Linux also offers financial firms the ability to modify the source code to further speed performance.
So does anyone have a link to any source code that was made open under the license? They may be taking our money, but at least they are giving us code, right?
When they say spoilers, they are referring to the Colombo mystery where they first show you who done it, and are asking participants to compare that with a Murder She Wrote where you aren't told. So this is a study of whether twists at the end unconditionally enhance our enjoyment...
Well, duh. Of course it depends on the whole story.
They make it sound like people would enjoy Murder She Wrote the same even after a friend gave away the ending. The misdirection in the title is the only reason why people are reading this article. Why put a hook in a research paper title?
But isn't that car listed around 30mpg? I mean, it's wonderful that you get 52 out of it, but it's not what Honda got, and it means even for a Honda Jazz/Fit, the car would somehow need 20 more mpg.
Did they consider we might be nearing the end of the road for pure gas efficiency? Just wondering if *any* science ever factors into these decisions. As if engineers can engineer anything given time!!
A Prius may do over 50mpg but that is only because it does not run on gas for a decent portion of it.
I really wish this statement were true to everyone's eyes, and we could just admit it. Unfortunately, to many run this code: function USA(){
capitasim; }
if (USA != capitalism)
then USA = socialism;
Those who cannot see the code at work for what it really is cannot fix it. But thank Gov for free speech, because we all get to spew bullshit about it all day regardless of how anything is actually implemented.
In a competitive market, the corporation that can give customers the most value will keep the most value for itself.
Right on cue!
This is the myth that fuels small to medium businesses, and the dreamers who still have any hope left.
Law #1 is true, and that is precisely why businesses that give the most value suffer through self-sacrifice and lower profits. While businesses are small, it is the moral stance of the founders and business operators that can counteract this law and increase customer satisfaction. It is at a price, but often those with a passion, and who are already happy with their compensation, such as the founders realizing their dreams, are happy to pay. This is great for consumers. But this is *not* capitalism at work. This is good will being applied to counteract the evil of capitalism at work.
Beyond a certain threshold however, the company starts to prioritize profits over all else. This is when moral baggage (founders) are let go of, and the quality of service falls to "the minimum quality required to sustain their business". This can happen before or after a company goes public, but almost always happens after mergers or take-overs. And unfortunately is only a matter of time...
Law of Capitalism #3: The quality of products, services, and compensation fall to their tolerable minimums, and prices rise to their tolerable maximums, as a corporation expands.
It's no new information because we knew it already.
Law of Capitalism #1: Customer value directly conflicts with corporate income. If more value goes to the consumer, less value will go to the corporation.
Mergers are never for the benefit of the consumer.
AT&T is willing to pay a huge premium simply to reduce competition and keep T-Mobile out of Sprint's hands
Law of Capitalism #2: Monopolies win.
But the problem isn't with our understanding of these laws. It's with the FCC not doing it's job, and everyone involved being paid off.
"Self-esteem increases with age, and those with a higher self-esteem are more likely to protect their personal information".
So it says those "are more likely" but not that "self-esteem causes". In other words, this sentence is made to sound like there is a connection, but avoids claiming there is a causal one. It is only saying "with age people are more private". Well, that directly contradicts "kids and adults are similar."
Secondly, this is an online survey. What kind of online user fills out online surveys these days anyway? Did they enter thinking they'd "win" a free iPad? Savvy adults rarely do surveys, or facebook surveys for that matter.
Thirdly, the study doesn't consider the subject's understanding of facebook, the default settings or how to change settings on facebook. Do they know their faces appear on sites they Like if the sites adds a facebook widget? Or that Everyone can see their friends and photos by default? Or how facebook shares their information?
It is quite understandable how the government would lose in cyber warfare: We all know.gov sites look ugly and are fat and bloated, and clearly their back-ends don't look any better.
But it would seem like USA, Inc., the big corporations that pretty much define USA, are far better at it than other foreign big corporations, such as, say SONY.
Although Amazon's cloud failures are quite discouraging, if North Korea attacked, I doubt Amazon would even notice.
Not to mention China would NEVER attack Amazon, or even USA for that matter. Everything we sell is made in China!! They want us to be online 24/7/365. In fact, I would go as far as to say, China would probably PROTECT us.
