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  1. Re:Existing lines on US Finalizes Stem Cell Research Guidelines · · Score: 1

    "If another use can be found for them, great."

    Says someone called NecroPuppy! :o

  2. Re:Better than a tail light? on Bike Projector Makes Lane For Rider · · Score: 1

    "...why don't you and the other bicyclists in your area get together, and make a political difference?"

    Relax, I don't even have a bike.

    I'm just saying that the comment that the idea would not receive support and encouragement is short-sighted. I never suggested that it was a great idea or would make cyclists safer, just that it was novel and that many people out there would like the concept.

  3. Re:Better than a tail light? on Bike Projector Makes Lane For Rider · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's novel, and I bet there *has* been widespread interest and encouragement - I've seen this discussed and sent around (with positive sentiment) many times over recent months.

  4. Re:Then write a letter on Text Comments Out In YouTube "National Discussion" of Health Care · · Score: 1

    There can be no winner.

    If they accept online text-based comments, they get trash from birfers and the like.

    If video responses, they get trash and criticism of creating an expensive barrier to entry.

    If paper comments, they get pre-printed junk and criticism of wasting paper.

    A solution is not to go to the masses (where it is the unemployed loons who have all the spare time), but to have a summit to which people (from all areas) are invited. Take away as much of the tribal clumping as possible, and bring it back to raw, individual ideas. That will still cop a lot of criticism (see Rudd's 2020 summit here in Australia), but so will any alternative.

  5. Re:3 more uses for parts of disused cities on US Plans To Bulldoze 50 Shrinking Cities · · Score: 1

    Fence off a suburb as a paintball war zone.

  6. Re:Heads aspode on GM's Hummer Brand To Be Sold To a Chinese Company · · Score: 1

    Hate to see that guy when he *is* trying to be racist. Wow.

  7. Re:Hell yeah - R2-45 on Church of Scientology On Trial In France · · Score: 1

    "It's pretty clear that he considered it a joke at the beginning, and then he went bat-shit insane."

    No, and then he realised that there really was a load of money to be made.

  8. Re:Yes, but it's in Chickens, not frogs on Microbes 100M Years Old Found In Termite Guts · · Score: 1

    On a more serious note, what are the chances of bringing back a Woolly Mammoth? The ticket sales for that at a zoo (or a series of exhibitions at major capitals around the world) would bring in incredible amounts of money to finance further research in related fields.

  9. Re:Huh? on Microsoft Patents the Crippling of Operating Systems · · Score: 1

    And it's not dissimilar to region-encoding on DVD players - artificially limiting a product to engineer more revenue (in that case, for a related industry).

    What MS are doing is called 'versioning' in marketing terms and it's something they have done for years. The concept is that a company provides a range of product/service options (budget to premium) and lets the customer choose what level of customer they consider themselves to be.

  10. Re:Yahoo sucks. on A System For Handling 'Impostor' Complaints · · Score: 1

    Bennett, TL;DR.

    On the high volume as mentioned by the parent, it's that they can't handle it profitably. If you set up a site designed to make money from user-generated content, be prepared to support it professionally, or don't bother.

  11. Re:Another smart move from the movers and shakers. on News Corp Will Charge For Newspaper Websites · · Score: 1

    Agree completely and especially for local newspapers. They need to be making advertising accessible to the many local companies who would love to get in front of nearby customers but I think they're missing a significant opportunity.

  12. Re:Yes but how does this relate to Swine Flu? on Hundreds of Black Holes Roam Loose In Milky Way · · Score: 1

    Does insurance cover anything these days?

  13. Re:Can't we do ANYTHING anymore? on NASA Moon Launch May Be Delayed After 2020 · · Score: 1

    Funnel some of the defence expenditure across! Think long term rather than short term (warmongering).

  14. Re:Tell me why... on Paid Online News Venture Fails To Get Subscribers · · Score: 1

    Obviously not many, but very few will pay for that sort of watchdog role. I've actually wondered in the past if that responsibility couldn't fall to universities in some way - student journalists cutting their teeth. Better than no watchdog at all.

  15. Re:It's always the same story on Paid Online News Venture Fails To Get Subscribers · · Score: 1

    Why do you think selling ads doesn't work?

    Or do you mean selling a certain type of ad (annoying ones, for one thing)?

    I doubt ad blockers are used by a majority of people. And statistics on the web are better than they are in newspapers. While the current economic climate is impacting spending, businesses will always need to reach their targets. Anyone hosting eyeballs (popular websites) will have the option to capitalise on that.

    IMO, the money being spent on advertising in newspapers and radio will gradually start to shift to the web. I still have clients spending $15,000/year on their ad in the Yellow Pages which is an absolute waste of money and gradually they'll wake up to new opportunities. I have seen campaigns on AdWords and radio see the former outperform the latter by a factor of 100 to 1, for similar expenditure.

