasion could be. I think we underestimated Saddam, as well, which is always a tragically stupid thing to do.
But largely, nevertheless, it was a success. When Bush declared "mission accomplished" - it largely WAS. Saddam had been toppled, period, full stop.
Further, I think the occupation afterward was the catastrophe. Truth in advertising: I don't believe that the US is obligated in any way to rebuild countries that we attack and defeat. The logic BEHIND the Marshall plan is no more applicable universally than the implementation.
I would have said that Egypt could perhaps jettison it's shitty, tyrannical government and work on joining us in the 21st century....but they already made an effort.
Sadly, they've apparently decided to replace their shitty, tyrannical secular government with an autocratic theocracy, so I'm going to suggest that in 20 years, losing "only" one hour every other day is going to be looked back on with fond nostalgia....
Astronomers (and/or the reporters sending these reports) keep making comments like "... there appears to be a mysterious dearth of exoplanets smaller than Earth..." and then, later buried in the text: "...âoeThis is a guess, but theyâ(TM)re just harder to detect,â Marcy told Discovery News. âoeSmall planets dim the star less â" the dimming has to be greater than the noise to detect the planet...."
Well, no SHIT, Sherlock. But: Observing a lack of something doesn't mean that something is missing, particularly when we KNOW our method of observations are clumsy and limited.
We only recently developed the tech to discover planets at all, so obviously our gross methods first detected the largest planets that would either a) swing the primary around the most, or b) occlude the most light.
The Earth, transiting in front of the sun, blocks about 1% of the (2d) visible side. That's not much occlusion.
Further, when you consider that our detection methods largely rely on the faint chance (see what I did there?) that the planet passes almost DIRECTLY between Earth and the observed primary - and does so repeatedly (at least 3x), and within the span of observation - it's pretty f*cking unbelievable that we've seen ANY. And if the chance of observing something happening is vanishingly small, yet we are seeing thousands of these, then isn't it logical that the event must be happening with very high frequency?
On the contrary, given our still-new detection technologies, and the geometry working against us, I'd say the numbers of planets we've already observed strongly suggests that 'planet-building mechanisms' are common around pretty much every star.
Governments find a new arena of competition/avenueof conflict. Governments duking it out in this arena will prove unpleasant for non-governments also in that arena.
This should be brutally obvious to inhabitants of Belgium, if not everyone else with the slightest grasp of history.
Great overview, if a little histrionic. Correct me if I'm wrong, though: to generate blocked IPs in a custom hosts file, don't I have to know those IP's in the first place?
Ie, don't I have to have been bitten by that dog (or at least know he's vicious) to know I want to ban him from my house?
One of the adblock advantages (and I grant, they're not perfect) is that they ALREADY have built this list.
(I hope that despite posting AC, you come back and reply.)
"...U.S. proposal in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and existing obligations in the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) and other free trade agreements to which the United States is a party."
1) the TPP is merely PROPOSED. It's complete bullshit to say we can't just CHANGE OUR PROPOSAL. Jesus.
2) US Law > treaties (at least within the US). Congress has to basically pass a law authorizing any treaty. That law can be rewritten, struck, etc just like ANY OTHER US LAW, as far as its applicability to US citizens.
Simply, the administration's position on this is an outright, simple, lie. You know, government has been full of crap for at least the last 70 years, but within the last couple of administrations they aren't even bothering to try to conceal it anymore, they just state what they want us to believe. Their partisans cheerfully man the barricades to defend (whatever it is, even if it contradicts their party's basic premises), while the opposition fulminates pointlessly all over the web - in the meanwhile the government goes back to whatever it was doing anyway, uncaring.
You neglect that the terms of most treaties historically HAVE been secret; the precise terms of a treaty requiring mutual defense, combat forces, etc are almost invariably secret as the uncertainty gives the treaty extra 'reach' diplomatically.
Hell, many mutual defense treaties though the 19th century THEMSELVES have been secret - ie the public, and even other states don't even know they exist. (I'm looking at you, Bismarck.)
Not to mention narrow-minded. I mean, granted male-female heterosexual porn is probably the majority, but this begs so many questions it's silly: - is gay porn (2 men) banned? If not, that's pretty arbitrary; if so, how is a woman being exploited? - lesbian porn? - how about women who participate because they want to? Sasha Grey doesn't seem like she's ever been compelled to do anything. - dominatrix porn
This just screams a sort of retro-Victorian left-wing version of political correctness and no actual thought, not to mention any considerations of the rights of individuals to pursue happiness on their own.
