You see, my problem isn't with a site trying to make a profit, but rather with advertising. If CmdrTaco wants to hold a bake sale in the Slashdot corporate office, fine. If/. sells t-shirts or offers paid premium accounts, that's cool. But I object to adverts on principle, as I imagine many here do. I know what I want to buy, so there's no need to convince me that Shiny New Widget is what I need today. I come for the tech news (consolidated from other sources) and the chatter amongst other users, not for ads.
I don't pay for a/. sub, and I unabashedly filter ads while here (and everywhere else). If/. folds, well, them's the breaks I guess. I'll go back to USENET or some other site for my daily dose of tech ramblings and gossip. Seemed to work well back in the BBS days when most sites were free and most operators were glad to spend money on their labor of love. Sure, the dial-up BBS couldn't have hundreds of thousands us users online at any given time, so it was a different beast. But really, it wasn't that much different.
This site is cool, no doubt. It's a shame that there's no real valid business model for it to keep it from running in the red. It's one thing for sites with real original content to sell subscriptions (research publications, newletters, newspapers, etc.), but trying to charge for a site where the content itself is provided by all of us? When you think about it, it's one of those cases where "Step #2: ?????" doesn't really exist.
Personally, I'd wish there was a proxy/plugin that could randomly change my user agent string, either on a per-hit basis or a per-site basis. As I think that pandering to specific browsers is lame anyway, polluting the web server stats is always a fun hobby.:)
Repeat after me: "It is my computer. It is my browser. If the web site operator doesn't want me to view the content for free, then they should not place it on the web in a public location."
This is not like TV, where all you get is what the broadcasters send to you. You are the one who requests data from them. If all I want is the text (say, I want to read in a terminal via Lynx), then that's my prerogative and nobody else's. If I don't want Flash or JavaScript on my machine, then who is anyone else to tell me otherwise?
As the user has total control of the browsing experience, online adverts were an inherently broken revenue model from the beginning. The fact that users are just now being empowered in this respect does not change the inherent flaws of the advertisers' plan.
For all the Linux and *BSD users out there, the old Borland "Turbo" DOS programs work very well under "dosbox". Whenever nostalgia overpowers your common sense, grab one of the free (as in beer) Borland programs and fire it up and see how fast "hello, world" compiles. Pretty blue and yellow IDE editor included.;)
BP just realizes that there's tons of good PR to be made from appeasing to the "greenie weenie" demographic (you know, the ones that pat themselves on the back for buying over-priced pesticide-free terrycloth bathrobes from catalogs like Gaiam). I doubt that any of the oil producers are truly interested in any of these alternative oil sources, unless they plan on patenting them to get a piece of the pie.
I'm guessing The Simpsons Movie (like the show itself) was much more family-friendly than the South Park film. I doubt many kids walked out of The Simpsons Movie asking, "Mommy, what's a clitoris?";-) Mass market appeal has its financial rewards.
You are missing the point: no one forces musicians to sign with major labels. It's a CHOICE! If artists don't like the terms of their contract, they could very easily not sign them.
One could make the case that, given the incestuous collusion across the board in the industry, that, in the music entertainment biz, the playing field is only level when you sign with a big label. They control the airplay (payola), the distribution (how many indie labels do you see at Wal Mart or Barnes and Noble?), the performance venues, the video channels -- the list goes on.
Market "success" (or "money", in the capitalistic sense) is mostly a function of your willingness to play with the Big 5. This is due to their potentially illegal contol of the market.
If you examine most non-entertainment careers, you'll see that pretty much everyone starts with the same advantages (or lack thereof) as anyone else. That is, if I have the drive and skill to become in the top 1000 of computer security gurus in the nation -- nothing's stopping me. If Symantec, Cisco, or Microsoft want to screw me over with crappy terms of employment, I can still make a name for myself, as there are no artificial barriers to entry to publish research, set up a business, and anything else. Not so for musicians (or "performers") in the current market. For them, it's pretty much bend over to get a small piece of the big pie or enjoy a life of professional obscurity.
I'm not going to argue your point about greed, as it is irrelevant to the issue in the main topic, as well as this thread.
Tweens and teens are one of the hottest demographics for sets of eyeballs that advertisers want. Very impressionable and able to be indoctrinated into a lifetime of product recognition and loyalty. Plus, kids that age have access to the parents' purse strings. The GP is absolutely correct in this regard.
