I guarantee you that Yahoo would lose a huge percentage of its market share if people started getting calls from telemarketers who announced, "You're getting this call because Yahoo sold us your home phone number!"
Unfortunately, that doesn't happen. Most people never know which company sold the name and telephone number that got them that annoying telemarketing call at dinner. Or which Web firm sold off the e-mail address that got them that spam. So they never make the connection between giving up personal information to (whatever) company and the torrent of junk mail, calls and spam.
Without knowing exactly who is giving up what to whom, people don't know what companies to stop patronizing, in protest of their lousy privacy policies.
If you are the master of your own domain (ahem...), don't hesitate to create a new e-mai alias for each account you create with another Web site. (e.g. yahoo@yourdomain.com, amazon@yourdomain.com, etc.) That way, you at least can track who's selling e-mail addresses, and spread the word.
True. But it shows that UPN's got no problem picking up a show that's been on another 'net. I'd suspect that'd be more of a political/corporate ego problem for a more established net. Just MHO.
In this case, UPN could probably get a good deal on the rights, too, 'cause it is generally considered that you need five seasons' worth of a show to successfully syndicate it. And since that's where show producers make the bulk of their money, they're gonna be very motivated to find someone, anyone to pick up that fifth season.
Don't just petition Fox. If they've made up their mind, they've made it up. Even if they decide to consider the show as a midseason replacement, the production company will likely let people go before that call ever comes.
Instead, petition UPN to pick it up. They have a history of picking up other networks' shows (Buffy, Roswell, etc.) and this one would fit in well with its lineup.
The address:
UPN Entertainment
11800 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
I'd love to have an opportunity to tell the higher-ups at Open Directory about a couple of editors there who seem to delight in creating sub-sub-sub-sub-categories to banish sites similar to their editor's personal pages. The conflicts of interest over there are incredible.
Of course, as a web page publisher, you don't have that problem if the editors in the category you want never bother themselves to add new sites.
Come on, other open source projects can get good work done with volunteers. Anybody have an insight into why Open Directory apparently cannot?
One is left to wonder if the author of this piece even knows what a cookie is. There is a great deal of confusion between cookies (the line of text in a cookies.txt file) and the backend database analysis of user behavior.
Web sites can synch up usage logs, cookie, log-ins and customer profiles to create a sophisticated analysis of individual users' behavior and tastes online.
Or, a simple cookie can be used without all that to note whether a user has seen a specific page before. That's useful for webmasters who want to serve up certain types of dynamic content.
Neither did the article mention that without cookies, many European users will not be able to "customize" web sites, because the web server will not be able to track an individual user's session. You'd have to log in on every page to see your customized version, or pass the user's login through the URL--hardly a good idea for security's sake.
We're going to have an increasingly hard time making a good case for responsible pro-privacy legislation if the press can't figure out the basics of the technology being discussed. The public's never going to know they're being screwed if the press can't figure it out enough to tell them.
Promote Consumer Confidence With a Layoff Holiday
on
Morals and Layoffs
·
· Score: 1
If pols want Americans to support the economy by spending more money, I'd love to help. I'd also love to have enough to spend. Or at the very least, not have to worry about losing my job even though my employer is profitable.
The aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks has demonstrated why cash won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
To process payments electronically, you need phone lines. And if all your phone lines get cut, either due to terrorist attack, natural disaster or whatever, you can't buy or sell anything until they get fixed. (See details in this story from the Los Angeles Times.)
Unless you have cash.
Sure, in normal operation, you can go days without cash, using credit and debit cards and automatic payments. But until we get better support for secure wireless transactions, cash will remain the necessary fall-back for disasters when the land lines get cut.
(And this isn't even considering the issue of cyber-terrorism....)
The LA Times ran this story more than a week ago (and the powers-that-be rejected it when I submitted it then, sigh....). If you click on the picture of the slide rule at the top, you get a cool Flash animation of a slide rule in action.
I know, the idea of a Flash animation of a slide rule is kinda strange. But hey, it's cool.
It's a volunteer effort to collect theme park accident reports, in database format. (Why? Well, the big boys, like Disney, paid Congress to write a loophole in federal law that prevents the feds from collecting this kind of data.)
"Accident Watch" also has tips and discussion on staying safe on amusement park rides.
I'll probably enter this site anyway, but since the threat of layoffs at day job hangs over my head (despite the fact that the century-old company I work for is very profitable), not having to pay the hundred bucks would certainly help my bank balance.