Because astronomy is still deeply wedded to a sort of archaic taxonomy that is based in the observations of Chaldeans and still has more than a few toes mired in its astrological foundations.
It's long past time that the entire discipline basically sits down and rewrites its nomenclature (giving as best possible use of the common terms for things such as stars, planets, nebulae, etc.). We've started by throwing Pluto back out into the outer darkness where it properly belongs, but it's only a beginning.
Teenage Pokemon: [Teenage Pokemon is a cartoon show about Pokemon in their middle stage of evolution -- we're all wasted. New episodes every week.] This is an article about a cartoon show.
Sup Holmes:[Destructoid's Director of Communications Hamza Aziz asked Jonathan Holmes to make a show called 'Sup, Holmes?' so that Destructoid could later sell a t-shirt that says 'Sup, Holmes?' on it. This is that show. Subscribe... more] So, this is an article about a response to an article.
Ten golden rules of online gaming: "..Here's our most popular article from January 2009..." Really? Something from 2009?
My thoughts precisely; what good are photos that can never be viewed? The Smithsonian has (in my personal experience) always been a strong partner of digitization and research. Unless and until they release those photos, the 'interpretation' of the photos - as assiduous and interesting as it is - will only remain a footnote. Further, releasing those pictures doesn't change Smithsonian's stance on who was the first to powered flight, so it should be beyond the bounds of the contract (which is clearly unenforceable as Jane's already points out).
I don't read Destructoid, but I read plenty of other gaming sites.
I run strict adblockers for the same reason pretty much everyone does: because the obtrusiveness of ads - popover, popunder, audible, garish, and intellitext ads all are simply annoying, not to say that some (scripts) are flat-out security risks.
The fact is - not as bad as broadcast TV, but close - the hook is too large for the bait. Few people understand the true relationship between viewers, content producers, and advertisers: the ADVERTISERS are the customers, the viewers are what are being sold, and the content producer is like a fisherman, throwing just enough bait (content) into the water to get the fish to swim closer (read the site and thus the adverts) to sell THAT to the customer.
50% of the users block ads? I think that's low, actually. I also put adblock on every computer in our family (it means less service work for me).
So, you ask, how is a site like Destructoid supposed to survive? 1) recognize that (contrary to the OP) you're NOT "working 2x as hard as anyone to survive"...everyone else's ads are blocked at the same rate. 2) you are in a market where there are a glut of suppliers because the entry-price is so low: a website is cheap to start and there are all sorts of budding writers that are simply happy to have their crap posted somewhere more official than their facebook page.. The sad fact of capitalism is that many of them will fail. 3) Sadly, whether you fail or not will probably have little to do with the quality of your content. Life's a crapshoot, and choosing a business with a zero-depth entry point means your business is going to be CONSTANTLY challenged by other people who think they can do it better. Further, it is overall a relatively puny business, something that a corporate giant (a Sony, or EA, or whatever) can 'blow' $$$ on with little/no hope of return, compensating writers more aggressively. The only thing you have to offer that beats that is neutrality - any corporate-sponsored site (if it's identifiable as such) is suspected of being biased in its reviews, or (at best) being a gross corporate shill (ala Game Informer magazine). But ultimately (as especially those of us having spent time in the industry know) you are hostage to your advertisers too. In point of fact, the agglomerated sites (Telefragged, etc.) are probably LESS hostage to a particular advertiser, although as I'm not sure how fast the zeroes pile up at that scale, I'm not certain that's true.
For what it's worth, there is no bad publicity; I'd never even heard of Destructoid having been in the gaming industry as a consumer and reviewer since 1994. I'll check out Destructoid for a while, see if it's worth reading.
I don't have any advice for you. If I could be certain that the ads provided through your ad-providers are never going to be minimally-obtrusive, sure, I' d suspend adblock on you pages. But I can't change the fact that your industry is easy to get into and you will always have lots and lots of competition...I doubt it will ever get easier for you.