Like the.com bust, the thin-client bust, XML bust, and the yet-to-be cloud bust, the trend is not in any of these concepts being bullshit. The trend is in these concepts being taken away by men in gray suits and becoming the substance of what they do that is bullshit. It isn't bullshit to begin with. They take lemons and make bullshit, because it sells for more than the lemonade.
Although there are extents to gamification, there definitely is a legitimate idea here that has practical uses. Success can be counted or "scored". Failures can be given limits or "lives", which when depleted, would cause a reset or "game over". Workers with many completed tasks, regardless of outcome, can still gain experience, or "EXP" then maybe get promoted or "level up". Now, scores, lives, exp, and levels, are all numbers which can be shared and compared. And just as this information can guide and govern the flow of a game environment, it can with a work environment. This is inspired by games and would be my best guess as to a practical approach to gamification.
But who cares. For marketing and sales, gamification can be made out to be something more when it isn't, and more expensive when it shouldn't be. This is roughly how it's done.
1) Talk big, be epic, and as if you know. Pick a good myth, "Make it a game and everyone will play it." "Every game is fun."
2) Add financial talk that include similar terms, drop names. Feel free to lie, but applicable facts are usually easy to find. "The game industry is huge!!" "VCs say its the next big thing." "Microsoft is adopting it."
3) At this point, if they buy it, it's game on. Sell them everything but the kitchen sink. Charge them for: - per user - per game level - a gaming engine - a 3D rendering machine - 3D modelers, writers, artists - programming and consulting fees - the princess they get to spend the night with when they complete the game. - customer support
The key is 1+2 meeting a specific threshold which is sell-ability, and it pretty much what triggers an industry trend driven by suits. Once a few big clients topple over, the avalanche begins. They then repeat 1 through 3 until the industry catches on, then move on to something else. But the template is more or less identical.
Ah, no again. Good software is what doesn't depend on your agreement with values. Yet, she talks as if it was the values, not good software, that had people adopting mozilla.
Values may have helped source the product, but again, values have nothing to do with adoption, and even if mozilla never came on the scene, great browsers would still exist. As proof, if values is what got people using mozilla, none of them should have moved on to use chrome. Or any other browser for that matter. Not so.
The adoption of Windows, Chrome, and iPhones, or even more generally, cell phones, PCs, the internet, even television, all have little or nothing to do with values. It's what it does.
Yes, Apple and others love to use values to build their brand loyalty, much like cults and religions. But building software and building a moral high ground are two completely separate en devours, and I would much rather see mozilla focus on building software. Great software will be adopted by people of all values. It is for their own good to focus on what matters, yet some appear to be very confused.
Ah, no. You took back the web with a great browser + got bumps from IE sucking so bad, and the delay of Chrome. Most users don't know or care about Mozilla's values. They are satisfied customers who are happy with their $0 purchase, as am I.
It is fine for people closer to the product or people directly involved with its development to be proud of their values, and the values of the organization. But to say values are what make the browser great, is precisely the high horse I am trying to shed light on here.
You as a fan are free to say whatever. Free speech, freedom of values, free tacos, its all good. But for the representative of Mozilla to come out like this is not all good. One of the main reasons of which is the divide it will create between believers and non-believers in the Mozilla doctrine, which is detrimental to their goal, unless they are a church.
Right. But Mozilla wasn't purely responsible for the cross platform browser, and if they didn't do it, someone else surely would have... actually, many others have, and there are others browsers that are cross platform.
Mozilla did a great job, and they made a great product, but they cannot claim they saved anyone from anything, let alone the industry from itself.
Right, although I understand it isn't quite the same, if we were to talk purely of income levels, then free open software would be the sweatshops of software. Actually it's worse, because these contributors have NO INCOME stemming from their work. One could argue it is closer to many religions in how they get everyone to work for free, and even donate money on top of that. "If you believe, you shall follow, work, and support us financially."
Of course it isn't quite the same because most programmers have a choice, and the choice usually is with how they spend their extracurricular resources and expendable income. With sweatshops it's about their livelihood.
If we hadn’t, the web would be a very sorry place today.
I respectfully completely disagree.
We should bring Mozilla values to where people are living today.
