I can understand your concern about the first half, but about the second half....why are so many people always offended by the notion of targeted advertising? People always seem to get mad about the possibility that the ads they see might actually be relevant to them. Why is this so terrible?
Because, the amount of information a company knows about you in order to do targeted advertising is bordering on the scary.
The way they collect that information continues to be opaque, and likely spread across a large number of sources, and far too much of your personal life can be cross-referenced without people realizing it. The fact that this information gets collected, and the routinely sold means that a lot of your personal/lifestyle/spending information is just out there for people to use, abuse, or just plain exploit.
Voluntarily signing up on Facebook so I can tell everybody where I am, what I'm doing, and the names and addresses of everybody I know is like signing up for Big Brother, only with some stupid game involving farming to placate the masses. Some of this stuff used to be considered confidential, and places like banks would guard it. Now, every schmuck with a customer card willingly hands over boatloads of personal information by associating a customer number with everything they buy.
I mean, seriously, if you go for a prescription to clear up an "infection of a personal nature", do you want to be inundated with ads for anti-itch cream, condoms, yeast infections, incontinence products, free clinics and whatnot? It's like when people say "if you have nothing to hide, why do you have secrets?" -- some information is personal, and isn't really intended to be spread around to everybody.
This really has to be a generational thing -- a lot of geeks used to be rabid privacy nuts. Now everybody is willing to publish all of this stuff onto Facebook like it's normal for the world to know what gotchies you're wearing, when you've got an itch, and the results of your latest medical tests.
Not being aware of the Fancy French technique, I've always poured Champagne like this (ok, "sparkling wine" since "real champagne" is too spendy). Precisely because it doesn't froth up like mad, just like pouring beer.
This just in.. poncy table-side service is more about flash than substance. Who knew?
Of course, this brings up the debate of which is the correct champagne glass -- the flute, or the wide/shallow one? It seems to have changed over the last several decades -- at least, in movies and the like.
They have encryption software -- making those less CPU intensive (especially for cell phone and other mobile use) might actually be moderately useful.
Intel doesn't have any corporate interests in making things less CPU intensive. They'll give you more power in the same wattage, or the same power with less wattage.
But, really, the more you need to upgrade hardware the better.
Re:All part of their core business
on
Intel Buys McAfee
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· Score: 1
Or, they plan to make it even slower, and encourage users to upgrade their processors!
Or, make it incompatible with AMD.
"McAfee has identified you are using an insecure AMD processor and should upgrade to the latest Intel Unobtanium model".
I think we're all thinking that. I'm so amazed at this. Someone paid 7 billion for the right to sell people magic beans.
Ignoring the fact that we think McAfee is a PoS... it's sold in retail stores, and people recognize the name. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if you can buy it at Wal Mart, which makes for a huge potential customer base.
Those magic beans are already positioned to be marketed to the people who least understand it and who most need it because they don't know much about their new computer other than they need antivirus. I can see that being worth $7b. How many billion dollar industries are essentially 'magic beans'? (diets, crappy exercise equipment, lotteries, Nigerian scams)
Doesn't make the product any better, and the notion of Intel being involved in security kind of makes me a little worried. But, I can definitely understand why they'd be interested in the product.
Then I must have Asperger's too. I don't go to church, I don't watch sports on TV, I believe that men went to the moon, I believe that heavy use of fossil fuels is causing global warming, and I believe fluor is good for your teeth.
Oh noes... I caught teh Asperger's from teh Slashdot.
(Apologies to anybody who actually has this condition.)
It shouldn't have been awkward. You should have simply told the VP you were making some changes and left it at that.
Well, I'd know him for several years and had shared drinks with him. Standing in front of someone and bald-faced lying to them isn't a skill I've ever worked on perfecting, and not one I've ever felt I wanted to.
There is no good reason to lose respect for HR for doing their job. The only ding against HR is for not telling you what to do in case you do see the VP.
The HR guy had demonstrated himself to be an oily, lying b@stard on several occasions. This was just the last straw. As I recall, he was let go within 3 months.
I simply don't want to be drawn into it. Handling those moments isn't what they paid me for, it's what they paid him for. Keep me the hell out of it.
not to inflame anyone, but as an IT guy, I frequently got the notices at one company about firings long before the employee did. the employee would either find out from HR or when they went to go work on something that was now secured from them.
Uggh. I had that happen to me once.
I was an admin for a small workgroup within our company. They were letting the VP we reported to go, but they needed to ensure that he'd not be able to access the machines once they did it.
The guy from HR pulled me aside and told me I needed to start disabling the VPs accounts on the machines I controlled since they were going to sack him in an hour or so. He put me into a really awkward position, since I ended up seeing the VP before HR (he was asking why he couldn't log into the servers). I sort of stood there for a few moments with a stunned look and informed him the HR guy was looking for him.