Truth in commenting 1: I personally can't understand the advertising economy; the amounts paid for advertising seem to me staggeringly out of line for the benefit. I rarely watch/view ads, those I do see often dissuade as much as persuade, and I've never (as far as I can tell) made a purchasing choice based on an advert. Truth in commenting 2: on Slashdot, I have deliberately left unchecked the 'disable adverts' box because I've never been annoyed at their ads; however, I don't make an adblock exception for them either.
1) Cherry-picked data alert: when someone picks a data set of "11300 years" it suggests Cherry-Picking. Why not 10k, 20k, 50k years? Does that not 'fit' the message?
2) from the article: "...After the ice age, they found, global average temperatures rose until they reached a plateau between 7550 and 3550 bc. Then a long-term cooling trend set in, reaching its lowest temperature extreme between ad 1450 and 1850...." So let's see, after an ice age it warmed, then it reached a "low temp extreme" and now it's high? Hm, almost like it's cyclic.
Again, it's obvious from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png There is a 'pulse' of warm temps approx every 120k years, and has been for at least 500,000 years, if not 1 million years or more (the sliding scale on the referenced graph is hard to discern). We're - in fact - overdue for our most recent pulse of warmth.
Now, hypothetically: cast us back to the last pulse, about 200k years ago. Had human society existed (in its current tech state) at that time, how would we have interpreted that pulse? Would we have recognized it as a regular cycle, or would politicians (and their fellow-travelers, who have been screaming about the destruction of the environment for 40 years now) have opportunistically re-interpreted it as "human-caused"?
If the EU parliament is ANYTHING like the US Congress, their impact on the country would be relatively positive if they WERE looking at porn instead of what they usually spend their time doing.....
"...The IT department of the European Parliament is blocking the delivery of the emails on this issue, after some members of the parliament complained about getting emails from citizens."
EU Parliament is a triumph of democracy, clearly.
Really, the moment I start to think that nothing could be more ridiculous than the US Congress, there I go, proved wrong again.
I'm pretty sure "harshest sanctions ever" mean a sternly worded phone call is needless escalation.
We'll implement sanctions that anyone and everyone who cares about will ignore, until the collective hand-wringing over the plight of the North Koreans means that we ship over another several shiploads of food, clothing, and medical supplies.
That was Iraq. That is Iran. It will be North Korea.
Dear Slashdot editors/coders: it's 2013, do you think we could get some posting code that would understand that pasted quotation test are quotes, and not 'Ãoe'?
For that matter, using now-fairly-standard [bracketed] code rather than greater-than and less-than symbols might be clever too....
St Boni has the highest point in Hennepin County (the major urban county in MN) and aviation uses their water tower for calibration and navigation. The Mayor/Council noted that two test labs in Minnesota have been testing them and certifying drones based on the Military standards, kind of like the UL, or CE mark. Having a fairly strong stance on Constitutional rights and privacy issues of Citizens vs govt, they banned warrentless flights for 2 years pending a transparent discussion of standards for such intelligence-gathering mechanisms.
âoeWe support taking a step back for two years and let the state and county come up with policies and procedures for how to do it,â said St. Boni Mayor Rick Weible. Council member Joe Arwood added, âoeWe donâ(TM)t want to exclude a lawful purpose (for use of drone technology), but we want to be aware when it happens.â
Would it be alright if the publisher said "we only believe in straight marriages - you've spoken out in FAVOR of 'gay marriage'*, therefore we're not going to use you"?
*insert here any non-politically correct belief. If the publisher was secretly a white supremacist, could they reject Clayton Biggs?
Personally, I believe that in a perfect world, we'd all be allowed to choose our friends and associates freely. A company could hire - or not hire - anyone based on whatever criteria they want; likewise, customers could patronize (or not) a business equally arbitrarily.
However, that's NOT how our society works. A company cannot refuse to hire women, black people, or gays. One can't form a club and refuse to allow women in. Hell, you can't even have a simple pass/fail test for capability (ie a fire department) without special 'easy mode' parts for women. So why do we tolerate the hypocrisy? It's ok to be thought-police one way, but not the other?
Slashdot Mirror
...it's rarely started by 'grumpy flight attendant'. The rules are the rules, and obviously the flight attendant isn't making them,. (I don't object to people being sticklers for safety - even if the rules are dubious.)
