Company ignores customer complaint: "They're not listening to their player base!"
Company responds to and rectifies customer complaint: "They don't have spines! They're caving to the masses!"
Only a nonpartisan, centrist voice like Robert F. Kennedy is unbiased enough to announce that only the Republicans engage in voter fraud, trickery, and manipulation. There's no corruption in the Democratic party - hasn't Air America Radio taught us anything?
Seeing as this is a 4-month-old political opinion piece of a speculative, conspiratorial nature that doesn't even pretend to promote an unbiased or nonpartisan viewpoint, what business does it have on Slashdot?
If Slashdot is going to be linking to Robert Kennedy, Jr's writings, it better also link to those of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Bill O'Reilly. Frankly, I'd rather Slashdot stay away from all of them.
I wish the article itself could be modded down to -1 Flamebait.
The factual truth is that less than one-tenth of one percent of Catholic priests in the U.S. have even been accused of molestation. This percentage is lower than it is for the general population. This means that, despite what bad comedians would have you believe, if you pick a random person off the street and a random Catholic priest, the Catholic priest is far less likely to be a sexual predator.
As a Catholic, I find jokes such as this one extremely offensive. Would racist or homophobic comments be repeatedly moderated up as "funny"? Or has our society reached the point where the only demographic it's socially acceptable to publicly mock are the Christians?
I want to know why everyone assumes the name of this discovery is Atlantis. How can we know the name of an ancient civilization we discover before we discover it?
Anyway, wouldn't Mediterranis be far more appropriate, given its location?
And when another Jim Dabell wants the same URL?.per works better because you can name your site whatever you want without it being your name.
Why do we need to sort something into categories just to have a label to refer to them? When somebody says "Microsoft", I don't need them to tell me that they are a business before I can understand what they are talking about, and it's not like you can create enough categories that there will be no namespace conflicts.
That's because Microsoft is big and prominent. Let's use another example. If you heard the URL "www.tungsten.com" what would you think it would be about? A site about the element? A company named Tungsten? Someone who's named Charles Tungsten? Some Asian man named Tung Sten? Palm Tungsten handheld computers? Or maybe a website about art, that just assumes the name "tungsten" for its own? There is great ambiguity in TLDs.
I don't really see why we need corporate TLDs. www.google.google? It really doesn't make any sense.
Most of all, I'd like to see a.per domain name reserved exclusively for personal, non-profit websites..com has lost its original purpose (and.net has lost it, even more so.) Users of.org tend to be of more of a non-profit nature than other domain names, but rarely are they actual organizations. We need a return to strictly descriptive TLDs.
for differentiating "hackers" from "crackers" and "malicious hackers" in the eyes of the mainstream press. It could be an important symbol for setting the term "hacker" free from negative connotation.
It's time for us to move beyond the space shuttle for our regular space missions and develop something that works a lot better, a lot cheaper, and a lot more exciting. The shuttle, unfortunately, is necessary at this point to finish the ISS *cough*WASTEOFMONEY*cough* but it's not too late to go to the drawing board and develop a space vehicle (preferably with long-range capabilities) that does not involve getting off the ground by blasting itself off the ground with hundreds of pounds of fuel.
1) Corporations think it's a good idea to add more features to their software. 2) Corporations have no idea what people actually want to do with their software's new features. 3) Corporations fail to realize that what we often want are not new features, but actually smoother design, better ease of use, more speed, and more stability.
Thus, what we get is "bloatware" such as ICQ - where so many new "features" are added to the program that it becomes impossible to use and navigate even when you want to use the program for even the simplest functions. (When I got the latest version of ICQ it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to add a new contact by UIN#.) AIM is headed this way, too.
I can't stand Office XP because of all the stupid features you don't need.
Even Office 97 has a large plethora of thoroughly useless features. Send To Routing Recipient, Send To Fax Recipient, Footnotes, Comments, Document Map, Field, Cross-Reference, Index & Tables, Insert Object, Insert Bookmark, Look Up Changes, Track Changes, Change Case, Style Gallery, Merge Documents, Letter Wizard, Formula
It gets worse as the version numbers get higher. Maybe what we want is more ease of use and less damn paperclip animations.
Remember everyone's excitement over "Virtual Reality" technology, circa 1994? What did it get us?
Clunky helmets, oversized gloves, blurry screens, and generally something very much unlike reality.
Maybe such technology will have practical applications in 30 some years. Imagine playing a game of tennis using balls equipped with these "phantoms" and an invisible opponent from across the country.
Be excited for what the future holds, not tomorrow.
There is nothing wrong with P2P. Nothing. What the real problem is, is knee-jerk Congressmen who see the music piracy war as some sort of drug war that they can actually win. (I'm reminded of the Disney executive who thought that DRM software can be installed in the processor "because all the bits go through there, right?") They realize that it's easier to shut down P2P companies than to actually go after the music pirates.
