I don't know. Having low standards for ads seems consistent with their low standards for objectivity and truth.
Frankly, I can't see a moral argument for _not_ blocking ads any more. This crap is worse than the "Punch the Monkey" crap we used to be bombarded with*, only the poor non-technical users get pwned on top of it.
Advertising as a viable business model won't last another decade, and the biggest reason is the advertisers themselves. Look at network TV, which went from 5 minutes per half hour in the 60s to about 7 minutes per half hour in the 80s and are now breaking the 10-minute mark. I turned off the satellite subscription years ago. Hulu shows plenty of good TV (and a lot of crap, granted), but their commercial quantities are on par with the 1960s when they were quite reasonable... and they don't usually have commercials that are 10 times louder than the show itself (although that is changing recently). I can't imagine Hulu will last long, but it's great for now.
It used to gall me that the Washington Post, a supposedly respectable newspaper, would run page after page of bra and panty ads every day. Now we're getting malware from the NYT. Pretty soon we'll start seeing this crap on respectable sites like/.
* Since I haven't regularly seen ads on most sites in about 5 years, I can only assume those ads (and the people who made them) died the grisly death they deserved.
Reputation? The New York Times? If you ask me the malware ad _is_ consistent with their reputation.
Fake software ads go along with their fake stories and their fake objectivity. I'm sorry, they don't even _pretend_ to be objective any more, so you can't accuse them of faking that.
Prior art for most of these kinds of patents is obvious to anyone in the industry. If it's that obvious, there's no way reporting it will do any good: The fix is in.
Plus, most of us have better things to do than piss off corporations with lots of lawyers and an obvious willingness to use them.
Only the tiniest of fractions of the private managers are in a situation where they are richly rewarded regardless of their performances. Usually only the top executive officers.
If the problem (whether it's bad performance, waste or too many golden parachutes) gets too out of control, the company will eventually fail. Are there any government agencies that were eliminated for the same reasons? Or were they simply rewarded with good money thrown in after bad to try to correct the problem.
For all its faults, the capitalist system does tend towards a meritocracy. The government generally tends away from it.
I rarely bothered. Given the lack of context, it was seldom possible to really judge if the moderation was fair or not. This is particularly true for something modded "Off-Topic".
Of course, there's the moderations "Overrated" and "Underrated" which are meta-mods on their own. That always struck me as really weird.
It's seriously flawed, but still works reasonably well. We've had it with little change for more than a decade. I don't think it's going anywhere.
... and is using it to create and render 3D objects in the past couple weeks. The first major thing he created in full detail was (I kid you not), a sci-fi corridor.:-)
Now, that said, if I ever see someone use "walla" instead of "voila", or "alot", I feel the uncontrollable urge to smack them with a trout.
That's why I like to say "Viola!". Plus I used to play one. Of course, having taken high school French, I recognize the literal meaning of the word and that makes it easier to remember. A smattering of French, Spanish, Latin and Greek knowledge will do wonders for your spelling. I'm not even talking about studying the language, although I did study Spanish for several years. However, I never studied Latin or Greek, but I can often recognize words of those etymologies when I see them, and this helps immensely when trying to spell.
I have found that it's perfectly possible to make homophone mistakes and apostrophe mistakes in the heat of composition... "brainos" rather than typos. Your brain misfires instead of your fingers... but it's the same thing. However, a little proofing will catch those. I will let a small number of typos slide, but more than a couple convinces me the person is illiterate, not necessarily stupid, but the two correlate pretty highly.
Of course, the smartest person I know spells like a remedial fourth grader. He is currently a director at a large Internet corporation after having a long career as a highly-paid and well-respected consultant. He is also the most widely read person I know as well, especially in the fields of math and science. He is mostly self-educated but is an expert in more fields of computers, software and networking than I can name, and knows more about paleontology, math and physics than anyone outside of a researcher.
Nonetheless, there is a strong correlation between not reading "real" books (and most things online do _not_ count, unless you're reading Project Gutenberg) and actually having good spelling and grammar. I wouldn't know half the obscure but cromulent words I know if I didn't see them regularly in print. Seeing proper use of the language also helps drill it into you. I'm old enough to have not been seriously exposed to computers until I was a teenagers, but there's no reason it should be worse now. Furthermore, I know that despite my good track record (I always aced English in high school and college), I know that constant reinforcement does a tremendous amount of good for my ability to communicate.
