Just to reinforce LeeZard's commments on Lutris' financial problems.
I live here in Santa Cruz, and know a lot of people who used to work for Lutris and are now looking for work.
It was only a year ago that Lutris was in the middle of a hiring frenzy. I knew many people who had just started working for Lutris and many others who were interviewing there. Most of these are engineers (I don't know a whole lot of people who aren't engineers). Consulting companies that did a lot of work with Lutris, like Giavaneers, were also in a great position.
These days, all of my buddies who were new Lutris hires are out looking for jobs, and many of the old guard at Lutris are also out. This isn't to say that Lutris axed most of their work force: many of the people who I know still work for Lutris, but its a much smaller number than it was 6 months back.
The economy slump has hit Santa Cruz tech businesses hard, and those businesses who were hiring rapidly a year ago seem to be the hardest hit of all.
If it is true that both AOL and Earthlink are cooperating with duly authorized search warrants. And if it is true that these search warrants are sufficiently specific to pass constitutional muster. Then ya, I don't have a problem.
However, we know nothing about whether AOL or Earthlink have been served search warrants. We know only that Earthlink has been served a subpeona: that has a far lower level of judicial oversight than a search warrant. Specifically, subpeonas have no judicial oversight.
Further, we haven't seen the subpeona served on Earthlink. So we don't know if it's addressing specific information, as would be required for a search warrant, or if it's a blanket subpeona covering all of Earthlink's records.
For the uninitiated:
A search warrant is requested of a judge in closed session by law enforcement personnel (including DAs and AGs). The petitioning party has to convince the judge that sufficient evidence already exists to lead investigators to believe that a particular item or piece of information exists at a specific location. That item or information must be named in the warrant, and in the case of information, its specific expected physical embodiment must be named as well. Only things specifically named in a search warrant are subject to seizure. While there have been many search warrants issued this century that are broad and inspecific, or even based on insufficient evidence, those search warrants are illegal and can be legally resisted by the target, generally by refusing entry until his lawyer arrives. Search warrants are issued before a case has been filed with the courts.
A subpeona can be issued by either the defense or plantiff in any civil or criminal matter. A case has to have already been filed in the courts. Subpeonas are issued during the discovery phase of the trial. The clerk of the court provides any requested number of prestamped subpeonas to each side in the case, and the two sides can fill them out requesting any information or item from any party that they choose. Subpeonas must always be complied with. But, if the opposition objects to the target of a subpeona (defense objecting to a plaintiff subpeona or vice versa), the judge can rule that the evidence is inadmissable. But that ruling occurs after the subpeona is executed. (Subpeonas can also be used to compel people to appear in court as a witness, or to submit to deposition).
The most abusive subpeonas you'll see are those issued at Grand Jury investigations. Those are insanely broad.
If, as reported in the link above, the FBI has issued a subpeona to Earthlink, that means that either a grand jury has been convened or that a court action has been filed.
I think it's more likely that the article misreported a search warrant as a subpeona. In any case, I didn't see any mention in that article of AOL being served with a search warrant or subpeona... and we have all seen AOL's history of cooperating with warrantless searches.
You can be certain, however, that the FBI, secret service, and other investigating agencies are going to take full advantage of the fact that it is politically expensive for any entity to deny any law enforcement request in these times. Dont expect the agencies to exercise any kind of restraint in their requests. You will see a whole lot of unreasonable requests with which the targets will meekly comply. And in the next 5 years you will see many prosecutions based on evidence gathered during these next few months, which are nevertheless totally unrelated to the WTC/Pentagon attacks.
I haven't had any trouble with my IR stuff. I've got an HP 2100M with IR on the front, and I can print to it from all my IR stuff: laptops, my newtons. Even all my server motherboards have connectors for IR, I just haven't been able to find modules to plug in. I'm really happy with my IR stuff. Unfortunately, I can't print from my palm pilot that way, but at least they recognize each other.
Some open source projects that are in pre-alpha don't want any outside help until they hit alpha. The people running the project want enough of a code base down that other people can see where the code is supposed to be going before they make submissions.
This is the case with some projects that I'm working on.
This doesn't address the issue of projects that are actively asking for help, though. I've never encountered a project that is asking for help, and has ignored submissions that I've made.
"The game/is/ the suffering and stress and paranoia of the lower levels"
That couldn't be farther from the truth.
Diablo 2 (with expansion, since that's what most people on the Closed Battle.net realms* use these days) has 3 difficulty levels and 5 acts. The difficulty levels are normal, nightmare and hell. You must beat each act in sequence progress to the next difficulty level.
Normal is easy. Normal is *ridiculously* easy. The ONLY way to make normal SLIGHTLY difficult is to play a sick variant character (like a sorceress that doesn't use spells and tries to compete in melee combat).
You're right; I don't play Diablo II. I played the demo and was sufficiently turned off that I didn't even try the full version.
My problem with the demo is precisely the problem that you name in the full version of the game: the low levels are trivial, and have no risks or challenges.
But the argument that you present here isn't an argument in favor of buying those neato magic toys to leapfrog over the lower levels. Instead, you've presented an argument to avoid Diablo II entirely.
What should I do? Spend $50 to buy a game that isn't going to present any challenges until I've put ~40 hours into playing the game? Or just compile up a copy of gnuchess and get challenges with no money outlay after about 20 minutes of investment? Or if you insist on games that are online and massively multiplayer, I can take my pick from thousands of muds out there. Insist on graphical? Sure, there are free graphical muds, and there's evercrack (my personal drug of choice), and lots of others.
Perhaps there's a reason for this? Why do people play video games. In most cases it's to have fun, right? What would most people consider to be more fun, tromping around a small grassy field with a disk of wood strapped to one forearm and a small pointy piece of metal strapped to the other, poking zombies that are so slow they routinely die before they can even take a swing at you...or running (or teleporting) around wearing a powerful set of armor you wrested from the cold body of some vile demon, wielding a magical weapon you had to work long and hard to acquire, fighting hordes of demons that *will* kill you if you falter? There are reasons most people like the mid-to-end-game more than the early game. What's wrong with that?
The reason that your second scenario is more fun is because there's challenge. It's not that you're playing at a higher level. Your first scenario has no challenge. What possible source of enjoyment could that have?
A properly designed game maintains the same level of challenge regardless of a player's level. Different level characters merely encounter different types of situations. But relative to the characters' own skills, the challenge is the same. Any game that falls short of that is faulty.
I do play evercrack. And when I find a line for something, like getting into Guk to hunt froglocks, I just run off and do something else. I've never been in a position where there's only one thing open for me. I've got a whole category on my palm pilot full of quest clues that I've encountered. And I can always follow up one of those when the thing that I was going to do is packed up with a line.
Hell, the only reason why I hunt froggies in the first place is to up my levels enough that I can follow up on some of the more advanced quests that I've found.
Same goes for my other characters (I've got 3 characters right now). Each is in a different part of the world, at different levels, with access to different quests. And my highest level character is my troll shadowknight, who's only 9th level. My enchanter is a miserable 3rd level, and I have loads of fun with her, running away from just about everything with a heartbeat.:)
So what you're saying is that you get no pleasure from the act of questing for this sash? Or, at least, that the pleasure that you receive from questing for the sash is equal to the pleasure you get from working as a Sysadmin, and therefore requires the same monetary compensation to justify.
If that's the case, then why try to get the sash at all? Even if you can buy it on eBay for $100.
If I didn't get pleasure from the mere act of playing Evercrack, then I wouldn't play it at all. Regardless of what other rewards it offered.
I'm (theoretically) earning $120k/year at one job. At another job I contract my services out for $100/hr. In my free time I play computer games and write freeware and watch TV. I don't require $120k/year or $100/hr to play computer games or write freeware or watch TV, because I enjoy these activities. In fact, I enjoy them enough that rather than requiring compensation for them, I spend money in order to be able to continue doing them. The pleasure I derive from these activities, minus the annoyances and the money I pay to continue them, is equal to someone handing me a $120k check at the end of the year or $100 for each hour I work on their project (plus the pleasure I derive from those projects).
If I derived so little pleasure from playing Evercrack that I needed someone to hand me a $100 check for each hour that I spent playing, I'd go do something else.
When I phrase it in these terms, I hope you can see how ridiculous it is to equate questing time in a game to your hourly work pay.
Ok, so you've got $25,000 eating a hole in your pocket and you want to buy that extra-special Sword of Sudden Doom (and tomato slicing) in Evercrack, DiabloII, .