No, more frequently it's 'asshole passenger who doesn't think the rule needs to apply to him' that *makes* the flight attendant 'grumpy'.
Personally, I wish they were far MORE draconian: "Sir, turn off the phone in the next 10 seconds or we kick you off the plane, period, no appeals, no refund."
I'm sure the fact that Pres Obama has deliberately snubbed Israel several times, as well as offering perhaps the most-obviously-lukewarm support of any US president for our sole worthwhile ally in the region...has nothing at all to do with this "oops".
...is (I suspect deliberately) misleading.
The electoral vote was 301-191-46...not really even close.
The subsequent election in 1972 for Nixon was (I believe) the greatest electoral landslide in US history - 520:17 for Nixon, which would suggest it was a pretty strong confirmation of the 1968 results.
The difference between Nixon and Humphrey 1968 was 110 electoral votes, not significantly less than the 126 between Obama/Romney in 2012, and that's considered a pretty clear mandate for Obama.
Ah, historical memory is so conveniently short.
I'd like to review this on multiple levels: first, the simplest, legal level.
The ceasefire at the end of the 1993 Gulf War had a number of terms that Saddam routinely and casually violated. This ALONE legally justifies any US resumption of combat operations.
Second, Saddam was our tool, and thus our problem 'to fix'. From a Cold War era where finding proxies to fight on 'our side' was more important than considering they were brutal sociopaths, he'd also proved useful to us in countering Iranian regional power in the 1980s. To ignore that he was our creature is almost as bad as ignoring the routine brutalities he exercised against his own peoples - to fault both Conservatives and Liberals on this issue, respectively.
Thirdly, and I think most important, were the geopolitical realities. By the time of the 2nd Gulf War, there was widespread clamor from the Left to end the 'cruel' sanctions that 'were only hurting schoolchildren'. Nobody seems to remember this? (And this setting aside the regular and systemic violations of the sanctions that were taking place by European firms in probable collusion with some governments.) Saddam was politically isolated, he was a pariah, his military was decrepit. We had (criminally, in my view) allowed him to crush his opposition in the southern Marshes over the 1990s without objecting. It was a perfect opportunity to get rid of him, try to restore some American military credibility (badly soiled since Mogadishu), and likely to be limited in duration.
Not to mention, and this may be distressingly amoral/utilitarian for some, US casualties WERE LOW. 5000 dead, 50,000 injured isn't trivial by any measure, but for a war against a nation of 22 million and a 10-year resisted occupation, it's small. When your opponent is reduced to planting bombs in trash cans, you've essentially won.
Personally, I never gave a shit about the "WMD" or "Al Qaeda" stories, they were fairy-tale sound bites useful for convincing the naive and ignorant too stupid to understand the geopolitical rationale behind the US's actions in the Gulf.
Was the invasion botched? Yep. I think we went into it entirely undergunned even recalling that the main invasion force - 4ID - was blocked from planned deployment by last-minute Turkish qualms, and the invasion plan (originally planned to be a 'demonstration' in the south, with the real invasion coming from the undefended north through the sympathetic Kurdish regions) essentially completely reversed at the last moment. I'm not sure I understand the parsimony in deployments, unless there was a hope that - given the political and public antiwar repercussions that were growing - this could be as 'light' as an invasion could be. I think we underestimated Saddam, as well, which is always a tragically stupid thing to do.
But largely, nevertheless, it was a success. When Bush declared "mission accomplished" - it largely WAS. Saddam had been toppled, period, full stop.
Further, I think the occupation afterward was the catastrophe. Truth in advertising: I don't believe that the US is obligated in any way to rebuild countries that we attack and defeat. The logic BEHIND the Marshall plan is no more applicable universally than the implementation.
I would have said that Egypt could perhaps jettison it's shitty, tyrannical government and work on joining us in the 21st century....but they already made an effort.
Sadly, they've apparently decided to replace their shitty, tyrannical secular government with an autocratic theocracy, so I'm going to suggest that in 20 years, losing "only" one hour every other day is going to be looked back on with fond nostalgia....
You guys enjoy that.
Not to mention the entire slant of the article trying to blame the US for other countries' energy consumption appetites.
How about "As the US succeeds at cleaning its energy mix, other countries using the coal instead."?
But that might make us out to be something other than the Great Satan, surely?
It's almost like it was scripted.