So it's about values? I'd like to think users care mostly about what something does, then maybe the price, before any moral baggage it could possibly bring with it. But while you're at it, if tax breaks by becoming a religion is where you're going with it, it's f'ing genius.
Why such a high horse? It's just software!! It's either useful or it sucks.
Anonymity has always existed. Back in the day they were called "strangers". They were the people we would see walking the streets, but would never talk to. They were the names and numbers in the phone book between those that mattered to us.
The problem today is with those who confuse "strangers" with "people". To be a person, one must acquire an identity, or they do not deserve to be taken seriously. An anonymous phone call warning of a bomb is not courteous, but suspicious. Why would they hide their identity if it were that important? Yes, it may still be worth pursuing, but the situation is nothing like if a real person called it in, yet confusing the two is still too common.
We all have identities. Hence authorities feel they can demand them. But ultimately, we still get to choose who we give our identities to, and in this case, I think many of us will choose not to give it to google+.
Thank you google, but I'd rather you didn't get to know me (more than you do).
I am quite sure at this point no one is forced to be on google+. Yes, this may change if google starts leveraging its other services to pressure or force people onto goolge+, but that would be an abuse of their monopoly, not the authoritative abuse of power postulated in this article.
Since when has google had authority over any of us?
Wake up people! Just because you got an invite, doesn't mean you have to.
"Real names enforcement" was just a bad idea, and just because it sucks. And for no other reason, except maybe that it blew up in their face.
With Google, the user is not the customer. Those placing ads are the customers, the user is the product.
Best thing I read on Slashdot in a while!!!
Yes, we are the lemons in their lemonade. Google doesn't suck. They know exactly what they are doing. The only thing they could possibly regret at the present is the bad publicity, but watch as damage control kicks in.
And it could very well be a good thing that "savvy" users get scared off by this. The last thing you'd want at your lemonade stand is your smart lemons rebelling.
Not to get too off topic by being serious, but I'm wondering if it is even possible to detect humor just from the expression.
Even with "that's what she said" there is an element of unpredictability that can only be tested when executed. I mean, sometimes it's not funny. In other words, the only test is if someone reads it and laughs.
This is much like not being able to predict the outcome of code completely without executing it.
We can always record results and rely on statistical analysis, but finding answers from the past is different from finding the answer just from what is present.
I am telling you how it is. Corporations have no conscience. The bigger, the worse. Spanking them doesn't discourage them. They are not misbehaving children. They're sociopaths. On the other hand, because they have no conscience, we can be as cruel as we want. They feel no pain.
Corporations avoid class actions lawsuits by now requiring arbitration, so they can abuse the customer all they like. Either you can have bad service or no service, those are now your options
So until this, we haven't been abused? Bad service or no service is the way it has always been my friend, and it is in part because class-actions don't work... which was my original point. They can get around class-action suits. What do you think this article was about? THEY WIN.
If I had it my way, any company that does something that they get fined for by the government, should not be paying the government, but the consumer for their wrong doing. Like 1 privacy violation is a 200 dollar ticket which requires them to pay the victim (their customer) that same amount. Grocery stores get fined all the time for false advertising. Well, they have all our information through those membership cards. They know exactly who they ripped off. I say each one of us deserves a check in the mail.
None of this is sophisticated. It doesn't work. It's a waste of everyone's time. And everyone involved is an a-hole.
"larger class-action settlements which might include punitive awards designed to discourage future bad practices"
I hear this line often, and it is wrong. Big corporations have no memory, and these "crimes" are hardly ever done on purpose. You cannot adjust your intentions if the outcome that needs correcting was never intended in the first place. Before getting into any details at all, it is blatantly obvious that any corporation would try to avoid a class action lawsuit of any kind. Same with recalls. The damage is done and the outcome is already secondary.
Of course, if it was done on purpose, then the outcome is already factored in, so they're just pissing on the system.
Slashdot Mirror
Linux also offers financial firms the ability to modify the source code to further speed performance.
So does anyone have a link to any source code that was made open under the license? They may be taking our money, but at least they are giving us code, right?
When they say spoilers, they are referring to the Colombo mystery where they first show you who done it, and are asking participants to compare that with a Murder She Wrote where you aren't told. So this is a study of whether twists at the end unconditionally enhance our enjoyment...
