wooo. thats some good news. i guess that makes up for the watchmen calling it quits, who were also left off that list; and to tell you the truth, it might as well not even BE a list without the Barenaked Ladies! Aren't the pikes a sketchywan band? she aint pretty is on the uniquely candianly titled cd, "snow in june." incidently, thats the one with "girl with a problem." perhaps their #1 in my books. now there's some music i'll pay for.:)
While I'm not an economist, you may be paying Dell to earn more money...
well, I am, and if that's the case... let them. They should make money.. it gives them an incentive to do this recylcing program, which will somehow or another remove (or at least reduce) the pollution (or Negative Externalities as we like to call them) from the "real cost of computers"
If we don't find a way to control the MSC (marginal social cost), we'll pay for it. In the price of computers. This is actually a very interesting way of internalizing the externaility.. no government intervention needed! and it might actually work.
Buddy, just break down and get a Visa or Mastercard! Then I would probably pay more in interest a year than I do in service charges. (I seriously doubt I would pay it off every month) Like I said, I prob wont be using "debit at the door" again unless I am starving without any paper cash on hand. I did want to try the wireless gadget out though, like any curious geek would. Credit cards are stupid if you ask me.. people who are already paying 7%-15% in sales tax, willingly pay 10%-20% interest on their purchases (if they are using it for a lot of their purchases and not paying off their balance every month.. which is 90% of credit card users) Yea.. and they are smarter than I am. right. And, convienient bank locations are a luxury when you live in a city of less than 100k. Oh, and don't call ppl "buddy" as if the only people who use the net are males. It is annoying.
I see what your saying, but... first of all, "credit cards will be shifting to smart cards". Umm, do you mean the smart card technology? Because smart cards would never replace credit cards. One is "money spent right now" whereas the other is "money spent when I get my bill"
Anyways, I don't think this is what Canada *needs*. Our Interac situation is very efficient, unfortunately a bit expensive if you are as addicted to it as I am. I spend approx $30/month in service charges with TDCT for "convenience". This always shocks americans.. I carry about 10% of the cash that I spend, I don't use (or even have) credit cards, and the only person who gets a cheque is my landlord. Oh, and the last time a pizza was delivered here, it was beep beepity beep too:) won't be doing that again though, those wireless transactions are 3 bucks a pop!
I found the article a bit confusing. It says: the basic Moneo card is anonymous, there are no privacy or identity theft concerns.
Then they lost me at:
users can upload money from their bank accounts onto smart cards at special teller machines in banks and post offices. Conveniently, they can also refill the so-called stored value cards at any participating shop, supermarket, ticket booth or cinema, punching in a PIN number for security reasons.
ok no PIN is required for dispensing cash, but how is this card anonymous if you use a PIN to upload money onto it? PIN stands for Personal Identification Number the last time I checked.
Yeah, I can imagine there are problems with magnetic strips (my debit card has a lifespan of about 18 months), but I don't think this Interac thing will die off here, anytime soon. The banks have a pretty tight grip on the situtation here right now, and I definately can't see them giving us an option to reduce our costs (even if a smart card would). Like I said, I see what your saying.. and I agree with you that Canadians would use it, another payment option would never hurt. But, I don't think it would necessarily be better than Interac althought the technology of it certainly would.
These digital homes of the future will only be as smart as the owner. People will yell and scream and curse at their house just like they do to their printer. The main server that runs the whole party will require pretty good knowledge of computers. Unless of course, you are rich and have a 24 hour geek squad a phone call away. Technical difficulties will arise, upgrades will need to be done, and to do it yourself (economically) will require *wanting* to know the guts of the system. Not to mention, a bit of knowledge about whatever language is making everything tick. The interesting thing about these "future" homes is that they are just a concept right now. They will become widely built and used only if simplicity is pursued by the people designing and building them. Whoever comes up with a very simple GUI for some "master controls" that doesn't require every single appliance, light, alarm, and garage door opener to be compliant to only one protocol, or worse, MADE BY MS, will be a very rich person. Of course, the average/.'er could handle the 'super house' (and most likely would not let any other person put their muckers on the design and implementation of it), but the average 'i have 40 gigabytes of ram!' person won't be able to.
More importantly, Microsoft doesn't have a single view of the future. The tours present possible scenarios, not a blueprint for product development.