Under Republican President:
Interceptors deployed: +1 GOP, -1 Democrats
Interceptors canceled: -1 GOP, +1 Democrats
Under Democrat President:
Interceptors deployed: -1 GOP, +1 Democrats
Pretty much every step: +1000 Military Industrial Complex
Astronomers (and/or the reporters sending these reports) keep making comments like "... there appears to be a mysterious dearth of exoplanets smaller than Earth..."
and then, later buried in the text:
"...âoeThis is a guess, but theyâ(TM)re just harder to detect,â Marcy told Discovery News. âoeSmall planets dim the star less â" the dimming has to be greater than the noise to detect the planet...."
Well, no SHIT, Sherlock. But: Observing a lack of something doesn't mean that something is missing, particularly when we KNOW our method of observations are clumsy and limited.
We only recently developed the tech to discover planets at all, so obviously our gross methods first detected the largest planets that would either a) swing the primary around the most, or b) occlude the most light.
The Earth, transiting in front of the sun, blocks about 1% of the (2d) visible side. That's not much occlusion.
Further, when you consider that our detection methods largely rely on the faint chance (see what I did there?) that the planet passes almost DIRECTLY between Earth and the observed primary - and does so repeatedly (at least 3x), and within the span of observation - it's pretty f*cking unbelievable that we've seen ANY. And if the chance of observing something happening is vanishingly small, yet we are seeing thousands of these, then isn't it logical that the event must be happening with very high frequency?
On the contrary, given our still-new detection technologies, and the geometry working against us, I'd say the numbers of planets we've already observed strongly suggests that 'planet-building mechanisms' are common around pretty much every star.
Funny, this weird technique also helps my marriage.
Capt Obvious points out the obvious.
Seriously, this rates as 'news'?
Governments find a new arena of competition/avenueof conflict.
Governments duking it out in this arena will prove unpleasant for non-governments also in that arena.
This should be brutally obvious to inhabitants of Belgium, if not everyone else with the slightest grasp of history.
Great overview, if a little histrionic.
Correct me if I'm wrong, though: to generate blocked IPs in a custom hosts file, don't I have to know those IP's in the first place?
Ie, don't I have to have been bitten by that dog (or at least know he's vicious) to know I want to ban him from my house?
One of the adblock advantages (and I grant, they're not perfect) is that they ALREADY have built this list.
(I hope that despite posting AC, you come back and reply.)
"...U.S. proposal in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and existing obligations in the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) and other free trade agreements to which the United States is a party."
1) the TPP is merely PROPOSED. It's complete bullshit to say we can't just CHANGE OUR PROPOSAL. Jesus.
2) US Law > treaties (at least within the US). Congress has to basically pass a law authorizing any treaty. That law can be rewritten, struck, etc just like ANY OTHER US LAW, as far as its applicability to US citizens.
Simply, the administration's position on this is an outright, simple, lie.
You know, government has been full of crap for at least the last 70 years, but within the last couple of administrations they aren't even bothering to try to conceal it anymore, they just state what they want us to believe. Their partisans cheerfully man the barricades to defend (whatever it is, even if it contradicts their party's basic premises), while the opposition fulminates pointlessly all over the web - in the meanwhile the government goes back to whatever it was doing anyway, uncaring.
You neglect that the terms of most treaties historically HAVE been secret; the precise terms of a treaty requiring mutual defense, combat forces, etc are almost invariably secret as the uncertainty gives the treaty extra 'reach' diplomatically.
Hell, many mutual defense treaties though the 19th century THEMSELVES have been secret - ie the public, and even other states don't even know they exist. (I'm looking at you, Bismarck.)
Not to mention narrow-minded.
I mean, granted male-female heterosexual porn is probably the majority, but this begs so many questions it's silly:
- is gay porn (2 men) banned? If not, that's pretty arbitrary; if so, how is a woman being exploited?
- lesbian porn?
- how about women who participate because they want to? Sasha Grey doesn't seem like she's ever been compelled to do anything.
- dominatrix porn
This just screams a sort of retro-Victorian left-wing version of political correctness and no actual thought, not to mention any considerations of the rights of individuals to pursue happiness on their own.
Because astronomy is still deeply wedded to a sort of archaic taxonomy that is based in the observations of Chaldeans and still has more than a few toes mired in its astrological foundations.
