I wax poetic about the old days sometimes, too. Back when BBS's were becoming mom and pop ISPs, AOL and CompuServe were just getting real e-mail, you could count the number of useful websites on your fingers and everyone on the internet was either rich or smart.
Anyway I don't think Usenet is going to be missed. P2P has replaced binary access as a better method for finding files and most web forums are as useful as text. I know there will be a lot of people that will say I'm wrong and I may be from your viewpoint but the amount of junk on Usenet compared to the good stuff is not worth paying for access.
This is a state proposal to fund the state's transportation fund. Gas taxes pay for roads. If you aren't buying gas, you're not paying for the roads. They want to stop that.
So gas prices will plummet in California when they take all the taxes off of gasoline then, right?
There are websites that will charge you for your credit report, in my state you're allowed to see your credit report free every 6 months.
Credit Reports are not standard information. There is no set standard as to what information is pertinent. It is three independent for-profit companies that create credit reports. The three reports from the three companies can be very different. They all have different ways of scoring. The reason why there are quite a few states coming on board requiring these agencies to provide free reports is that it was becoming a racket.
It's estimated that 20% of information on any given credit report is incorrect. Experian reported that I had defaulted on a mortgage loan in 2000. I've never had a mortgage, I've never had a loan of any kind, when challenged they immediately removed the information because they didn't even have bank information regarding the loan.
There is no positive information on credit reports, only negative. There is no way to "improve" credit without having information expunged.
$20 a month was (and is) a small price to pay for everything, if "everything" is correct and up to date.
Not much to pay at all, I call it my Internet bill and that's why I have the internet.
The internet was not created to provide a revenue model. Countless companies learned this in the dot.bomb. It's not like cable or satellite where my choices are limited and if I don't pay I don't get content. Wikipedia came about for a reason. If it goes subscription it immediately loses value because now articles are only maintained/created by subscribers.
If it goes subscription another free/open online encyclopaedia will take its place, the same way that FreeDB came about after CDDB required buying a license to use in applications.
If you want to do the legwork to find them. Most chain stores only sell the CD singles that are basically given away to the store. CD singles are only seen as a promotional tool for the album. Amazon.com is the only reliable source I have found for CD singles. With the cost of the single and shipping weighed in, I'd rather just pay a dollar for the mixes I like on iTunes.
That's been done before. There used to be stores that let you mix songs onto tapes and there have been a few that let you burn CDs. It's slow and selection sucks.
It's easier and better to just use a download service like iTunes (which is where things are going) if you want to do that. You can download all the songs you want and burn to whatever media you like, the quality may not be that great but people were fine with analogue cassette tapes for 20 years and people still listen to low fidelity FM radio without complaints about the audio quality.
convince 'regular folks' that this is a good thing.
Did Microsoft need to convince people that bundling the atrocity that is WMP was a good thing? No one got the choice. On every other OS I am free to use whatever media player I like best. Even on Mac OS X QuickTime is a media layer and I can throw away QuickTime Player.app and run any number of 3rd party media players that will even play QuickTime files WITHOUT using the media layer.
Can I play Windows Media files without a Microsoft licensed player?
Keep in mind that "hate and racism" is covered by the first amendment, no matter how tasteless. These people have a right to what they're doing and thinking.
So do the people who are targeted by their ignorance, which is exactly what it is. People who have no actual knowledge of the people they are targeting.
The targets of these attacks also have right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
If you want to properly combat these people, you are going to have to listen to their concerns. I believe that they have legitimate concerns that are skewed by blanket ideology and a fascination with nazism and ephemera. Shunning them only makes them stronger.
There is reason why people do not try and reason with these types of people. Many of them actually are insane. There's no arguing with people who have biological malfunctions. If their concerns were legitimate they would have been addressed centuries ago.
There are a lot of cockroaches in the world, that doesn't inherently make them interesting or worth considering.
She has some interesting things to say but in general she scares me more than Tilda Swinton in The Beach.
"Kill them quickly and have no regrets."
"Disemvowelling works. Consider it."
"If...a post is offensive, upsetting, or just plain unpleasant, it's important to get rid of it...as quickly as possible."
"You can let one...unpleasant jerk hang around for a while, but the minute you get two...they both have to go, and all their recent messages with them."
Social manipulation is nothing new; this style of agitation once restricted to face-to-face interactions has become empowered in online social groups or forums.
They're not empowered they're just an X-factor. In social settings people who agitate consistently are shunned from the group. Usually all it takes is someone to realise what that person is doing and then challenge them. That's Sociology 101. Betas quite often exhibit this behaviour just to get beat down by the Alpha.
I think the behaviour is more masochistic than sadistic because the outcome will not be that people will be inflicted with anguish, the outcome is the instigator becomes the target of aggression.
However, with 90% of the browser market aren't they now the de-facto standard around the world just as a matter of their dominance?
