I compeltely disagree with greed-before-need marketing. I think it's probably one of the worst things about our society. In my opinion, our consumer-driven society and the marketing that perpetuates it can be correlated to almost ALL the things wrong with our society.
That's just my personal opinion, which isn't right or wrong. If one of your concerns is that advertising is too much work to pick through, then sure, this sounds like the service for you. I can understand how deciding what to buy is so hard and all. I mean, who has time for research after looking at this falls must-see-tv line up?
Things are never as bad as the cynics say and never as good as the optimists believe; besides governments are becoming less and less important in the world. If anything, I see this technology being used to improve targetted advertising; afterall everything in American society goes back to making dollars. Having a police force keeping people "in line" would be a waste of money.
That thought is analogous to the thought of security through obsecurity. Your line of reasoning is that it is not dangerous simply because it's unlikely. Well, getting into a car accident, on a person to person basis is also unlikely. So I suppose you should pay less attention when driving, because since it's unlikely it is not dangerous.
Being paranoid about these types of things is exactly what keeps them from happening. As soon as we slack off, someone who will benefit from it will use it.
As a side note, I'm really concerned for you if you see improving targeting advertising in this consumer-focused, debt-ridden society as an improtment.
... and there are three words you should be afraid of:
Google Dot Com
I'm not exactly paranoid. But if you look at googles recent developments and purchasing of services; you can see how data such as this could be used in the future.
Couple that with archived search engine results, google maps, google wallet, google froogle, ect and you know a lot about a person does. If you were to then apply these predictive models, you know a lot about what a person will do in the market place. Food for thought.
Many internet banner ad advertising / hosting companies went out of business after pop up blockers became popular. Or after they found out people were driving per click traffic without actually buying anything.
We can also stop this annoying practice by just boycotting the games that contain these.
Or by modding the games to not display the advertisments.
If the publishers that plan to do this don't make any money off of it, they won't continue the practice. They will likely find another intrusive way to force their ilk on us. But it all comes back to money. If they don't make money off of it, they don't do it.
Lets make sure that the metrics they use to track revune and advertising show poor gains. Vote with your wallet, not with slashdot posts!
Good points, but considering that the US is China's #1 buyer of export goods, they aren't going to be calling us out on our debt any time soon.
Futhermore, it's not like the Chinese government are the ones responsible for the piracy, it's their citizens. It'd be in their (the Chinese gov.) best interests to cooperate or act like they are cooperating.
They aren't going to suddenly say: "You accuse our citizens of piracy?!?!? That may be true, but how dare you! Time to pay your debt!"
Assuming they did, how are they even going to enforce it? Go to war with America? No. Force us to pay some other way and cripple our economy? No. Then where would China export all it's crap to? Crippling the US economy hurts China just as much as it does us. More so, probably.
Well, call me crazy, but I was under the impression that office belonged to the President of the United States. After all, each one cites and swears to the following:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Now I could be wrong, but I think the constitution is that document that has all those liberties and privacy garuntees defined and outlined in it. Go figure!
Don't tell me you like being tracked. You may not be able to come up with ways in which this information can be used against you, but it is generally accepted that knowledge gives an advantage, and no businessman will refrain from turning that advantage into more money for himself. There's only one place where this money can come from: your pockets.
Eh, that's making the assumption that BECAUSE they track me, I WILL 100% spend money that I hadn't otherwise intended to spend.
This arguement is invalid for two reasons:
1. The consumer chooses what they spend their money on. If this choice comes from want, need, or marketing techniques, the choice is ALWAYS in the hands of the consumer. They are never forced to spend their money.
2. Assuming that the consumer decided to spend the money, how do you know the marketing techniques involved from cookie data collection didn't help that person buy the product they wanted. If they were intent on buying it anyway based (see #1), then how is the businessman doing the consumer harm by better providing his products and services to the consumer?.
You people act like everyone out there selling something and advertising is evil. People want products, and other people want to provide those products and make a buck off it.
The same people who are crying foul about cookies are probably the SAME people praising google for their innovative business techniques.
Google will soon become the biggest marketing company the world has ever known. They will know what you search on, where you like to go, where you do go, where your friends go, and use this information to provide ads based on YOU and the content you're currently looking at (google ads).