Well, duh. Of course it depends on the whole story.
They make it sound like people would enjoy Murder She Wrote the same even after a friend gave away the ending. The misdirection in the title is the only reason why people are reading this article. Why put a hook in a research paper title?
Please don't.
But isn't that car listed around 30mpg? I mean, it's wonderful that you get 52 out of it, but it's not what Honda got, and it means even for a Honda Jazz/Fit, the car would somehow need 20 more mpg.
Did they consider we might be nearing the end of the road for pure gas efficiency? Just wondering if *any* science ever factors into these decisions. As if engineers can engineer anything given time!!
A Prius may do over 50mpg but that is only because it does not run on gas for a decent portion of it.
US economic system != capitalism.
I really wish this statement were true to everyone's eyes, and we could just admit it. Unfortunately, to many run this code:
function USA(){
capitasim;
}
if (USA != capitalism)
then USA = socialism;
Those who cannot see the code at work for what it really is cannot fix it. But thank Gov for free speech, because we all get to spew bullshit about it all day regardless of how anything is actually implemented.
In a competitive market, the corporation that can give customers the most value will keep the most value for itself.
Right on cue!
This is the myth that fuels small to medium businesses, and the dreamers who still have any hope left.
Law #1 is true, and that is precisely why businesses that give the most value suffer through self-sacrifice and lower profits. While businesses are small, it is the moral stance of the founders and business operators that can counteract this law and increase customer satisfaction. It is at a price, but often those with a passion, and who are already happy with their compensation, such as the founders realizing their dreams, are happy to pay. This is great for consumers. But this is *not* capitalism at work. This is good will being applied to counteract the evil of capitalism at work.
Beyond a certain threshold however, the company starts to prioritize profits over all else. This is when moral baggage (founders) are let go of, and the quality of service falls to "the minimum quality required to sustain their business". This can happen before or after a company goes public, but almost always happens after mergers or take-overs. And unfortunately is only a matter of time...
Law of Capitalism #3: The quality of products, services, and compensation fall to their tolerable minimums, and prices rise to their tolerable maximums, as a corporation expands.
It's no new information because we knew it already.
Law of Capitalism #1: Customer value directly conflicts with corporate income. If more value goes to the consumer, less value will go to the corporation.
Mergers are never for the benefit of the consumer.
AT&T is willing to pay a huge premium simply to reduce competition and keep T-Mobile out of Sprint's hands
Law of Capitalism #2: Monopolies win.
But the problem isn't with our understanding of these laws. It's with the FCC not doing it's job, and everyone involved being paid off.
From the conclusion:
"Self-esteem increases with age, and those with a higher self-esteem are more likely to protect their personal information".
So it says those "are more likely" but not that "self-esteem causes". In other words, this sentence is made to sound like there is a connection, but avoids claiming there is a causal one. It is only saying "with age people are more private". Well, that directly contradicts "kids and adults are similar."
Secondly, this is an online survey. What kind of online user fills out online surveys these days anyway? Did they enter thinking they'd "win" a free iPad? Savvy adults rarely do surveys, or facebook surveys for that matter.
Thirdly, the study doesn't consider the subject's understanding of facebook, the default settings or how to change settings on facebook. Do they know their faces appear on sites they Like if the sites adds a facebook widget? Or that Everyone can see their friends and photos by default? Or how facebook shares their information?
This study SUCKS.
It is quite understandable how the government would lose in cyber warfare: We all know .gov sites look ugly and are fat and bloated, and clearly their back-ends don't look any better.
But it would seem like USA, Inc., the big corporations that pretty much define USA, are far better at it than other foreign big corporations, such as, say SONY.
Although Amazon's cloud failures are quite discouraging, if North Korea attacked, I doubt Amazon would even notice.
Not to mention China would NEVER attack Amazon, or even USA for that matter. Everything we sell is made in China!! They want us to be online 24/7/365. In fact, I would go as far as to say, China would probably PROTECT us.
Like the .com bust, the thin-client bust, XML bust, and the yet-to-be cloud bust, the trend is not in any of these concepts being bullshit. The trend is in these concepts being taken away by men in gray suits and becoming the substance of what they do that is bullshit. It isn't bullshit to begin with. They take lemons and make bullshit, because it sells for more than the lemonade.