I don't think IE has that high of a browser usage percent anymore (there's no market for free products). I'd be inclined to say they dropped a good 5-10% when Apple came out with Safari and a good 10-15% now that Firefox is being used heavily. IE usage is probably 65-75% of Web traffic. While still high it is eroding.
iTunes "FairPlay" DRM is one of the most liberal DRM schemes around. I can burn CD's(As long as I don't burn the same playlist more than 7 times) and put the music on multiple computers (up to three).
5 computers can have the file, along with an unlimited amount of iPods.
Consumers, in general, as compared to us techs and those used to technology, versus those who are well trained into consumerism, will buy a subscription based listening experience, not thinking about owning the music, hook, line, and sinker.
I think consumers understand that Napster doesn't work with iPod and that's all that matters, especially since Napster is making it clear in their commercials with targeting the iPod as being bad.
Alienate your potential customer base 101. Dude, look at the sales of iPods, there are freaking MILLIONS of them out there, no other player comes close.
If you doubt my words, think of what MySQL and PostgreSQL were just a year ago. Then think "What will they be like with 5 more YEARS of development?". Then realize that they are free to everyone and you'll see why Oracle is doomed
That sounds good in theory but you could apply that same theory to GIMP in putting Adobe out of business with Photoshop but everyone knows that ain't gonna happen.
Oracle is not just a database for most people who are using it. I know from having dated an Oracle Database Administrator for 3 years. Their biggest competition has always been DB2. To most people using those databases it is all about service and services as well as custom built frontends.
There may be a company that forms that will displace Oracle but a free application isn't going to do it anymore than a free operating system and a free office program have displaced Microsoft.
Satellite radio has limited appeal. I don't know many people that are excited about the idea of radio you have to pay for, commercials or not. Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market.
Satellite radio is like cable TV. The main appeal is that you don't have to deal with the FCC so it allows a greater variety. Because you don't have to sell commercials you also get to have a better target market for your programming.
I don't recall hearing any FM radio stations that play showtunes all day.
I bought a computer and I don't know what they're talking about. I don't have popups constantly bothering me or anything getting in my way. I don't have notifications screaming for my immediate attention and I definitely don't have the OS always assuming it knows better than I do about what I am beginning to do.
Every now and then I had applications bounce in the dock when they had a modal dialog appear and I didn't have the application in the foreground, but then I installed Dock Detox from http://www.unsanity.com and that stopped.
If I go to a store and ask for "Louis Vuitton" is it trademark infringement if the sales person also shows me Dior or some other maker's products?
Dior is also owned by LVMH, FYI. Louis Vuitton is only staffed by Louis Vuitton employees, even in stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Nieman Marcus. They're leased departments. So you would never have the opportunity for a sales person to show you a Dior when you went to see a Louis Vuitton. Dior is also a leased department and operates the same way. LVMH has spent a lot of money protecting their brand so consumers have every confidence in the product.
They should shut down google.fr (but keep control of the domain name so no one takes it over), and maybe even block French IPs from accessing the rest of Google
French courts ruled against Yahoo!, and Yahoo! told them to shove it. The U.S. also gave Yahoo! the green light. It is quite ridiculous for the French to stifle competition. If people do not like it, they do not have to use Google. I do not hear many people, besides the French gov't. complaining.
Since clearly you have no concept of how wars work and what World War II entailed, it probably had something to do with reparations since 70% of France's population was killed during World War II. I'm sure the French government saw no reason why an American company such as Yahoo! should be able to profit from Naziism when it all but destroyed their country.
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I wax poetic about the old days sometimes, too. Back when BBS's were becoming mom and pop ISPs, AOL and CompuServe were just getting real e-mail, you could count the number of useful websites on your fingers and everyone on the internet was either rich or smart.
Anyway I don't think Usenet is going to be missed. P2P has replaced binary access as a better method for finding files and most web forums are as useful as text. I know there will be a lot of people that will say I'm wrong and I may be from your viewpoint but the amount of junk on Usenet compared to the good stuff is not worth paying for access.
I make my own decisions on who to ignore.
So gas prices will plummet in California when they take all the taxes off of gasoline then, right?
Credit Reports are not standard information. There is no set standard as to what information is pertinent. It is three independent for-profit companies that create credit reports. The three reports from the three companies can be very different. They all have different ways of scoring. The reason why there are quite a few states coming on board requiring these agencies to provide free reports is that it was becoming a racket.
It's estimated that 20% of information on any given credit report is incorrect. Experian reported that I had defaulted on a mortgage loan in 2000. I've never had a mortgage, I've never had a loan of any kind, when challenged they immediately removed the information because they didn't even have bank information regarding the loan.
There is no positive information on credit reports, only negative. There is no way to "improve" credit without having information expunged.
Not much to pay at all, I call it my Internet bill and that's why I have the internet.