The problem with a P2P subscription service is that the money for subscriptions goes to the RIAA. Meaning? Independent artists get gypped. This means the easier way for them to make money is to side with the RIAA, who apparantely hates the idea of people listening to music for free.
What's my solution? Micropayments, in a different form. $2 nets you 100 song downloads, and the P2P service monitors the completed downloads, and logs what artists are being downloaded. So for every song you download, 2 cents goes to the artist.
Let's say that, on average, a typical ~obscure~ song gets 100 downloads per day. That's $2 right there for the artist. Now, spread that out over 365 days. $730 in the pocket for the artist. That's a pretty penny for our musician pals.
And if he gets popular, and starts getting 500 downloads per day? $3,650 a year. Those 2 cents add up. A very popular artist who gets, perhaps, 1,500 downloads per day would be looking at $10,950. And remember that people would still be buying CDs.
Considering that the average musician actually sees about 6 cents out of every CD sale, I doubt they'll argue against this idea.
We are just one step closer to becoming one with our computers. I started using this and I kind of slipped into a trance, and my hand started to naturally, instinctively move the mouse in response to the letters my brain was thinking. I'll have to write a letter to a friend using this. It would be a practical purpose for it.
Computers aren't cheap. They never have been. When it comes to food, shelter, medicine, or computers, what do you think has the lowest spending priority for a poor person?
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls."
And whisper'd in the sounds of silence.
Techie fans are more likely to be legally conscious and aware of their rights and the copyright law. I, for one, download (pirate) MP3s, and see if I like the artist/album. If I do, I buy the CD, and the MP3s become legal. If I do not, I delete the MP3s. This exposes me to a wider variety of new music, as I might not be aware of music that's not commonly played, but all it takes is an MP3 download to judge an artist.
Today AudioGalaxy reached an out-of-court settlement with representatives of a class-action spyware suit. To sum up the settlement, AudioGalaxy will pay the spyware victims a lot of money and from now only provide programs for which the user has specifically given permission for the program to install"
Slashdot Mirror
Company ignores customer complaint: "They're not listening to their player base!"
Company responds to and rectifies customer complaint: "They don't have spines! They're caving to the masses!"
Who wants to bet that the logo for the controller will feature some kind of symmetry?
Only a nonpartisan, centrist voice like Robert F. Kennedy is unbiased enough to announce that only the Republicans engage in voter fraud, trickery, and manipulation. There's no corruption in the Democratic party - hasn't Air America Radio taught us anything?
:/
Another great article, kdawson.
Seeing as this is a 4-month-old political opinion piece of a speculative, conspiratorial nature that doesn't even pretend to promote an unbiased or nonpartisan viewpoint, what business does it have on Slashdot?
If Slashdot is going to be linking to Robert Kennedy, Jr's writings, it better also link to those of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Bill O'Reilly. Frankly, I'd rather Slashdot stay away from all of them.
I wish the article itself could be modded down to -1 Flamebait.
The article clearly mentions a partnership with "Mazda, Ford, and GM."
They're 3 different companies. (Though Mazda is 1/3 owned by Ford.)
And besides, as we all remember from several years ago, Ford really sucks.
Isn't this like saying that children's books "contain" R-rated material if you cut them up and rearrange the words and letters?
Should we be rushing to pull The Lorax from the shelves, anyone?
The factual truth is that less than one-tenth of one percent of Catholic priests in the U.S. have even been accused of molestation. This percentage is lower than it is for the general population. This means that, despite what bad comedians would have you believe, if you pick a random person off the street and a random Catholic priest, the Catholic priest is far less likely to be a sexual predator.
As a Catholic, I find jokes such as this one extremely offensive. Would racist or homophobic comments be repeatedly moderated up as "funny"? Or has our society reached the point where the only demographic it's socially acceptable to publicly mock are the Christians?
I want to know why everyone assumes the name of this discovery is Atlantis. How can we know the name of an ancient civilization we discover before we discover it?
Anyway, wouldn't Mediterranis be far more appropriate, given its location?
That's what .name is for.
.per works better because you can name your site whatever you want without it being your name.
And when another Jim Dabell wants the same URL?
Why do we need to sort something into categories just to have a label to refer to them? When somebody says "Microsoft", I don't need them to tell me that they are a business before I can understand what they are talking about, and it's not like you can create enough categories that there will be no namespace conflicts.
That's because Microsoft is big and prominent. Let's use another example. If you heard the URL "www.tungsten.com" what would you think it would be about? A site about the element? A company named Tungsten? Someone who's named Charles Tungsten? Some Asian man named Tung Sten? Palm Tungsten handheld computers? Or maybe a website about art, that just assumes the name "tungsten" for its own? There is great ambiguity in TLDs.
I don't really see why we need corporate TLDs. www.google.google? It really doesn't make any sense.
.per domain name reserved exclusively for personal, non-profit websites. .com has lost its original purpose (and .net has lost it, even more so.) Users of .org tend to be of more of a non-profit nature than other domain names, but rarely are they actual organizations. We need a return to strictly descriptive TLDs.