It's already happening. If cookies are evil, then google is Darth Fucking Vader.
Exactly what is wrong with retailers using cookies to determine information about their users and customers?
So cookies gather information about demographics, statistics, and probability for people to buy things. So they use this information to try and make a buck off of you.
Exactly HOW is this different than any other form of commercial advertising in this world today? Now I hate using that "the precident has been sent already" arguement. But no one is actually taking anything away from you that you didn't already provide.
1. You connected to someone's website, and they sent you data and requested data. You still control what you send and what you don't send.
2. Assuming they use the information to market specificaly towards you and people like you, they aren't forcing you to buy anything. If you fall for marketing, custom tailored or not, odds are you wanted the product anyway. If you didn't and the marketing "tricked you" then controlling your personal information is the least of your worries and you need evaluate your consumer whore life style.
I'm just having a real hard time finding the expressed evil in cookies, and information/demographic gather in the first place when everyone controls their own level of involvement and commitment based on what they chose to buy.
I used to do almost the exact same thing you are describing. I didn't alter the web pages at all, but I ran the metrics and statistics piece from the data we collected. Luckily, most of our users opt to create a login for the benefits it gives them when browsing our site. I say luckily because it also helps us track them and produce metrics that make their lives easier. For the customers who don't have a login, we'd still generate a session guid and create a cookie. I later found this data to be bogus because over 20% of the non logged in users actually were the same customers not getting caught by the cookie due to cookies being deleted ect. But either way, it helps us help the customer.
I worked on the metrics for both the support and sales end of our page. Using the login and cookie data, I was able to construct probabilities to fail out of the website. We then designed easier portals and linking structures. We completely rethought the way customers used our website and increased support article fixes (as deteremined by "did this solve your issue" survey on the website) by over 40% and decreased the amount of sales browser drop outs by something like 10%.
All chalked up to a site redesign... which means users were frusterated with our design, which we fixed by examining their habbits, failure points, and data.
I also know that the same data my team used to help them, is also tracked in our marketing databases to offer dynamic content in order to have a higher chance of appealing to make subsequent sales. They even do things like IP location look up to see where you live and what type of products to offer you. You can still buy all the same products, but the order is changed to reflect your areas demographic. So it's not ALL good usage of this data, but marketing is marketing.
It's both good and evil, but without measuring who and how people use websites, they are tough to improve. Not only that, but they are tough to PROVE you've improved them without managing metrics and statistics.
At any rate, I think leaving cookies on by default helps the situations more than it hurts it. So what if people use it to try and make a buck... the consumer ALWAYS has the right to 1. disable the passing of the information and 2. to not buy from any medium which requires them to reveal more information than they are willing.
1. Crude oil may have to be processed into gasoline for us to use it in automobiles, but oil has already had thousands if not millions of years of processing under the pressures of the Earth. With Ethanol, you're starting from raw materials, so of course it's going to take more energy to process into the equivlant of gasoline.
2. The costs of oil are far greater than the money spent processing it. What about the economic costs of having to over build car engine technology to mitigate exhaust pollution? Catylitic converters use some fairly expensive materials. What about the economic costs of dealing with polluted air? What about the economic costs of keeping our military topped off with oil so we can go "fight terra" and "keep the homeland safe" aka, keep the homeland filled with plastics and oil? The military takes up over 30% of tax payer money, and it's sole purpose these days appears to be securing oil for western countries.
3. What about the tactical cost of keeping all your eggs in one basket? There would be distinct tactical advantage for America's military and cival sector to have another source of energy in case the rug were pulled out from underneath oil. Major wars have been decided by cutting off oil supplies, and if there was ever another world wide conflict, you better believe that oil control will be the tactical ace up the sleeve. Without oil, our fancy war machines do nothing. Having a secondary source of energy is very important in this regard.
So yea, the article says that ethanol costs more and requires more energy to produce. Well, that may be true in the short term. That is, unless we feel like digging a huge hole, putting a bunch of carbon based corpses and plants, and covering it up for a few millennia. If you want to speed up that process, it's going to take more energy.