I never did respect the HR guy after that. I don't want to be involved in the process of locking out someone before they've been informed by someone in authority of this impending fact. It's really unfair to the poor schmuck who gets caught in the middle.
I'm fairly certain your superiors see this as the obvious solution - change your personal phone number.
No, his better option is to say "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm no longer in their employ. If you'd like to engage my consulting services at $2000/day plus expenses, I'd be happy to help you out. If not I'm afraid you need to go away now."
It's not stealing customers when they phone you and engage your services. In which case, the company has just populated your sales pipeline as a consultant.
There's about a dozen distilleries within 50 miles of where I live. I'd love to use locally produced fuel.
If it works, they're not going to give it to you for free. Although, I can see running their own fleet off it and saving a bunch of cash on trucking expenses.
Of course, if your tailpipe smelled like bourbon, I can see a lot of people in Kentucky asphyxiating as an unfortunate side effect of this.:-P
For some of us, it reminds us a lot of the technologies we were using in the 80s, except with a slightly higher quality of gibberish because you could ban the dumbest users from BBS's and gain loyalty from those that were left.
Yes, I guess I'd forgotten the old BBS days. And, there was a higher level of discussion going on, that is true. And, generally those people were locals who I might actually know and stand a chance of meeting at some of the parties.
I'd be more surprised that your mother stopped using it than started. The fact that a lot of AARP type folks are on FB should say something about how hip it is.
Well, to use it meant a certain leap I didn't think she'd ever make since up until a few years ago my parents were almost entirely computer illiterate.
But, once she used it, she saw that it was largely stupid stuff between friends of her friends that made no sense -- and she kept getting friend requests from people who she had no idea who they were. Eventually she almost entirely gave up on it as a waste of time. She pretty much figured out on her own to give the absolute barest of information on it, and not to friend just any schmuck that came along.
I think it's become ubiquitous, and almost everybody uses it. But, the presence of senior citizens has never really made something "hip" -- they're more of a trailing cohort than any actual measure of hipness. It might be considered hip because almost everyone under 30 uses it. The old people are an after thought.
If you're jaded, to me, it means that you were interested at one point and you've lost touch with that interest. The indifferent person never cared in the first place and simply doesn't give a damn.
Definitely jaded. Sunk way too many hours into usenet and IRC in the 90s, completely lost interest in it. All of the stuff that came afterwards just seems like variations on a theme that doesn't really bring anything new to the table -- except for a new generation of users that never used it in the last iteration of the technology and think they've discovered something new the world has never seen.
To bother to sit around and debate over something you have no interest in makes me wonder about how much free time someone has. Sorry but I'm ust being honest about it.
*laugh* Well, I might point out you're taking an awful lot of time to kvetch about the fact that other people are posting in the thread.:-P
Hell, you're meta-kvetching -- you're complaining about the fact that people are taking the time to complain about things they don't care about. So, either you care about what other people don't care about, or you don't care about what other people don't care about... the latter is just too wacky to contemplate.;-)
And as far as what people around here want? Don't make any bets on it. I've been here a long time and if I put money down on what the future of most technology would be from the majority around here I would be broke today.
Slashdot would be the worst possible indicator of a technology which would be successful in the future.
If Slashdot could predict successful tech, we'd all be using ogg-vorbis, the Year of the Linux Desktop would have happened by now, and Apple wouldn't have sold 3+ million iPads.:-P
We see technology through an entirely different lens than the consumer public. And we're have really bad tunnel vision.
That's all fine and well but do you stop at every article that you have no interest in and explain yourself? If not, why do it here?
No, but I read the articles that seem like they'll be interesting and respond to the salient points that people make.
Counting old and jaded folks like myself as "hip" seemed interesting enough to respond to. I mean, I've never been lumped in with the hipsters before, so the assertion just seemed... unusual.
I was merely pointing out that some of us really are old and jaded, and (as ever), anything but hip. I mean, is crotchety the new black or something? Are people really going around pretending to be old-skool and indifferent to this stuff?
Maybe you're more making a (potentially valid) observation that Slashdot now has an increasing amount of old school geeks who really do look at some of this new-fangled hotness as kind of pointless.
I wouldn't have merely chimed in to say "who cares", but what you said actually merited a response, precisely because it implies that people are merely acting like they don't see the point because it's trendy or something.
Either you have a life, or you're feigning ignorance trying to one up us all... damn hipsters.
Hipsters? What, not knowing or caring what people on Facebook are doing makes me a hipster? Friggin' awesome!!