Sure, you can probably find someone to sell it to you. Sure, you can pick it up and start using it in game. Sure, it'll help you survive (probably by a large margin). But then where's the fun?
The game/is/ the suffering and stress and paranoia of the lower levels. It's the effort and intrigue it takes to survive at those lower levels and work you way up. Once you get up high and don't have to worry any more, the game's over. So throw away your character and start a new one from scratch.
If you leapfrog that whole phase and jump right into the uber-powered elite, then you've just skipped over all the enjoyment. It's just like when I was playing AD&D all the time and constantly encountering players who didn't want to play mages below 5th level "because it was just too hard". Phtt. Rodents.
Sure, I'll accept that the overwhelming majority of players out there don't appreciate the pleasure of struggling at the low power levels. These guys just hate that low level crap and want to get over to wailing on critters so large that only its ankle appears on their monitors.
Let these guys waste their money robbing themselves of the true pleasure of the game. It doesn't do anything to reduce my pleasure, and it removes these weenies from my immediate surroundings.
They're doing what they want and giving me a reason to call them lamers. I like that. Everyone wins.
3D printers are a far cry from a vonNeumann machine.
Current 3D printers can only make homogeneous items, and generally can't make parts with certain types of geometic features (any feature that would initially be disconnected from the part being fabricated, until a later layer is added to the part to connect them). Among other things, this means that you can't use a 3D printer to fabricate pre-assembled complex machinery: you'd need some other device to assemble the parts.
All the printers that I personally know of only work with polycarbonates. Back when my first startup was trying to get prototypes for our plastics, we hired a number of firms to fabricate samples on these machines. Of course, since we wanted a polycarbonate product, we only looked at companies that had 3D printers that worked in polycarbonates. So that's a highly biased sample.
Nevertheless, the whole point is that you can't use a (current gen) 3D printer to build a complex electromechanical machine... such as another 3D printer. That would take many different materials applied in different ways. To do it, you'd need at least: a 3D printer, a programmable CNC machine, an MBE chip fab line, a programmable assembly robot that could also function as a supply materials reloader... and a hydroelectric plant, a couple different types of mines and refining facilities, some chemical factories, and attendant staff.
Don't look for true vonNeumann machines in our lifetimes.
Nevertheless, larger 3D printers are great for certain types of items: I'd love to have one to make myself some custom furniture at home without having to deal with all that sawdust to get into your computer fan filters. I'd have the baddest computer desk of all time. Of course, if I had enough money to buy my own 3D printer, I don't think I'd be worried about sawdust in my computers.:)
3) Lego has known about legOS since at least Feb. of 1999, when their PR people told Wired that "'People have also done stuff [created programming tools and components like LegOS] on their own as well, and that's fine,' Dion said."
That's something I didn't consider. If it can be shown that Lego knew about LegOS that long ago and did nothing, then its an open and shut case. At least it would be in the US, where generally civil issues have a 12 month window for action.
Lego has no real basis for a lawsuit based on the/existance/ or/use/ of NQC or LegOS. They could try to sue (as mentioned in the article) because these products, if used with the lego mindstorms hardware, could cause failures that Lego wouldn't be able to support. This would indirectly tarnish Lego's name and cause losses. At least that's the theory. It wouldn't take a hell of a lot of effort for a defense attorney to show that since the products themselves are only usable with Lego's products, that the existance of the products directly benefit Lego's sales. And by Lego's own admission, their sales are vastly higher/because/ of the existance of NQC and LegOS than they would otherwise be. Since users of NQC and LegOS don't approach Lego for tech support (Lego has terrible Mindstorms tech support), the claim that failures in NQC or LegOS would tarnish Lego's name is also easy to refute.
But that's about existance and use.
LegOS has a naming problem. It possesses a name that is textually identical to a registered trademark of Lego. While every person has an automatic, unrestricted, nonexclusive use trademark to their own names (see McDonald vs McDonald's Corporation, England (I don't know which court), 1989), those trademarks generally only apply to a person's actual use name. While trademark applications have to specify the visual presentation of the trademarked phrase as well as the phrase itself, courts have generally applied trademark protection to any textually identical string, because of the rendering limitations of the Internet, newsprint, and other general printed matter. Since the author of LegOS can only claim the use of the word "Leg" as an English language translation of his real name, that use protection doesn't apply. A very good lawyer might be able to convince a court to allow use protection of translations as well, but it would be hard.
In order to prove trademark infringement, the plaintiff has to show 3 things (on top of the claim of trademark, which is a trivial claim to make):
1) the use of the trademark is not in reference to the trademark holder or its products,
2) the trademark is used in a way that is likely to cause confusion in the minds of third parties (read: those third parties might conclude that the use/is/ in reference to the trademark holder or its products),
and 3) such a confusion would cause harm, in fact or faith, to the trademark holder, its products, or the trademark itself.
Even if all three are shown, the defendant could still win if he can show that the trademarked phrase has already entered the common vocabulary in reference to the general class of products or services to which the product or service specifically named by the trademark belongs. Two examples of this exemption are "xerox" and "kleenex". These two are registered trademarks referring to a company and a series of products in the first place, and a series of products in the second place. But both have been ruled to have entered the common vocabulary in reference to the process of photocopying, and facial tissue, respectively. The holders of those trademarks (Xerox and Kimberly-Clark) still engage in legal scare tactics to prevent the general use of what was formerly their exclusive trademarks, but they almost never go all the way to court unless they have an alternate attack avenue to fall back on.
It would be easy for Lego to show the first and second points to a court's satisfaction. Harder to show the third, but not all that hard. And it would be very difficult (if not impossible) for the author of LegOS to show that the exemption applies.
In other words: I would conclude, on the basis of the information currently available to me as a person who has not been retained or consulted by any party to the matter, that it would be relatively easy and inexpensive for Lego to successfully sue over the naming of the alternate Lego Mindstorms firmware that is currently referred to as LegOS.
The job crunch must be pretty close to global. I'm sure there are isolated areas with employment spurts, but in average, everyone is having trouble.
I make this claim based only on a report in the Wall Street Journal on Friday (7 Sept 2001) morning that claimed that almost every stock market in the world closed down at least 1%, and that if the trend continues through the next quarter, that this would "meet the classic definition of a recession". And not just a recession, but a global recession. Of course, the value of this claim is proportional to how much you trust the WSJ to accurately report financial news and how much you believe that the stock markets influence employment rates.
Sorry, I don't have a link: I get my WSJ fix through my palm pilot with AvantGo.
Of course. Being paranoid bastards, the open source inspired defenders of the castle take one look at the wooden penguin and burn it to the ground, crying, "I'm not taking that until I read the EULA!", "Where're the blueprints?", and "Bah! I hate precompiled statues."
Yes, I know your message was a troll. That's the only explanation for a message that draws such totally unjustified conclusions from my post. Yet its possible that there are lurkers who are confused by some pointts that you bring up, so I'll address them.
wtf is this increasing CTR bullshit - yeh it works on paper but at the end of the day how does this benefit the advertiser?
There is no way that any kind of advertising can actually make a sale. This is true for banner ads, magazine ads, billboards, newspaper ads, TV ads, and every other type of advertising in existance. The only thing that advertising can do is attract attention.
I can get people into the merchant's store, but I can't convince them to buy stuff. It's up to the advertiser to convert traffic into sales. The only way that I could influence the turnover rate would be to personally go in and redesign the advertiser's website.
My job is to present the advertisement in such a way that it is more likely to increase the number of people who knock on the advertiser's door. The advertiser is responsible for designing the advertisement (sometimes they do it themselves, sometimes they hire someone else), and for operating a business that doesn't turn off customers.
I can change the time of day that the ad is shown. I can change the type of people who see the ad. I can change the sites that carry the ad. There's a whole lot that I can do, but at the end of the day, the only way to measure my contribution to an advertising campaign's success is to look at the CTR.
and saying you dont care about ad blocker software because often the impression still counts?
Please be so kind as to say where I said that. I said three things in that section of my post:
I said that you might not be reducing mp3.com's revenue by using an ad blocking proxy, because if the proxy blocks on the response, an impression is still counted.
I said that I don't mind if you use an ad blocking proxy because I don't want to show ads to people who don't want to see ads.