This is the most important part of the article. Not everyone will want *everything* that MS's digital home showscases... but customizability (is that a word?) of these future homes will be the key. Opting for the econopackage presented by your home builder would be a bad idea. A home owner would end up without enough features that they could make good use of, and too many things that they don't need, or worse, don't know how to work.
It will be interesting to see how these become mainstream.
Re:Canadians don't get to see those nifty ads!
on
Superbowl XXXVII
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· Score: 1
werd. Global scares me.. here in AB they take over the superbowl (on ABC), friends (on NBC) and survivor (on CBS) This fairly new network seems to have a lot of power.. I wont even get into canada.com:) But all the hoopla over the ads really does make us feel like we're missing out on something eh.
Re:Forgive the obvious question...
on
Superbowl XXXVII
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· Score: 1
what channel did you watch the superbowl on? I am not blessed with satellite.. and my ABC was of course, ownz0red by Global. What a ripoff! We don't get to see any of the American commercials.. every commercial break cut to lame local commercials.
Re:What are the wood things that forklifts carry?
on
DreamHack Winter 2002
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· Score: 2, Insightful
my first thought was.. it's the flooring Like how material is put down on a floor in a gymnasium for an event.. If you look at the very front of the picture theres some sheets of solid wood too.. I thought maybe those go over the pallets (sp?).
OK but then when I was looking at that.. I found those guys putting the pallets 'together'. Look at what they're doing.. they're making little 'cubicles' out of them.. so theres a wall between your station and the person beside you.
I'm already using it, and it drives me nuts. When I add money to my "pay and talk" cell phone account, I am forced to use their new (within the past couple of months) speech recognition menu. I am literally answering a robot's questions, and she makes me want to bang my phone on the closest solid structure near me.
Welcome to Rogers At&T pay as you go service, would you like to add money to your account today? Please say yes, or no.
Yes
I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, would you like to add money to your account today?
Yeeeees.
I'm trying to ask you a question. Please answer with yes or no.
YEEEEEES
this is the part where I wonder if swearing at the system will make it work. Maybe it recognizes "i said yes you piece of shit android" No it doesn't (I tried), but it usually takes about 5 tries, and I get into the "add money to my account menu" where i can then use the keypad (still) to enter in my P.I.N., new card number, etc.
While a handful of experts and analysts have applauded the project, the reaction in chat rooms and on weblogs has been muted.
"There's absolutely no reason to believe that the spams collected here will be any 'better' a sample than those collected by opening a random Hotmail account," read one posting on Slashdot.
If that's your comment, smile, you're in wired. Good to see such cynicism speaking for the whole:)
Does somebody know what happens to the people who started Napster? Shawn Fanning is "hangin out" in mountain view. I hardly think he's having money problems.
Will they spend the rest of their life paying off their debts? If you are a sole proprietor, and you file for bankrupcy, you are not personally liable for your debts. Thats what bankruptcy is. If you are a corporation (a seperate entity) and you file for bankrupcy, the corporate entity is no longer liable for it's debts.
Will no bank ever going to supply them credit again? Credit is more than your past. It's your present too. It should take about a decade for the bankrupcy to be forgotten, but I don't think Fanning would have much trouble getting some capital for any bright idea he might have.
Does setting up such a groundbreaking company and failing affect the rest of your life? Yes. It makes you better than the rest of the population. Theres nothing wrong with failing. Theres only something wrong with not doing.
If it does, i suggest them writing a book "The Woes of Napster - The Secrets revealed";) I think MTV might be making the "napster" movie.
You weren't in western canada then. Thankfully, we also had a clear night... and we couldn't keep up with our counting. (we had three people counting 30 second intervals) We were seeing 40-50 a minute, for over an hour. It really was the most spectacular thing I had ever seen.
Because you get what you pay for in this world. when I download an mp3, it might not be at the bitrate I prefer.. but it's hard to find more than a few copies of it, so i get it anyway. Or you get to the end, and there is no end. The reason I never used napster (not once) is b/c the idiot filter just wasnt there for me.. way too many kiddies who didn't know how to encode worth shit.
