I was working for washingtonpost.com (officially called "Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive" because the organization was responsible for both publications' sites) when The Post announced its alliance with MSNBC.
One of the provisions of the alliance was that Microsoft would publish Newsweek.com. The first reaction I heard from my coworkers was a concern for Newsweek's objectivity, or at least the appearance of objectivity. The Post's top brass assured everyone that the deal would have no impact on Newsweek's objectivity. I'm not saying it has; just putting a little insider kerosene on your fire.
One of the other provisions was that washingtonpost.com would feature Windows Media clips of Washington Post reporters on MSNBC. We were instructed to embed the video in our templates and also call a.js file hosted on MSNBC's site. The sole purpose of the.js file was to weed out non-Windows browsers. For instance, I visited the page (on our site) with a Mac and was redirected to an MSNBC page stating "Windows Media Player is not available for the Macintosh." I showed this to one of the top editors, who replied our users should know better than to buy a substandard computer. I then downloaded Windows Media Player for Mac from Microsoft and demonstrated that the video works perfectly if you take the.js reference out. The next morning the multimedia editor was waiting at my desk to get the details, and later began re-encoding the video files in Real format -- over Microsoft's loud objections.
Bottom line: Microsoft tried to use its deal with The Washington Post to prevent non-Windows users from viewing Post reporters on The Post's own site. I can only imagine what goes on at "newsweek.msnbc.com."
Re:What if it gets turned up to 11??
on
Voices in Your Head
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If you're really opposed to this form of advertising, you'll be able to call and 800 number and opt out. Then they will be required to leave you alone for five years, at which point you can opt out again if you haven't had a change of heart after seeing how this method of advertising has improved the lives of your friends and coworkers.
Even if you don't opt out, with 300 million people receiving over 100 direct audio marketing messages each day, you'd be more likely to get struck by lightning than injured by a "faulty" ad beam.
---
On a more serious, but related and entirely factual note... while making a purchase at Barnes and Noble one day, the cashier asked if I would like to join their discount club (pay $xx per year in trade for a percentage discount and presumably a neverending stream of electronic and snail junk mail).
"No thank you," I told her. "I get enough junk mail as it is."
"Oh come on," she urged, waving my credit card in a way that scared me. "You could save five dollars right here on this purchase!"
"I said 'no.'"
"Personally I like receiving things in the mail. I know that may sound pathetic, but it makes me feel good because no one ever mails me stuff."
"Give me my card back."
"But I haven't rung your order up--"
"Give me my card back now or I'm calling the police. You have been insulting my intelligence for the last two minutes in an attempt to sell me something I have repeatedly stated I don't want and now you are holding my credit card hostage."
She just stared at me in disbelief until I pulled out my cell phone, at which point she handed my card back and I walked out -- leaving the books on the counter.
is learning more important than copyright enforcement?
It depends on what lessons you're trying to teach. If you want to teach students how to use the software, then learning is more important. If you want to teach students how to be good consumers, copyright is more important.
But if copyright enforcement is more important than learning, isn't the act of learning piracy in itself? Lets say you read a book and learn the concepts it's addressing. By learning, you are copying the information to your brain, and you are capable of further infringing the owner's copyright by discussing the book with people who haven't read it.
Fair use? Nah that's just a liberal attempt to legalize piracy, like marijuana, for "educational" or "medicinal" purposes.
Suggesting the possibility that learning might be more important than copyright enforcement also leaves open the possibility that copyright enforcement may be more important than learning. And if you're still thinking about this tomorrow, I'm going to sick my lawyers on you for infringing my implied copyright.
"We'd like to bring you in for an interview, but we've got just one more "t" to cross. I need your Slashdot username?"
"What for?"
"Standard credit check. Need to find out whether you're an intelligent, helpful, informative individual or... well, this also helps us weed out the trolls."
"Actually, I just got an offer from another company I couldn't turn down. Sorry."
If Apple began selling OS X for x86 just to kill the megahertz myth, people would expect OS X to run twice as fast on the new hardware. When it doesn't, they'll either realize that Apple was telling the truth (that's a lot of effort and expense just to get people to buy into the megahertz myth story) or accuse Apple of intentionally crippling the x86 version to support its earlier claims. Either way Apple would be shooting itself in the foot.
I would recommend the "Dummies" series to any smart person.
What will this be like in 2050?
on
Social Robot?