It's long past time that the entire discipline basically sits down and rewrites its nomenclature (giving as best possible use of the common terms for things such as stars, planets, nebulae, etc.). We've started by throwing Pluto back out into the outer darkness where it properly belongs, but it's only a beginning.
Here are their first 3 stories at this moment:
Teenage Pokemon: [Teenage Pokemon is a cartoon show about Pokemon in their middle stage of evolution -- we're all wasted. New episodes every week.]
This is an article about a cartoon show.
Sup Holmes :[Destructoid's Director of Communications Hamza Aziz asked Jonathan Holmes to make a show called 'Sup, Holmes?' so that Destructoid could later sell a t-shirt that says 'Sup, Holmes?' on it. This is that show. Subscribe ... more] So, this is an article about a response to an article.
Ten golden rules of online gaming: "..Here's our most popular article from January 2009..." Really? Something from 2009?
Exactly the right (Wright?) point.
From TFA:
The William J. Hammer Collection is located at the Smithsonian Institute: http://airandspace.si.edu/research/arch/findaids/pdf/william_j_hammer_collection_finding_aid.pdf
Researchers are denied access:
My thoughts precisely; what good are photos that can never be viewed?
The Smithsonian has (in my personal experience) always been a strong partner of digitization and research. Unless and until they release those photos, the 'interpretation' of the photos - as assiduous and interesting as it is - will only remain a footnote. Further, releasing those pictures doesn't change Smithsonian's stance on who was the first to powered flight, so it should be beyond the bounds of the contract (which is clearly unenforceable as Jane's already points out).
I don't read Destructoid, but I read plenty of other gaming sites.
I run strict adblockers for the same reason pretty much everyone does: because the obtrusiveness of ads - popover, popunder, audible, garish, and intellitext ads all are simply annoying, not to say that some (scripts) are flat-out security risks.
The fact is - not as bad as broadcast TV, but close - the hook is too large for the bait. Few people understand the true relationship between viewers, content producers, and advertisers: the ADVERTISERS are the customers, the viewers are what are being sold, and the content producer is like a fisherman, throwing just enough bait (content) into the water to get the fish to swim closer (read the site and thus the adverts) to sell THAT to the customer.
50% of the users block ads? I think that's low, actually. I also put adblock on every computer in our family (it means less service work for me).
So, you ask, how is a site like Destructoid supposed to survive?
1) recognize that (contrary to the OP) you're NOT "working 2x as hard as anyone to survive"...everyone else's ads are blocked at the same rate.
2) you are in a market where there are a glut of suppliers because the entry-price is so low: a website is cheap to start and there are all sorts of budding writers that are simply happy to have their crap posted somewhere more official than their facebook page.. The sad fact of capitalism is that many of them will fail.
3) Sadly, whether you fail or not will probably have little to do with the quality of your content. Life's a crapshoot, and choosing a business with a zero-depth entry point means your business is going to be CONSTANTLY challenged by other people who think they can do it better. Further, it is overall a relatively puny business, something that a corporate giant (a Sony, or EA, or whatever) can 'blow' $$$ on with little/no hope of return, compensating writers more aggressively. The only thing you have to offer that beats that is neutrality - any corporate-sponsored site (if it's identifiable as such) is suspected of being biased in its reviews, or (at best) being a gross corporate shill (ala Game Informer magazine). But ultimately (as especially those of us having spent time in the industry know) you are hostage to your advertisers too. In point of fact, the agglomerated sites (Telefragged, etc.) are probably LESS hostage to a particular advertiser, although as I'm not sure how fast the zeroes pile up at that scale, I'm not certain that's true.
For what it's worth, there is no bad publicity; I'd never even heard of Destructoid having been in the gaming industry as a consumer and reviewer since 1994. I'll check out Destructoid for a while, see if it's worth reading.
I don't have any advice for you. If I could be certain that the ads provided through your ad-providers are never going to be minimally-obtrusive, sure, I' d suspend adblock on you pages. But I can't change the fact that your industry is easy to get into and you will always have lots and lots of competition...I doubt it will ever get easier for you.
Truth in commenting 1: I personally can't understand the advertising economy; the amounts paid for advertising seem to me staggeringly out of line for the benefit. I rarely watch/view ads, those I do see often dissuade as much as persuade, and I've never (as far as I can tell) made a purchasing choice based on an advert.