The other thing is, if I am not completely sure about how to spell something, I look it up. That is certainly easier now than ever. Spell-checkers are fine for spotting typos, but they will not make a good speller out of a poor one. I'm happy to have a spell checker, but I certainly get along just fine without one.
I recently saw a news commentary article that consistently used "allot" instead of "a lot". I had to wonder if that was a spell-checker suggestion, which I find to be incredibly humorous. Of course, it doesn't help that the concept of an "editor" seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth... but that's another topic.
Worse, they would be so desperate for female companionship that they would overlook anything short of machine-gunning a house full of nuns and kittens. So it would never occur to them that women could be evil. Or maybe I'm projecting...
I disagree. I don't think it glorifies torture. I think it shows a situation where Jack Bauer finds it to be lesser to two evils. I don't always agree with what Jack Bauer does. He's murdered people, not in self-defense, or trying to save the world. He's flat out murdered people more than once. He does horrible things sometimes. He's not a perfect hero (well, he's superhuman in what he can do, but he does morally questionable things all the time. Things I wouldn't do if I were him.). He's pushed by really evil people who do really horrible things. But he also agonizes over it. He is also willing to sacrifice his life over and over, but is eventually saved by a deus ex machina, only to perform another seeming suicide mission to save people's lives, or stop something else horrible, etc. He has also been willing, time and again to accept the consequences of the choices he's made. I don't watch the show to get off on bad guys being tortured. I'd be happy if they eased up on that aspect. On the other hand, if you are dealing with bad guys with no morality and no honor, how much will you handicap yourself to hold the high moral ground? When it comes down to you vs. them, where do you draw the line?
The sad thing about the torture debate in the real world was that there is almost never a situation where things are as cut-and-dried as they are on "24", which is why people invoking Jack Bauer's name in defense of torture, under certain extreme circumstances, made me cringe. I don't support the death penalty for the same reason. It's impossible to be sure enough to justify using it, in almost every case. I think the government is perfectly justified to administer capital when necessary. I just think it's not necessary, at least these days. Similarly, if torture were to be used, it would have to be in situations so cut-and-dried you would have no doubt. That almost never happens. Given that Bush Administration only ever used waterboarding on 3 people, I guess they would agree. Also, can that be considered torture when we subject our on military and espionage agents to it? Something to ponder. I don't support the idea of waterboarding, but I don't jump on the bandwagon that painted Bush and his people as some sort of Dr. Caligula Marquis de Sade Mengele like the breathless left did.
I enjoy "24" for the same reason I enjoy comic books. It's escapist adventure where even though the hero isn't always the paragon of morality, he's always right. No one is always right in real life. I can tell the difference.
The sad thing is that many of the most popular shows from the 70s were creative and intelligent (and funny, in the case of sitcoms):
All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, The Bob Newhart Show... just to name a few. Adult shows written for adults without having to resort to crudity and shock value, well, OK, "All in the Family" did, but it was usually in the pursuit of Making A Point(TM), which it did very well. Sure, there was a lot of crap back then, as always, but it seems to me there is nothing comparable to those shows today.
There are some good mainstream shows that I follow, "House M.D.", "24", "Fringe", well, the latter might not be too mainstream, but it hasn't been cancelled yet. "24" isn't always very intelligent, but it does suspense in a way that most similar shows can't even touch. There's more plot progression and resolution in a single episode of "24" than in a whole season of, say, "Heroes".
You're right, but I'm 80% of the way to that kind of typing ability now, and my speed is quite good. That's a whole lotta effort for a marginal gain only after a long time. I'm sticking with the excuse that I'm too old to change.
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I don't know. Having low standards for ads seems consistent with their low standards for objectivity and truth.
Frankly, I can't see a moral argument for _not_ blocking ads any more. This crap is worse than the "Punch the Monkey" crap we used to be bombarded with*, only the poor non-technical users get pwned on top of it.
Advertising as a viable business model won't last another decade, and the biggest reason is the advertisers themselves. Look at network TV, which went from 5 minutes per half hour in the 60s to about 7 minutes per half hour in the 80s and are now breaking the 10-minute mark. I turned off the satellite subscription years ago. Hulu shows plenty of good TV (and a lot of crap, granted), but their commercial quantities are on par with the 1960s when they were quite reasonable... and they don't usually have commercials that are 10 times louder than the show itself (although that is changing recently). I can't imagine Hulu will last long, but it's great for now.