I'm not saying I will jump to sign up for $9.99 a month, or use listen.com at all.. I'm pretty bitter about the RIAA's behavior in the past few years, it will probably take me a while to get over it, but at least now I *can* pay for an mp3 and I know that if I pay for it, there better be a fsking ending on it, and maybe even a selection of bitrates to choose from.
ok i don't think my conversion is right.. but I'd like to know what 5 degrees fahrenheit is in celcius. I wish everyone just used the same measurement.:/
I found a story about this in a Discover magazine, in a friend's bathroom (of all places) a couple of weeks ago. A very interesting read.
I remember thinking about how I always say in the winter time up here: it's sure not global *warming* us up any here.
All I know is, if the winters here get worse than they already are, I will be heading for the equator.
"the next cooling trend could drop average temperatures 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast, northern Europe, and northern Asia"
5 degrees fahrenheit is 15 degrees celcius to us canooks.. and an average temperature drop of 15 degrees celcius will definately have me packing my bags. An Average January temperature of -25 degrees is bad, but you learn to deal with it. (plug the car in!) -40 are particularily bad days (maybe I won't go to work today) but -40 as a new average is a serious concern (to me at least).
I know, I know, the folks up in Tuktayuktuk are saying, "what a candy ass"
Don't be so quick to discredit our excellent access to broadband to the fact that Canadian cities are centered in certain areas. I live in asscrack, Alberta, and I've been on high speed for about 4 years now. It has nothing to do with the golden horseshoe, or vancouver. It's because our government gives a shit. It's also because our telco companies spend more time developing infrastructure than trying to figure out how to prevent market entry or taking the fifth american amendment. We have kick ass infrastructure here... be proud of it.. don't think it's just because "canada is small" or "canada is in southern clusters". It's because we're just downright better eh. (/me ducks)
The paradox that content providers are finding themselves in is interesting. No advertisements, equals no revenue. No revenue means you can't pay the bills, and the site goes offline. Advertisements piss people off, and they get annoyed and stop hitting the site. ok we all know all of that.
What happened to me recently was very interesting. I got sick and tired of the ads on alberta.com. Specifically, the news. I really enjoyed reading the news on alberta.com because of how they set it up... I can get national, provincial, or international news, or all of it together. A few months ago.. I noticed that every single fsking time I clicked on a news story, a popup ad came up. SO, if i read say... 12 news stories in one visit, I had 12 browser windows open with the SAME ad. (or I had clicked them closed 12 times)
I got so mad that I emailed them. I thought they wouldn't care, let alone reply to me. I was wrong. They care about you!
this is the reply I got within 48 hours of firing off my flame mail:
"Thanks for the feedback. Sorry to hear you're so upset about the advertising on Alberta.com, but we have faced a difficult challenge: Drastically cut the amount of news we purchase for our users, or subsidize that content by responding to advertisers' demands for increasingly more intrusive advertising. We are working on trying to ensure that most pop-up advertising occurs once per session. I'll pass this along to our advertising department to see if something can be done. In the meantime, we can only hope you give us another chance. Thanks, Rob Klovance Managing Editor TELUS Multimedia Solutions"
Interestingly, within a couple weeks, the popup ads were gone. It seems that there are more (and bigger) ads on the site (wihch I much more prefer over popups), and I don't know if this was a result of my measly flame mail, or if I was merely one of hundreds that voiced my opinion, but one thing is clear:
If you like a website, but you're ready to stop hitting it because you are so annoyed, tell them! They want to hear from you. You are more important to their site than the advertisers. Oh, and thanks Rob.:)
Re:Economic reasons to scare John Q. Public
on
What, Me Worry?
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· Score: 2
This has nothing whatsoever to do with science, it's an attempt by politicians to justify deficit spending (rightly so in my view) by scaring the public at large.
riiight. The politicians didn't discover the asteroid, or report it for that matter.
oh please. The reason we call you names is because of comments like this. When Americans say things like, "ah geez.. we always have to save the world, it isnt easy being the best ya know"
I can't even count the amount of times I have heard, "The USA is the best country in the world" on American television in the past 10 months. No doubt, written by an American who has never crossed an International border.
Don't get me wrong.. I love the USA. I love what it stands for. I love the media I enjoy, I love the imported products I buy. But don't be so quick to say stupid shit that assumes the USA will be the only one who fixes the problem. You're talking about a country who calls NASA's Canada Arm, "the Big Arm". I'm tired of hearing shit like this. There are other competent nations too. You are not the only country that has the expertise and extra money to devote to saving the world. Owe you one? Bah. Go back to hating you? You arrogant fucks... you just don't get it.