    Of course, the form of advertising may change; things like co-branded ventures, side-projects/tools, sponsorships, etc are harder to block and less annoying for users.

  16. Re:The rise of social consciousness on Ancient Books Go Online · · Score: 2, Informative

    The tip of the tail will change and data (rare songs or live recordings) will slip off the available net unless a couple of organisations start cataloguing every single piece of such information.

  17. Re:sounds like a very reasonable solution on Consortium To Share Ad Revenue From Stolen Stories · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How? If their revenue dropped 50%, they'd just double their efforts. They're using scrapers, so it costs them nothing to harvest more content.

    Look at spam. If the amount of clicking recipients halves, the spammers double their mailing list to compensate as their cost-per-message is still virtually nothing.

    It's not the right solution.

  18. Re:HOT AIR on Vatican To Build 100 Megawatt Solar Power Plant · · Score: 1

    "homosexuals, or a socialist nation"

    No way - the comments would be full of jokes, just as they are for this story.

  19. Re:Latency on Telepresence — Our Best Bet For Exploring Space · · Score: 1

    Why are return tickets for human missions a problem? Surely there'd be people who'd put their hand up for a likely-one-way-mission if it meant a nestegg for their family and their name immortalised in exploration books as being the first on Mars or to orbit another star?

  20. Re:Do we really have to revive the 90s web on Digg Backs Down On DiggBar · · Score: 1

    "Slightly offtopic: why the hell does youtube autoplays the movies when you open up a page?"

    Probably because 95% of their visitors would prefer that. Ever browsed a non-autoplay movie site with an average internet user? Sometimes a fair amount of time will pass before they realise that they have to click play to start.

    Note that a DVD player will generally autoplay a DVD on insertion. Most CD players work in the same way, game consoles by default, etc.

  21. Re:Alternative viewpoint: on New ICANN TLDs May Cause Internet Land Rush · · Score: 1

    Most of the older set seem to search Google for the domain they want to go to anyway.

  22. Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog on Google CEO Warns Newspapers Not To Anger Readers · · Score: 1

    Google doesn't need them that much as there's enough else out there.

    I'm sure the summary or articles mention it somewhere, but AP and Google actually have a deal where Google pays them money for the right to host their news content?

    Slashdot's links to large, mainstream, traditional news sources would probably be about 5% of story summary links. I doubt Slashdot would miss that 5% were it gone and not replaced. I had already been aware of this current spat and out of the coverage of maybe 15 or so sites, just one would be considered mainstream/trad.

    Newspapers are dying and so they should. What can hopefully be saved (I think it can only be out of advertising, philanthropy or research/universities/watchdogs) will be the writers themselves.

  23. Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog on Google CEO Warns Newspapers Not To Anger Readers · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I disagree. How often do the majority of people still read big-brand, traditional news sources? And that will drop further if they opt out of aggregating services. I check my local daily briefly, but get the majority of my news from other sources.

    Fred Wilson makes the point here:
    http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/04/you-cant-take-the-paper-out-of-the-newstand.html

    On Friday, an asian online games company called ChangeYou went public here in the US and had a very successful offering. This is interesting to me on many levels as you might imagine. Google shows three stories on the ChangeYou IPO; the lead story from SeekingAlpha, a story from Forbes, and a story from the FT. Note that there is no story there from the WSJ.

    And I could care less. I had the option of all three links and I selected the SeekingAlpha link. SeekingAlpha is a network of stock bloggers. It is slowly but surely building a brand as a trusted source of stock news and opinion.

    Newspapers dropped the ball on classifieds and this is only going to be another example of management making another dreadful mistake.

    Quit the jibberjabber and opt out, I say. If major papers don't want to participate, opt out and leave it for those publishers and readers who do.

  24. Re:Your choice on How Do You Deal With Pirated Programs At Work? · · Score: 1

    Depends on the size of the company. If it's more than a handful of people and the directors are raking in cash, then I'd encourage them to take a more legal path. If they're small and making a modest living, I'd be more likely to get the CYA-note (explaining your position) and potentially turn a bit of a blind eye if necessary. I'd rather see a business employing people and worrying about 100% software legality when possible than a small business having to make cut backs on staff in order to perfectly toe the line.

    Might not be a popular perspective on here, but I don't have a huge problem with a design hopeful/freelancer pirating the Adobe suite in order to teach themselves or get their first few jobs through and then gradually working towards an ideal situation as their business grows.

    As a small business expands, staff and hardware are enough of an expense as it is - minimise that added load until the incoming work picks up to cover further costs.

  25. Re:People don't really believe in Noah's Flood on Texas Vote May Challenge Teaching of Evolution · · Score: 1

    I like how there are some Young Earth Creationists who try to explain light from a distant star having travelled billions of years as having been created by god as 'already en route'!