.
Concerned Slashdotter: Your Majesty, the people in the third world are angry, for they have no bread
Katz: Let them have open source software
OSS advocacy is one thing, but claiming it's a panacea to everything is ridiculous. People in developing countries need:
1. Food
2. Healthcare
3. Non-corrupt governments
As for Soros, more power to him and his charities, but when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Soros thinks they need stable financial markets, etc., because he's a capitalist and his only tool is the market.
I was reading this story this morning and was feeling a bit full of myself, you know, being too smart to ever do something as retarded as downloading a program from an untrusted source. It had happened to me before while searching astalavista for cracks, and I had consistently resisted clicking "yes".
This feeling lasted until a few minutes ago when I downloaded what I thought was a nice piece of warez from the gnutella network. I had plenty of warning that it wasn't what I was looking for. First of all it was only about 160 KB, but to distract me from that obvious fault it had the words "full-downloader" in the title, implying that you just run the program and it connects to a magical server to get your warez. Still, stupid me plodded along, knuckles dragging on the floor, drool hanging from my lips, and spouting something about an "axis of evil." I installed the program.
The final clue to pass through my thick skull was when I launched it and it started running a casino program, attempting to connect to something. Panic set it. Virus scan was run. Nothing. Whew. Adaware was run to check for spyware. Nothing. Google search. Nothing. Usenet search: a two month old post from France. Apparently the program tries to call a sex line or something in Germany (at least if you're in France). It even asks you what country you're connecting from!
Moral of the story: it can happen to anyone; we all have moments of stupidity.
umm...doood...the whole point is that it's not a separate browser that installs itself. It's your browser that whores itself out to the website you're viewing. And you won't even get the money for this lewd behavior on your browser's part. I'll stop before I get to the pimp analogies;)
Anyone have any ideas how they'll do this, by the way? The article states that Users don't have to download any software to set the process in motion.
the key here is the ability to turn it off if you don't want it.
If it's anything like the "ability" not to use flash, I'll take a pass. Every time I go to a site that uses flash for ads I have to click at least twice to tell it not to download it for me. (BTW is there a way to get "never trust content from macromedia" working in any of the browsers?)
If oompa loompa (or whatever the cofounder's daughter's retarded nick name is - she should sue for attaching her name to something this annoying) is too easy to disable, the advertisers won't pay for it. If it's unobtrusive, the advertisers won't pay for it. We already tune out 90% of the banner ads and use programs to get rid of pop-ups and -unders. Annoying and in-your-face is the only way left to sell ads online.
I do agree that this has the theoretical potential to make sites more useful (e.g., comet, flash, etc.), but in the long run, it will mostly be used for evil (e.g., comet, flash, etc.).
The whole idea of networks and channels is outdated. Echostar is just trying to ride this dead horse a while longer, but the whole system needs to change.
What we need is a way of watching programs directly without the network middlemen deciding for us. What's the use of having 20 NBC affiliates at the touch of my remote? Just so I can watch Will and Grace across 4 time zones?
Ideally we'd program in the shows we want and the satellite provider would deliver the programs (encrypted and copy-proofed, of course;)) to some TiVo-like device. We could get charged by the program or whatever and not even have to watch ads anymore.
The satellite provider would license the shows directly (more profit to the producers of the show) and we'd get to see what we want, when we want.
People generally want their local weather, sports, and news, so they'll keep at least one or two local stations.
I know I'm not the only one who can do without the sensationalistic, T&A, program lead-ins that pass for local news these days ("you saw it on ER, now see some real live Houston doctors struggle with thongs and leather pants!") The weather channel more than takes care of the weather and related emergencies.
The fact is local affiliates have nothing left to offer, and they're using old laws to keep their sorry asses in business.
It took me a while to make sense of the two seemingly contradictory finishing sentences in Taco's post. I think I've figured out what this master of prose, spelling, and grammar was saying:
When Taco said "I don't care about local programming, they shouldn't force it on me" he was saying that he doesn't want to be forced to watch only his local network channels (via antenna). Having the choice of watching other local stations' crappy programming (via satellite) would be preferable to him.