Again.. I don't mean this in as much haste as it sounds like.. I'm just really tired of hearing Americans whine that no one likes them.. then they say shit like this. Still, God bless the USA.
It may be really fricken cold here, but if there's anything worth mentioning whenever paypal comes up, it's that we no longer need escrow services up here (as of just last week) We are now in control of our own transactions.. person to person. I don't mean for this to be flaimbait at all.. but our banking is light years ahead of the Americans... just last week.. I payed for my dinner with my bank card (via Interac) AT my table at the restaurant thanks to a nifty little wireless device the waiters carry around with them.
But back to online transactions, this was BIG news here last week... the introduction of the Canadian banks offering person to person online transactions. I thought it was very newsworthy... a Major technological development.. yea yea.. I submitted the story and it was rejected... and yes.. I actually am very bitter about it.
Anyways, it's too bad that paypal is still your only option. Cut out the middleman!! Tell your bank you want to do it like the Canadians!:P
Try not screwing me out of money Moby, and maybe I won't screw you.
I won't buy 18 because I went to Area One last summer in Vancouver. Now although, not EVERYONE on the area one list is guaranteed to play at EVERY stop, when you show up, there is a list of the ones who did make it.
The list said Oakenfold was there.. cool. So in the Oakenfold tent, the music was great, but you couldn't actually see Oakenfold. It didn't matter... who needs to see him as long as you know he's on the decks right?
Jared Cook: Hi Paul... Rumour has it that some time ago in Vancouver, Canada, after Max Graham opened for you and you saw the crowd's response to his style you whispered to someone that 'Trance was dead'. Did you say that? And if so, what did you mean by it ?
Paul: No I never said that. I didn't know it was dead. I have never played in Vancouver by the way!
Do not give Moby a cent. He's a lying thief. Dang, did I ever get fooled. Oh and beware of Area Two. There is a good chance there will be some imposters posing as the real thing. Not exactly the way to treat fans in our day and age if you ask me. Just my 3 cents CND.
Slashdot Mirror
wooo. thats some good news. i guess that makes up for the watchmen calling it quits, who were also left off that list; and to tell you the truth, it might as well not even BE a list without the Barenaked Ladies! Aren't the pikes a sketchywan band? she aint pretty is on the uniquely candianly titled cd, "snow in june." incidently, thats the one with "girl with a problem." perhaps their #1 in my books. :)
now there's some music i'll pay for.
While I'm not an economist, you may be paying Dell to earn more money...
well, I am, and if that's the case... let them. They should make money.. it gives them an incentive to do this recylcing program, which will somehow or another remove (or at least reduce) the pollution (or Negative Externalities as we like to call them) from the "real cost of computers"
If we don't find a way to control the MSC (marginal social cost), we'll pay for it. In the price of computers. This is actually a very interesting way of internalizing the externaility.. no government intervention needed! and it might actually work.
Buddy, just break down and get a Visa or Mastercard!
Then I would probably pay more in interest a year than I do in service charges. (I seriously doubt I would pay it off every month) Like I said, I prob wont be using "debit at the door" again unless I am starving without any paper cash on hand. I did want to try the wireless gadget out though, like any curious geek would. Credit cards are stupid if you ask me.. people who are already paying 7%-15% in sales tax, willingly pay 10%-20% interest on their purchases (if they are using it for a lot of their purchases and not paying off their balance every month.. which is 90% of credit card users) Yea.. and they are smarter than I am. right. And, convienient bank locations are a luxury when you live in a city of less than 100k. Oh, and don't call ppl "buddy" as if the only people who use the net are males. It is annoying.
I see what your saying, but...
:) won't be doing that again though, those wireless transactions are 3 bucks a pop!
first of all, "credit cards will be shifting to smart cards". Umm, do you mean the smart card technology? Because smart cards would never replace credit cards. One is "money spent right now" whereas the other is "money spent when I get my bill"
Anyways, I don't think this is what Canada *needs*. Our Interac situation is very efficient, unfortunately a bit expensive if you are as addicted to it as I am. I spend approx $30/month in service charges with TDCT for "convenience". This always shocks americans.. I carry about 10% of the cash that I spend, I don't use (or even have) credit cards, and the only person who gets a cheque is my landlord. Oh, and the last time a pizza was delivered here, it was beep beepity beep too
I found the article a bit confusing. It says:
the basic Moneo card is anonymous, there are no privacy or identity theft concerns.
