Rewriting press releases usually isn't pure corruption. It's just that the reporters have a daily hit quota to meet and their editors know that time spent thinking or fact checking could be "better" spent (from a traffic-generating perspective) writing another PR-driven story.
An obviously inaccurate story can even be a good way to generate hits and ad revenue, because lots of well-meaning bloggers will link to it in order to debunk it. The point is to stir up controversy, not to get the facts right.
The surprise is that it's so blatant and public. What usually happens is that the people who toe the line are more likely to get raises or promotions and those who don't are more likely to get layed off. There doesn't even need to be any actual corruption or selling out at the level of individual writers (though there usually is, of course) because lots of people lack critical thinking skills anyway.
This is an industry where layoffs are very common, so firing people can usually be blamed on something other than annoying an advertiser. The companies usually make people targeted for layoff sign NDAs as a condition of getting severance, meaning we rarely hear the true reasons.
You can actually can have some influence over politicians. The two-party system means that waiting until the general election is probably too late, but there are primary battles going on all over the country at all different levels. Find someone who isn't corrupt and vote for them over the incumbent.
In the case of this bill, contact your congresscritters and tell them what's wrong with it. The most important are the people on this list, as they're the members of the education committee that's nominally responsible for it.
CNET just wants people to think "Democrats= bad" (and more generally "government=bad"), so TFA doesn't bother to say *who* these "top Democratic politicians" are, but it turns out there are only two of them so far:
George Miller (CA 7) Ruben Hinojosa (TX 15)
They are clearly hoping to get a lot more co-sponsors and eventually a veto-proof majority, because the bill is mostly about money for education and most politicians like to be seen as helping kids. But it's still an early draft, so there's a good chance of getting the RIAA stuff taken out.
This is yet another example of how laws surrounding "intellectual property" have got more extreme over the last few years. Back in 1984, they could make a transformer in the likeness of a VW bug whether VW wanted them to or not. This is no longer the case.
The bit-rate makes a bigger difference if you convert to mp3 format, because some information is lost in conversion. I think this is what a lot of users will be doing until AAC is more widely supported.
It's hard to tell, but he seems to be talking about the DRM that is built into many cell phones (to stop people sharing ringtones, downloaded video clips, etc.) rather than the GSM encryption protocol itself.
This only works because most cell phones are limited-capability devices tied to a particular service provider. Similar schemes can be used with set-top boxes, but not with PCs unless the PC's functionality is also drastically limited so that it becomes more like a phone than a computer. (The iPod is similarly limited, of course. But the DRM problem is with iTunes, and that still needs a computer.)
Wasn't this part of the rationale behind.NET? That it would work on multiple Windows variants, including Windows CE (which MS is is still pushing for all kinds of stuff) as well as NT.
The other thing MS means by cross-platform is hardware independence. Until a couple of years ago, they thought that most PCs might eventually be based on Itanium and wanted a way to migrate to that without rewriting apps.
Prescription drugs are a bit different from other advertised products in that the people who are convinced to buy them are not the ones who actually pay for them. The cost is shared by everyone in the form of higher medical insurance premiums and taxes.
Many countries have already banned ads for prescription drugs, and as a result they spend much less on healthcare (yet have healthier and longer-lived populations) than the US. The drug companies say it's R&D costs, but they spend a lot more on TV ads than research. That's obviously not the only reason for insanely expensive health costs, but it's one of them.
Hardcore libertarians will obviously disagree with any kind of ban on principle, but there are already all kinds of (completely justifiable) federal restrictions on corporations buying TV ads, including outright bans on commercials for drugs like cigarettes.
Most people in the UK still have the old-style, non-photo licenses. They were valid for up to 53 years (expiring on the driver's 70th birthday) and were issued until a few years ago.
Many U.S. states and European countries put vandals in jail. How is caning any worse?
I'm not defending Singapore's police state approach (of which TFA is a great example), but I don't understand why caning is considered so bad. If I had been convicted of a crime, I would much rather suffer a few minutes of excruciating pain than spend weeks or years in a place where people are regularly beaten and raped.
Caning is also much cheaper, and more likely to rehabilitate minor offenders because it doesn't cut people off from their work/family/social lives or immerse them among hardened criminals.