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· Score: 4, Funny
Her goal is to register for the conference, give a speech and answer questions.
I realize these are not easy tasks, but I have to wonder what challenging goals will be like in the future. Will we be reading an article on Slashdot.NET in 2050 that talks about a robot's goals at the conference including:
Driving itself to the conference in an inconspicuous, beat-up old 2040-model car?
Spilling its drink on an attractive woman's shirt and taking first-person-perspective photos of the cleanup efforts?
Fooling the attendees into believing it is a real person?
Fooling the other robots posing as attendees into believing it is a real person?
Fooling the attendees into believing they are real people?
By those standards, registering oneself for the conference, giving a speech and answering questions seems easy.
Hold on there slim. Many corporations break the law, but openly endorsing the practice is another matter. Microsoft still claims it hasn't broken any laws (which is the exact opposite of an open endorsement), Enron admits its previous management broke the law and condemns it (again, opposite of open endorsement), Martha Stewart denies she broke the law, etc.
When corporations break the law, they endorse the practice behind closed doors and only if the practice is profitable. That's very important. HP would not profit by endorsing a violation of the DMCA.
So, uh, MarsDude... Did any other beings turn out at the meetup on your planet? I understand most martians are afraid to reveal themselves on slashdot, but I'd love to know what they really think about this forum, karma, Windows, etc.
I'm probably missing something here, but isn't that just what they'd want you to do? It would create so much noise in the P2P system that no one would be able to find the real files they're looking for.
How about QuicKeys? When I couldn't get AppleScript to translate spoken commands into certain keystrokes and mouse clicks in my mapping program, I found that QuicKeys was able to do the job. (I ended up using AppleScript for the Speech Recognition input and QK to manipulate the interface)
Someone mentioned server load testing earlier... if that's what you're looking for, remember that Mac OS X is basically a pretty window manager on top of a flavor of FreeBSD -- you can have cron automate shell scripts and perl.
Does anybody else hate the word 'Ms.'? Good god, I hate it when a woman introduces herself like that. Telling a man your marital status upon introduction is simply good manners.
It's a formal tradition intended to convey respect. The New York Times refers to all men by their full name (i.e. Bill Gates) on first reference and Mr. Lastname on subsequent references (Mr. Gates). The NYT uses Ms. by default for all women, unless there is a reason to identify the fact that she is married or single, or her marital status is common knowledge among the readers.
In this case, Crick's marital status is omitted because it has nothing to do with the article. Why do you want to know? If the article was about you, would you want the world to know that you are single/married?
Most news organizations consider the practice archaic and dropped it years ago. They use full name on first reference (Bill Gates) and just the last name one subsequent reference (Gates).
And no, teens do not need to be spied on - they need to be instilled with a good set of values at an early age, then be allowed to make their own mistakes.
Good point. When Congress attempts to pass a law mandating these spy boxes, we should remind them of this and ask them to instead add a "driving safety values" clause to the pledge of allegiance. That way they can still appear to be doing something without infringing the rights of citizens.
Are other companies that claim to track Internet usage next?
Look at Alexa, for example. It claims to know where people surf, but it's information is biased toward people who use Alexa. Yes, I realize it's built into Mozilla, but most people don't use Mozilla and aren't going to download Alexa. It's interesting to note that Alexa claims to be the 10th-most-visited site on the Web, but if a user has to talk to alexa.com each time it makes a report, shouldn't alexa be number one on their list? It's not because that would cause people to suspect that their rankings were false. Still, they report that Alexa.com and go.com (which officially died over a year ago) beat out AOL, MSNBC, Amazon, Lycos, CNN, etc.
I've always wondered about Media Metrix. Every news organizations seems to quote their "reports," as authoritative fact, but no one (including MM) has any way of verifying the information about where traffic goes on the Web.
Last I checked, MM functioned by paying a chosen cross-section of the population to allow their surfing to be monitored. Based on their viewing habits, MM believes claims it can tellBut the Web is not like broadcast TV where you have less than a dozen options to choose from, or cable with a few hundred at most. The Web is more fragmented than any other medium. It's so easy to publish and exchange information that one can find one or more sites tailored to just about any interest imaginable. You can't just guess where everyone goes based on a miniscule percentage of the population (watch, a MM troll will "refute" this in a moment by claiming I don't understand statistics).