Most of all, I'd like to see a
We have here definitive proof that "The Gimp" is never used as a story topic.
for differentiating "hackers" from "crackers" and "malicious hackers" in the eyes of the mainstream press. It could be an important symbol for setting the term "hacker" free from negative connotation.
It's time for us to move beyond the space shuttle for our regular space missions and develop something that works a lot better, a lot cheaper, and a lot more exciting. The shuttle, unfortunately, is necessary at this point to finish the ISS *cough*WASTEOFMONEY*cough* but it's not too late to go to the drawing board and develop a space vehicle (preferably with long-range capabilities) that does not involve getting off the ground by blasting itself off the ground with hundreds of pounds of fuel.
-Evan
In software..
1) Corporations think it's a good idea to add more features to their software.
2) Corporations have no idea what people actually want to do with their software's new features.
3) Corporations fail to realize that what we often want are not new features, but actually smoother design, better ease of use, more speed, and more stability.
Thus, what we get is "bloatware" such as ICQ - where so many new "features" are added to the program that it becomes impossible to use and navigate even when you want to use the program for even the simplest functions. (When I got the latest version of ICQ it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to add a new contact by UIN#.) AIM is headed this way, too.
I can't stand Office XP because of all the stupid features you don't need.
Even Office 97 has a large plethora of thoroughly useless features.
Send To Routing Recipient, Send To Fax Recipient, Footnotes, Comments, Document Map, Field, Cross-Reference, Index & Tables, Insert Object, Insert Bookmark, Look Up Changes, Track Changes, Change Case, Style Gallery, Merge Documents, Letter Wizard, Formula
It gets worse as the version numbers get higher. Maybe what we want is more ease of use and less damn paperclip animations.
Looking back through old films, textbooks, documents, etc. when "computer operator" is mentioned as a prospective career for people.
Ah, if only I could be paid to be a computer operator....
The warning labels on the outsides of laser weapons:
CAUTION: DO NOT STARE DIRECTLY INTO LENS
-Evan
Remember everyone's excitement over "Virtual Reality" technology, circa 1994? What did it get us?
Clunky helmets, oversized gloves, blurry screens, and generally something very much unlike reality.
Maybe such technology will have practical applications in 30 some years. Imagine playing a game of tennis using balls equipped with these "phantoms" and an invisible opponent from across the country.
Be excited for what the future holds, not tomorrow.
-Evan
There is nothing wrong with P2P. Nothing. What the real problem is, is knee-jerk Congressmen who see the music piracy war as some sort of drug war that they can actually win. (I'm reminded of the Disney executive who thought that DRM software can be installed in the processor "because all the bits go through there, right?") They realize that it's easier to shut down P2P companies than to actually go after the music pirates.
The problem with a P2P subscription service is that the money for subscriptions goes to the RIAA. Meaning? Independent artists get gypped. This means the easier way for them to make money is to side with the RIAA, who apparantely hates the idea of people listening to music for free.
What's my solution? Micropayments, in a different form. $2 nets you 100 song downloads, and the P2P service monitors the completed downloads, and logs what artists are being downloaded. So for every song you download, 2 cents goes to the artist.
Let's say that, on average, a typical ~obscure~ song gets 100 downloads per day. That's $2 right there for the artist. Now, spread that out over 365 days. $730 in the pocket for the artist. That's a pretty penny for our musician pals.
And if he gets popular, and starts getting 500 downloads per day? $3,650 a year. Those 2 cents add up. A very popular artist who gets, perhaps, 1,500 downloads per day would be looking at $10,950. And remember that people would still be buying CDs.
Considering that the average musician actually sees about 6 cents out of every CD sale, I doubt they'll argue against this idea.
-Evan
Try it for a half hour. It's euphoric.
We are just one step closer to becoming one with our computers. I started using this and I kind of slipped into a trance, and my hand started to naturally, instinctively move the mouse in response to the letters my brain was thinking. I'll have to write a letter to a friend using this. It would be a practical purpose for it.
-Evan
Computers aren't cheap. They never have been. When it comes to food, shelter, medicine, or computers, what do you think has the lowest spending priority for a poor person?
-evan
Google's Cache Of The Page
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls."
And whisper'd in the sounds of silence.
Funny, that I never run into this "cell phone conversation" problem at the symphony.
Techie fans are more likely to be legally conscious and aware of their rights and the copyright law. I, for one, download (pirate) MP3s, and see if I like the artist/album. If I do, I buy the CD, and the MP3s become legal. If I do not, I delete the MP3s. This exposes me to a wider variety of new music, as I might not be aware of music that's not commonly played, but all it takes is an MP3 download to judge an artist.
-Evan
I'd like to see this:
Today AudioGalaxy reached an out-of-court settlement with representatives of a class-action spyware suit. To sum up the settlement, AudioGalaxy will pay the spyware victims a lot of money and from now only provide programs for which the user has specifically given permission for the program to install"