Wind doesn't "strike" a tree. I flows around into and subsequently around it. It wouldn't affect it's velocity at all, because what is moving the wind, pressure, wouldn't be changed. You know that whole atmosphere thing? Yea... it is kinda tall.
And even if it were to be changed, 99.9999% of the wind that has any impact on the weather is in the jet stream.
So unless you're planning to build some 20k high tall wind turbines, I don't think we're going to cause the next ice age, be destroyed by fire and brimstone, or stop the planets rotation any time soon.
I don't think your anecdote counts. The article isn't saying: All time on the internet is wasted time. Afterall, business don't equip thier employees with the internet so they can slack off. No, it has practical business purposes. Business purposes that you've just demonstrated. What you just described would not be classified as "slacking off". Instead, we call that "research".
If any of my people complained that they could do their work in 45 minutes, I'd find them at least 6 more hours of duties to do. You know, given that we expect them to waste at least one and all.
If I couldn't find them more work to do, I'd probably reconsider why I had them staffed in the first place. If ultimately it was determined that they are neccesary as an on call basis, I'd let them do whatever the want as long as they completed the obligations *I* gave them. You can't expect anything more from your employees.
Once upon a time you could buy a Dell desktop or notebook with linux on it, but you can't anymore.
It's not because of some microsoft conpsiracy, it's because driver support is laxing on brand new launching systems. And also because the tech support costs would increase, not to mention the sustaining costs of having multiple OSes.
It's not Dell trying to support some Microsoft conspiracy. You can still buy notebooks and destkops without an os at all. Allthough you may have to call to do it, instead of order from the website.
That's a much better point than the GP. I also disagree with DRM. But I also see the reason for companies to want it. Fair use is fair use, but we can't overlook the fact that there IS and will be piracy involved, especially when it would be so easy to do.
This is not a problem of the service however, but a problem of the music distribution medium and the fact that the artists don't have control over their own rights.
And this business offering is stopping them from doing that how?
Last I checked it will still be quite possible to learn about non-DRM digital media and continue that practice.
Frankly, I'm amazed that people are so clueless that they can think they internet is theirs. How do you suggest people learn in the first place if they can't use the internet until they learn? Or were you born with this innate l33t knowledge.
It really sounds like you're bullied by those losers down the hall and you have a personal grudge against them because they made fun of non DRM Britney Spears collection.
You have no concept of freedom except your own. Freedom is extended to everyone, even when it makes your own inconvienent.
Dell continues to protect Microsoft's desktop monopoly.
How exactly? They offer alternatives and the option to choose no OS at all.
Refuse to do business with Dell.
That's well within your rights to choose to do so, and I encourage that. However, if you are doing so based on the above, then you are a misinformed consumer.
This is being marketed those people who DON'T know what they are doing. You don't represent the entire market.
Since when were tuition dollars paying for this?
News flash there buddy, freedom INCLUDES companies doing whatever they want, along with you. They aren't throwing DRM at you, because you aren't FORCED to use it. They aren't robbing you of your tuition dollars.
I personally think the idea will probably not see any money and fail, but that's business. Why are you making it a crusade as if it's an attack on your freedom when you aren't forced to change anything about the way YOU CHOOSE to listen to your music.
Congratulations, do you want a cookie? A gold star perhaps?
Quick, someone call Dell & Napster! Tell them that an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot doesn't need thier service and to halt all production immediately!
I don't plan on using this service for some of the exact same reasons you do. Additionally, I prefer listening to the actual CD itself in most cases. Or when I do listen to my digital library, I like knowing I ripped it myself with my own personal fanatical settings and preferences.
But I still fail to see why that merits a boycott just because you, personally, have no need for their service and product. Is this service going to do you harm some how? Is it going to prevent you from doing exactly what you are doing so far? No. Because you won't participate in it.
It's actually a rather decent offering with a specific market in mind. Clearly you and I aren't part of that market, but why ruin it for those who might be?
As laudable as it might sound, China doesn't want its citizens knowing about western technology. The less China's citizens know about the outside world, the less China has to explain, therefore the less China appears to be hiding from its Citizens.