It's interesting to note that each of these news organizations that quotes media metrix pays MM a hefty sum for this reports on a regular basis. Nearly all the companies that MM claims are among the most-popular do this because they want to be able to show their bosses and shareholders how well they're doing on the Web -- this includes the news organizations. So we have a never-ending circle in which companies pay MM to tell them what they want to hear. I believe that if you have a business proposition to sell that involves the Web, MM has a "report" to back you up -- for a price.
Is it only a matter of time before we discover that MM's reports are based on the same self-interested lies as WorldCom's claims about Internet traffic? Or will the marketing industry succeed in fiercely defending its irrefutable source?
Anyone taking bets on whether he gets arrested on Thursday night for some mundane offense like jaywalking.
He steps off the curb a moment before the "WALK" sign lights up and three men in suits and shades appear. The one who's not restraining one of Perens's arms says, "Bruce Perens, you are under arrest for jaywalking."
In some cases, simply stating your intent to commit a crime is a crime in itself, even if you never follow through on your stated intent. I wonder if they could arrest him on the grounds that a credible source (Perens himself) tipped them off to the fact that a crime was going to be committed.
Can you just give it to us in plain English? All we need to know is what color Palermo 0.06 and Torino 2 translate into on the Ridgean Homeland Security Advisory Scale. Please try to be precise, no "bluish-green" or "reddish-blue" answers.
We need to hurry up and send a team of foul-mouthed perverted semi-illiterate oil miners into space!
Why say semi-illiterate?Is there a difference between "semi-illiterate" people and "semi-literate" people? How about "slashdot readers who drill for oil?"
Also, are we so consumed with the fossil fuel "crisis" that when a killer asteroid is found on course for earth our first reaction is, "send someone up there to find out if it's got any oil?"
This was posted just seven hours after a story about ex-Microsoft security chief Howard Schmidt warning that the Internet could facilitate the collapse of our infrastructure.
A lot of people have commented that Schmidt is full of... well, Schmidt, because anything critical should not be hooked up to the Internet. But here's an example of one way the ubiquity of Internet-connected computers could disrupt things.
Hypothetical scenario:
A rogue group hiding out in the tribal areas of Pakistan writes this virus (or whatever it's officially classified as), begins sending it to WebTV random *@WebTV.net addresses and causes them to flood 911 (a critical part of our emergency response infrastructure) with false calls. While the officials are busy trying to sort the WebTV-callers from the real emergencies, a group like Al Qaeda could carry out an attack and we would be ill-equipped to respond appropriately.
Whether this "virus" was planted by terrorists is not at issue, though. Perhaps we should pay more attention to Schmidt -- after all, who would know more about the insecurity of 95% of US PCs than an ex-MS security chief. We need to start looking at how our non-Internet-connected infrastructure might be indirectly vulnerable to Internet-based attacks.
If this affects all of MSNTV, it could be a bigger problem than we thought. Just think of all the unsuspecting MSNBC viewers who didn't even know their TV had a modem! We should petition our cable providers to block MSNBC until this is fixed.
I can just see the FBI going to Redmond to settle the issue of liability:
FBI: "The kid says your computer called 911. What the hell is going on, Bill? I woke up the president and told him we were under attack by the Russians. Do you have any idea what kind of an idiot that makes me look like?"
What kind of idiot would buy moon rocks over the Internet for any appreciable sum of money?
The FBI.
Idiot Selling Moon Rocks: "Hey, I got me some moon rocks for sale! Moon rocks! Get 'em while they're hot!" FBI Agent: "I'm very interested in your moon rocks. Where did you get them? I see... Where do I send the check?"
Why would these things be controlled via the internet? We already segregate certain high security systems from the internet to avoid even the chance of them being "hacked".
Because pretty soon we're going to start hearing "the only way to secure your appliances/traffic lights/power grids/etc. is to install Windows Secure Edition." Manufacturers will preinstall Windows SE on consumer devices because this will give them an excuse to scare customers into buying new products from themm every few years. Government officials who have accepted campaign money from Microsoft will encourage the maintainers of infrastructure systems to switch -- "no one uses ada these days anyway, wouldn't you feel safer with C#?" Banks... well, let's just say there are already ATMs and cash registers running Windows. Congress
All these things will "need" to be connected to the Internet "for regular security updates."
Slashdot Mirror
I want to know when they're releasing the beer-fetching Princess Leia.