Truth in commenting 2: on Slashdot, I have deliberately left unchecked the 'disable adverts' box because I've never been annoyed at their ads; however, I don't make an adblock exception for them either.
1) Cherry-picked data alert: when someone picks a data set of "11300 years" it suggests Cherry-Picking. Why not 10k, 20k, 50k years? Does that not 'fit' the message?
2) from the article:
"...After the ice age, they found, global average temperatures rose until they reached a plateau between 7550 and 3550 bc. Then a long-term cooling trend set in, reaching its lowest temperature extreme between ad 1450 and 1850...."
So let's see, after an ice age it warmed, then it reached a "low temp extreme" and now it's high? Hm, almost like it's cyclic.
Again, it's obvious from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png
There is a 'pulse' of warm temps approx every 120k years, and has been for at least 500,000 years, if not 1 million years or more (the sliding scale on the referenced graph is hard to discern). We're - in fact - overdue for our most recent pulse of warmth.
Now, hypothetically: cast us back to the last pulse, about 200k years ago. Had human society existed (in its current tech state) at that time, how would we have interpreted that pulse? Would we have recognized it as a regular cycle, or would politicians (and their fellow-travelers, who have been screaming about the destruction of the environment for 40 years now) have opportunistically re-interpreted it as "human-caused"?
If the EU parliament is ANYTHING like the US Congress, their impact on the country would be relatively positive if they WERE looking at porn instead of what they usually spend their time doing.....
The story just gets funnier as you read it:
"...The IT department of the European Parliament is blocking the delivery of the emails on this issue, after some members of the parliament complained about getting emails from citizens."
EU Parliament is a triumph of democracy, clearly.
Really, the moment I start to think that nothing could be more ridiculous than the US Congress, there I go, proved wrong again.
I'm pretty sure "harshest sanctions ever" mean a sternly worded phone call is needless escalation.
We'll implement sanctions that anyone and everyone who cares about will ignore, until the collective hand-wringing over the plight of the North Koreans means that we ship over another several shiploads of food, clothing, and medical supplies.
That was Iraq.
That is Iran.
It will be North Korea.
"That'll teach 'em!"
Dear Slashdot editors/coders: it's 2013, do you think we could get some posting code that would understand that pasted quotation test are quotes, and not 'Ãoe'?
For that matter, using now-fairly-standard [bracketed] code rather than greater-than and less-than symbols might be clever too....
Of course it's more of a statement than something they're going to be able to enforce if the Feds/State have different plans, but a local community here in MN banned drones from its airspace for 2 years: http://sunpatriot.com/2013/02/28/st-boni-acts-to-protect-its-airspace-against-drones/
St Boni has the highest point in Hennepin County (the major urban county in MN) and aviation uses their water tower for calibration and navigation. The Mayor/Council noted that two test labs in Minnesota have been testing them and certifying drones based on the Military standards, kind of like the UL, or CE mark. Having a fairly strong stance on Constitutional rights and privacy issues of Citizens vs govt, they banned warrentless flights for 2 years pending a transparent discussion of standards for such intelligence-gathering mechanisms.
âoeWe support taking a step back for two years and let the state and county come up with policies and procedures for how to do it,â said St. Boni Mayor Rick Weible. Council member Joe Arwood added, âoeWe donâ(TM)t want to exclude a lawful purpose (for use of drone technology), but we want to be aware when it happens.â
Would it be alright if the publisher said "we only believe in straight marriages - you've spoken out in FAVOR of 'gay marriage'*, therefore we're not going to use you"?
*insert here any non-politically correct belief. If the publisher was secretly a white supremacist, could they reject Clayton Biggs?
Personally, I believe that in a perfect world, we'd all be allowed to choose our friends and associates freely. A company could hire - or not hire - anyone based on whatever criteria they want; likewise, customers could patronize (or not) a business equally arbitrarily.
However, that's NOT how our society works. A company cannot refuse to hire women, black people, or gays. One can't form a club and refuse to allow women in. Hell, you can't even have a simple pass/fail test for capability (ie a fire department) without special 'easy mode' parts for women. So why do we tolerate the hypocrisy? It's ok to be thought-police one way, but not the other?