Although there are extents to gamification, there definitely is a legitimate idea here that has practical uses. Success can be counted or "scored". Failures can be given limits or "lives", which when depleted, would cause a reset or "game over". Workers with many completed tasks, regardless of outcome, can still gain experience, or "EXP" then maybe get promoted or "level up". Now, scores, lives, exp, and levels, are all numbers which can be shared and compared. And just as this information can guide and govern the flow of a game environment, it can with a work environment. This is inspired by games and would be my best guess as to a practical approach to gamification.
But who cares. For marketing and sales, gamification can be made out to be something more when it isn't, and more expensive when it shouldn't be. This is roughly how it's done.
1) Talk big, be epic, and as if you know. Pick a good myth,
"Make it a game and everyone will play it."
"Every game is fun."
2) Add financial talk that include similar terms, drop names. Feel free to lie, but applicable facts are usually easy to find.
"The game industry is huge!!"
"VCs say its the next big thing."
"Microsoft is adopting it."
3) At this point, if they buy it, it's game on. Sell them everything but the kitchen sink. Charge them for:
- per user
- per game level
- a gaming engine
- a 3D rendering machine
- 3D modelers, writers, artists
- programming and consulting fees
- the princess they get to spend the night with when they complete the game.
- customer support
The key is 1+2 meeting a specific threshold which is sell-ability, and it pretty much what triggers an industry trend driven by suits. Once a few big clients topple over, the avalanche begins. They then repeat 1 through 3 until the industry catches on, then move on to something else. But the template is more or less identical.
Ah, no again. Good software is what doesn't depend on your agreement with values. Yet, she talks as if it was the values, not good software, that had people adopting mozilla.
Values may have helped source the product, but again, values have nothing to do with adoption, and even if mozilla never came on the scene, great browsers would still exist. As proof, if values is what got people using mozilla, none of them should have moved on to use chrome. Or any other browser for that matter. Not so.
The adoption of Windows, Chrome, and iPhones, or even more generally, cell phones, PCs, the internet, even television, all have little or nothing to do with values. It's what it does.
Yes, Apple and others love to use values to build their brand loyalty, much like cults and religions. But building software and building a moral high ground are two completely separate en devours, and I would much rather see mozilla focus on building software. Great software will be adopted by people of all values. It is for their own good to focus on what matters, yet some appear to be very confused.
They can't even treat their workers right, and we expect more from their customer service... *sigh*
If only had a choice.
Ah, no. You took back the web with a great browser + got bumps from IE sucking so bad, and the delay of Chrome. Most users don't know or care about Mozilla's values. They are satisfied customers who are happy with their $0 purchase, as am I.
It is fine for people closer to the product or people directly involved with its development to be proud of their values, and the values of the organization. But to say values are what make the browser great, is precisely the high horse I am trying to shed light on here.
You as a fan are free to say whatever. Free speech, freedom of values, free tacos, its all good. But for the representative of Mozilla to come out like this is not all good. One of the main reasons of which is the divide it will create between believers and non-believers in the Mozilla doctrine, which is detrimental to their goal, unless they are a church.
Right. But Mozilla wasn't purely responsible for the cross platform browser, and if they didn't do it, someone else surely would have... actually, many others have, and there are others browsers that are cross platform.
Mozilla did a great job, and they made a great product, but they cannot claim they saved anyone from anything, let alone the industry from itself.
Right, although I understand it isn't quite the same, if we were to talk purely of income levels, then free open software would be the sweatshops of software. Actually it's worse, because these contributors have NO INCOME stemming from their work. One could argue it is closer to many religions in how they get everyone to work for free, and even donate money on top of that. "If you believe, you shall follow, work, and support us financially."
Of course it isn't quite the same because most programmers have a choice, and the choice usually is with how they spend their extracurricular resources and expendable income. With sweatshops it's about their livelihood.
If we hadn’t, the web would be a very sorry place today.
I respectfully completely disagree.
We should bring Mozilla values to where people are living today.
So it's about values? I'd like to think users care mostly about what something does, then maybe the price, before any moral baggage it could possibly bring with it. But while you're at it, if tax breaks by becoming a religion is where you're going with it, it's f'ing genius.