Now, get off my cool, hip lawn as I go back to ignoring your social networking craze altogether. It's largely just recycling usenet and IRC/ICQ -- all of which got boring in the 90s for some of us.
That's what I was thinking but it's now cool to be jaded on Slashdot. Acting like you're too old school to give a crap about anything used by the social networking folks is now hip.
Well, I don't know about hip... mine aches from time to time, but I don't think that's what you mean.:-P
But, some of us are old and jaded and don't get the whole social networking thing. Some of this stuff just reminds me of stuff I got bored with in the early-mid 90's and stopped using. Some of the technologies are the same, but it's largely the same inane gibberish as before.
Heck, even my 70 year old mother doesn't trust Facebook and has stopped using it. She finds it's more crap than useful. (I was more surprised she ever used it than that she had given up on it and largely stopped using it.)
Slashdot Mirror
Because, the amount of information a company knows about you in order to do targeted advertising is bordering on the scary.
The way they collect that information continues to be opaque, and likely spread across a large number of sources, and far too much of your personal life can be cross-referenced without people realizing it. The fact that this information gets collected, and the routinely sold means that a lot of your personal/lifestyle/spending information is just out there for people to use, abuse, or just plain exploit.
Voluntarily signing up on Facebook so I can tell everybody where I am, what I'm doing, and the names and addresses of everybody I know is like signing up for Big Brother, only with some stupid game involving farming to placate the masses. Some of this stuff used to be considered confidential, and places like banks would guard it. Now, every schmuck with a customer card willingly hands over boatloads of personal information by associating a customer number with everything they buy.
I mean, seriously, if you go for a prescription to clear up an "infection of a personal nature", do you want to be inundated with ads for anti-itch cream, condoms, yeast infections, incontinence products, free clinics and whatnot? It's like when people say "if you have nothing to hide, why do you have secrets?" -- some information is personal, and isn't really intended to be spread around to everybody.
This really has to be a generational thing -- a lot of geeks used to be rabid privacy nuts. Now everybody is willing to publish all of this stuff onto Facebook like it's normal for the world to know what gotchies you're wearing, when you've got an itch, and the results of your latest medical tests.
*laugh* At that point, shouldn't I just leave the bottle in the paper bag?
Not being aware of the Fancy French technique, I've always poured Champagne like this (ok, "sparkling wine" since "real champagne" is too spendy). Precisely because it doesn't froth up like mad, just like pouring beer.
This just in .. poncy table-side service is more about flash than substance. Who knew?
Of course, this brings up the debate of which is the correct champagne glass -- the flute, or the wide/shallow one? It seems to have changed over the last several decades -- at least, in movies and the like.
Intel doesn't have any corporate interests in making things less CPU intensive. They'll give you more power in the same wattage, or the same power with less wattage.
But, really, the more you need to upgrade hardware the better.
Or, make it incompatible with AMD.
"McAfee has identified you are using an insecure AMD processor and should upgrade to the latest Intel Unobtanium model".
Ignoring the fact that we think McAfee is a PoS ... it's sold in retail stores, and people recognize the name. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if you can buy it at Wal Mart, which makes for a huge potential customer base.
Those magic beans are already positioned to be marketed to the people who least understand it and who most need it because they don't know much about their new computer other than they need antivirus. I can see that being worth $7b. How many billion dollar industries are essentially 'magic beans'? (diets, crappy exercise equipment, lotteries, Nigerian scams)
Doesn't make the product any better, and the notion of Intel being involved in security kind of makes me a little worried. But, I can definitely understand why they'd be interested in the product.
Oh noes ... I caught teh Asperger's from teh Slashdot.
(Apologies to anybody who actually has this condition.)
As good as an analogy as that is ... I'm not sure I can finish my peanut butter toast anymore.
That's just wrong.
Sadly, so have I. :-P
I'm too old to be so damned superficial.
Bah. A lot of us are in our 40's now, and she's only in her early-mid 50's. That's not that much of a difference.
She can put on the uniform and escort me to the brig any day. :-P
Well, I'd know him for several years and had shared drinks with him. Standing in front of someone and bald-faced lying to them isn't a skill I've ever worked on perfecting, and not one I've ever felt I wanted to.
The HR guy had demonstrated himself to be an oily, lying b@stard on several occasions. This was just the last straw. As I recall, he was let go within 3 months.
I simply don't want to be drawn into it. Handling those moments isn't what they paid me for, it's what they paid him for. Keep me the hell out of it.
Uggh. I had that happen to me once.
I was an admin for a small workgroup within our company. They were letting the VP we reported to go, but they needed to ensure that he'd not be able to access the machines once they did it.