One of the provisions of the alliance was that Microsoft would publish Newsweek.com. The first reaction I heard from my coworkers was a concern for Newsweek's objectivity, or at least the appearance of objectivity. The Post's top brass assured everyone that the deal would have no impact on Newsweek's objectivity. I'm not saying it has; just putting a little insider kerosene on your fire.
One of the other provisions was that washingtonpost.com would feature Windows Media clips of Washington Post reporters on MSNBC. We were instructed to embed the video in our templates and also call a .js file hosted on MSNBC's site. The sole purpose of the .js file was to weed out non-Windows browsers. For instance, I visited the page (on our site) with a Mac and was redirected to an MSNBC page stating "Windows Media Player is not available for the Macintosh." I showed this to one of the top editors, who replied our users should know better than to buy a substandard computer. I then downloaded Windows Media Player for Mac from Microsoft and demonstrated that the video works perfectly if you take the .js reference out. The next morning the multimedia editor was waiting at my desk to get the details, and later began re-encoding the video files in Real format -- over Microsoft's loud objections.
Bottom line: Microsoft tried to use its deal with The Washington Post to prevent non-Windows users from viewing Post reporters on The Post's own site. I can only imagine what goes on at "newsweek.msnbc.com."
Even if you don't opt out, with 300 million people receiving over 100 direct audio marketing messages each day, you'd be more likely to get struck by lightning than injured by a "faulty" ad beam.
---
On a more serious, but related and entirely factual note... while making a purchase at Barnes and Noble one day, the cashier asked if I would like to join their discount club (pay $xx per year in trade for a percentage discount and presumably a neverending stream of electronic and snail junk mail).
"No thank you," I told her. "I get enough junk mail as it is."
"Oh come on," she urged, waving my credit card in a way that scared me. "You could save five dollars right here on this purchase!"
"I said 'no.'"
"Personally I like receiving things in the mail. I know that may sound pathetic, but it makes me feel good because no one ever mails me stuff."
"Give me my card back."
"But I haven't rung your order up--"
"Give me my card back now or I'm calling the police. You have been insulting my intelligence for the last two minutes in an attempt to sell me something I have repeatedly stated I don't want and now you are holding my credit card hostage."
She just stared at me in disbelief until I pulled out my cell phone, at which point she handed my card back and I walked out -- leaving the books on the counter.
But if copyright enforcement is more important than learning, isn't the act of learning piracy in itself? Lets say you read a book and learn the concepts it's addressing. By learning, you are copying the information to your brain, and you are capable of further infringing the owner's copyright by discussing the book with people who haven't read it.
Fair use? Nah that's just a liberal attempt to legalize piracy, like marijuana, for "educational" or "medicinal" purposes.
Suggesting the possibility that learning might be more important than copyright enforcement also leaves open the possibility that copyright enforcement may be more important than learning. And if you're still thinking about this tomorrow, I'm going to sick my lawyers on you for infringing my implied copyright.
"What for?"
"Standard credit check. Need to find out whether you're an intelligent, helpful, informative individual or... well, this also helps us weed out the trolls."
"Actually, I just got an offer from another company I couldn't turn down. Sorry."
If Apple began selling OS X for x86 just to kill the megahertz myth, people would expect OS X to run twice as fast on the new hardware. When it doesn't, they'll either realize that Apple was telling the truth (that's a lot of effort and expense just to get people to buy into the megahertz myth story) or accuse Apple of intentionally crippling the x86 version to support its earlier claims. Either way Apple would be shooting itself in the foot.
I would recommend the "Dummies" series to any smart person.
- Driving itself to the conference in an inconspicuous, beat-up old 2040-model car?
- Spilling its drink on an attractive woman's shirt and taking first-person-perspective photos of the cleanup efforts?
- Fooling the attendees into believing it is a real person?
- Fooling the other robots posing as attendees into believing it is a real person?
- Fooling the attendees into believing they are real people?
By those standards, registering oneself for the conference, giving a speech and answering questions seems easy.When corporations break the law, they endorse the practice behind closed doors and only if the practice is profitable. That's very important. HP would not profit by endorsing a violation of the DMCA.
So, uh, MarsDude... Did any other beings turn out at the meetup on your planet? I understand most martians are afraid to reveal themselves on slashdot, but I'd love to know what they really think about this forum, karma, Windows, etc.
"Excellent. You will make a fine addition to my ideological army. Together we will stamp out trolls. Now go forth and rid the world of trolls!"