Then they lost me at:
users can upload money from their bank accounts onto smart cards at special teller machines in banks and post offices. Conveniently, they can also refill the so-called stored value cards at any participating shop, supermarket, ticket booth or cinema, punching in a PIN number for security reasons.
ok no PIN is required for dispensing cash, but how is this card anonymous if you use a PIN to upload money onto it? PIN stands for Personal Identification Number the last time I checked.
Yeah, I can imagine there are problems with magnetic strips (my debit card has a lifespan of about 18 months), but I don't think this Interac thing will die off here, anytime soon. The banks have a pretty tight grip on the situtation here right now, and I definately can't see them giving us an option to reduce our costs (even if a smart card would). Like I said, I see what your saying.. and I agree with you that Canadians would use it, another payment option would never hurt. But, I don't think it would necessarily be better than Interac althought the technology of it certainly would.
These digital homes of the future will only be as smart as the owner. People will yell and scream and curse at their house just like they do to their printer. The main server that runs the whole party will require pretty good knowledge of computers. Unless of course, you are rich and have a 24 hour geek squad a phone call away. Technical difficulties will arise, upgrades will need to be done, and to do it yourself (economically) will require *wanting* to know the guts of the system. Not to mention, a bit of knowledge about whatever language is making everything tick. The interesting thing about these "future" homes is that they are just a concept right now. They will become widely built and used only if simplicity is pursued by the people designing and building them. Whoever comes up with a very simple GUI for some "master controls" that doesn't require every single appliance, light, alarm, and garage door opener to be compliant to only one protocol, or worse, MADE BY MS, will be a very rich person. Of course, the average /.'er could handle the 'super house' (and most likely would not let any other person put their muckers on the design and implementation of it), but the average 'i have 40 gigabytes of ram!' person won't be able to.
More importantly, Microsoft doesn't have a single view of the future. The tours present possible scenarios, not a blueprint for product development.
This is the most important part of the article. Not everyone will want *everything* that MS's digital home showscases... but customizability (is that a word?) of these future homes will be the key. Opting for the econopackage presented by your home builder would be a bad idea. A home owner would end up without enough features that they could make good use of, and too many things that they don't need, or worse, don't know how to work.
It will be interesting to see how these become mainstream.
werd. Global scares me.. here in AB they take over the superbowl (on ABC), friends (on NBC) and survivor (on CBS) This fairly new network seems to have a lot of power.. I wont even get into canada.com :) But all the hoopla over the ads really does make us feel like we're missing out on something eh.
what channel did you watch the superbowl on?
I am not blessed with satellite.. and my ABC was of course, ownz0red by Global. What a ripoff! We don't get to see any of the American commercials.. every commercial break cut to lame local commercials.
my first thought was.. it's the flooring
Like how material is put down on a floor in a gymnasium for an event.. If you look at the very front of the picture theres some sheets of solid wood too.. I thought maybe those go over the pallets (sp?).
OK but then when I was looking at that.. I found those guys putting the pallets 'together'. Look at what they're doing.. they're making little 'cubicles' out of them.. so theres a wall between your station and the person beside you.
bah I want to go there.
I don't have any faith in speech recognition.
I'm already using it, and it drives me nuts. When I add money to my "pay and talk" cell phone account, I am forced to use their new (within the past couple of months) speech recognition menu. I am literally answering a robot's questions, and she makes me want to bang my phone on the closest solid structure near me.
Welcome to Rogers At&T pay as you go service, would you like to add money to your account today? Please say yes, or no.
Yes
I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, would you like to add money to your account today?
Yeeeees.
I'm trying to ask you a question. Please answer with yes or no.
YEEEEEES
this is the part where I wonder if swearing at the system will make it work. Maybe it recognizes "i said yes you piece of shit android" No it doesn't (I tried), but it usually takes about 5 tries, and I get into the "add money to my account menu" where i can then use the keypad (still) to enter in my P.I.N., new card number, etc.
While a handful of experts and analysts have applauded the project, the reaction in chat rooms and on weblogs has been muted.
:)
"There's absolutely no reason to believe that the spams collected here will be any 'better' a sample than those collected by opening a random Hotmail account," read one posting on Slashdot.