The Microsoft license is really extortion, not a tax. Taxes pay for things like schools, firefighters and the Hubble space telescope, while money paid to Microsoft just goes into its profits. In a democratic society, people can vote to decide who or what is taxed, how much, and where the money goes, whereas the Windows license fee is set arbitrarily by Microsoft.
Microsoft is a monopoly, so you don't really have much of a choice. Buying a buying a PC without Windows is difficult. If you manage to, you will break most of your custom apps (including Office macros to and Web sites dependent on ActiveX or MS-JVM, not just Win32 itself.).
I like the Windows key, but it was still designed as a marketing tool (copied from Apple.) That's why it has a Windows logo rather than something generic.
Me too. I'd add that they already have one official extension (the DOM Inspector.) As this is aimed mainly at developers, why is it even included as part of the download package? Seems to be a waste of bandwidth for the vast majority of users.
There could be one "light" download (just the browser itself), and another that included DOM Inspector, Spell Checker, Anti-phishing, Live Bookmarks, etc. as extensions.
Every major media player has a non-standard UI, at least on Windows. WMP is particularly bad because MS actually defines the conventions, so ought at least to stick to them.
WinAmp is the least bad: It doesn't add junk to the startup folder, fill the screen with ads for a download store, or add useless eye candy like dancing wave patterns. But its default skin is still too different from a standard Windows app.
There's no giant interconnected database, but the Feds don't need a subpoena or warrant anymore. That was one of the main provisions in the USA-PATRIOT act.
My library deliberately destroys all its records (at least, it says it does) after a few days, to protect its patrons' privacy. That isn't illegal yet.
This is why MS is producing so many versions of Vista. The low-end home version will cost some OEMs almost nothing, but it'll be so crippled that it's basically trialware. MS is betting that people will prefer the convenient online upgrade "feature" (just enter your credit card number and unlock an better version) to switching to Linux, hunting for a Vista crack or installing an old copy of XP.
Vista Ultimate is mostly aimed at the kind of people who line up outside the computer store at midnight the day a new OS is released. If it's available to OEMs at all, it'll be for the multi-CPU, liquid-nitrogen-cooled machines that cost many thousands of dollars anyway.
People switching to Opera (or Konqueror) isn't a bad thing. We're all better off if there is a diversity of browsers than if a single company is able to control the market and dictate the standards. Everyone using Firefox would be better than everyone using IE (because Firefox is open-source, more secure and more customizable) but not as good as some actual competition.
I like the tub-thumping song. I probably wouldn't have heard it at all if it hadn't been popular, but that's true of most songs. (There's a reason they call it pop music...)
Myspace is different from the other examples because of the network effect. You go to a social networking (or auction, or "news for nerds, stuff that matters") site because of the other people who go there, not the site itself.
How is the 2K interface for XP dummied-down? It's much more efficient, both in terms of the hardware it requries and the time taken to get things done (fewer mouse clicks.)
But otherwise, I agree. There's no need for all the eye-candy, which (other than DRM) seems to be the only new feature of Vista. Even outside of a business setting, I think most people would prefer an OS that doesn't get in the way of the movie they're watching, Web site they're surfing or game they're playing.
It's more the other way round. Most people are already locked into Windows, so MS hopes to leverage the Windows monopoly to sell the Zune. The reason for making it is an attempt to control online music (and ultimately movie) distribution, something Apple has been much moer successful at.
They won't make much (any) profit on sales of the Zune itself at first, but that's mostly because they don't anticipate selling many and so won't have many economies of scale. As with the Xbox, they expect that to change. And most of the money isn't in the device itself.
Slashdot caters to an audience of intelligent people who like to keep some awareness of the world outside Fox News and talk radio. This is perceived as a liberal bias in American politics.
They could ask one of the players to spin the wheel instead. Of course, then we'd see all kinds of books and Web sites that claimed to show players how to spin a roulette wheel in such a way that a particular number always came up.
The main problem is that this would slow the game down, resulting in less profit for the casino. But TFA is about the UK, where roulette wheels are still single-0. They can easily double their profits (and thus the players' losses) by introducing American-style wheels.
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No, that was just the submitter's (cynical, but perhaps correct) commentary. The proposal is only to take DNA from "bad" kids, whatever that means.
It's only silly if the actual purpose is to catch terrorists. It makes perfect sense if they just want to spy on people.