So it seems wiretaps can't be initiated at will by the FBI; someone at the telcom has to enable access.
That shouldn't make anyone feel better, really. Remember that a bunch of the telcos are being sued for flipping the switch when simply asked by the TLAs, without a properly documented warrant or court order.
From what I've heard, most judges tend to be lenient about lack of procedural minutia when it comes to pro se litigants. Not that many people go that route, which is a shame. Justice should not have a cover charge.
I run Bacula on a small office server (FreeBSD) which backs up a half-dozen XP machines. The Win32 client supports the VSS snapshots just fine, and multi-GB Outlook PST files that are left open 24/7/365 are backed up without problems. So, it can be done.
The more popular tor gets, and the more traffic in the network, the better it'll be for the entire 'net. One click of the my "tor" option under "FoxyProxy", and I was able to submit searches no problem.
Are there any adapters for laptop-sized IDE drives? I've got an old, crusty ~400MHz laptop with a couple of gigs of drive space that my wife uses for casual browsing. Runs Win98 ok w/ a maxed out 160MB of RAM. Runs firefox well enough, I suppose. If I could beef up the drive space and increase the access times at the same time, that would be a big win, never mind silencing the loud HD the thing has.
Because the US companies do not want to loose access to the most lucrative money making opportunities in history, with China being the world's largest consumer market and all. Never mind the fact that if the media giants went Rambo on China to stop piracy, China would likely ban them from access to the Olympics they'll be having soon.
In short, China has much more financial clout to bully the US with than most any other nation. I just wish they'd stop talking out of their asses and start selling those US dollars they're holding over our heads. I'd love to see China put some serious fiscal hurt on us, as we'd deserve every bit of it. There's a big portion of the world's population who can buy cheap, shoddy goods from China, apart from the US. Sure, Wal Mart might hurt, but the rest of the world would benefit.
Due to new airplane security rules, only 3 oz can be shipped per courier on any given flight. Having that extra 1 oz would result in a whole courier dedicated to 1/3 of his possible shipping capacity. The studios would never submit to that kind of extra spending. After all, Hollywood is known for its ruthless efficiency.
Sure, both commercial or home made soap will get the job done. As will a McDonald's or a home-grilled hamburger. As with most stuff pumped out daily by the millions of units by factories, the home made counterpart is generally just better, if for no other reason than you know everything that did (or didn't) go into it and the ingredients are of a know (better, if you take the effort) quality.
As someone who routinely buys feed for livestock and has used OTC feed store remedies (wisely, of course), I know this is true. The best example that I know of is the use of Oxytetracycline ("Terramycin" brand) as a feed additive. Has instructions right there on the package, which is pretty scary. That's some pretty potent antibiotic, and (IIRC from the Merck Vet Manual), not only does a high percentage not get broken down by the body (thus passing out in the urine), it's fairly stable once it's left the body, so it'll act in the soil for a good while.
It's a wonder we haven't had a seriously nasty strain of E. Coli or Salmonella from cattle, pig, or chicken operations. To hell with West Nile and Bird Flu -- I'm more worried about something getting out of control at the nearest cattle feed lot!
Ditto in my household. At least laundry, body soap, and shampoo. Nothing really beats the grease like liquid detergent (no dishwasher), so we still buy that. Kind of a bummer Red Devil Lye is no longer available in stores. However, one of our favorite sources of bulk oils is Liberty Natural. Haven't found a better deal on olive oil than Costco. For laundry soap, we use the tallow rendered from our livestock and/or recycle bacon grease and other spent cooking oil. For the people soap, we use plant oils from the site mentioned earlier. Cocoa butter makes a great addition to a soap, and if you order extra, you can make some damned good homemade chocolate, too (see Good Eats episode "Art of Darkness" from Season 1).
However, it doesn't have to be fancy. If you can get your hands on lye, you can use the lard or cooking oil found at your nearest grocery store, and the quality is still far above and beyond what you can get from most commercial soaps found at the same store. Plus, it's cheaper. And has no scent beyond what you put into it yourself. Good stuff.
There's absolutely no evidence that a lack of exposure to bacteria reduces the efficacy of the immune system.
One of those diseases (Polio, I think) in the first half of the last century was often referred to as an "upper class" disease, because the people living in the upper crust of society weren't as unwashed and surrounded by filth as their lower class counterparts at the time. Therefore, the lower class kids were infected and died less frequently than the upper class kids because their immune systems were worked harder earlier in life.
best possible scenario would be for this to go up to the Supreme Court.