And I said that using an ad blocking proxy might actually/increase/ mp3.com's revenue because you're effectively raising their CTR, which lets them charge more from the next advertiser. That comment was meant to indicate that there's a reason why mp3.com wouldn't care about you using an ad blocking proxy either.
you represent everything that was wrong with the online ad industry last year & the reason cpm rates dropped to a few cents if they could be sold at all
The current industry average CPM is $8. There are a few maverick brokers in the ad industry who are trying to negotiate CPM deals at $.50 and $.40, but while they're having no problem finding advertisers to buy at those rates, they're having a huge problem finding ad networks to carry the ad.
parties over dipshit - u dont get into the ad bizness because u wanna help surfers with privacy or any of that shit
Perhas I did make a mistake in my motivation. But the fact is that that is precisely why I entered the ad business, and I'm having some small success with my efforts to promote privacy protections in the industry. Only time will tell if it actually was a mistake.
u get in because u know how to get traffic and sales for your advertisers.
Thank you. This is an important point.
The internet advertising business is in a horrible place right now because starting 5 years ago, ad sales people started overselling. It's like that IBM commercial where the lawyer is standing over the salesman's shoulder to make sure he doesn't oversell. Ad sales people made all sorts of insane promises over the years.
They'd claim things like 70% CTRs. No campaign in the entire history of online ads has had a CTR higher than 8%. The average CTR across the industry is.14%.
They'd claim things like that every click is an almost guaranteed sale. Good click conversion rates are 30%. But those rates are entirely up to the merchant, not the advertisement.
They'd claim things like "we can drive sales for you". That's patently untrue: no advertising network can drive sales. They can influence them, but they can't drive them.
The fact is, that many merchants became advertisers based on these promises. And the promises didn't hold up. When that happened, most merchants turned around and said "Internet advertising is shit. It's got no value. I'll never advertise on the internet again." And here we are now.
because of idiots like you the whole internet is becoming a mass of popup windows, misleading links, theres no barriers between content and ads, punch the monkey is the only banner that pays anymore
I expect you're making that statement out of pure ignorance. AdAce doesn't run popup ads. We don't like them. We put a whole lot of effort into trying to convince our customers not to run popup ads. If their minds cant be changed, then we'll direct them to some of our partners who are willing to run popups, but we won't carry those ads ourselves. Idiots like me are having a direct influence on the/reduction/ in the quantity of popup ads on the internet.
I'm not sure what you mean by "misleading links". Even though you're a painful pinhead and an obnoxious moron, I'll work to fix that problem if you can explain it to me.
The problem with content based advertising is that we, the ad networks, can offer that to our advertisers. But we can't make our advertisers purchase that. And we can't make them purchase the right categories. Sometimes it'll happen that a tech magazine wants to advertise in a sports category. We can warn them that they'll have a small response. We can suggest better categories to them. But if they're committed to that track, the only thing that we can do is to turn down the campaign. And in particularly heinous mismatches, we have done precisely that.
Yes, punch the monkey does pay. They don't pay all that well (it's a CPA campaign). But they do pay. Casino On-net pays a lot better than punch the monkey (which is also a CPA campaign). But claiming that these campaigns are the only ones that pay is just ridiculous.
Given all your comments, your vocabulary, and your attitudes, I'd wager a guess at your identity. We at AdAce have encountered your type before, and we have turned down your campaigns. I'm guessing that you're one of those maverick ad brokers that I complained about earlier in this post. If my guess is right, then you came to AdAce two weeks ago and offered us a CPA deal at $2, and claimed, "you'll never find a higher CPA rate for any other ad". I'm somewhat surprised to see you here. Perhaps I'm 1wrong about your identity. C'est la vie.
My source of information is the physics, chemistry, and design knowledge gained through a BS degree in Computer Engineering, with a focus on full custom CMOS VLSI design, and years of practice with the skills.
I can't point you to any single one of my textbooks and give you a page number that says "airport xray machines damage channel insulation". But I could point you to one of my materials science textbooks that discusses the ionizing behavior of high energy photons. I could point you to one of my chemistry textbooks that discusses the ionization energy of SiO2 insulation, its breakdown voltage, and ionization byproducts. Then to one of my basic chemistry textbooks that'd let you calculate the saturation current of an ionized conduction channel as a function of the ionization energies of the outermost valence electrons of the atoms which have been ionized. And of course, I'd have to point you to one of my design textbooks that discusses the structure of different types of transistors. After that, you'd have to sit down and do a bit of thinking to realize why buried gate transistors are susceptible to this kind of damage but other CMOS transistors aren't (hint: it's all about saturation current).
In other words, this subject/is/ my professional training. Unless you're prepared to go out and do a bunch of studying to get up to speed, then lets just say that I am my source of information on this subject, and leave it at that.
I'm probably going to get flamed here, but I don't really have a big problem with filtering in public libraries.
Remember that we're talking about libraries that are funded with public money. That means money that comes from taxpayers.
I, a taxpayer, should be allowed to exert unilateral control over which public programs are candidates to receive my portion of the tax pie. If I'm an ignorant baboon and I demand that none of my money be used to view bomb making instructions, then I should be allowed to do that. And if I demand that none of my money should go to pro-DMCA biased studies, then I should be able to do that as well.
Of course, implementing such a system would be a bookkeeping nightmare. So then we get the all or nothing solution that is so popular in the US' version of a democracy: if enough people raise a stink about something, then no one's tax money is spent to do that thing.
Fine. Better that than forcing me to pay for something that I'm opposed to. All that means is that as different groups scream and fight about different funding programs, more and more programs get cut. And as more programs get cut, there's more room for the government to lower my taxes. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
The real problem here isn't that we have filtering in public libraries. The problem is that we don't have enough private organizations operating libraries for the public. Let them charge a monthly fee for the library card and go from there. These baboons who demand filtering in the libraries probably don't use the libraries anyway, and therefore they'd have no influence on whether or not a privately run library would have filtering.
Of course, there are certain problems that a privately run library would have that public libraries wouldn't. And that's why we need both. Go to the private library for almost everything, but go to the public library when you need to read something that's critical of the corporation running the private library.
And there's the possibility that a cowardly management team in the private library would follow suit with the public library's filtering. But if they did that they'd be particularly dumb: if the public library is all filtered, then a private library that doesn't filter would have exclusive access to that portion of the market that wants unfiltered information. Talk about a revenue boon! Alas, cowardly managers are pretty common.
When I was in college, the probability was closer to 1 in every 1000 scans. These days, the airport xray machines are much stronger than back then. I can't cite a new probability, because I don't know the new radiation strength, but it must be lower than 1 in 1000.
The critical question is, "Will you notice the damage?" We're talking about a one bit error, here.
Take your average PC. You've got pretty much three firmware chips in there: one for the system BIOS, one for the hard drive firmware, and one for the video controller. No matter which firmware suffers the error, there's first a question of whether or not the error is in a memory cell that ever gets accessed, and second whether or not the error changes the value in a way that makes a difference. If we're talking about one of those lame bootup graphics that a lot of manufacturers like these days, you'll probably never notice a one bit error. And if we're talking about code that drives a piece of hardware that you don't have installed (or dont use) you won't notice that error either. But if you get an error in your POST code, you're dead. System BIOSes these days are pretty fluffy. Lots of extraneous stuff in there. Video firmware is also pretty fluffy, but not nearly as bad as system BIOS. And drive firmware is quite tight. Almost any error you get in there will be in some code that gets executed.
But on the other hand, the Intel opcode set is full of lots of unused bits. There are a whole lot of examples where flipping a bit from 0 to 1 doesn't change the opcode or operands. And recall that we're talking about errors that can only change a 0 to a 1; there is no way that xray damage could change a 1 to a 0. If the bit that gets damaged is already a 1 (~50% chance of that) then your dead memory cell is still functioning exactly the way you want... until it comes time to do a firmware upgrade.
So that brings us to the last two issues: given that damage occurs, and given that its noticeable, then how long will it take for you to notice it, and will you ascribe the damage correctly to the airport xray machine? Many users are perfectly happy to ascribe crashes and corruptions to Windows. And while Windows certainly accounts for more than its fair share of errors, on a machine that crashes once every 40 hours, are you going to notice and correctly assign a failure that makes it crash every 39h30m?
Lastly, we're not talking about a bit suddenly changing from 0 to 1. Normally a buried gate transistor will hold its charge for around 150 years (each transistor will be different). No insulator is perfect. You zap it with a single photon, and maybe you've chopped a year off that. Of course, a xray machine isn't going to output a single photon. It's going to bathe your machine in a tremendous number of photons. So maybe one airport xray machine will drop you from 150 years to 130 years (I'm pulling that 20 year figure out of my butt, pretty much, but it's within an order of magnitude of being right). Do it again, and we're down to 110 years (it'll always reduce the life by the same number: a single xray photon opens a single ionizied path in the silicon dioxide, and that single ionized path will saturate at a small fixed current). So after 8 hits in the airport xray machine, you've probably got a number of one bit errors. And then the discussion above about whether or not you'll notice the error and whether or not you ascribe it correctly comes into play.
