I can't believe Firefox don't state this anywhere easily accessible (I've read most the upgrading documents and never seen this mentioned, only something about editing non-existent config files which didn't work for me).
Previously I couldn't understand why on earth Firefox changed the system, but now after changing back from the new system I find it a little annoying having to trek the mouse across the screen to close every tab.
The great problem though with all modern commercialised democracy's is that although you can complain through channels like this, it doesn't mean you can make the tiniest bit of difference.
At the end of the day, a few thousand people may have read your post (maybe more, probably less) but tens of millions of people will see the political party TV ads tonight who will have their chance to twist the truth however they see fit. Rupert Murdoch (and friends) have true free speech that actually reaches enough people to make a difference but really for you and I, - who's "free speech" has zero chance of ever making any difference to anything - do we really have free speech when it has zero chance of bringing about change?
Surely speech is only really "free speech" if it has the capability to bring about change?
No, No, No. They have to do it all at once for dramatic effect. Besides if they did it at a rate of one $100 bill a second it would take around 23 days according to my lousy maths skills.
And watching them do that for 23 days would be almost as boring as watching the extended "director's cut" edition of the Doom movie! Although of course, 23 days still wouldn't be long enough for me to recite the entire list of plot holes in the film. (with the first hole being the complete lack of an actual plot!)
I'd of thought the Hollywood guys would have got the message with Doom's amazing flop. It'd be a heck of a lot simpler for the lot of them to just chuck their money in a bin and set it alight.
I would agree that IE is more responsive on Win 98 than Firefox is. But then again as the first version of Firefox was released almost 6 years after Win 98 I don't think this is surprising. I must say though that after installing Win 98 a couple of months ago on a computer which was really slow running Win XP, I miss the good old days when speed was more important than fading menu's etc.
Besides which it no longer even has anything to do with America Online / AOL Time Warner Inc. as the company recently sold this UK arm. I was surprised when I first heard this as the UK is a very lucrative market being one of the most broadband connected countries on earth. It seems though this was actually the reason for the sale. As elsewhere, AOL UK has struggled to make money on broadband connections and with the UK having one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world it seems the biggest worldwide ISP of them all just couldn't compete.
I just wonder if parallels could be drawn with General Motors current problems in the USA?
I know plenty of people who won't switch to Firefox from IE for the exact same reason. Deep down they understand that Firefox is a much better browser, but they find computers so intimidating that they are scared stiff about something so simple as switching their web browser.
People on slashdot often forget that we do not represent the majority. Just because people like us recognise when something is far better and are willing to spend 20 minutes switching, the majority are terrified that changing anything on their computer will stop it working (or I guess something along those lines).
Which is why there are so many countless stories of irrational 'upgradeaphobia' (my word, I claim it!) by otherwise quite intelligent people.
Here in the UK (where this scheme is occurring) we get free healthcare so no health insurance premiums anyway, in terms of car insurance: if someone was spending a lot of time at the pub then they should pay extra for car insurance, especially if they drive to and from the pub as it's a lot more likely they are going to have a crash. That way, us non-drink drivers don't have to pay for them.
Besides, the story exaggerates quite a bit. The places introducing this are all nightclubs (or bars that wish they were nightclubs) in the centre of towns and cities, and fingerprinting is only planned for weekend (+thursday which is also a big drinking night in the UK) evenings. Anyone who is driving home after a night out in a bar/club (unless they haven't been drinking) deserves a straight ban in my opinion. I'm not some old granny or evangelical freak and as a university (college in USA?) student I go out to nightclubs all the time, but I'd never drive home from such a place, it's just plain wrong to put everyone in such danger.
If the fingerprint system can help convict idiot retards who do this then all the better.
I think this is entirely reasonable. Only bloody idiots drive to bars / pubs anyway. If someone knows they are going to engage in an activity which will make them a bad driver yet still driver their car then they ought to be pay more.