I wonder how much of China's decision had to do with actual spam, rather than an additional form of information control.
Spam could potentially provide China's citizens with additional knowledge the government doesn't want them to know about.
It also cuts down on the amount of bulk China has to process to know what's happening with "its" internet. If China doesn't have to contend with spam, it can devote more resources to scanning their citizens software for disent.
Hey, I just thought of something: Maybe spam isn't a malicious, egregious and unsolicited marketing technique after all! Maybe it's just those countries trying to clog the internet filters with junk so they can disguise their normal communications. Spam is freeeeedom! If you try to squash spam, you're just one of them!
The revolution exists in penis enlargers and pain killers and we didn't even know it!
Because Osama doesn't isn't a media mogul with an empire of politicians begging for "contributions". Didn't you get the memo? "Infringing on copyrights" is a more henious crime than "stabbing someone in the spinal cord with an ice pick".
I wonder if we added: "Pirated 200 terrabytes of music and movies from the MPAA and RIAA" next to "Orchestrated and funded a terrorist entity responsible for thousands of murders globally", if we'd catch him any faster.
Slashdot Mirror
I compeltely disagree with greed-before-need marketing. I think it's probably one of the worst things about our society. In my opinion, our consumer-driven society and the marketing that perpetuates it can be correlated to almost ALL the things wrong with our society.
That's just my personal opinion, which isn't right or wrong. If one of your concerns is that advertising is too much work to pick through, then sure, this sounds like the service for you. I can understand how deciding what to buy is so hard and all. I mean, who has time for research after looking at this falls must-see-tv line up?
That thought is analogous to the thought of security through obsecurity. Your line of reasoning is that it is not dangerous simply because it's unlikely. Well, getting into a car accident, on a person to person basis is also unlikely. So I suppose you should pay less attention when driving, because since it's unlikely it is not dangerous.
Being paranoid about these types of things is exactly what keeps them from happening. As soon as we slack off, someone who will benefit from it will use it.
As a side note, I'm really concerned for you if you see improving targeting advertising in this consumer-focused, debt-ridden society as an improtment.
Google Dot Com
I'm not exactly paranoid. But if you look at googles recent developments and purchasing of services; you can see how data such as this could be used in the future.
Couple that with archived search engine results, google maps, google wallet, google froogle, ect and you know a lot about a person does. If you were to then apply these predictive models, you know a lot about what a person will do in the market place. Food for thought.
Marketing marketing marketing.
We can also stop this annoying practice by just boycotting the games that contain these.
Or by modding the games to not display the advertisments.
If the publishers that plan to do this don't make any money off of it, they won't continue the practice. They will likely find another intrusive way to force their ilk on us. But it all comes back to money. If they don't make money off of it, they don't do it.
Lets make sure that the metrics they use to track revune and advertising show poor gains. Vote with your wallet, not with slashdot posts!
Futhermore, it's not like the Chinese government are the ones responsible for the piracy, it's their citizens. It'd be in their (the Chinese gov.) best interests to cooperate or act like they are cooperating.
They aren't going to suddenly say: "You accuse our citizens of piracy?!?!? That may be true, but how dare you! Time to pay your debt!"
Assuming they did, how are they even going to enforce it? Go to war with America? No. Force us to pay some other way and cripple our economy? No. Then where would China export all it's crap to? Crippling the US economy hurts China just as much as it does us. More so, probably.
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Now I could be wrong, but I think the constitution is that document that has all those liberties and privacy garuntees defined and outlined in it. Go figure!
Cookies aren't egrigious because the end user has the right and ability to turn them off.
Cookies do help some of the time.
And above all else: You can always choose not to visit, use or buy from a site whose practices you do not agree with.
I guess my original post wasn't very well organized in that sense, but that's my point.
Eh, that's making the assumption that BECAUSE they track me, I WILL 100% spend money that I hadn't otherwise intended to spend.
This arguement is invalid for two reasons:
1. The consumer chooses what they spend their money on. If this choice comes from want, need, or marketing techniques, the choice is ALWAYS in the hands of the consumer. They are never forced to spend their money.