I'm probably missing something here, but isn't that just what they'd want you to do? It would create so much noise in the P2P system that no one would be able to find the real files they're looking for.
Someone mentioned server load testing earlier... if that's what you're looking for, remember that Mac OS X is basically a pretty window manager on top of a flavor of FreeBSD -- you can have cron automate shell scripts and perl.
In this case, Crick's marital status is omitted because it has nothing to do with the article. Why do you want to know? If the article was about you, would you want the world to know that you are single/married?
Most news organizations consider the practice archaic and dropped it years ago. They use full name on first reference (Bill Gates) and just the last name one subsequent reference (Gates).
Look at Alexa, for example. It claims to know where people surf, but it's information is biased toward people who use Alexa. Yes, I realize it's built into Mozilla, but most people don't use Mozilla and aren't going to download Alexa. It's interesting to note that Alexa claims to be the 10th-most-visited site on the Web, but if a user has to talk to alexa.com each time it makes a report, shouldn't alexa be number one on their list? It's not because that would cause people to suspect that their rankings were false. Still, they report that Alexa.com and go.com (which officially died over a year ago) beat out AOL, MSNBC, Amazon, Lycos, CNN, etc.
I've always wondered about Media Metrix. Every news organizations seems to quote their "reports," as authoritative fact, but no one (including MM) has any way of verifying the information about where traffic goes on the Web.
Last I checked, MM functioned by paying a chosen cross-section of the population to allow their surfing to be monitored. Based on their viewing habits, MM believes claims it can tellBut the Web is not like broadcast TV where you have less than a dozen options to choose from, or cable with a few hundred at most. The Web is more fragmented than any other medium. It's so easy to publish and exchange information that one can find one or more sites tailored to just about any interest imaginable. You can't just guess where everyone goes based on a miniscule percentage of the population (watch, a MM troll will "refute" this in a moment by claiming I don't understand statistics).
It's interesting to note that each of these news organizations that quotes media metrix pays MM a hefty sum for this reports on a regular basis. Nearly all the companies that MM claims are among the most-popular do this because they want to be able to show their bosses and shareholders how well they're doing on the Web -- this includes the news organizations. So we have a never-ending circle in which companies pay MM to tell them what they want to hear. I believe that if you have a business proposition to sell that involves the Web, MM has a "report" to back you up -- for a price.
Is it only a matter of time before we discover that MM's reports are based on the same self-interested lies as WorldCom's claims about Internet traffic? Or will the marketing industry succeed in fiercely defending its irrefutable source?
He steps off the curb a moment before the "WALK" sign lights up and three men in suits and shades appear. The one who's not restraining one of Perens's arms says, "Bruce Perens, you are under arrest for jaywalking."
In some cases, simply stating your intent to commit a crime is a crime in itself, even if you never follow through on your stated intent. I wonder if they could arrest him on the grounds that a credible source (Perens himself) tipped them off to the fact that a crime was going to be committed.
Can you just give it to us in plain English? All we need to know is what color Palermo 0.06 and Torino 2 translate into on the Ridgean Homeland Security Advisory Scale. Please try to be precise, no "bluish-green" or "reddish-blue" answers.
Also, are we so consumed with the fossil fuel "crisis" that when a killer asteroid is found on course for earth our first reaction is, "send someone up there to find out if it's got any oil?"
A lot of people have commented that Schmidt is full of... well, Schmidt, because anything critical should not be hooked up to the Internet. But here's an example of one way the ubiquity of Internet-connected computers could disrupt things.
Hypothetical scenario:
Whether this "virus" was planted by terrorists is not at issue, though. Perhaps we should pay more attention to Schmidt -- after all, who would know more about the insecurity of 95% of US PCs than an ex-MS security chief. We need to start looking at how our non-Internet-connected infrastructure might be indirectly vulnerable to Internet-based attacks.
FBI: "The kid says your computer called 911. What the hell is going on, Bill? I woke up the president and told him we were under attack by the Russians. Do you have any idea what kind of an idiot that makes me look like?"
Bill: "David, machines don't call people."
Idiot Selling Moon Rocks: "Hey, I got me some moon rocks for sale! Moon rocks! Get 'em while they're hot!"
FBI Agent: "I'm very interested in your moon rocks. Where did you get them? I see... Where do I send the check?"
All these things will "need" to be connected to the Internet "for regular security updates."