One size doesn't always fit all though. The world has a multitude of different cultures and I for one think they should be respected. People try to counter this by saying "if people of country X didn't want country Y's product they wouldn't buy it" but this is misleading because one thing almost every culture has in common is everyone wanting to pay the cheapest possible price for an item, regardless of any more subtle drawbacks (like lack of warranty, risk of fire as well as any possible cultural side-effects).
I find it quite shocking the anti-piracy ads at the start of legally purchased DVDs these days. It's annoying that they can't be done for blatent lying, as you point out they clearly refer state that "copyright infringement" is "theft" when clearly there different laws and totally different areas of the law. Whats worse though is that they even compare it to much more serious crimes like mugging, burglary and shoplifting; all of which are actually criminal offences.
Personally I can't help but wonder if this is seriosuly counter-productive. They are telling people who have actually paid the ridiculously high price of a DVD that they could have got it for free if they downloaded it.
"Why does this have to be a partisan issue instead of a cut and dry, "creepy old man" issue?"
Uhh it was a simple joke! Your the only one making it a partisan issue. It's simply a matter of fact that the guy was a Republican and the Original Poster referred to him as such. You seem to object to this as partisan implying that he is highlighting the fact he was a Republican Congressman but then you yourself refer to it as a "creepy old man issue", highlighting the fact that he was male. Surely that is just as partisan!
At the end of the day it was a joke. It is the media who prominently pointed out the guy was a Republican and to work jokes need to refer to the person who the joke is about through a reference people can identify. I laughed at the joke, wheras "Some creepy old man wants boy scouts ym nicknames" just isn't funny!
Umm, I think your confusing the BBC TV program "Question Time" with the weekly House of Commons event "Prime Minister's Questions". The two are completely unrelated and this story refers to the BBC TV program. Keith Vas was one of the MPs on the panel being asked questions.
How one random person voicing her opinion in a one line question/statement can make international news, I don't know!
The TV program in question is a sort of "letters to the editor" program but where members of the general public ask MP's (meaning "Members of Parliment" - the British equiv. of probably "Senators" in the USA)) questions. As is the case here though, often the members of the public are just making one-line political statements rather than asking actually meaningful questions.
"Following up the banning of Bully by British retailers"
This is a bit of an over-statement. According to the BBC: Currys and PC World, two shops which although big names for computers and electronics equipment but afaik quite small in terms of computer game sales, have said they won't stock the game (for the time being at least, but if the past is anything to go by they probably will in the future).
The big boys in the Computer Game sales industry, shops like Game, HMV, Virgin and Woolworths etc. have all specifically said they will stock the game. Besides, the game only has a 15+ certificate, hardly encouraging massive censorship.
How can they justify calling information like your IP Address, website cookies etc. "anonymous data". Unless your at an internet café and enter false info into any websites you visit, obviously IP address and some cookies can be used to personally identify exactly who you are.
Also, they'll need to do a lot more than just bury this disclaimer deep in the EULA to get around Data protection laws in many EU countries. The article states a piece of paper included in the game. Not sure how this works for people who download it though.
"For some reason 'Deptartment' gave me a chuckle- though I presume that was a typo."
No, I meant it as a cunning and witty pun to portray to other intellectually competent individuals, my sense of dissatisfaction at the incompetence and political bias existent within the DOJ which resulted in allowing Microsoft to get off pretty much Scot-free......pfft, your right, it was a typo:)
My god, have you got nothing better to do.
I can't even be bothered to read all the crap you've written there.
Go get a life. Or atleast start an arguement with someone who gives a damn.
as the Deptartment of Justice accused Microsoft of actually stating in internal memos. Like you say, it's alot cheaper for a company like Microsoft to steal someone else's market than to gamble in creating a new one.
You seem to have intentionally misinterpreted my post.
The previous poster had given a knee-jerk response to a study based on his own initial thoughts. That is what I was criticising, nothing more, nothing less. My post obeys these "standards" because I actually read his post before I was drew my conclusions on it.