If that's your comment, smile, you're in wired. Good to see such cynicism speaking for the whole
I love it when the exact phrase going through my head is the first post I see (on my threshold) when I scroll down :)
Does somebody know what happens to the people who started Napster?
;)
Shawn Fanning is "hangin out" in mountain view. I hardly think he's having money problems.
Will they spend the rest of their life paying off their debts?
If you are a sole proprietor, and you file for bankrupcy, you are not personally liable for your debts. Thats what bankruptcy is. If you are a corporation (a seperate entity) and you file for bankrupcy, the corporate entity is no longer liable for it's debts.
Will no bank ever going to supply them credit again?
Credit is more than your past. It's your present too. It should take about a decade for the bankrupcy to be forgotten, but I don't think Fanning would have much trouble getting some capital for any bright idea he might have.
Does setting up such a groundbreaking company and failing affect the rest of your life?
Yes. It makes you better than the rest of the population. Theres nothing wrong with failing. Theres only something wrong with not doing.
If it does, i suggest them writing a book "The Woes of Napster - The Secrets revealed"
I think MTV might be making the "napster" movie.
You weren't in western canada then. Thankfully, we also had a clear night... and we couldn't keep up with our counting. (we had three people counting 30 second intervals)
We were seeing 40-50 a minute, for over an hour. It really was the most spectacular thing I had ever seen.
Because you get what you pay for in this world. when I download an mp3, it might not be at the bitrate I prefer.. but it's hard to find more than a few copies of it, so i get it anyway. Or you get to the end, and there is no end. The reason I never used napster (not once) is b/c the idiot filter just wasnt there for me.. way too many kiddies who didn't know how to encode worth shit.
I'm not saying I will jump to sign up for $9.99 a month, or use listen.com at all.. I'm pretty bitter about the RIAA's behavior in the past few years, it will probably take me a while to get over it, but at least now I *can* pay for an mp3 and I know that if I pay for it, there better be a fsking ending on it, and maybe even a selection of bitrates to choose from.
lol
:)
If I remember correctly....
Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing green substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
yes ok.
I replied to my own comment (if you read)
I don't think that I am a good random sample of the Canadian science curriculum.
ok i don't think my conversion is right.. but I'd like to know what 5 degrees fahrenheit is in celcius. I wish everyone just used the same measurement. :/
I found a story about this in a Discover magazine, in a friend's bathroom (of all places) a couple of weeks ago. A very interesting read.
I remember thinking about how I always say in the winter time up here: it's sure not global *warming* us up any here.
All I know is, if the winters here get worse than they already are, I will be heading for the equator.
"the next cooling trend could drop average temperatures 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast, northern Europe, and northern Asia"
5 degrees fahrenheit is 15 degrees celcius to us canooks.. and an average temperature drop of 15 degrees celcius will definately have me packing my bags. An Average January temperature of -25 degrees is bad, but you learn to deal with it. (plug the car in!) -40 are particularily bad days (maybe I won't go to work today) but -40 as a new average is a serious concern (to me at least).
I know, I know, the folks up in Tuktayuktuk are saying, "what a candy ass"
Don't be so quick to discredit our excellent access to broadband to the fact that Canadian cities are centered in certain areas. I live in asscrack, Alberta, and I've been on high speed for about 4 years now. It has nothing to do with the golden horseshoe, or vancouver. It's because our government gives a shit. It's also because our telco companies spend more time developing infrastructure than trying to figure out how to prevent market entry or taking the fifth american amendment.
We have kick ass infrastructure here... be proud of it.. don't think it's just because "canada is small" or "canada is in southern clusters". It's because we're just downright better eh. (/me ducks)
The paradox that content providers are finding themselves in is interesting. No advertisements, equals no revenue. No revenue means you can't pay the bills, and the site goes offline.
:)
Advertisements piss people off, and they get annoyed and stop hitting the site.
ok we all know all of that.
What happened to me recently was very interesting.
I got sick and tired of the ads on alberta.com. Specifically, the news. I really enjoyed reading the news on alberta.com because of how they set it up... I can get national, provincial, or international news, or all of it together. A few months ago.. I noticed that every single fsking time I clicked on a news story, a popup ad came up. SO, if i read say... 12 news stories in one visit, I had 12 browser windows open with the SAME ad. (or I had clicked them closed 12 times)
I got so mad that I emailed them. I thought they wouldn't care, let alone reply to me. I was wrong.