It used to gall me that the Washington Post, a supposedly respectable newspaper, would run page after page of bra and panty ads every day. Now we're getting malware from the NYT. Pretty soon we'll start seeing this crap on respectable sites like /.
* Since I haven't regularly seen ads on most sites in about 5 years, I can only assume those ads (and the people who made them) died the grisly death they deserved.
Reputation? The New York Times? If you ask me the malware ad _is_ consistent with their reputation.
Fake software ads go along with their fake stories and their fake objectivity. I'm sorry, they don't even _pretend_ to be objective any more, so you can't accuse them of faking that.
Nothing but shills.
Perhaps it's my geeky-nerdiness, but "function first, flash second. if flash compromises function, remove the flash."
I'm sure Adobe will get it working well on Linux any decade now...
Tom Tom would have filed first, but all their computers blue-screened.
A very long time before, too.
Prior art for most of these kinds of patents is obvious to anyone in the industry. If it's that obvious, there's no way reporting it will do any good: The fix is in.
Plus, most of us have better things to do than piss off corporations with lots of lawyers and an obvious willingness to use them.
Forget iTunes! How long before this stuff is walking around killing people and looking like Robert Patrick?!
Only the tiniest of fractions of the private managers are in a situation where they are richly rewarded regardless of their performances. Usually only the top executive officers.
If the problem (whether it's bad performance, waste or too many golden parachutes) gets too out of control, the company will eventually fail. Are there any government agencies that were eliminated for the same reasons? Or were they simply rewarded with good money thrown in after bad to try to correct the problem.
For all its faults, the capitalist system does tend towards a meritocracy. The government generally tends away from it.
I rarely bothered. Given the lack of context, it was seldom possible to really judge if the moderation was fair or not. This is particularly true for something modded "Off-Topic".
Of course, there's the moderations "Overrated" and "Underrated" which are meta-mods on their own. That always struck me as really weird.
It's seriously flawed, but still works reasonably well. We've had it with little change for more than a decade. I don't think it's going anywhere.
... and is using it to create and render 3D objects in the past couple weeks. The first major thing he created in full detail was (I kid you not), a sci-fi corridor. :-)
We have that now, but you have to be a rich corporation to participate.
Republicans are fatter than democrats...and stupider.
No, Democrats are just more self-deluded.
... it took Adobe, what, about 7 years for a 64-bit Linux version of Flash?
Now, that said, if I ever see someone use "walla" [...] I feel the uncontrollable urge to smack them with a trout.
I live in Walla Walla, WA, you insensitive clod!
Now, that said, if I ever see someone use "walla" instead of "voila", or "alot", I feel the uncontrollable urge to smack them with a trout.
That's why I like to say "Viola!". Plus I used to play one. Of course, having taken high school French, I recognize the literal meaning of the word and that makes it easier to remember. A smattering of French, Spanish, Latin and Greek knowledge will do wonders for your spelling. I'm not even talking about studying the language, although I did study Spanish for several years. However, I never studied Latin or Greek, but I can often recognize words of those etymologies when I see them, and this helps immensely when trying to spell.
I have found that it's perfectly possible to make homophone mistakes and apostrophe mistakes in the heat of composition... "brainos" rather than typos. Your brain misfires instead of your fingers... but it's the same thing. However, a little proofing will catch those. I will let a small number of typos slide, but more than a couple convinces me the person is illiterate, not necessarily stupid, but the two correlate pretty highly.
Of course, the smartest person I know spells like a remedial fourth grader. He is currently a director at a large Internet corporation after having a long career as a highly-paid and well-respected consultant. He is also the most widely read person I know as well, especially in the fields of math and science. He is mostly self-educated but is an expert in more fields of computers, software and networking than I can name, and knows more about paleontology, math and physics than anyone outside of a researcher.
Nonetheless, there is a strong correlation between not reading "real" books (and most things online do _not_ count, unless you're reading Project Gutenberg) and actually having good spelling and grammar. I wouldn't know half the obscure but cromulent words I know if I didn't see them regularly in print. Seeing proper use of the language also helps drill it into you. I'm old enough to have not been seriously exposed to computers until I was a teenagers, but there's no reason it should be worse now. Furthermore, I know that despite my good track record (I always aced English in high school and college), I know that constant reinforcement does a tremendous amount of good for my ability to communicate.