PS: these days, most microcontrollers, PICs, CPUs, MMUs, and other assorted large chips also have EEPROM cells on board. But in any particular computer, the technology used to design the EEPROM cells in functional chips is usually 5 to 7 years ahead of the technology used to create EEPROM cells in memory chips. That means that if your CPU is using a.2um technology (that tells us that the transistor channel will be.2um x.4um in EEPROM memory cells), then your bulk EEPROM is probably using a.5um or 1um process. That means that not only does your bulk memory have far more EEPROM transistors, but that each one is 6.25 to 16 times as large. For this reason, we can ignore the probability of getting a one bit error in your CPU when discussing the likely places for errors to occur. But a rigorous discussion would require that we pay attention to all EEPROM cells in a computer.
Well, it's a nice complement, but I'm actually a hardware/software engineer and security auditor masquerading as an ad exec.
AdAce used to be one of my clients, and they needed a CSO. I saw a chance to help convert an evil, reprehensible industry into something approximating a sane one, and took the opportunity.
My degree is in full custom CMOS VLSI design.
And I'm working on a seminar for an upcoming ad conference, but it's hard to phrase things so that ad people understand. They're pretty thick. The/. crowd is much easier to talk to.
Most parts of a computer are "immune" to xrays. Meaning that the computer doesn't get damaged by them.
However, CMOS EEPROM cells that are designed using buried gate transistors (which is the most common type of EEPROM these days) can be damaged by xrays. If an xray passes through the buried gate to the channel, it'll ionize a bit of the silicon dioxide insulator between the buried gate and the channel. This makes the charge leak out of the buried gate somewhat faster. The more xrays that pass through that area, the more ionization and the faster the charge leaks out. This ionization is irreversable, and causes permanent damage.
Whether the damage actually causes the bit in question to revert to a 1 depends on the strength of the xray source and how long (total across all the sessions) your computer has been bathed. An airline xray machine is unlikely to erase a bit if your machine passes through once. But if you travel a lot, then its almost certain that you'll suffer at least a one-bit error.
In short: don't let the airport security goons xray your laptops, palm pilots, digital cameras, or anything else that has CMOS EEPROM memory.
Every airport security checkpoint in the US has alternate procedures for electronics (generally involving a swab and a "portable" gas chromatograph to search for nitrogen compounds). The goons will argue with you, but it's worth the annoyance.
I've done this in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, San Jose, Seattle, Denver, Sioux City, Minneapolis, and New Orleans. Those airports pretty much run the gamut of size from little podunk warts to huge transport hubs.
The FAA's assertion that airport x-ray machines dont damage electronics is a bald-faced lie.
This isn't really directly related to the topic here, but I'd like to address a number of points made in other comments here. It does bear on the topic of the news post, as you'll see. Also, please be aware that I'm not trying to promote either my company nor mp3.com in this post -- I'm just trying to clarify some of the facts about internet advertising, and how those facts impact mp3.com's business.
A bit of background first. I'm CSO/CTO of AdAce, Inc. (please dont/. us), and yes, we are an ad network, reselling the advertising inventory of our partners. One of those partners is mp3.com. I originally got involved in AdAce because I, like most of you, was (and am) pissed off about the privacy violations running rampant through the internet advertising industry. I hoped (and still do) to show, by example, that an ad network can be successful without screwing with the viewers of the ads. And I am having some success.
Anyway, to the points:
** Advertising revenue and blocking proxies
Advertising is sold three ways: by impressions (showing the ad), by clicks (someone clicking on an ad banner), and by "acquisition" (someone registering or making a purchase on the advertiser's website, after having clicked on the banner). If you use an ad-filtering proxy, then you definately reduce the revenues from clicks and from acquisitions (obviously). But you might not be reducing the revenues from impressions; it all depends on whether the proxy blocks the ad banner request or the response. If the proxy blocks the initial request, then there is no impression, and no revenue. If it blocks the response, then as far as the ad serving software can tell, an impression was delivered -- the fact that no one actually saw the ad can't be detected by the server.
The overwhelming majority of ad sales online are CPM (impression based). CPC (click based) is common, but not huge. And CPA (acquisition based) is highly disliked by the ad networks, because it means that either the ad network has to duplicate the advertiser's entire website, or the advertiser has a financial incentive to lie to us about their true number of acquisitions.
That aside, we at AdAce really don't mind if you choose to use an ad blocking proxy. And that's true for the advertisers and ad hosts as well: most sites, mp3.com included, have more inventory (read: browser requests for webpages that have one or more slots for ads) than they actually manage to sell. So those ad impressions that are lost by your use of a proxy don't affect our profits at all; we'll still have many more opportunities to deliver the ad before the end of the ad campaign.
Besides, if you chose to use an ad blocking proxy, then you're the kind of person who's very unlikely to click on an ad in the first place, and that's what the advertiser wants: clicks. So if we showed you an ad, you'd be very unlikely to click on it, and the only result would be that we'd spend money on the bandwidth without the advertiser getting any benefit.
So by using an ad blocking proxy, you actually let mp3.com earn more money. Ad hosts charge based on an average CTR (click through ratio). The more often their ads generate clicks, the more money they can charge the next advertiser. If you're unlikely to click on an ad, and you use an ad blocking proxy, then you're effectively raising their CTR by removing yourself from the pool of impressions. And a higher CTR means that they can charge their advertisers more.
Even if it weren't for all these practical and financial reasons, we still wouldn't mind about your use of an ad blocking proxy. It's your machine, and you're choosing to browse the way that you want to. We have no political, philosophical, or legal right to force you to view our ads. If you don't want to see them, then by all means, use an ad blocking proxy. Advertising is all about public response, and if your response is to get pissed at our ads, then we don't want to show them to you: the last thing that we want is a pissed off viewer. It's your browsing experience that matters to you, and we don't (nor should we) have any say in that.
** Popup ads
I, too, am highly annoyed with popup ads. They piss me off just as much as spam does. In fact, I run a popup blocker on my personal computer to prevent them. It's got problems, admittedly, but it succeeds in blocking all the popups that come to me (it just blocks a little more than I want).
Unfortunately, turning off javascript really doesn't prevent all popups. Most browsers support HTML variants that allow a link to open a new browser window (target="_new" in an <A> or <IMG> link). It'd be nice to see more web browsers that ignored these tag options, or allowed filtering on a site by site basis.
** MP3.com's advertising and ad free services
We've been doing business with MP3.com for some time now, and we've ridden out their hard weather with them. I've developed a bunch of contacts within MP3.com, and all these guys are quite cool. Even their evil marketroids are cool (as far as marketroids go).
I like these guys a lot, and I'd love to see them get out of their tough times. They've been hit by a lot of hardship over the years from outside sources and from bad internal decisions. But the greatest thing about MP3.com is that they listen to their users. If you've got a problem with something they're doing, or if you have suggestions for ways that they can improve their service, then don't hesitate to email them. Don't flame them incoherently, but if you can rationally express your outrage, then they're likely to pay attention. You don't even have to use formal English: these guys are mostly musicians, and tend to be pretty relaxed.
There are a lot of ways to avoid advertisements on MP3.com's service. The news post mentioned one way. Ad blocking proxies are another. Apparently they also allow artists to pay a small monthly fee (something like $5/month, I'm not too clear on it), so that those artists can have ad-free areas on MP3.com's service. So/any/ user who comes in to that artist's area can browse around without worrying about ads. And no, unfortunately, I don't have a list of the artists who've done this.
However, not all ads on MP3.com are obnoxious or irrelevant. Sure, they've got those omnipresent Heineken ads this month, and for some reason they're running a Janet Jackson in Paris ad (as if someone coming to a website will choose to fly off to Paris just because of an ad banner). But they also have advertisements from other artists on MP3.com.
We've been running a service for MP3.com that allows artists to advertise for themselves right there, at very low rates. All throughout the music browsing sections of MP3.com, you can find these artist ads mingled in with the normal advertisements. In a month where there are more artist ad purchases, you'll naturally see more of those ads. It's all a question of what portion of the inventory is going to artist purchases from one week to another.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to reinforce LeeZard's commments on Lutris' financial problems.