If IE is now part of Windows (and an integral part, at that, as Ballmer said and MS argued in court), couldn't there be a claim based on a percentage of profits from the sale of Windows?
The article asserts that crawlers "can easily get trapped in a dynamically driven site."
Not so fast.
While that is true of older, cr@ppier search engines like AltaVista and Inktomi, Google can and does index dynamic pages. (Indeed, more than 60 percent of new users to one of my sites come in via dynamically generated.cfm detail pages that have been indexed on Google.)
It seems to me that if you want your content to be indexed, getting on Google (and by extension, Yahoo, since Yahoo uses Google results in addition to its directory), is pretty darn easy. I have to say, I'm not nearly as frustrated with search engines as I was in the days B.G. (Before Google)
If the Journal and iCopyright can find people willing to pay $50 for a link, I say - let 'em collect.
Of course it's unenforceable. But until I see the Journal, or any other publisher, going after linkers who don't pay, I'm not gonna complain. Heck, I probably won't say a word even then, 'cause the courts will slap down that for me.
I move to consider this nothing more than a step toward the voluntary payment system for Internet content that some have advocated.
Prof. Natapof's argument holds if you assume that the nation's interest equals the sum of all its citizens' individual interests. But anyone who's studied the Prisoner's Dilemma knows that the common good isn't always served by people pursuing their individual best interests.
For me, I want a president who will transcend individual interests to act in the nation's best interest. (I have senators to represent my state's interest, and a representative to defend my community's interest.) To get such a person, the nation as a whole must vote in a common, popular vote.
(On another note, this will be the third election in which a winner did not attract a majority. Perhaps we would be better served by a popular vote, followed by a run-off between the top two, if no one won a majority. That would assure a president with majority support, and give everyone a 'second chance' in a badly fragmented electorate like this.)
As for the GOP contention that thousands of ballots are thrown out in every election, so why sweat this one -- well, this election demonstrates that not even voting is immune from measurement error. (Of course, any ninth grade chem student coulda told you that, but we are dealing with politicians here... a level of evolutionary development several steps below that of a ninth grade chem student.)
In an election where the margin of victory lies within the tens or hundreds of thousands of votes, a measurement error of thousands of votes may be acceptible. In an election where the margin of victory is only a couple hundred votes, a measurement error of several thousand is clearly unacceptible. Thus the dispute.
The brightest aspect of this controversy may be the new national attention to usability issues. It seems absurd to me that in this technologically advanced nation, we are using paper punch cards to elect a president.
Surely, we should implement some sort of touch screen voting, with adjustible font sizes and confirmation boxes, that would eliminate the confusion that even bright, clear-thinking people sometimes feel when trying to vote.
I've often said that if we had more developers and fewer lawyers involved in politics, we'd be a better nation. This sorry episode's just proving that point.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, that doesn't happen. Most people never know which company sold the name and telephone number that got them that annoying telemarketing call at dinner. Or which Web firm sold off the e-mail address that got them that spam. So they never make the connection between giving up personal information to (whatever) company and the torrent of junk mail, calls and spam.
Without knowing exactly who is giving up what to whom, people don't know what companies to stop patronizing, in protest of their lousy privacy policies.
If you are the master of your own domain (ahem...), don't hesitate to create a new e-mai alias for each account you create with another Web site. (e.g. yahoo@yourdomain.com, amazon@yourdomain.com, etc.) That way, you at least can track who's selling e-mail addresses, and spread the word.
In this case, UPN could probably get a good deal on the rights, too, 'cause it is generally considered that you need five seasons' worth of a show to successfully syndicate it. And since that's where show producers make the bulk of their money, they're gonna be very motivated to find someone, anyone to pick up that fifth season.
UPN could walk in and get a good show for a song.
Instead, petition UPN to pick it up. They have a history of picking up other networks' shows (Buffy, Roswell, etc.) and this one would fit in well with its lineup.
The address:
UPN Entertainment
11800 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
IMHO, this is the show's best hope.
"Oh, it IS a hard drive in your pocket."
I'd love to have an opportunity to tell the higher-ups at Open Directory about a couple of editors there who seem to delight in creating sub-sub-sub-sub-categories to banish sites similar to their editor's personal pages. The conflicts of interest over there are incredible.
Of course, as a web page publisher, you don't have that problem if the editors in the category you want never bother themselves to add new sites.
Come on, other open source projects can get good work done with volunteers. Anybody have an insight into why Open Directory apparently cannot?