2. Assuming that the consumer decided to spend the money, how do you know the marketing techniques involved from cookie data collection didn't help that person buy the product they wanted. If they were intent on buying it anyway based (see #1), then how is the businessman doing the consumer harm by better providing his products and services to the consumer?.
You people act like everyone out there selling something and advertising is evil. People want products, and other people want to provide those products and make a buck off it.
The same people who are crying foul about cookies are probably the SAME people praising google for their innovative business techniques.
Google will soon become the biggest marketing company the world has ever known. They will know what you search on, where you like to go, where you do go, where your friends go, and use this information to provide ads based on YOU and the content you're currently looking at (google ads).
It's already happening. If cookies are evil, then google is Darth Fucking Vader.
So cookies gather information about demographics, statistics, and probability for people to buy things. So they use this information to try and make a buck off of you.
Exactly HOW is this different than any other form of commercial advertising in this world today? Now I hate using that "the precident has been sent already" arguement. But no one is actually taking anything away from you that you didn't already provide. 1. You connected to someone's website, and they sent you data and requested data. You still control what you send and what you don't send.
2. Assuming they use the information to market specificaly towards you and people like you, they aren't forcing you to buy anything. If you fall for marketing, custom tailored or not, odds are you wanted the product anyway. If you didn't and the marketing "tricked you" then controlling your personal information is the least of your worries and you need evaluate your consumer whore life style.
I'm just having a real hard time finding the expressed evil in cookies, and information/demographic gather in the first place when everyone controls their own level of involvement and commitment based on what they chose to buy.
I worked on the metrics for both the support and sales end of our page. Using the login and cookie data, I was able to construct probabilities to fail out of the website. We then designed easier portals and linking structures. We completely rethought the way customers used our website and increased support article fixes (as deteremined by "did this solve your issue" survey on the website) by over 40% and decreased the amount of sales browser drop outs by something like 10%.
All chalked up to a site redesign... which means users were frusterated with our design, which we fixed by examining their habbits, failure points, and data.
I also know that the same data my team used to help them, is also tracked in our marketing databases to offer dynamic content in order to have a higher chance of appealing to make subsequent sales. They even do things like IP location look up to see where you live and what type of products to offer you. You can still buy all the same products, but the order is changed to reflect your areas demographic. So it's not ALL good usage of this data, but marketing is marketing.
It's both good and evil, but without measuring who and how people use websites, they are tough to improve. Not only that, but they are tough to PROVE you've improved them without managing metrics and statistics.
At any rate, I think leaving cookies on by default helps the situations more than it hurts it. So what if people use it to try and make a buck... the consumer ALWAYS has the right to 1. disable the passing of the information and 2. to not buy from any medium which requires them to reveal more information than they are willing.
2. The costs of oil are far greater than the money spent processing it. What about the economic costs of having to over build car engine technology to mitigate exhaust pollution? Catylitic converters use some fairly expensive materials. What about the economic costs of dealing with polluted air? What about the economic costs of keeping our military topped off with oil so we can go "fight terra" and "keep the homeland safe" aka, keep the homeland filled with plastics and oil? The military takes up over 30% of tax payer money, and it's sole purpose these days appears to be securing oil for western countries.
3. What about the tactical cost of keeping all your eggs in one basket? There would be distinct tactical advantage for America's military and cival sector to have another source of energy in case the rug were pulled out from underneath oil. Major wars have been decided by cutting off oil supplies, and if there was ever another world wide conflict, you better believe that oil control will be the tactical ace up the sleeve. Without oil, our fancy war machines do nothing. Having a secondary source of energy is very important in this regard.
So yea, the article says that ethanol costs more and requires more energy to produce. Well, that may be true in the short term. That is, unless we feel like digging a huge hole, putting a bunch of carbon based corpses and plants, and covering it up for a few millennia. If you want to speed up that process, it's going to take more energy.
Ethanol is a good thing.
http://www.redhat.com/
And even if it were to be changed, 99.9999% of the wind that has any impact on the weather is in the jet stream.
So unless you're planning to build some 20k high tall wind turbines, I don't think we're going to cause the next ice age, be destroyed by fire and brimstone, or stop the planets rotation any time soon.