I live here in Santa Cruz, and know a lot of people who used to work for Lutris and are now looking for work.
It was only a year ago that Lutris was in the middle of a hiring frenzy. I knew many people who had just started working for Lutris and many others who were interviewing there. Most of these are engineers (I don't know a whole lot of people who aren't engineers). Consulting companies that did a lot of work with Lutris, like Giavaneers, were also in a great position.
These days, all of my buddies who were new Lutris hires are out looking for jobs, and many of the old guard at Lutris are also out. This isn't to say that Lutris axed most of their work force: many of the people who I know still work for Lutris, but its a much smaller number than it was 6 months back.
The economy slump has hit Santa Cruz tech businesses hard, and those businesses who were hiring rapidly a year ago seem to be the hardest hit of all.
If it is true that both AOL and Earthlink are cooperating with duly authorized search warrants. And if it is true that these search warrants are sufficiently specific to pass constitutional muster. Then ya, I don't have a problem.
However, we know nothing about whether AOL or Earthlink have been served search warrants. We know only that Earthlink has been served a subpeona: that has a far lower level of judicial oversight than a search warrant. Specifically, subpeonas have no judicial oversight.
Further, we haven't seen the subpeona served on Earthlink. So we don't know if it's addressing specific information, as would be required for a search warrant, or if it's a blanket subpeona covering all of Earthlink's records.
For the uninitiated:
A search warrant is requested of a judge in closed session by law enforcement personnel (including DAs and AGs). The petitioning party has to convince the judge that sufficient evidence already exists to lead investigators to believe that a particular item or piece of information exists at a specific location. That item or information must be named in the warrant, and in the case of information, its specific expected physical embodiment must be named as well. Only things specifically named in a search warrant are subject to seizure. While there have been many search warrants issued this century that are broad and inspecific, or even based on insufficient evidence, those search warrants are illegal and can be legally resisted by the target, generally by refusing entry until his lawyer arrives. Search warrants are issued before a case has been filed with the courts.
A subpeona can be issued by either the defense or plantiff in any civil or criminal matter. A case has to have already been filed in the courts. Subpeonas are issued during the discovery phase of the trial. The clerk of the court provides any requested number of prestamped subpeonas to each side in the case, and the two sides can fill them out requesting any information or item from any party that they choose. Subpeonas must always be complied with. But, if the opposition objects to the target of a subpeona (defense objecting to a plaintiff subpeona or vice versa), the judge can rule that the evidence is inadmissable. But that ruling occurs after the subpeona is executed. (Subpeonas can also be used to compel people to appear in court as a witness, or to submit to deposition).
The most abusive subpeonas you'll see are those issued at Grand Jury investigations. Those are insanely broad.
If, as reported in the link above, the FBI has issued a subpeona to Earthlink, that means that either a grand jury has been convened or that a court action has been filed.
I think it's more likely that the article misreported a search warrant as a subpeona. In any case, I didn't see any mention in that article of AOL being served with a search warrant or subpeona... and we have all seen AOL's history of cooperating with warrantless searches.
You can be certain, however, that the FBI, secret service, and other investigating agencies are going to take full advantage of the fact that it is politically expensive for any entity to deny any law enforcement request in these times. Dont expect the agencies to exercise any kind of restraint in their requests. You will see a whole lot of unreasonable requests with which the targets will meekly comply. And in the next 5 years you will see many prosecutions based on evidence gathered during these next few months, which are nevertheless totally unrelated to the WTC/Pentagon attacks.
I haven't had any trouble with my IR stuff. I've got an HP 2100M with IR on the front, and I can print to it from all my IR stuff: laptops, my newtons. Even all my server motherboards have connectors for IR, I just haven't been able to find modules to plug in. I'm really happy with my IR stuff. Unfortunately, I can't print from my palm pilot that way, but at least they recognize each other.
Some open source projects that are in pre-alpha don't want any outside help until they hit alpha. The people running the project want enough of a code base down that other people can see where the code is supposed to be going before they make submissions.
This is the case with some projects that I'm working on.
This doesn't address the issue of projects that are actively asking for help, though. I've never encountered a project that is asking for help, and has ignored submissions that I've made.
"The game /is/ the suffering and stress and paranoia of the lower levels"
That couldn't be farther from the truth.
Diablo 2 (with expansion, since that's what most people on the Closed Battle.net realms* use these days) has 3 difficulty levels and 5 acts. The difficulty levels are normal, nightmare and hell. You must beat each act in sequence progress to the next difficulty level.
Normal is easy. Normal is *ridiculously* easy. The ONLY way to make normal SLIGHTLY difficult is to play a sick variant character (like a sorceress that doesn't use spells and tries to compete in melee combat).
You're right; I don't play Diablo II. I played the demo and was sufficiently turned off that I didn't even try the full version.
My problem with the demo is precisely the problem that you name in the full version of the game: the low levels are trivial, and have no risks or challenges.
But the argument that you present here isn't an argument in favor of buying those neato magic toys to leapfrog over the lower levels. Instead, you've presented an argument to avoid Diablo II entirely.
What should I do? Spend $50 to buy a game that isn't going to present any challenges until I've put ~40 hours into playing the game? Or just compile up a copy of gnuchess and get challenges with no money outlay after about 20 minutes of investment? Or if you insist on games that are online and massively multiplayer, I can take my pick from thousands of muds out there. Insist on graphical? Sure, there are free graphical muds, and there's evercrack (my personal drug of choice), and lots of others.
Perhaps there's a reason for this? Why do people play video games. In most cases it's to have fun, right? What would most people consider to be more fun, tromping around a small grassy field with a disk of wood strapped to one forearm and a small pointy piece of metal strapped to the other, poking zombies that are so slow they routinely die before they can even take a swing at you...or running (or teleporting) around wearing a powerful set of armor you wrested from the cold body of some vile demon, wielding a magical weapon you had to work long and hard to acquire, fighting hordes of demons that *will* kill you if you falter? There are reasons most people like the mid-to-end-game more than the early game. What's wrong with that?
The reason that your second scenario is more fun is because there's challenge. It's not that you're playing at a higher level. Your first scenario has no challenge. What possible source of enjoyment could that have?
A properly designed game maintains the same level of challenge regardless of a player's level. Different level characters merely encounter different types of situations. But relative to the characters' own skills, the challenge is the same. Any game that falls short of that is faulty.
I do play evercrack. And when I find a line for something, like getting into Guk to hunt froglocks, I just run off and do something else. I've never been in a position where there's only one thing open for me. I've got a whole category on my palm pilot full of quest clues that I've encountered. And I can always follow up one of those when the thing that I was going to do is packed up with a line.
:)
Hell, the only reason why I hunt froggies in the first place is to up my levels enough that I can follow up on some of the more advanced quests that I've found.
Same goes for my other characters (I've got 3 characters right now). Each is in a different part of the world, at different levels, with access to different quests. And my highest level character is my troll shadowknight, who's only 9th level. My enchanter is a miserable 3rd level, and I have loads of fun with her, running away from just about everything with a heartbeat.
So what you're saying is that you get no pleasure from the act of questing for this sash? Or, at least, that the pleasure that you receive from questing for the sash is equal to the pleasure you get from working as a Sysadmin, and therefore requires the same monetary compensation to justify.
If that's the case, then why try to get the sash at all? Even if you can buy it on eBay for $100.
If I didn't get pleasure from the mere act of playing Evercrack, then I wouldn't play it at all. Regardless of what other rewards it offered.
I'm (theoretically) earning $120k/year at one job. At another job I contract my services out for $100/hr. In my free time I play computer games and write freeware and watch TV. I don't require $120k/year or $100/hr to play computer games or write freeware or watch TV, because I enjoy these activities. In fact, I enjoy them enough that rather than requiring compensation for them, I spend money in order to be able to continue doing them. The pleasure I derive from these activities, minus the annoyances and the money I pay to continue them, is equal to someone handing me a $120k check at the end of the year or $100 for each hour I work on their project (plus the pleasure I derive from those projects).
If I derived so little pleasure from playing Evercrack that I needed someone to hand me a $100 check for each hour that I spent playing, I'd go do something else.
When I phrase it in these terms, I hope you can see how ridiculous it is to equate questing time in a game to your hourly work pay.
Ok, so you've got $25,000 eating a hole in your pocket and you want to buy that extra-special Sword of Sudden Doom (and tomato slicing) in Evercrack, DiabloII, .