It's not wait times. But it is at least wireless ride ratings and reviews.
Frantic phone calls from the White House this morning, as "W" ordered his staff to find one of dem there meteor thingies and buy one, durnit!
Web sites can synch up usage logs, cookie, log-ins and customer profiles to create a sophisticated analysis of individual users' behavior and tastes online.
Or, a simple cookie can be used without all that to note whether a user has seen a specific page before. That's useful for webmasters who want to serve up certain types of dynamic content.
Neither did the article mention that without cookies, many European users will not be able to "customize" web sites, because the web server will not be able to track an individual user's session. You'd have to log in on every page to see your customized version, or pass the user's login through the URL--hardly a good idea for security's sake.
We're going to have an increasingly hard time making a good case for responsible pro-privacy legislation if the press can't figure out the basics of the technology being discussed. The public's never going to know they're being screwed if the press can't figure it out enough to tell them.
Want to see the economy soar? Declare a layoff holiday.
To process payments electronically, you need phone lines. And if all your phone lines get cut, either due to terrorist attack, natural disaster or whatever, you can't buy or sell anything until they get fixed. (See details in this story from the Los Angeles Times.)
Unless you have cash.
Sure, in normal operation, you can go days without cash, using credit and debit cards and automatic payments. But until we get better support for secure wireless transactions, cash will remain the necessary fall-back for disasters when the land lines get cut.
(And this isn't even considering the issue of cyber-terrorism....)
I know, the idea of a Flash animation of a slide rule is kinda strange. But hey, it's cool.
It's a volunteer effort to collect theme park accident reports, in database format. (Why? Well, the big boys, like Disney, paid Congress to write a loophole in federal law that prevents the feds from collecting this kind of data.)
"Accident Watch" also has tips and discussion on staying safe on amusement park rides.
I'll probably enter this site anyway, but since the threat of layoffs at day job hangs over my head (despite the fact that the century-old company I work for is very profitable), not having to pay the hundred bucks would certainly help my bank balance.
Wait a minute.
If IE is now part of Windows (and an integral part, at that, as Ballmer said and MS argued in court), couldn't there be a claim based on a percentage of profits from the sale of Windows?
Not so fast.
While that is true of older, cr@ppier search engines like AltaVista and Inktomi, Google can and does index dynamic pages. (Indeed, more than 60 percent of new users to one of my sites come in via dynamically generated .cfm detail pages that have been indexed on Google.)
It seems to me that if you want your content to be indexed, getting on Google (and by extension, Yahoo, since Yahoo uses Google results in addition to its directory), is pretty darn easy. I have to say, I'm not nearly as frustrated with search engines as I was in the days B.G. (Before Google)
Of course it's unenforceable. But until I see the Journal, or any other publisher, going after linkers who don't pay, I'm not gonna complain. Heck, I probably won't say a word even then, 'cause the courts will slap down that for me.
I move to consider this nothing more than a step toward the voluntary payment system for Internet content that some have advocated.
For me, I want a president who will transcend individual interests to act in the nation's best interest. (I have senators to represent my state's interest, and a representative to defend my community's interest.) To get such a person, the nation as a whole must vote in a common, popular vote. (On another note, this will be the third election in which a winner did not attract a majority. Perhaps we would be better served by a popular vote, followed by a run-off between the top two, if no one won a majority. That would assure a president with majority support, and give everyone a 'second chance' in a badly fragmented electorate like this.)
As for the GOP contention that thousands of ballots are thrown out in every election, so why sweat this one -- well, this election demonstrates that not even voting is immune from measurement error. (Of course, any ninth grade chem student coulda told you that, but we are dealing with politicians here... a level of evolutionary development several steps below that of a ninth grade chem student.)
In an election where the margin of victory lies within the tens or hundreds of thousands of votes, a measurement error of thousands of votes may be acceptible. In an election where the margin of victory is only a couple hundred votes, a measurement error of several thousand is clearly unacceptible. Thus the dispute.
The brightest aspect of this controversy may be the new national attention to usability issues. It seems absurd to me that in this technologically advanced nation, we are using paper punch cards to elect a president.
Surely, we should implement some sort of touch screen voting, with adjustible font sizes and confirmation boxes, that would eliminate the confusion that even bright, clear-thinking people sometimes feel when trying to vote.
I've often said that if we had more developers and fewer lawyers involved in politics, we'd be a better nation. This sorry episode's just proving that point.
--