I expect that the next step will be to make everyone show ID or give a fingerprint (or both) when they buy a card.
Rewriting press releases usually isn't pure corruption. It's just that the reporters have a daily hit quota to meet and their editors know that time spent thinking or fact checking could be "better" spent (from a traffic-generating perspective) writing another PR-driven story.
An obviously inaccurate story can even be a good way to generate hits and ad revenue, because lots of well-meaning bloggers will link to it in order to debunk it. The point is to stir up controversy, not to get the facts right.
The surprise is that it's so blatant and public. What usually happens is that the people who toe the line are more likely to get raises or promotions and those who don't are more likely to get layed off. There doesn't even need to be any actual corruption or selling out at the level of individual writers (though there usually is, of course) because lots of people lack critical thinking skills anyway.
This is an industry where layoffs are very common, so firing people can usually be blamed on something other than annoying an advertiser. The companies usually make people targeted for layoff sign NDAs as a condition of getting severance, meaning we rarely hear the true reasons.
You can actually can have some influence over politicians. The two-party system means that waiting until the general election is probably too late, but there are primary battles going on all over the country at all different levels. Find someone who isn't corrupt and vote for them over the incumbent.
In the case of this bill, contact your congresscritters and tell them what's wrong with it. The most important are the people on this list, as they're the members of the education committee that's nominally responsible for it.
CNET just wants people to think "Democrats= bad" (and more generally "government=bad"), so TFA doesn't bother to say *who* these "top Democratic politicians" are, but it turns out there are only two of them so far:
George Miller (CA 7)
Ruben Hinojosa (TX 15)
They are clearly hoping to get a lot more co-sponsors and eventually a veto-proof majority, because the bill is mostly about money for education and most politicians like to be seen as helping kids. But it's still an early draft, so there's a good chance of getting the RIAA stuff taken out.
This is yet another example of how laws surrounding "intellectual property" have got more extreme over the last few years. Back in 1984, they could make a transformer in the likeness of a VW bug whether VW wanted them to or not. This is no longer the case.
Didn't Novell and Microsoft make some patent licensing deal?
The bit-rate makes a bigger difference if you convert to mp3 format, because some information is lost in conversion. I think this is what a lot of users will be doing until AAC is more widely supported.
It's hard to tell, but he seems to be talking about the DRM that is built into many cell phones (to stop people sharing ringtones, downloaded video clips, etc.) rather than the GSM encryption protocol itself.
This only works because most cell phones are limited-capability devices tied to a particular service provider. Similar schemes can be used with set-top boxes, but not with PCs unless the PC's functionality is also drastically limited so that it becomes more like a phone than a computer. (The iPod is similarly limited, of course. But the DRM problem is with iTunes, and that still needs a computer.)
Wasn't this part of the rationale behind .NET? That it would work on multiple Windows variants, including Windows CE (which MS is is still pushing for all kinds of stuff) as well as NT.
The other thing MS means by cross-platform is hardware independence. Until a couple of years ago, they thought that most PCs might eventually be based on Itanium and wanted a way to migrate to that without rewriting apps.
Prescription drugs are a bit different from other advertised products in that the people who are convinced to buy them are not the ones who actually pay for them. The cost is shared by everyone in the form of higher medical insurance premiums and taxes.
Many countries have already banned ads for prescription drugs, and as a result they spend much less on healthcare (yet have healthier and longer-lived populations) than the US. The drug companies say it's R&D costs, but they spend a lot more on TV ads than research. That's obviously not the only reason for insanely expensive health costs, but it's one of them.
Hardcore libertarians will obviously disagree with any kind of ban on principle, but there are already all kinds of (completely justifiable) federal restrictions on corporations buying TV ads, including outright bans on commercials for drugs like cigarettes.
Or they'll just require Trusted Computing, which is designed so that an OS (or a DRM application) will always know whether it's been virtualized.
Most people in the UK still have the old-style, non-photo licenses. They were valid for up to 53 years (expiring on the driver's 70th birthday) and were issued until a few years ago.
Many U.S. states and European countries put vandals in jail. How is caning any worse?
I'm not defending Singapore's police state approach (of which TFA is a great example), but I don't understand why caning is considered so bad. If I had been convicted of a crime, I would much rather suffer a few minutes of excruciating pain than spend weeks or years in a place where people are regularly beaten and raped.