If any of my people complained that they could do their work in 45 minutes, I'd find them at least 6 more hours of duties to do. You know, given that we expect them to waste at least one and all.
If I couldn't find them more work to do, I'd probably reconsider why I had them staffed in the first place. If ultimately it was determined that they are neccesary as an on call basis, I'd let them do whatever the want as long as they completed the obligations *I* gave them. You can't expect anything more from your employees.
It's not because of some microsoft conpsiracy, it's because driver support is laxing on brand new launching systems. And also because the tech support costs would increase, not to mention the sustaining costs of having multiple OSes.
It's not Dell trying to support some Microsoft conspiracy. You can still buy notebooks and destkops without an os at all. Allthough you may have to call to do it, instead of order from the website.
I pretty much agree that yours is way cooler, but it doesn't mean you're more important. You're an elitist prick. Valuable bandwidth indeed.
This is not a problem of the service however, but a problem of the music distribution medium and the fact that the artists don't have control over their own rights.
That's another discussion though
Last I checked it will still be quite possible to learn about non-DRM digital media and continue that practice.
Frankly, I'm amazed that people are so clueless that they can think they internet is theirs. How do you suggest people learn in the first place if they can't use the internet until they learn? Or were you born with this innate l33t knowledge.
It really sounds like you're bullied by those losers down the hall and you have a personal grudge against them because they made fun of non DRM Britney Spears collection.
You have no concept of freedom except your own. Freedom is extended to everyone, even when it makes your own inconvienent.
Dell refuses to offer consumers an alternative to Microsoft.
You can buy servers with Linux, and Desktop PCs and Notebooks without an OS. http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?cs=555&oc=PE1420SATAPAD&m_8=40GS&c=us&l=en&s=biz" >Look at all those OS choices!
Dell continues to protect Microsoft's desktop monopoly. How exactly? They offer alternatives and the option to choose no OS at all.
Refuse to do business with Dell.
That's well within your rights to choose to do so, and I encourage that. However, if you are doing so based on the above, then you are a misinformed consumer.
This is being marketed those people who DON'T know what they are doing. You don't represent the entire market.
Since when were tuition dollars paying for this?
News flash there buddy, freedom INCLUDES companies doing whatever they want, along with you. They aren't throwing DRM at you, because you aren't FORCED to use it. They aren't robbing you of your tuition dollars.
I personally think the idea will probably not see any money and fail, but that's business. Why are you making it a crusade as if it's an attack on your freedom when you aren't forced to change anything about the way YOU CHOOSE to listen to your music.
Quick, someone call Dell & Napster! Tell them that an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot doesn't need thier service and to halt all production immediately!
I don't plan on using this service for some of the exact same reasons you do. Additionally, I prefer listening to the actual CD itself in most cases. Or when I do listen to my digital library, I like knowing I ripped it myself with my own personal fanatical settings and preferences.
But I still fail to see why that merits a boycott just because you, personally, have no need for their service and product. Is this service going to do you harm some how? Is it going to prevent you from doing exactly what you are doing so far? No. Because you won't participate in it.
It's actually a rather decent offering with a specific market in mind. Clearly you and I aren't part of that market, but why ruin it for those who might be?
Grow up.
As laudable as it might sound, China doesn't want its citizens knowing about western technology. The less China's citizens know about the outside world, the less China has to explain, therefore the less China appears to be hiding from its Citizens.
Spam could potentially provide China's citizens with additional knowledge the government doesn't want them to know about.
It also cuts down on the amount of bulk China has to process to know what's happening with "its" internet. If China doesn't have to contend with spam, it can devote more resources to scanning their citizens software for disent.
Hey, I just thought of something: Maybe spam isn't a malicious, egregious and unsolicited marketing technique after all! Maybe it's just those countries trying to clog the internet filters with junk so they can disguise their normal communications. Spam is freeeeedom! If you try to squash spam, you're just one of them!
The revolution exists in penis enlargers and pain killers and we didn't even know it!
I wonder if we added: "Pirated 200 terrabytes of music and movies from the MPAA and RIAA" next to "Orchestrated and funded a terrorist entity responsible for thousands of murders globally", if we'd catch him any faster.