They care about you!
this is the reply I got within 48 hours of firing off my flame mail:
"Thanks for the feedback.
Sorry to hear you're so upset about the advertising on Alberta.com, but we have
faced a difficult challenge: Drastically cut the
amount of news we purchase for our users, or subsidize that content by responding to
advertisers' demands for increasingly more
intrusive advertising.
We are working on trying to ensure that most pop-up advertising occurs once per
session. I'll pass this along to our advertising
department to see if something can be done. In the meantime, we can only hope you
give us another chance.
Thanks,
Rob Klovance
Managing Editor
TELUS Multimedia Solutions"
Interestingly, within a couple weeks, the popup ads were gone. It seems that there are more (and bigger) ads on the site (wihch I much more prefer over popups), and I don't know if this was a result of my measly flame mail, or if I was merely one of hundreds that voiced my opinion, but one thing is clear:
If you like a website, but you're ready to stop hitting it because you are so annoyed, tell them! They want to hear from you. You are more important to their site than the advertisers. Oh, and thanks Rob.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with science, it's an attempt by politicians to justify deficit spending (rightly so in my view) by scaring the public at large.
riiight.
The politicians didn't discover the asteroid, or report it for that matter.
oh please. The reason we call you names is because of comments like this. When Americans say things like, "ah geez.. we always have to save the world, it isnt easy being the best ya know"
I can't even count the amount of times I have heard, "The USA is the best country in the world" on American television in the past 10 months. No doubt, written by an American who has never crossed an International border.
Don't get me wrong.. I love the USA. I love what it stands for. I love the media I enjoy, I love the imported products I buy. But don't be so quick to say stupid shit that assumes the USA will be the only one who fixes the problem. You're talking about a country who calls NASA's Canada Arm, "the Big Arm". I'm tired of hearing shit like this. There are other competent nations too. You are not the only country that has the expertise and extra money to devote to saving the world.
Owe you one? Bah. Go back to hating you? You arrogant fucks... you just don't get it.
Again.. I don't mean this in as much haste as it sounds like.. I'm just really tired of hearing Americans whine that no one likes them.. then they say shit like this.
Still, God bless the USA.
its still going to be shared bandwidth... offer me value that DSL can't? I highly doubt it.. I'll keep my DSL thanks.
Tried cable once.. never again.
does anybody else know of a current competitor to both of these people I could switch to?
:P
Yeah, It's called Canada.
It may be really fricken cold here, but if there's anything worth mentioning whenever paypal comes up, it's that we no longer need escrow services up here (as of just last week) We are now in control of our own transactions.. person to person. I don't mean for this to be flaimbait at all.. but our banking is light years ahead of the Americans... just last week.. I payed for my dinner with my bank card (via Interac) AT my table at the restaurant thanks to a nifty little wireless device the waiters carry around with them.
But back to online transactions, this was BIG news here last week... the introduction of the Canadian banks offering person to person online transactions. I thought it was very newsworthy... a Major technological development.. yea yea.. I submitted the story and it was rejected... and yes.. I actually am very bitter about it.
Anyways, it's too bad that paypal is still your only option. Cut out the middleman!! Tell your bank you want to do it like the Canadians!
Try not screwing me out of money Moby, and maybe I won't screw you.
I won't buy 18 because I went to Area One last summer in Vancouver. Now although, not EVERYONE on the area one list is guaranteed to play at EVERY stop, when you show up, there is a list of the ones who did make it.
The list said Oakenfold was there.. cool.
So in the Oakenfold tent, the music was great, but you couldn't actually see Oakenfold. It didn't matter... who needs to see him as long as you know he's on the decks right?
October, 2001 - Oakenfold does a chat with the BBC.
Jared Cook: Hi Paul... Rumour has it that some time ago in Vancouver, Canada, after Max Graham opened for you and you saw the crowd's response to his style you whispered to someone that 'Trance was dead'. Did you say that? And if so, what did you mean by it ?
Paul: No I never said that. I didn't know it was dead. I have never played in Vancouver by the way!
Do not give Moby a cent. He's a lying thief. Dang, did I ever get fooled. Oh and beware of Area Two. There is a good chance there will be some imposters posing as the real thing.
Not exactly the way to treat fans in our day and age if you ask me.
Just my 3 cents CND.