I made it perfectly clear in my post that I have not read the report but that has nothing to do with anything. The report's conclusions may well be completely false, partially false or 100% spot on; but that is for commenting on by academic peers with the appropriate expertise and who cruically has actually read the report, not by some arrogant individual who had obviously not even bothered to do that.
Now your just being stupid. You read what someone says before replying. Just like you should read a study before criticising it. If you then disagree with the research then fine, but criticising something without reading it is moronic.
Disagreeing with a study that you haven't even read does not show a thinking mind, it shows a very arrogant person who automatically assumes they know more than everyone else. That is NOT a good thing.
The person in question was not "being skeptical", to be a skeptic you have to know what you are actually being skeptical about. The person in question basically said "no it's not due to what these people have concluded after spending over 5 years researching, what they obviously have a mountain of evidence for; it's what I've decided off the top of my head it probably is".
If you think the world needs people like that than good help us all if you become a world leader.
Thats not what he appears to me to be stating. To me it appears he is drawing his own conclusions about a report he has not actually read. Rather than read the conclusions of an expert who has spent years studying thousands of people and researching the data and results, he has decided "Off the top of my head I would say it is actually due to this or that".
He is saying the exact same thing the researchers probably wondered 6 or 7 years ago before they actually undertook the study. The poster compalins "Correlation doesn't equal Causation" but he is using the exact same small-minded, unresearched, hypothesis drawing which leads to such news reports and examples of bad journalism.
I'm sorry if I seem hostile, but if the great-grandposter actually has done his own peer-reviewed, 2.2 thousand people study and reached that conclusion, fair enough; if he has actually read the report - which will undoubtably investigate his quite obvious hypothesis on the matter - then he is committing plagerism; but I'm pretty certain what he is really doing is imagining himself as some sort of omniscient being who knows the true answer just by spending a few seconds thinking about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks loads!
:|
I can't believe Firefox don't state this anywhere easily accessible (I've read most the upgrading documents and never seen this mentioned, only something about editing non-existent config files which didn't work for me).
Previously I couldn't understand why on earth Firefox changed the system, but now after changing back from the new system I find it a little annoying having to trek the mouse across the screen to close every tab.
Hmm, not sure which way I prefer anymore
The great problem though with all modern commercialised democracy's is that although you can complain through channels like this, it doesn't mean you can make the tiniest bit of difference.
At the end of the day, a few thousand people may have read your post (maybe more, probably less) but tens of millions of people will see the political party TV ads tonight who will have their chance to twist the truth however they see fit. Rupert Murdoch (and friends) have true free speech that actually reaches enough people to make a difference but really for you and I, - who's "free speech" has zero chance of ever making any difference to anything - do we really have free speech when it has zero chance of bringing about change?
Surely speech is only really "free speech" if it has the capability to bring about change?
The sarcasm in your post makes it confusing.
No, No, No. They have to do it all at once for dramatic effect.
Besides if they did it at a rate of one $100 bill a second it would take around 23 days according to my lousy maths skills.
And watching them do that for 23 days would be almost as boring as watching the extended "director's cut" edition of the Doom movie!
Although of course, 23 days still wouldn't be long enough for me to recite the entire list of plot holes in the film.
(with the first hole being the complete lack of an actual plot!)
I'd of thought the Hollywood guys would have got the message with Doom's amazing flop. It'd be a heck of a lot simpler for the lot of them to just chuck their money in a bin and set it alight.
I would agree that IE is more responsive on Win 98 than Firefox is. But then again as the first version of Firefox was released almost 6 years after Win 98 I don't think this is surprising. I must say though that after installing Win 98 a couple of months ago on a computer which was really slow running Win XP, I miss the good old days when speed was more important than fading menu's etc.
I get it, I just don't agree with it!
Besides which it no longer even has anything to do with America Online / AOL Time Warner Inc. as the company recently sold this UK arm. I was surprised when I first heard this as the UK is a very lucrative market being one of the most broadband connected countries on earth. It seems though this was actually the reason for the sale. As elsewhere, AOL UK has struggled to make money on broadband connections and with the UK having one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world it seems the biggest worldwide ISP of them all just couldn't compete.
