Thanks for effort. I just hope you will have the time to do it while still following the other piece of news you have posted on your blog regarding the immediate annexation of Mexico by the U.S...
I don't use NoScript but I do use FlashGot which is made by the same company. The frequent updates really smell fishy and are getting quite annoying. I'll probably simply uninstall it the next time they update.
How many ads do you that actually see that advertise one specific product or service?
You don't always have to click for the ad to be successful. Just look at the stuff you have around your house and try to think how you became aware of those brands.
On a different note, ad blocking is like piracy 4 or 5 (or 8 ?)years ago. It was always there but the magnitude wasn't as big as so to make the content creators actively try and take measures against it. Nowadays, people are getting sued, bandwidth is getting capped (not a direct result but still), draconian laws are enforced, and the annoyance factor for legitimate buyers is getting higher.
What is basically happening today is that on sites like slashdot, those who don't block ads are "funding" the ones who do. If the company behind Slashdot.org sees that the site is costing them money, they will shut it down. As the percentage of ad blockers on FF installation rises, the corps will figure out ways to make it harder to do it. Obviously, they will not succeed, but be prepared for the overall experience for most of us to get much worse.
All those in this thread, and many similar ones on other sites, are basically chopping off the branch their sitting on by constantly proudly announcing to the whole world that they are blocking ads and how fun it is and how they fucking don't care. It's just a question of time.
You're presupposing that the quality of teachers is bad and that the quality of programmers is good, neither of which is necessarily true. I am assuming that an intelligent person would mostly prefer a profession which provides good income and that an intelligent person is more likely to become good at what he does. That doesn't seem so plausible to me.
I guess IBM, Google, et al. didn't get that memo... IBM, Google etc.. only release source code when it is financially beneficial to them or when it has no effect. If google released the source code for their search engine they will be out of business.
However, they are all of a selfish nature: individuals or companies benefiting at the expense of society in general. As such, they don't provide a reason as to why we shouldn't go down that road, any more than "job losses due to automation" are a compelling reason not to progress further in robotics and AI. Of course they are of selfish nature, human beings are selfish. Since we can't change that we have to adapt to living in a selfish world. The fact that they are selfish is what gives them the incentive to create ( I create, I make money) and this is how progress is made.
In a utopia every person would be creating for the good of society. If you tried to do that in our society you will have a very small group of people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good and large group of leechers who just enjoy the free stuff and don't contribute back. There will be no progress but stagnation.
1. Doing it because you like it, not because it makes you money (same reason people become teachers and other low-paid professionals). Don't you think that the quality of teachers would improve tremendously if it was a job that paid more?
2. You can make money by keeping ahead of the curve. CAD software, for example, is an area where Free Software has made very little progress and isn't likely to for a long time yet. It just means that open source software is not good for business. In order to make money you need to go against OSS - never releasing your source code - or you are doomed. As open source gets bigger the viable options for profitable software development get smaller.
We have a bunch of developers at our place who are paid decent bucks, and we have no intention of ever releasing any software. However, we do need to do stuff that's specific to our business and not available in free or off-the-shelf products. (Conceivably we could release their output, but certainly not for profit.) Well, following the open source philosophy you are supposed to release your output and it is practically guaranteed that some other company (probably your competitor) will find it useful to improve their own business. So again, by releasing your code you are:
1) Helping a competitor, causing your company to lose money. 2) Causing less demand for software developers because you've release code that already works.
If free software is your competitor then you have to compete with free. I think the problem here is that the GPL makes it almost impossible to compete with free.
So let's say we've reached a point that product A is a good open source software but I have some ideas on how to improve on it. Assuming that I am starting from scratch I cannot build over the foundation of product A if it is GPL'ed, I have to recreate product A from scratch and then improve on it or otherwise I cannot sell my improvement. Obviously, creating product A from scratch is much more costly then creating just the improvements so it's much less likely that it will be worth it for me from a business point of view. The end result is that product A stays as it is.