/is/ the suffering and stress and paranoia of the lower levels. It's the effort and intrigue it takes to survive at those lower levels and work you way up. Once you get up high and don't have to worry any more, the game's over. So throw away your character and start a new one from scratch.
Sure, you can probably find someone to sell it to you. Sure, you can pick it up and start using it in game. Sure, it'll help you survive (probably by a large margin). But then where's the fun?
The game
If you leapfrog that whole phase and jump right into the uber-powered elite, then you've just skipped over all the enjoyment. It's just like when I was playing AD&D all the time and constantly encountering players who didn't want to play mages below 5th level "because it was just too hard". Phtt. Rodents.
Sure, I'll accept that the overwhelming majority of players out there don't appreciate the pleasure of struggling at the low power levels. These guys just hate that low level crap and want to get over to wailing on critters so large that only its ankle appears on their monitors.
Let these guys waste their money robbing themselves of the true pleasure of the game. It doesn't do anything to reduce my pleasure, and it removes these weenies from my immediate surroundings.
They're doing what they want and giving me a reason to call them lamers. I like that. Everyone wins.
3D printers are a far cry from a vonNeumann machine.
:)
Current 3D printers can only make homogeneous items, and generally can't make parts with certain types of geometic features (any feature that would initially be disconnected from the part being fabricated, until a later layer is added to the part to connect them). Among other things, this means that you can't use a 3D printer to fabricate pre-assembled complex machinery: you'd need some other device to assemble the parts.
All the printers that I personally know of only work with polycarbonates. Back when my first startup was trying to get prototypes for our plastics, we hired a number of firms to fabricate samples on these machines. Of course, since we wanted a polycarbonate product, we only looked at companies that had 3D printers that worked in polycarbonates. So that's a highly biased sample.
Nevertheless, the whole point is that you can't use a (current gen) 3D printer to build a complex electromechanical machine... such as another 3D printer. That would take many different materials applied in different ways. To do it, you'd need at least: a 3D printer, a programmable CNC machine, an MBE chip fab line, a programmable assembly robot that could also function as a supply materials reloader... and a hydroelectric plant, a couple different types of mines and refining facilities, some chemical factories, and attendant staff.
Don't look for true vonNeumann machines in our lifetimes.
Nevertheless, larger 3D printers are great for certain types of items: I'd love to have one to make myself some custom furniture at home without having to deal with all that sawdust to get into your computer fan filters. I'd have the baddest computer desk of all time. Of course, if I had enough money to buy my own 3D printer, I don't think I'd be worried about sawdust in my computers.
3) Lego has known about legOS since at least Feb. of 1999, when their PR people told Wired that "'People have also done stuff [created programming tools and components like LegOS] on their own as well, and that's fine,' Dion said."
That's something I didn't consider. If it can be shown that Lego knew about LegOS that long ago and did nothing, then its an open and shut case. At least it would be in the US, where generally civil issues have a 12 month window for action.
IANYL ("I am not your lawyer")
/existance/ or /use/ of NQC or LegOS. They could try to sue (as mentioned in the article) because these products, if used with the lego mindstorms hardware, could cause failures that Lego wouldn't be able to support. This would indirectly tarnish Lego's name and cause losses. At least that's the theory. It wouldn't take a hell of a lot of effort for a defense attorney to show that since the products themselves are only usable with Lego's products, that the existance of the products directly benefit Lego's sales. And by Lego's own admission, their sales are vastly higher /because/ of the existance of NQC and LegOS than they would otherwise be. Since users of NQC and LegOS don't approach Lego for tech support (Lego has terrible Mindstorms tech support), the claim that failures in NQC or LegOS would tarnish Lego's name is also easy to refute.
/is/ in reference to the trademark holder or its products),
Lego has no real basis for a lawsuit based on the
But that's about existance and use.
LegOS has a naming problem. It possesses a name that is textually identical to a registered trademark of Lego. While every person has an automatic, unrestricted, nonexclusive use trademark to their own names (see McDonald vs McDonald's Corporation, England (I don't know which court), 1989), those trademarks generally only apply to a person's actual use name. While trademark applications have to specify the visual presentation of the trademarked phrase as well as the phrase itself, courts have generally applied trademark protection to any textually identical string, because of the rendering limitations of the Internet, newsprint, and other general printed matter. Since the author of LegOS can only claim the use of the word "Leg" as an English language translation of his real name, that use protection doesn't apply. A very good lawyer might be able to convince a court to allow use protection of translations as well, but it would be hard.
In order to prove trademark infringement, the plaintiff has to show 3 things (on top of the claim of trademark, which is a trivial claim to make):
1) the use of the trademark is not in reference to the trademark holder or its products,
2) the trademark is used in a way that is likely to cause confusion in the minds of third parties (read: those third parties might conclude that the use
and 3) such a confusion would cause harm, in fact or faith, to the trademark holder, its products, or the trademark itself.
Even if all three are shown, the defendant could still win if he can show that the trademarked phrase has already entered the common vocabulary in reference to the general class of products or services to which the product or service specifically named by the trademark belongs. Two examples of this exemption are "xerox" and "kleenex". These two are registered trademarks referring to a company and a series of products in the first place, and a series of products in the second place. But both have been ruled to have entered the common vocabulary in reference to the process of photocopying, and facial tissue, respectively. The holders of those trademarks (Xerox and Kimberly-Clark) still engage in legal scare tactics to prevent the general use of what was formerly their exclusive trademarks, but they almost never go all the way to court unless they have an alternate attack avenue to fall back on.
It would be easy for Lego to show the first and second points to a court's satisfaction. Harder to show the third, but not all that hard. And it would be very difficult (if not impossible) for the author of LegOS to show that the exemption applies.
In other words: I would conclude, on the basis of the information currently available to me as a person who has not been retained or consulted by any party to the matter, that it would be relatively easy and inexpensive for Lego to successfully sue over the naming of the alternate Lego Mindstorms firmware that is currently referred to as LegOS.
The job crunch must be pretty close to global. I'm sure there are isolated areas with employment spurts, but in average, everyone is having trouble.
I make this claim based only on a report in the Wall Street Journal on Friday (7 Sept 2001) morning that claimed that almost every stock market in the world closed down at least 1%, and that if the trend continues through the next quarter, that this would "meet the classic definition of a recession". And not just a recession, but a global recession. Of course, the value of this claim is proportional to how much you trust the WSJ to accurately report financial news and how much you believe that the stock markets influence employment rates.
Sorry, I don't have a link: I get my WSJ fix through my palm pilot with AvantGo.
Of course. Being paranoid bastards, the open source inspired defenders of the castle take one look at the wooden penguin and burn it to the ground, crying, "I'm not taking that until I read the EULA!", "Where're the blueprints?", and "Bah! I hate precompiled statues."
Yes, I know your message was a troll. That's the only explanation for a message that draws such totally unjustified conclusions from my post. Yet its possible that there are lurkers who are confused by some pointts that you bring up, so I'll address them.
/increase/ mp3.com's revenue because you're effectively raising their CTR, which lets them charge more from the next advertiser. That comment was meant to indicate that there's a reason why mp3.com wouldn't care about you using an ad blocking proxy either.
.14%.
/reduction/ in the quantity of popup ads on the internet.
wtf is this increasing CTR bullshit - yeh it works on paper but at the end of the day how does this benefit the advertiser?
There is no way that any kind of advertising can actually make a sale. This is true for banner ads, magazine ads, billboards, newspaper ads, TV ads, and every other type of advertising in existance. The only thing that advertising can do is attract attention.
I can get people into the merchant's store, but I can't convince them to buy stuff. It's up to the advertiser to convert traffic into sales. The only way that I could influence the turnover rate would be to personally go in and redesign the advertiser's website.
My job is to present the advertisement in such a way that it is more likely to increase the number of people who knock on the advertiser's door. The advertiser is responsible for designing the advertisement (sometimes they do it themselves, sometimes they hire someone else), and for operating a business that doesn't turn off customers.
I can change the time of day that the ad is shown. I can change the type of people who see the ad. I can change the sites that carry the ad. There's a whole lot that I can do, but at the end of the day, the only way to measure my contribution to an advertising campaign's success is to look at the CTR.
and saying you dont care about ad blocker software because often the impression still counts?
Please be so kind as to say where I said that. I said three things in that section of my post:
I said that you might not be reducing mp3.com's revenue by using an ad blocking proxy, because if the proxy blocks on the response, an impression is still counted.
I said that I don't mind if you use an ad blocking proxy because I don't want to show ads to people who don't want to see ads.