At least that's my interpretation of the Book of Taco. Other scholars may have different views on this.
IP has nothing to do with this. You can buy a book/CD/magazine/program and destroy it and not violate the copyright.
Kaaaazaaaa simply won't run if you delete certain of its bundled adware. This is what makes it particularly annoying (though I hear this has been cracked for some versions). With most of the other P2P apps you can use Ad-Aware to get rid of the adware and not affect the function of the program.
I tend to agree with a previous comment that competition isn't always a good thing. We can all come up with examples of how competition from an inferior product with a bigger ad budget killed a better product.(e.g.)
People seem to think that competition will somehow magically select the best product or company. To steal an idea from memetics, the only thing competition does is select the product or company who is best at competing.
Finally, let's not judge Teoma until it's completed. The page has changed at least cosmetically since I first visited it this morning; who knows what's going on underneath. Maybe it'll even stop sucking my ass once it's out of beta;)
Raise your had if you know what a DMA and CMR are.
YMBSTUBYKWTASF;)*
*You must be smarter than us because you know what those acronyms stand for;)
The purpose of slashdot isn't to impress each other with how much we know about a specific field, but to have a discussion that will hopefully educate. Yes, it's frustrating when people assume that their knowledge generalizes to other fields, especially when you know they're full of shit, but you render your own posts meaningless by using jargon that is unfamiliar to the target audience. I'll shut up now; you probably knew this already being in the advertising field.
PhysicsGenius wrote: You may not be aware of this or have thought of it this way, but a microwave oven is basically just a big, unmodulated radio station broadcasting in the microwave band instead of the radio band.
...and lightbulbs are just microwave ovens broadcasting mainly in the visible range. And where do we put these light bulbs? Everywhere we live!!! Oh my GOD, we're all gonna die of cancer from light bulbs!
Are you a real physics genius, or do you just play one in front of your liberal arts friends;)
Mhz might be a very poor buying consideration, but at least it's an objective number
The weight, volume, and color of the chip are also objective numbers...;)
Neither Intel's insistence on MHz, nor AMD's system are ideal. All the different benchmarks just add to the average buyer's confusion who ends up depending on jingles and the Blue Man Group in making decisions.
Compared to some ways that animals are killed, a properly placed bullet could be a lot less painful than some alternatives.
So can a properly-placed and adequately fast spoon. Saying guns are ok as long as you use them to kill animals painlessly isn't much of a justification for their existence. There are better ways of doing it, if it must be done at all.
I once got into an argument about Islam (I was young and naive) with this dude who told me I was unfit to comment on his (and my former) religion because I wasn't a believer. I think he even quoted some bit of something or other to justify his circular argument.
This seems to be the goal of all religions: to keep their delusions from scrutiny until you're too far in to question anything. However, in order to reach the largest audience possible, they have to distribute their beliefs pretty widely (I had a huge stack of tiny bibles in college courtesy of those bible pushers on campus). Finally, in order to spread, they need financial resources for schools, thinly-veiled charities, presidential elections, &c.
In order to be effective memes, religions need to
strike a balance between scrutiny, free distribution, and payment. Most successful ones have evolved into something resembling poorly-commented open source, i.e., free distribution of writings that are so vague that they could mean anything to anyone. They also don't directly force you into paying ("Join the Mandrake Club, pleaaaaase!"), but rely on guilt to get at your wallet.
The $cientologists have taken the closed source approach (copyrighting their clam drivel) with something that resembles micro$oft's new licensing scheme, i.e., "keep paying if you want to stay locked into our proprietary format."
Both methods give the end users the product they want: a false sense of security, order, and purpose in an otherwise chaotic world (e.g., OpenFaith vs. MS Faith), the closed source approach just ends up costing the users more money and keeps them locked in.
Awesome. Keep up the good work. One question, since you were on the inside, do you think the people high up in $cientology, inc actully believe in this clam drivel, or are they just in it for the money? The former would make them more dangerous, because there's nothing more fearsome than dedicated zealots (e.g., the "christian" coalition), whereas a businessman can always be bought out with a better offer.