The internet was not created to provide a revenue model. Countless companies learned this in the dot.bomb. It's not like cable or satellite where my choices are limited and if I don't pay I don't get content. Wikipedia came about for a reason. If it goes subscription it immediately loses value because now articles are only maintained/created by subscribers.
If it goes subscription another free/open online encyclopaedia will take its place, the same way that FreeDB came about after CDDB required buying a license to use in applications.
If you want to do the legwork to find them. Most chain stores only sell the CD singles that are basically given away to the store. CD singles are only seen as a promotional tool for the album. Amazon.com is the only reliable source I have found for CD singles. With the cost of the single and shipping weighed in, I'd rather just pay a dollar for the mixes I like on iTunes.
It's easier and better to just use a download service like iTunes (which is where things are going) if you want to do that. You can download all the songs you want and burn to whatever media you like, the quality may not be that great but people were fine with analogue cassette tapes for 20 years and people still listen to low fidelity FM radio without complaints about the audio quality.
Did Microsoft need to convince people that bundling the atrocity that is WMP was a good thing? No one got the choice. On every other OS I am free to use whatever media player I like best. Even on Mac OS X QuickTime is a media layer and I can throw away QuickTime Player.app and run any number of 3rd party media players that will even play QuickTime files WITHOUT using the media layer.
Can I play Windows Media files without a Microsoft licensed player?
So do the people who are targeted by their ignorance, which is exactly what it is. People who have no actual knowledge of the people they are targeting.
The targets of these attacks also have right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
There is reason why people do not try and reason with these types of people. Many of them actually are insane. There's no arguing with people who have biological malfunctions. If their concerns were legitimate they would have been addressed centuries ago.
There are a lot of cockroaches in the world, that doesn't inherently make them interesting or worth considering.
"Kill them quickly and have no regrets."
"Disemvowelling works. Consider it."
"If...a post is offensive, upsetting, or just plain unpleasant, it's important to get rid of it...as quickly as possible."
"You can let one...unpleasant jerk hang around for a while, but the minute you get two...they both have to go, and all their recent messages with them."
Man, don't knock them times. I miss the days when everyone on the internet was rich or smart.
They're not empowered they're just an X-factor. In social settings people who agitate consistently are shunned from the group. Usually all it takes is someone to realise what that person is doing and then challenge them. That's Sociology 101. Betas quite often exhibit this behaviour just to get beat down by the Alpha.
I think the behaviour is more masochistic than sadistic because the outcome will not be that people will be inflicted with anguish, the outcome is the instigator becomes the target of aggression.
A troll comparing himself to Aristotle. That right there is the best troll ever. Better than "think about your breathing".
I don't think IE has that high of a browser usage percent anymore (there's no market for free products). I'd be inclined to say they dropped a good 5-10% when Apple came out with Safari and a good 10-15% now that Firefox is being used heavily. IE usage is probably 65-75% of Web traffic. While still high it is eroding.
5 computers can have the file, along with an unlimited amount of iPods.
Really?
I think consumers understand that Napster doesn't work with iPod and that's all that matters, especially since Napster is making it clear in their commercials with targeting the iPod as being bad.
Alienate your potential customer base 101. Dude, look at the sales of iPods, there are freaking MILLIONS of them out there, no other player comes close.
That sounds good in theory but you could apply that same theory to GIMP in putting Adobe out of business with Photoshop but everyone knows that ain't gonna happen.
Oracle is not just a database for most people who are using it. I know from having dated an Oracle Database Administrator for 3 years. Their biggest competition has always been DB2. To most people using those databases it is all about service and services as well as custom built frontends.
There may be a company that forms that will displace Oracle but a free application isn't going to do it anymore than a free operating system and a free office program have displaced Microsoft.
You mean there are people using MSN Messenger?
Satellite radio is like cable TV. The main appeal is that you don't have to deal with the FCC so it allows a greater variety. Because you don't have to sell commercials you also get to have a better target market for your programming.
I don't recall hearing any FM radio stations that play showtunes all day.
Every now and then I had applications bounce in the dock when they had a modal dialog appear and I didn't have the application in the foreground, but then I installed Dock Detox from http://www.unsanity.com and that stopped.
What the hell are they talking about?
Dior is also owned by LVMH, FYI. Louis Vuitton is only staffed by Louis Vuitton employees, even in stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Nieman Marcus. They're leased departments. So you would never have the opportunity for a sales person to show you a Dior when you went to see a Louis Vuitton. Dior is also a leased department and operates the same way. LVMH has spent a lot of money protecting their brand so consumers have every confidence in the product.
That's why you don't run Google.
Yes, let's all jump on board with the idea that it's OK for corporations to bully the government into doing their bidding.
Since clearly you have no concept of how wars work and what World War II entailed, it probably had something to do with reparations since 70% of France's population was killed during World War II. I'm sure the French government saw no reason why an American company such as Yahoo! should be able to profit from Naziism when it all but destroyed their country.