I just wonder if parallels could be drawn with General Motors current problems in the USA?
I know plenty of people who won't switch to Firefox from IE for the exact same reason. Deep down they understand that Firefox is a much better browser, but they find computers so intimidating that they are scared stiff about something so simple as switching their web browser.
People on slashdot often forget that we do not represent the majority. Just because people like us recognise when something is far better and are willing to spend 20 minutes switching, the majority are terrified that changing anything on their computer will stop it working (or I guess something along those lines).
Which is why there are so many countless stories of irrational 'upgradeaphobia' (my word, I claim it!) by otherwise quite intelligent people.
Sure, but that doesn't make it necessarily right. Some choices we all can make are bad for the larger society.
Here in the UK (where this scheme is occurring) we get free healthcare so no health insurance premiums anyway, in terms of car insurance: if someone was spending a lot of time at the pub then they should pay extra for car insurance, especially if they drive to and from the pub as it's a lot more likely they are going to have a crash. That way, us non-drink drivers don't have to pay for them.
Besides, the story exaggerates quite a bit. The places introducing this are all nightclubs (or bars that wish they were nightclubs) in the centre of towns and cities, and fingerprinting is only planned for weekend (+thursday which is also a big drinking night in the UK) evenings. Anyone who is driving home after a night out in a bar/club (unless they haven't been drinking) deserves a straight ban in my opinion. I'm not some old granny or evangelical freak and as a university (college in USA?) student I go out to nightclubs all the time, but I'd never drive home from such a place, it's just plain wrong to put everyone in such danger.
If the fingerprint system can help convict idiot retards who do this then all the better.
I think this is entirely reasonable. Only bloody idiots drive to bars / pubs anyway. If someone knows they are going to engage in an activity which will make them a bad driver yet still driver their car then they ought to be pay more.
One size doesn't always fit all though. The world has a multitude of different cultures and I for one think they should be respected. People try to counter this by saying "if people of country X didn't want country Y's product they wouldn't buy it" but this is misleading because one thing almost every culture has in common is everyone wanting to pay the cheapest possible price for an item, regardless of any more subtle drawbacks (like lack of warranty, risk of fire as well as any possible cultural side-effects).
I find it quite shocking the anti-piracy ads at the start of legally purchased DVDs these days. It's annoying that they can't be done for blatent lying, as you point out they clearly refer state that "copyright infringement" is "theft" when clearly there different laws and totally different areas of the law. Whats worse though is that they even compare it to much more serious crimes like mugging, burglary and shoplifting; all of which are actually criminal offences.
Personally I can't help but wonder if this is seriosuly counter-productive. They are telling people who have actually paid the ridiculously high price of a DVD that they could have got it for free if they downloaded it.
"Why does this have to be a partisan issue instead of a cut and dry, "creepy old man" issue?"
Uhh it was a simple joke! Your the only one making it a partisan issue. It's simply a matter of fact that the guy was a Republican and the Original Poster referred to him as such. You seem to object to this as partisan implying that he is highlighting the fact he was a Republican Congressman but then you yourself refer to it as a "creepy old man issue", highlighting the fact that he was male. Surely that is just as partisan!
At the end of the day it was a joke. It is the media who prominently pointed out the guy was a Republican and to work jokes need to refer to the person who the joke is about through a reference people can identify. I laughed at the joke, wheras "Some creepy old man wants boy scouts ym nicknames" just isn't funny!
Umm, I think your confusing the BBC TV program "Question Time" with the weekly House of Commons event "Prime Minister's Questions". The two are completely unrelated and this story refers to the BBC TV program. Keith Vas was one of the MPs on the panel being asked questions.
How one random person voicing her opinion in a one line question/statement can make international news, I don't know!
The TV program in question is a sort of "letters to the editor" program but where members of the general public ask MP's (meaning "Members of Parliment" - the British equiv. of probably "Senators" in the USA)) questions. As is the case here though, often the members of the public are just making one-line political statements rather than asking actually meaningful questions.