This whole thing kind of reminds me of the "preists" in Asimov's Foundation series: a bunch of true believers going through an algorithm oblivious to its true purpose.
I saw something similar a few weeks ago. A friend asked me to take a look at his computer. He had started getting bombarded with porn ads for no reason. I fired up his IE and found out that his home page had been switched to a site that redirected him to his old home page, but not before popping up a bunch of porn windows. The process was invisible to him.
What's worse is that it had somehow also managed to make it impossible to change his homepage from within IE (the fields were grayed out.) After a quick registry hack he was porn free
Anyway, as long as there's a way for people to make money off the swiss cheese that passes for software security, they're going to do it. The sad thing is most people don't know how to stop these things. The sadder thing is that most people don't remember a time when the internet wasn't about making money (when people were boycotting web sites with banner ads) and don't think there's much wrong with these tactics.
from the article: Users may buy a trusted PC even if it won't show a digital video lent by a friend, because it will act less like a temperamental computer and more like a crash-free super-VCR
Saying that copy protecting my computer will make it more reliable is like saying that putting copy protection in my car's CD player will improve my gas mileage.
They're not cloning embryos to make more humans. Read the article.
The biggest problem with/. is that some very smart people who know a lot about one specific field, think they're qualified to comment (and +mod) on things they know nothing about.
Slashdot Mirror
Concerned Slashdotter: Your Majesty, the people in the third world are angry, for they have no bread
Katz: Let them have open source software
OSS advocacy is one thing, but claiming it's a panacea to everything is ridiculous. People in developing countries need:
1. Food
2. Healthcare
3. Non-corrupt governments
As for Soros, more power to him and his charities, but when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Soros thinks they need stable financial markets, etc., because he's a capitalist and his only tool is the market.
This feeling lasted until a few minutes ago when I downloaded what I thought was a nice piece of warez from the gnutella network. I had plenty of warning that it wasn't what I was looking for. First of all it was only about 160 KB, but to distract me from that obvious fault it had the words "full-downloader" in the title, implying that you just run the program and it connects to a magical server to get your warez. Still, stupid me plodded along, knuckles dragging on the floor, drool hanging from my lips, and spouting something about an "axis of evil." I installed the program.
The final clue to pass through my thick skull was when I launched it and it started running a casino program, attempting to connect to something. Panic set it. Virus scan was run. Nothing. Whew. Adaware was run to check for spyware. Nothing. Google search. Nothing. Usenet search: a two month old post from France. Apparently the program tries to call a sex line or something in Germany (at least if you're in France). It even asks you what country you're connecting from!
Moral of the story: it can happen to anyone; we all have moments of stupidity.
Moral 2: Stop pirating warez.
This latest Gator crap is pure, unregulated capitalism at work. Enjoy.
I also like Mr. Cranky Lots of ads and pop-ups on the main page, but the reviews are dark and full of bile.
Suure... one of your roommates owns the CD, but you don't, right ;)
Can't Sony cross-market this as a system that protects the user from Celine Dion?
Anyone have any ideas how they'll do this, by the way? The article states that Users don't have to download any software to set the process in motion.
If it's anything like the "ability" not to use flash, I'll take a pass. Every time I go to a site that uses flash for ads I have to click at least twice to tell it not to download it for me. (BTW is there a way to get "never trust content from macromedia" working in any of the browsers?)
If oompa loompa (or whatever the cofounder's daughter's retarded nick name is - she should sue for attaching her name to something this annoying) is too easy to disable, the advertisers won't pay for it. If it's unobtrusive, the advertisers won't pay for it. We already tune out 90% of the banner ads and use programs to get rid of pop-ups and -unders. Annoying and in-your-face is the only way left to sell ads online.
I do agree that this has the theoretical potential to make sites more useful (e.g., comet, flash, etc.), but in the long run, it will mostly be used for evil (e.g., comet, flash, etc.).
Good to know we made the national scene :)
What we need is a way of watching programs directly without the network middlemen deciding for us. What's the use of having 20 NBC affiliates at the touch of my remote? Just so I can watch Will and Grace across 4 time zones?