Caning is also much cheaper, and more likely to rehabilitate minor offenders because it doesn't cut people off from their work/family/social lives or immerse them among hardened criminals.
The Microsoft license is really extortion, not a tax. Taxes pay for things like schools, firefighters and the Hubble space telescope, while money paid to Microsoft just goes into its profits. In a democratic society, people can vote to decide who or what is taxed, how much, and where the money goes, whereas the Windows license fee is set arbitrarily by Microsoft.
Microsoft is a monopoly, so you don't really have much of a choice. Buying a buying a PC without Windows is difficult. If you manage to, you will break most of your custom apps (including Office macros to and Web sites dependent on ActiveX or MS-JVM, not just Win32 itself.).
I like the Windows key, but it was still designed as a marketing tool (copied from Apple.) That's why it has a Windows logo rather than something generic.
Me too. I'd add that they already have one official extension (the DOM Inspector.) As this is aimed mainly at developers, why is it even included as part of the download package? Seems to be a waste of bandwidth for the vast majority of users.
There could be one "light" download (just the browser itself), and another that included DOM Inspector, Spell Checker, Anti-phishing, Live Bookmarks, etc. as extensions.
Every major media player has a non-standard UI, at least on Windows. WMP is particularly bad because MS actually defines the conventions, so ought at least to stick to them.
WinAmp is the least bad: It doesn't add junk to the startup folder, fill the screen with ads for a download store, or add useless eye candy like dancing wave patterns. But its default skin is still too different from a standard Windows app.
There's no giant interconnected database, but the Feds don't need a subpoena or warrant anymore. That was one of the main provisions in the USA-PATRIOT act.
My library deliberately destroys all its records (at least, it says it does) after a few days, to protect its patrons' privacy. That isn't illegal yet.
This is why MS is producing so many versions of Vista. The low-end home version will cost some OEMs almost nothing, but it'll be so crippled that it's basically trialware. MS is betting that people will prefer the convenient online upgrade "feature" (just enter your credit card number and unlock an better version) to switching to Linux, hunting for a Vista crack or installing an old copy of XP.
Vista Ultimate is mostly aimed at the kind of people who line up outside the computer store at midnight the day a new OS is released. If it's available to OEMs at all, it'll be for the multi-CPU, liquid-nitrogen-cooled machines that cost many thousands of dollars anyway.
People switching to Opera (or Konqueror) isn't a bad thing. We're all better off if there is a diversity of browsers than if a single company is able to control the market and dictate the standards. Everyone using Firefox would be better than everyone using IE (because Firefox is open-source, more secure and more customizable) but not as good as some actual competition.
I like the tub-thumping song. I probably wouldn't have heard it at all if it hadn't been popular, but that's true of most songs. (There's a reason they call it pop music...)
Myspace is different from the other examples because of the network effect. You go to a social networking (or auction, or "news for nerds, stuff that matters") site because of the other people who go there, not the site itself.
How is the 2K interface for XP dummied-down? It's much more efficient, both in terms of the hardware it requries and the time taken to get things done (fewer mouse clicks.)
But otherwise, I agree. There's no need for all the eye-candy, which (other than DRM) seems to be the only new feature of Vista. Even outside of a business setting, I think most people would prefer an OS that doesn't get in the way of the movie they're watching, Web site they're surfing or game they're playing.
It's more the other way round. Most people are already locked into Windows, so MS hopes to leverage the Windows monopoly to sell the Zune. The reason for making it is an attempt to control online music (and ultimately movie) distribution, something Apple has been much moer successful at.
They won't make much (any) profit on sales of the Zune itself at first, but that's mostly because they don't anticipate selling many and so won't have many economies of scale. As with the Xbox, they expect that to change. And most of the money isn't in the device itself.
Slashdot caters to an audience of intelligent people who like to keep some awareness of the world outside Fox News and talk radio. This is perceived as a liberal bias in American politics.
They could ask one of the players to spin the wheel instead. Of course, then we'd see all kinds of books and Web sites that claimed to show players how to spin a roulette wheel in such a way that a particular number always came up.
The main problem is that this would slow the game down, resulting in less profit for the casino. But TFA is about the UK, where roulette wheels are still single-0. They can easily double their profits (and thus the players' losses) by introducing American-style wheels.