The guy from HR pulled me aside and told me I needed to start disabling the VPs accounts on the machines I controlled since they were going to sack him in an hour or so. He put me into a really awkward position, since I ended up seeing the VP before HR (he was asking why he couldn't log into the servers). I sort of stood there for a few moments with a stunned look and informed him the HR guy was looking for him.
I never did respect the HR guy after that. I don't want to be involved in the process of locking out someone before they've been informed by someone in authority of this impending fact. It's really unfair to the poor schmuck who gets caught in the middle.
*laugh* Now now, play nicely. :-P
No, his better option is to say "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm no longer in their employ. If you'd like to engage my consulting services at $2000/day plus expenses, I'd be happy to help you out. If not I'm afraid you need to go away now."
It's not stealing customers when they phone you and engage your services. In which case, the company has just populated your sales pipeline as a consultant.
What, like taxes? ;-)
If it works, they're not going to give it to you for free. Although, I can see running their own fleet off it and saving a bunch of cash on trucking expenses.
Of course, if your tailpipe smelled like bourbon, I can see a lot of people in Kentucky asphyxiating as an unfortunate side effect of this. :-P
Yeah, you're still wrong. :-P
Yes, I guess I'd forgotten the old BBS days. And, there was a higher level of discussion going on, that is true. And, generally those people were locals who I might actually know and stand a chance of meeting at some of the parties.
Well, to use it meant a certain leap I didn't think she'd ever make since up until a few years ago my parents were almost entirely computer illiterate.
But, once she used it, she saw that it was largely stupid stuff between friends of her friends that made no sense -- and she kept getting friend requests from people who she had no idea who they were. Eventually she almost entirely gave up on it as a waste of time. She pretty much figured out on her own to give the absolute barest of information on it, and not to friend just any schmuck that came along.
I think it's become ubiquitous, and almost everybody uses it. But, the presence of senior citizens has never really made something "hip" -- they're more of a trailing cohort than any actual measure of hipness. It might be considered hip because almost everyone under 30 uses it. The old people are an after thought.
Definitely jaded. Sunk way too many hours into usenet and IRC in the 90s, completely lost interest in it. All of the stuff that came afterwards just seems like variations on a theme that doesn't really bring anything new to the table -- except for a new generation of users that never used it in the last iteration of the technology and think they've discovered something new the world has never seen.
*laugh* Well, I might point out you're taking an awful lot of time to kvetch about the fact that other people are posting in the thread. :-P
Hell, you're meta-kvetching -- you're complaining about the fact that people are taking the time to complain about things they don't care about. So, either you care about what other people don't care about, or you don't care about what other people don't care about ... the latter is just too wacky to contemplate. ;-)
Cheers
Slashdot would be the worst possible indicator of a technology which would be successful in the future.
If Slashdot could predict successful tech, we'd all be using ogg-vorbis, the Year of the Linux Desktop would have happened by now, and Apple wouldn't have sold 3+ million iPads. :-P
We see technology through an entirely different lens than the consumer public. And we're have really bad tunnel vision.
Wait ... so, the electric sheep are the ones dreaming now? ;-)
No, but I read the articles that seem like they'll be interesting and respond to the salient points that people make.
Counting old and jaded folks like myself as "hip" seemed interesting enough to respond to. I mean, I've never been lumped in with the hipsters before, so the assertion just seemed ... unusual.
I was merely pointing out that some of us really are old and jaded, and (as ever), anything but hip. I mean, is crotchety the new black or something? Are people really going around pretending to be old-skool and indifferent to this stuff?
Maybe you're more making a (potentially valid) observation that Slashdot now has an increasing amount of old school geeks who really do look at some of this new-fangled hotness as kind of pointless.
I wouldn't have merely chimed in to say "who cares", but what you said actually merited a response, precisely because it implies that people are merely acting like they don't see the point because it's trendy or something.
Hipsters? What, not knowing or caring what people on Facebook are doing makes me a hipster? Friggin' awesome!!
Now, get off my cool, hip lawn as I go back to ignoring your social networking craze altogether. It's largely just recycling usenet and IRC/ICQ -- all of which got boring in the 90s for some of us.
Well, I don't know about hip ... mine aches from time to time, but I don't think that's what you mean. :-P
But, some of us are old and jaded and don't get the whole social networking thing. Some of this stuff just reminds me of stuff I got bored with in the early-mid 90's and stopped using. Some of the technologies are the same, but it's largely the same inane gibberish as before.
Heck, even my 70 year old mother doesn't trust Facebook and has stopped using it. She finds it's more crap than useful. (I was more surprised she ever used it than that she had given up on it and largely stopped using it.)
No, you're absolutely correct.
It's an economic model built on top of a construct like the Easter Bunny. It doesn't exist, and doesn't do what people think it would do if it did.
And people wonder why I'm skeptical anytime someone talks about the free market.