Not after the current administration has padded the current SCOTUS with business friendly justices. Note that my keeping tabs on the SCOTUS is pretty much high-profile headlines on Slashdot and Plastic, but the trend over the years seems pretty clear to me. Excepting an abuse of the law so laughable and egregious on the part of the RIAA that it would be foolish to rule for them, I would almost certainly expect the current Supreme Court to hand the RIAA the defendant's head on a silver platter.
Slashdot Mirror
You see, my problem isn't with a site trying to make a profit, but rather with advertising. If CmdrTaco wants to hold a bake sale in the Slashdot corporate office, fine. If /. sells t-shirts or offers paid premium accounts, that's cool. But I object to adverts on principle, as I imagine many here do. I know what I want to buy, so there's no need to convince me that Shiny New Widget is what I need today. I come for the tech news (consolidated from other sources) and the chatter amongst other users, not for ads.
I don't pay for a /. sub, and I unabashedly filter ads while here (and everywhere else). If /. folds, well, them's the breaks I guess. I'll go back to USENET or some other site for my daily dose of tech ramblings and gossip. Seemed to work well back in the BBS days when most sites were free and most operators were glad to spend money on their labor of love. Sure, the dial-up BBS couldn't have hundreds of thousands us users online at any given time, so it was a different beast. But really, it wasn't that much different.
This site is cool, no doubt. It's a shame that there's no real valid business model for it to keep it from running in the red. It's one thing for sites with real original content to sell subscriptions (research publications, newletters, newspapers, etc.), but trying to charge for a site where the content itself is provided by all of us? When you think about it, it's one of those cases where "Step #2: ?????" doesn't really exist.
Personally, I'd wish there was a proxy/plugin that could randomly change my user agent string, either on a per-hit basis or a per-site basis. As I think that pandering to specific browsers is lame anyway, polluting the web server stats is always a fun hobby. :)
Very well said. As stated by others, this would make a great t-shirt or bumper sticker. :)
This is not like TV, where all you get is what the broadcasters send to you. You are the one who requests data from them. If all I want is the text (say, I want to read in a terminal via Lynx), then that's my prerogative and nobody else's. If I don't want Flash or JavaScript on my machine, then who is anyone else to tell me otherwise?
As the user has total control of the browsing experience, online adverts were an inherently broken revenue model from the beginning. The fact that users are just now being empowered in this respect does not change the inherent flaws of the advertisers' plan.
For all the Linux and *BSD users out there, the old Borland "Turbo" DOS programs work very well under "dosbox". Whenever nostalgia overpowers your common sense, grab one of the free (as in beer) Borland programs and fire it up and see how fast "hello, world" compiles. Pretty blue and yellow IDE editor included. ;)
BP just realizes that there's tons of good PR to be made from appeasing to the "greenie weenie" demographic (you know, the ones that pat themselves on the back for buying over-priced pesticide-free terrycloth bathrobes from catalogs like Gaiam). I doubt that any of the oil producers are truly interested in any of these alternative oil sources, unless they plan on patenting them to get a piece of the pie.
I'm guessing The Simpsons Movie (like the show itself) was much more family-friendly than the South Park film. I doubt many kids walked out of The Simpsons Movie asking, "Mommy, what's a clitoris?" ;-) Mass market appeal has its financial rewards.
I liked this one much better. ;-)
That's exactly what the movie did, too. What a tragic waste of celluloid.
One could make the case that, given the incestuous collusion across the board in the industry, that, in the music entertainment biz, the playing field is only level when you sign with a big label. They control the airplay (payola), the distribution (how many indie labels do you see at Wal Mart or Barnes and Noble?), the performance venues, the video channels -- the list goes on.
Market "success" (or "money", in the capitalistic sense) is mostly a function of your willingness to play with the Big 5. This is due to their potentially illegal contol of the market.
If you examine most non-entertainment careers, you'll see that pretty much everyone starts with the same advantages (or lack thereof) as anyone else. That is, if I have the drive and skill to become in the top 1000 of computer security gurus in the nation -- nothing's stopping me. If Symantec, Cisco, or Microsoft want to screw me over with crappy terms of employment, I can still make a name for myself, as there are no artificial barriers to entry to publish research, set up a business, and anything else. Not so for musicians (or "performers") in the current market. For them, it's pretty much bend over to get a small piece of the big pie or enjoy a life of professional obscurity.