"Following up the banning of Bully by British retailers"
This is a bit of an over-statement. According to the BBC: Currys and PC World, two shops which although big names for computers and electronics equipment but afaik quite small in terms of computer game sales, have said they won't stock the game (for the time being at least, but if the past is anything to go by they probably will in the future).
The big boys in the Computer Game sales industry, shops like Game, HMV, Virgin and Woolworths etc. have all specifically said they will stock the game. Besides, the game only has a 15+ certificate, hardly encouraging massive censorship.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6063502.stm - Article on the stores censoring the game (but keep in mind they will all probably stock the game in 6 months time anyway)
How can they justify calling information like your IP Address, website cookies etc. "anonymous data". Unless your at an internet café and enter false info into any websites you visit, obviously IP address and some cookies can be used to personally identify exactly who you are.
Also, they'll need to do a lot more than just bury this disclaimer deep in the EULA to get around Data protection laws in many EU countries. The article states a piece of paper included in the game. Not sure how this works for people who download it though.
"For some reason 'Deptartment' gave me a chuckle- though I presume that was a typo."
...pfft, your right, it was a typo :)
No, I meant it as a cunning and witty pun to portray to other intellectually competent individuals, my sense of dissatisfaction at the incompetence and political bias existent within the DOJ which resulted in allowing Microsoft to get off pretty much Scot-free...
My god, have you got nothing better to do. I can't even be bothered to read all the crap you've written there. Go get a life. Or atleast start an arguement with someone who gives a damn.
That's the basic Microsoft business tactic.
d _extinguish
"Embrace, extend and extinguish"
as the Deptartment of Justice accused Microsoft of actually stating in internal memos. Like you say, it's alot cheaper for a company like Microsoft to steal someone else's market than to gamble in creating a new one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_an
You seem to have intentionally misinterpreted my post.
The previous poster had given a knee-jerk response to a study based on his own initial thoughts. That is what I was criticising, nothing more, nothing less. My post obeys these "standards" because I actually read his post before I was drew my conclusions on it.
I made it perfectly clear in my post that I have not read the report but that has nothing to do with anything. The report's conclusions may well be completely false, partially false or 100% spot on; but that is for commenting on by academic peers with the appropriate expertise and who cruically has actually read the report, not by some arrogant individual who had obviously not even bothered to do that.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Now your just being stupid. You read what someone says before replying. Just like you should read a study before criticising it. If you then disagree with the research then fine, but criticising something without reading it is moronic.
Disagreeing with a study that you haven't even read does not show a thinking mind, it shows a very arrogant person who automatically assumes they know more than everyone else. That is NOT a good thing.
The person in question was not "being skeptical", to be a skeptic you have to know what you are actually being skeptical about. The person in question basically said "no it's not due to what these people have concluded after spending over 5 years researching, what they obviously have a mountain of evidence for; it's what I've decided off the top of my head it probably is".
If you think the world needs people like that than good help us all if you become a world leader.
Thats not what he appears to me to be stating. To me it appears he is drawing his own conclusions about a report he has not actually read. Rather than read the conclusions of an expert who has spent years studying thousands of people and researching the data and results, he has decided "Off the top of my head I would say it is actually due to this or that".
He is saying the exact same thing the researchers probably wondered 6 or 7 years ago before they actually undertook the study. The poster compalins "Correlation doesn't equal Causation" but he is using the exact same small-minded, unresearched, hypothesis drawing which leads to such news reports and examples of bad journalism.
I'm sorry if I seem hostile, but if the great-grandposter actually has done his own peer-reviewed, 2.2 thousand people study and reached that conclusion, fair enough; if he has actually read the report - which will undoubtably investigate his quite obvious hypothesis on the matter - then he is committing plagerism; but I'm pretty certain what he is really doing is imagining himself as some sort of omniscient being who knows the true answer just by spending a few seconds thinking about it.
Personally, I can't stand people who do this.