And I said that using an ad blocking proxy might actually
you represent everything that was wrong with the online ad industry last year & the reason cpm rates dropped to a few cents if they could be sold at all
The current industry average CPM is $8. There are a few maverick brokers in the ad industry who are trying to negotiate CPM deals at $.50 and $.40, but while they're having no problem finding advertisers to buy at those rates, they're having a huge problem finding ad networks to carry the ad.
parties over dipshit - u dont get into the ad bizness because u wanna help surfers with privacy or any of that shit
Perhas I did make a mistake in my motivation. But the fact is that that is precisely why I entered the ad business, and I'm having some small success with my efforts to promote privacy protections in the industry. Only time will tell if it actually was a mistake.
u get in because u know how to get traffic and sales for your advertisers.
Thank you. This is an important point.
The internet advertising business is in a horrible place right now because starting 5 years ago, ad sales people started overselling. It's like that IBM commercial where the lawyer is standing over the salesman's shoulder to make sure he doesn't oversell. Ad sales people made all sorts of insane promises over the years.
They'd claim things like 70% CTRs. No campaign in the entire history of online ads has had a CTR higher than 8%. The average CTR across the industry is
They'd claim things like that every click is an almost guaranteed sale. Good click conversion rates are 30%. But those rates are entirely up to the merchant, not the advertisement.
They'd claim things like "we can drive sales for you". That's patently untrue: no advertising network can drive sales. They can influence them, but they can't drive them.
The fact is, that many merchants became advertisers based on these promises. And the promises didn't hold up. When that happened, most merchants turned around and said "Internet advertising is shit. It's got no value. I'll never advertise on the internet again." And here we are now.
because of idiots like you the whole internet is becoming a mass of popup windows, misleading links, theres no barriers between content and ads, punch the monkey is the only banner that pays anymore
I expect you're making that statement out of pure ignorance. AdAce doesn't run popup ads. We don't like them. We put a whole lot of effort into trying to convince our customers not to run popup ads. If their minds cant be changed, then we'll direct them to some of our partners who are willing to run popups, but we won't carry those ads ourselves. Idiots like me are having a direct influence on the
I'm not sure what you mean by "misleading links". Even though you're a painful pinhead and an obnoxious moron, I'll work to fix that problem if you can explain it to me.
The problem with content based advertising is that we, the ad networks, can offer that to our advertisers. But we can't make our advertisers purchase that. And we can't make them purchase the right categories. Sometimes it'll happen that a tech magazine wants to advertise in a sports category. We can warn them that they'll have a small response. We can suggest better categories to them. But if they're committed to that track, the only thing that we can do is to turn down the campaign. And in particularly heinous mismatches, we have done precisely that.
Yes, punch the monkey does pay. They don't pay all that well (it's a CPA campaign). But they do pay. Casino On-net pays a lot better than punch the monkey (which is also a CPA campaign). But claiming that these campaigns are the only ones that pay is just ridiculous.
Given all your comments, your vocabulary, and your attitudes, I'd wager a guess at your identity. We at AdAce have encountered your type before, and we have turned down your campaigns. I'm guessing that you're one of those maverick ad brokers that I complained about earlier in this post. If my guess is right, then you came to AdAce two weeks ago and offered us a CPA deal at $2, and claimed, "you'll never find a higher CPA rate for any other ad". I'm somewhat surprised to see you here. Perhaps I'm 1wrong about your identity. C'est la vie.
My source of information is the physics, chemistry, and design knowledge gained through a BS degree in Computer Engineering, with a focus on full custom CMOS VLSI design, and years of practice with the skills.
/is/ my professional training. Unless you're prepared to go out and do a bunch of studying to get up to speed, then lets just say that I am my source of information on this subject, and leave it at that.
I can't point you to any single one of my textbooks and give you a page number that says "airport xray machines damage channel insulation". But I could point you to one of my materials science textbooks that discusses the ionizing behavior of high energy photons. I could point you to one of my chemistry textbooks that discusses the ionization energy of SiO2 insulation, its breakdown voltage, and ionization byproducts. Then to one of my basic chemistry textbooks that'd let you calculate the saturation current of an ionized conduction channel as a function of the ionization energies of the outermost valence electrons of the atoms which have been ionized. And of course, I'd have to point you to one of my design textbooks that discusses the structure of different types of transistors. After that, you'd have to sit down and do a bit of thinking to realize why buried gate transistors are susceptible to this kind of damage but other CMOS transistors aren't (hint: it's all about saturation current).
In other words, this subject
I'm probably going to get flamed here, but I don't really have a big problem with filtering in public libraries.
Remember that we're talking about libraries that are funded with public money. That means money that comes from taxpayers.
I, a taxpayer, should be allowed to exert unilateral control over which public programs are candidates to receive my portion of the tax pie. If I'm an ignorant baboon and I demand that none of my money be used to view bomb making instructions, then I should be allowed to do that. And if I demand that none of my money should go to pro-DMCA biased studies, then I should be able to do that as well.
Of course, implementing such a system would be a bookkeeping nightmare. So then we get the all or nothing solution that is so popular in the US' version of a democracy: if enough people raise a stink about something, then no one's tax money is spent to do that thing.
Fine. Better that than forcing me to pay for something that I'm opposed to. All that means is that as different groups scream and fight about different funding programs, more and more programs get cut. And as more programs get cut, there's more room for the government to lower my taxes. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
The real problem here isn't that we have filtering in public libraries. The problem is that we don't have enough private organizations operating libraries for the public. Let them charge a monthly fee for the library card and go from there. These baboons who demand filtering in the libraries probably don't use the libraries anyway, and therefore they'd have no influence on whether or not a privately run library would have filtering.
Of course, there are certain problems that a privately run library would have that public libraries wouldn't. And that's why we need both. Go to the private library for almost everything, but go to the public library when you need to read something that's critical of the corporation running the private library.
And there's the possibility that a cowardly management team in the private library would follow suit with the public library's filtering. But if they did that they'd be particularly dumb: if the public library is all filtered, then a private library that doesn't filter would have exclusive access to that portion of the market that wants unfiltered information. Talk about a revenue boon! Alas, cowardly managers are pretty common.
When I was in college, the probability was closer to 1 in every 1000 scans. These days, the airport xray machines are much stronger than back then. I can't cite a new probability, because I don't know the new radiation strength, but it must be lower than 1 in 1000.
.2um technology (that tells us that the transistor channel will be .2um x .4um in EEPROM memory cells), then your bulk EEPROM is probably using a .5um or 1um process. That means that not only does your bulk memory have far more EEPROM transistors, but that each one is 6.25 to 16 times as large. For this reason, we can ignore the probability of getting a one bit error in your CPU when discussing the likely places for errors to occur. But a rigorous discussion would require that we pay attention to all EEPROM cells in a computer.
The critical question is, "Will you notice the damage?" We're talking about a one bit error, here.
Take your average PC. You've got pretty much three firmware chips in there: one for the system BIOS, one for the hard drive firmware, and one for the video controller. No matter which firmware suffers the error, there's first a question of whether or not the error is in a memory cell that ever gets accessed, and second whether or not the error changes the value in a way that makes a difference. If we're talking about one of those lame bootup graphics that a lot of manufacturers like these days, you'll probably never notice a one bit error. And if we're talking about code that drives a piece of hardware that you don't have installed (or dont use) you won't notice that error either. But if you get an error in your POST code, you're dead. System BIOSes these days are pretty fluffy. Lots of extraneous stuff in there. Video firmware is also pretty fluffy, but not nearly as bad as system BIOS. And drive firmware is quite tight. Almost any error you get in there will be in some code that gets executed.
But on the other hand, the Intel opcode set is full of lots of unused bits. There are a whole lot of examples where flipping a bit from 0 to 1 doesn't change the opcode or operands. And recall that we're talking about errors that can only change a 0 to a 1; there is no way that xray damage could change a 1 to a 0. If the bit that gets damaged is already a 1 (~50% chance of that) then your dead memory cell is still functioning exactly the way you want... until it comes time to do a firmware upgrade.
So that brings us to the last two issues: given that damage occurs, and given that its noticeable, then how long will it take for you to notice it, and will you ascribe the damage correctly to the airport xray machine? Many users are perfectly happy to ascribe crashes and corruptions to Windows. And while Windows certainly accounts for more than its fair share of errors, on a machine that crashes once every 40 hours, are you going to notice and correctly assign a failure that makes it crash every 39h30m?