The other thing is, if I am not completely sure about how to spell something, I look it up. That is certainly easier now than ever. Spell-checkers are fine for spotting typos, but they will not make a good speller out of a poor one. I'm happy to have a spell checker, but I certainly get along just fine without one.
I recently saw a news commentary article that consistently used "allot" instead of "a lot". I had to wonder if that was a spell-checker suggestion, which I find to be incredibly humorous. Of course, it doesn't help that the concept of an "editor" seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth... but that's another topic.
I'm not prejudiced against anyone because of race, but I sure am prejudiced the incurably stupid, like you, Anonymous.
Worse, they would be so desperate for female companionship that they would overlook anything short of machine-gunning a house full of nuns and kittens. So it would never occur to them that women could be evil. Or maybe I'm projecting...
Nor do intellectuals ever get elected to high office in America.
In the U.S., anything goes in education as long as it allows every student to be considered above average.
Capitalism still works great for me. I just hope the current President and Congress don't do any more damage since they seem to be opposed to it.
... is called "Windows XP".
I disagree. I don't think it glorifies torture. I think it shows a situation where Jack Bauer finds it to be lesser to two evils. I don't always agree with what Jack Bauer does. He's murdered people, not in self-defense, or trying to save the world. He's flat out murdered people more than once. He does horrible things sometimes. He's not a perfect hero (well, he's superhuman in what he can do, but he does morally questionable things all the time. Things I wouldn't do if I were him.). He's pushed by really evil people who do really horrible things. But he also agonizes over it. He is also willing to sacrifice his life over and over, but is eventually saved by a deus ex machina, only to perform another seeming suicide mission to save people's lives, or stop something else horrible, etc. He has also been willing, time and again to accept the consequences of the choices he's made. I don't watch the show to get off on bad guys being tortured. I'd be happy if they eased up on that aspect. On the other hand, if you are dealing with bad guys with no morality and no honor, how much will you handicap yourself to hold the high moral ground? When it comes down to you vs. them, where do you draw the line?
The sad thing about the torture debate in the real world was that there is almost never a situation where things are as cut-and-dried as they are on "24", which is why people invoking Jack Bauer's name in defense of torture, under certain extreme circumstances, made me cringe. I don't support the death penalty for the same reason. It's impossible to be sure enough to justify using it, in almost every case. I think the government is perfectly justified to administer capital when necessary. I just think it's not necessary, at least these days. Similarly, if torture were to be used, it would have to be in situations so cut-and-dried you would have no doubt. That almost never happens. Given that Bush Administration only ever used waterboarding on 3 people, I guess they would agree. Also, can that be considered torture when we subject our on military and espionage agents to it? Something to ponder. I don't support the idea of waterboarding, but I don't jump on the bandwagon that painted Bush and his people as some sort of Dr. Caligula Marquis de Sade Mengele like the breathless left did.
I enjoy "24" for the same reason I enjoy comic books. It's escapist adventure where even though the hero isn't always the paragon of morality, he's always right. No one is always right in real life. I can tell the difference.
I guess the moral of the story is: Don't live in Massachusetts.
Hey, I like all those shows.
The sad thing is that many of the most popular shows from the 70s were creative and intelligent (and funny, in the case of sitcoms):
All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, The Bob Newhart Show... just to name a few. Adult shows written for adults without having to resort to crudity and shock value, well, OK, "All in the Family" did, but it was usually in the pursuit of Making A Point(TM), which it did very well. Sure, there was a lot of crap back then, as always, but it seems to me there is nothing comparable to those shows today.
There are some good mainstream shows that I follow, "House M.D.", "24", "Fringe", well, the latter might not be too mainstream, but it hasn't been cancelled yet. "24" isn't always very intelligent, but it does suspense in a way that most similar shows can't even touch. There's more plot progression and resolution in a single episode of "24" than in a whole season of, say, "Heroes".
You're right, but I'm 80% of the way to that kind of typing ability now, and my speed is quite good. That's a whole lotta effort for a marginal gain only after a long time. I'm sticking with the excuse that I'm too old to change.