I'm not going to argue your point about greed, as it is irrelevant to the issue in the main topic, as well as this thread.
Tweens and teens are one of the hottest demographics for sets of eyeballs that advertisers want. Very impressionable and able to be indoctrinated into a lifetime of product recognition and loyalty. Plus, kids that age have access to the parents' purse strings. The GP is absolutely correct in this regard.
That shouldn't make anyone feel better, really. Remember that a bunch of the telcos are being sued for flipping the switch when simply asked by the TLAs, without a properly documented warrant or court order.
From what I've heard, most judges tend to be lenient about lack of procedural minutia when it comes to pro se litigants. Not that many people go that route, which is a shame. Justice should not have a cover charge.
I run Bacula on a small office server (FreeBSD) which backs up a half-dozen XP machines. The Win32 client supports the VSS snapshots just fine, and multi-GB Outlook PST files that are left open 24/7/365 are backed up without problems. So, it can be done.
The more popular tor gets, and the more traffic in the network, the better it'll be for the entire 'net. One click of the my "tor" option under "FoxyProxy", and I was able to submit searches no problem.
Are there any adapters for laptop-sized IDE drives? I've got an old, crusty ~400MHz laptop with a couple of gigs of drive space that my wife uses for casual browsing. Runs Win98 ok w/ a maxed out 160MB of RAM. Runs firefox well enough, I suppose. If I could beef up the drive space and increase the access times at the same time, that would be a big win, never mind silencing the loud HD the thing has.
In short, China has much more financial clout to bully the US with than most any other nation. I just wish they'd stop talking out of their asses and start selling those US dollars they're holding over our heads. I'd love to see China put some serious fiscal hurt on us, as we'd deserve every bit of it. There's a big portion of the world's population who can buy cheap, shoddy goods from China, apart from the US. Sure, Wal Mart might hurt, but the rest of the world would benefit.
Due to new airplane security rules, only 3 oz can be shipped per courier on any given flight. Having that extra 1 oz would result in a whole courier dedicated to 1/3 of his possible shipping capacity. The studios would never submit to that kind of extra spending. After all, Hollywood is known for its ruthless efficiency.
You bastard! ;-)
Sure, both commercial or home made soap will get the job done. As will a McDonald's or a home-grilled hamburger. As with most stuff pumped out daily by the millions of units by factories, the home made counterpart is generally just better, if for no other reason than you know everything that did (or didn't) go into it and the ingredients are of a know (better, if you take the effort) quality.
As someone who routinely buys feed for livestock and has used OTC feed store remedies (wisely, of course), I know this is true. The best example that I know of is the use of Oxytetracycline ("Terramycin" brand) as a feed additive. Has instructions right there on the package, which is pretty scary. That's some pretty potent antibiotic, and (IIRC from the Merck Vet Manual), not only does a high percentage not get broken down by the body (thus passing out in the urine), it's fairly stable once it's left the body, so it'll act in the soil for a good while.
It's a wonder we haven't had a seriously nasty strain of E. Coli or Salmonella from cattle, pig, or chicken operations. To hell with West Nile and Bird Flu -- I'm more worried about something getting out of control at the nearest cattle feed lot!
However, it doesn't have to be fancy. If you can get your hands on lye, you can use the lard or cooking oil found at your nearest grocery store, and the quality is still far above and beyond what you can get from most commercial soaps found at the same store. Plus, it's cheaper. And has no scent beyond what you put into it yourself. Good stuff.
One of those diseases (Polio, I think) in the first half of the last century was often referred to as an "upper class" disease, because the people living in the upper crust of society weren't as unwashed and surrounded by filth as their lower class counterparts at the time. Therefore, the lower class kids were infected and died less frequently than the upper class kids because their immune systems were worked harder earlier in life.
Not after the current administration has padded the current SCOTUS with business friendly justices. Note that my keeping tabs on the SCOTUS is pretty much high-profile headlines on Slashdot and Plastic, but the trend over the years seems pretty clear to me. Excepting an abuse of the law so laughable and egregious on the part of the RIAA that it would be foolish to rule for them, I would almost certainly expect the current Supreme Court to hand the RIAA the defendant's head on a silver platter.
rsync via ssh? That'll let you pick up where you left off.