Maybe the point is that these software companies should move to something more than making source code editors which we can no longer distinguish from each other. Ok, so free tools killed the source code editor business. Now, if open source succeeds, it is supposed to kill every other software business eventually. What is the incentive in becoming a programmer then if you know that your skills are only going to be worth less with time.
Have you ever installed a windows version that didn't come from Dell/HP/Sony etc.. ? They are the ones that put the bloatware in your PC. An original Windows installation is remarkably clean.
I've had two CPUs die from heat death when their cooling fans became clogged with dust, cat hair and pot smoke. You post made me open up speedfan and I was shocked to see my core 2 cpu running at more the 65c...
I immediately pulled out a vacuum cleaner and now it's back to 33c.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond will probably be regarded as a classic a couple of years from now.
Thanks for effort. I just hope you will have the time to do it while still following the other piece of news you have posted on your blog regarding the immediate annexation of Mexico by the U.S...
I don't use NoScript but I do use FlashGot which is made by the same company. The frequent updates really smell fishy and are getting quite annoying. I'll probably simply uninstall it the next time they update.
I find that any new installation of Windows works better than the one I had installed previously, even if I am reinstalling the same version.
Windows performance tends to be slower as time goes by (the infamous windows rot
I am pretty sure the parent was referring to stealing the actual content for which you came to the site, not ads.
I think the moderators today kind of forgot what is the purpose of moderating.
How many ads do you that actually see that advertise one specific product or service?
You don't always have to click for the ad to be successful. Just look at the stuff you have around your house and try to think how you became aware of those brands.
On a different note, ad blocking is like piracy 4 or 5 (or 8 ?)years ago. It was always there but the magnitude wasn't as big as so to make the content creators actively try and take measures against it. Nowadays, people are getting sued, bandwidth is getting capped (not a direct result but still), draconian laws are enforced, and the annoyance factor for legitimate buyers is getting higher.
What is basically happening today is that on sites like slashdot, those who don't block ads are "funding" the ones who do. If the company behind Slashdot.org sees that the site is costing them money, they will shut it down. As the percentage of ad blockers on FF installation rises, the corps will figure out ways to make it harder to do it. Obviously, they will not succeed, but be prepared for the overall experience for most of us to get much worse.
All those in this thread, and many similar ones on other sites, are basically chopping off the branch their sitting on by constantly proudly announcing to the whole world that they are blocking ads and how fun it is and how they fucking don't care. It's just a question of time.
They started with an ad based business model first but it didn't work out.
Here is the future of the internet for you ad blockers!
What's wrong with a kilo of coke? It's just a collection of atoms.
Actually slashdot has more posts about Windows than Linux. Or so it seems...
Apparently, on Linux even 4GB of RAM won't make it playable.
In a utopia every person would be creating for the good of society. If you tried to do that in our society you will have a very small group of people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good and large group of leechers who just enjoy the free stuff and don't contribute back. There will be no progress but stagnation.
1) Helping a competitor, causing your company to lose money.
2) Causing less demand for software developers because you've release code that already works.
So let's say we've reached a point that product A is a good open source software but I have some ideas on how to improve on it. Assuming that I am starting from scratch I cannot build over the foundation of product A if it is GPL'ed, I have to recreate product A from scratch and then improve on it or otherwise I cannot sell my improvement. Obviously, creating product A from scratch is much more costly then creating just the improvements so it's much less likely that it will be worth it for me from a business point of view. The end result is that product A stays as it is.
Just saying thank you. I had a good laugh.
There are other informative comments by that guy over there if you are interested.
Have you ever installed a windows version that didn't come from Dell/HP/Sony etc.. ? They are the ones that put the bloatware in your PC. An original Windows installation is remarkably clean.
I always thought of 3.1 as a souped up Norton Commander.
Actually Windows Me is the version that I would recommend.
(someone mod me up please)
Absolutely.
I immediately pulled out a vacuum cleaner and now it's back to 33c.