Lastly, we're not talking about a bit suddenly changing from 0 to 1. Normally a buried gate transistor will hold its charge for around 150 years (each transistor will be different). No insulator is perfect. You zap it with a single photon, and maybe you've chopped a year off that. Of course, a xray machine isn't going to output a single photon. It's going to bathe your machine in a tremendous number of photons. So maybe one airport xray machine will drop you from 150 years to 130 years (I'm pulling that 20 year figure out of my butt, pretty much, but it's within an order of magnitude of being right). Do it again, and we're down to 110 years (it'll always reduce the life by the same number: a single xray photon opens a single ionizied path in the silicon dioxide, and that single ionized path will saturate at a small fixed current). So after 8 hits in the airport xray machine, you've probably got a number of one bit errors. And then the discussion above about whether or not you'll notice the error and whether or not you ascribe it correctly comes into play.
PS: these days, most microcontrollers, PICs, CPUs, MMUs, and other assorted large chips also have EEPROM cells on board. But in any particular computer, the technology used to design the EEPROM cells in functional chips is usually 5 to 7 years ahead of the technology used to create EEPROM cells in memory chips. That means that if your CPU is using a
Well, it's a nice complement, but I'm actually a hardware/software engineer and security auditor masquerading as an ad exec.
/. crowd is much easier to talk to.
AdAce used to be one of my clients, and they needed a CSO. I saw a chance to help convert an evil, reprehensible industry into something approximating a sane one, and took the opportunity.
My degree is in full custom CMOS VLSI design.
And I'm working on a seminar for an upcoming ad conference, but it's hard to phrase things so that ad people understand. They're pretty thick. The
Most parts of a computer are "immune" to xrays. Meaning that the computer doesn't get damaged by them.
However, CMOS EEPROM cells that are designed using buried gate transistors (which is the most common type of EEPROM these days) can be damaged by xrays. If an xray passes through the buried gate to the channel, it'll ionize a bit of the silicon dioxide insulator between the buried gate and the channel. This makes the charge leak out of the buried gate somewhat faster. The more xrays that pass through that area, the more ionization and the faster the charge leaks out. This ionization is irreversable, and causes permanent damage.
Whether the damage actually causes the bit in question to revert to a 1 depends on the strength of the xray source and how long (total across all the sessions) your computer has been bathed. An airline xray machine is unlikely to erase a bit if your machine passes through once. But if you travel a lot, then its almost certain that you'll suffer at least a one-bit error.
In short: don't let the airport security goons xray your laptops, palm pilots, digital cameras, or anything else that has CMOS EEPROM memory.
Every airport security checkpoint in the US has alternate procedures for electronics (generally involving a swab and a "portable" gas chromatograph to search for nitrogen compounds). The goons will argue with you, but it's worth the annoyance.
I've done this in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, San Jose, Seattle, Denver, Sioux City, Minneapolis, and New Orleans. Those airports pretty much run the gamut of size from little podunk warts to huge transport hubs.
The FAA's assertion that airport x-ray machines dont damage electronics is a bald-faced lie.
This isn't really directly related to the topic here, but I'd like to address a number of points made in other comments here. It does bear on the topic of the news post, as you'll see. Also, please be aware that I'm not trying to promote either my company nor mp3.com in this post -- I'm just trying to clarify some of the facts about internet advertising, and how those facts impact mp3.com's business.
/. us), and yes, we are an ad network, reselling the advertising inventory of our partners. One of those partners is mp3.com. I originally got involved in AdAce because I, like most of you, was (and am) pissed off about the privacy violations running rampant through the internet advertising industry. I hoped (and still do) to show, by example, that an ad network can be successful without screwing with the viewers of the ads. And I am having some success.
/any/ user who comes in to that artist's area can browse around without worrying about ads. And no, unfortunately, I don't have a list of the artists who've done this.
A bit of background first. I'm CSO/CTO of AdAce, Inc. (please dont
Anyway, to the points:
** Advertising revenue and blocking proxies
Advertising is sold three ways: by impressions (showing the ad), by clicks (someone clicking on an ad banner), and by "acquisition" (someone registering or making a purchase on the advertiser's website, after having clicked on the banner). If you use an ad-filtering proxy, then you definately reduce the revenues from clicks and from acquisitions (obviously). But you might not be reducing the revenues from impressions; it all depends on whether the proxy blocks the ad banner request or the response. If the proxy blocks the initial request, then there is no impression, and no revenue. If it blocks the response, then as far as the ad serving software can tell, an impression was delivered -- the fact that no one actually saw the ad can't be detected by the server.
The overwhelming majority of ad sales online are CPM (impression based). CPC (click based) is common, but not huge. And CPA (acquisition based) is highly disliked by the ad networks, because it means that either the ad network has to duplicate the advertiser's entire website, or the advertiser has a financial incentive to lie to us about their true number of acquisitions.
That aside, we at AdAce really don't mind if you choose to use an ad blocking proxy. And that's true for the advertisers and ad hosts as well: most sites, mp3.com included, have more inventory (read: browser requests for webpages that have one or more slots for ads) than they actually manage to sell. So those ad impressions that are lost by your use of a proxy don't affect our profits at all; we'll still have many more opportunities to deliver the ad before the end of the ad campaign.
Besides, if you chose to use an ad blocking proxy, then you're the kind of person who's very unlikely to click on an ad in the first place, and that's what the advertiser wants: clicks. So if we showed you an ad, you'd be very unlikely to click on it, and the only result would be that we'd spend money on the bandwidth without the advertiser getting any benefit.
So by using an ad blocking proxy, you actually let mp3.com earn more money. Ad hosts charge based on an average CTR (click through ratio). The more often their ads generate clicks, the more money they can charge the next advertiser. If you're unlikely to click on an ad, and you use an ad blocking proxy, then you're effectively raising their CTR by removing yourself from the pool of impressions. And a higher CTR means that they can charge their advertisers more.
Even if it weren't for all these practical and financial reasons, we still wouldn't mind about your use of an ad blocking proxy. It's your machine, and you're choosing to browse the way that you want to. We have no political, philosophical, or legal right to force you to view our ads. If you don't want to see them, then by all means, use an ad blocking proxy. Advertising is all about public response, and if your response is to get pissed at our ads, then we don't want to show them to you: the last thing that we want is a pissed off viewer. It's your browsing experience that matters to you, and we don't (nor should we) have any say in that.
** Popup ads
I, too, am highly annoyed with popup ads. They piss me off just as much as spam does. In fact, I run a popup blocker on my personal computer to prevent them. It's got problems, admittedly, but it succeeds in blocking all the popups that come to me (it just blocks a little more than I want).
Unfortunately, turning off javascript really doesn't prevent all popups. Most browsers support HTML variants that allow a link to open a new browser window (target="_new" in an <A> or <IMG> link). It'd be nice to see more web browsers that ignored these tag options, or allowed filtering on a site by site basis.
** MP3.com's advertising and ad free services
We've been doing business with MP3.com for some time now, and we've ridden out their hard weather with them. I've developed a bunch of contacts within MP3.com, and all these guys are quite cool. Even their evil marketroids are cool (as far as marketroids go).
I like these guys a lot, and I'd love to see them get out of their tough times. They've been hit by a lot of hardship over the years from outside sources and from bad internal decisions. But the greatest thing about MP3.com is that they listen to their users. If you've got a problem with something they're doing, or if you have suggestions for ways that they can improve their service, then don't hesitate to email them. Don't flame them incoherently, but if you can rationally express your outrage, then they're likely to pay attention. You don't even have to use formal English: these guys are mostly musicians, and tend to be pretty relaxed.
There are a lot of ways to avoid advertisements on MP3.com's service. The news post mentioned one way. Ad blocking proxies are another. Apparently they also allow artists to pay a small monthly fee (something like $5/month, I'm not too clear on it), so that those artists can have ad-free areas on MP3.com's service. So
However, not all ads on MP3.com are obnoxious or irrelevant. Sure, they've got those omnipresent Heineken ads this month, and for some reason they're running a Janet Jackson in Paris ad (as if someone coming to a website will choose to fly off to Paris just because of an ad banner). But they also have advertisements from other artists on MP3.com.
We've been running a service for MP3.com that allows artists to advertise for themselves right there, at very low rates. All throughout the music browsing sections of MP3.com, you can find these artist ads mingled in with the normal advertisements. In a month where there are more artist ad purchases, you'll naturally see more of those ads. It's all a question of what portion of the inventory is going to artist purchases from one week to another.