Why such a high horse? It's just software!! It's either useful or it sucks.
Anonymity has always existed. Back in the day they were called "strangers". They were the people we would see walking the streets, but would never talk to. They were the names and numbers in the phone book between those that mattered to us.
The problem today is with those who confuse "strangers" with "people". To be a person, one must acquire an identity, or they do not deserve to be taken seriously. An anonymous phone call warning of a bomb is not courteous, but suspicious. Why would they hide their identity if it were that important? Yes, it may still be worth pursuing, but the situation is nothing like if a real person called it in, yet confusing the two is still too common.
We all have identities. Hence authorities feel they can demand them. But ultimately, we still get to choose who we give our identities to, and in this case, I think many of us will choose not to give it to google+.
Thank you google, but I'd rather you didn't get to know me (more than you do).
I am quite sure at this point no one is forced to be on google+. Yes, this may change if google starts leveraging its other services to pressure or force people onto goolge+, but that would be an abuse of their monopoly, not the authoritative abuse of power postulated in this article.
Since when has google had authority over any of us?
Wake up people! Just because you got an invite, doesn't mean you have to.
"Real names enforcement" was just a bad idea, and just because it sucks. And for no other reason, except maybe that it blew up in their face.
With Google, the user is not the customer. Those placing ads are the customers, the user is the product.
Best thing I read on Slashdot in a while!!!
Yes, we are the lemons in their lemonade. Google doesn't suck. They know exactly what they are doing. The only thing they could possibly regret at the present is the bad publicity, but watch as damage control kicks in.
And it could very well be a good thing that "savvy" users get scared off by this. The last thing you'd want at your lemonade stand is your smart lemons rebelling.
#1: The bigger the herd, the easier it is to justify moral compromise regarding the herd's actions.
#2: For business, every ethical challenge that can be overcome will result in huge profit.
1 + 2 = Why every mega-corporation is driven by extreme evil, yet still be run by extremely good people.
Not to get too off topic by being serious, but I'm wondering if it is even possible to detect humor just from the expression.
Even with "that's what she said" there is an element of unpredictability that can only be tested when executed. I mean, sometimes it's not funny. In other words, the only test is if someone reads it and laughs.
This is much like not being able to predict the outcome of code completely without executing it.
We can always record results and rely on statistical analysis, but finding answers from the past is different from finding the answer just from what is present.
Flash is the only thing that still manages to crash Chrome and my computer. I am not a big fan of Apple, but they did do us web devs a huge favor.
The last time something like this happened, Adobe acquired Macromedia... It's how large guerrilla's get to know each other.
I am telling you how it is. Corporations have no conscience. The bigger, the worse. Spanking them doesn't discourage them. They are not misbehaving children. They're sociopaths. On the other hand, because they have no conscience, we can be as cruel as we want. They feel no pain.
Corporations avoid class actions lawsuits by now requiring arbitration, so they can abuse the customer all they like. Either you can have bad service or no service, those are now your options
So until this, we haven't been abused? Bad service or no service is the way it has always been my friend, and it is in part because class-actions don't work... which was my original point. They can get around class-action suits. What do you think this article was about? THEY WIN.
If I had it my way, any company that does something that they get fined for by the government, should not be paying the government, but the consumer for their wrong doing. Like 1 privacy violation is a 200 dollar ticket which requires them to pay the victim (their customer) that same amount. Grocery stores get fined all the time for false advertising. Well, they have all our information through those membership cards. They know exactly who they ripped off. I say each one of us deserves a check in the mail.
None of this is sophisticated. It doesn't work. It's a waste of everyone's time. And everyone involved is an a-hole.
"larger class-action settlements which might include punitive awards designed to discourage future bad practices"
I hear this line often, and it is wrong. Big corporations have no memory, and these "crimes" are hardly ever done on purpose. You cannot adjust your intentions if the outcome that needs correcting was never intended in the first place. Before getting into any details at all, it is blatantly obvious that any corporation would try to avoid a class action lawsuit of any kind. Same with recalls. The damage is done and the outcome is already secondary.
Of course, if it was done on purpose, then the outcome is already factored in, so they're just pissing on the system.