Ideally we'd program in the shows we want and the satellite provider would deliver the programs (encrypted and copy-proofed, of course ;)) to some TiVo-like device. We could get charged by the program or whatever and not even have to watch ads anymore.
The satellite provider would license the shows directly (more profit to the producers of the show) and we'd get to see what we want, when we want.
I know I'm not the only one who can do without the sensationalistic, T&A, program lead-ins that pass for local news these days ("you saw it on ER, now see some real live Houston doctors struggle with thongs and leather pants!") The weather channel more than takes care of the weather and related emergencies.
The fact is local affiliates have nothing left to offer, and they're using old laws to keep their sorry asses in business.
When Taco said "I don't care about local programming, they shouldn't force it on me" he was saying that he doesn't want to be forced to watch only his local network channels (via antenna). Having the choice of watching other local stations' crappy programming (via satellite) would be preferable to him.
At least that's my interpretation of the Book of Taco. Other scholars may have different views on this.
Kaaaazaaaa simply won't run if you delete certain of its bundled adware. This is what makes it particularly annoying (though I hear this has been cracked for some versions). With most of the other P2P apps you can use Ad-Aware to get rid of the adware and not affect the function of the program.
People seem to think that competition will somehow magically select the best product or company. To steal an idea from memetics, the only thing competition does is select the product or company who is best at competing.
Finally, let's not judge Teoma until it's completed. The page has changed at least cosmetically since I first visited it this morning; who knows what's going on underneath. Maybe it'll even stop sucking my ass once it's out of beta ;)
YMBSTUBYKWTASF;)*
*You must be smarter than us because you know what those acronyms stand for ;)
The purpose of slashdot isn't to impress each other with how much we know about a specific field, but to have a discussion that will hopefully educate. Yes, it's frustrating when people assume that their knowledge generalizes to other fields, especially when you know they're full of shit, but you render your own posts meaningless by using jargon that is unfamiliar to the target audience. I'll shut up now; you probably knew this already being in the advertising field.
You may not be aware of this or have thought of it this way, but a microwave oven is basically just a big, unmodulated radio station broadcasting in the microwave band instead of the radio band.
Are you a real physics genius, or do you just play one in front of your liberal arts friends ;)
The weight, volume, and color of the chip are also objective numbers... ;)
Neither Intel's insistence on MHz, nor AMD's system are ideal. All the different benchmarks just add to the average buyer's confusion who ends up depending on jingles and the Blue Man Group in making decisions.
P.S., I don't have a solution.
So can a properly-placed and adequately fast spoon. Saying guns are ok as long as you use them to kill animals painlessly isn't much of a justification for their existence. There are better ways of doing it, if it must be done at all.
This seems to be the goal of all religions: to keep their delusions from scrutiny until you're too far in to question anything. However, in order to reach the largest audience possible, they have to distribute their beliefs pretty widely (I had a huge stack of tiny bibles in college courtesy of those bible pushers on campus). Finally, in order to spread, they need financial resources for schools, thinly-veiled charities, presidential elections, &c.
In order to be effective memes, religions need to strike a balance between scrutiny, free distribution, and payment. Most successful ones have evolved into something resembling poorly-commented open source, i.e., free distribution of writings that are so vague that they could mean anything to anyone. They also don't directly force you into paying ("Join the Mandrake Club, pleaaaaase!"), but rely on guilt to get at your wallet.
The $cientologists have taken the closed source approach (copyrighting their clam drivel) with something that resembles micro$oft's new licensing scheme, i.e., "keep paying if you want to stay locked into our proprietary format."
Both methods give the end users the product they want: a false sense of security, order, and purpose in an otherwise chaotic world (e.g., OpenFaith vs. MS Faith), the closed source approach just ends up costing the users more money and keeps them locked in.
I'm only half joking about this, by the way ;)
This whole thing kind of reminds me of the "preists" in Asimov's Foundation series: a bunch of true believers going through an algorithm oblivious to its true purpose.
They're both $cientologists
Is it just the post-Enron me, or does anyone else think that in a few months we'll be hearing about unethical dealings at SIS regarding this decision?
What's worse is that it had somehow also managed to make it impossible to change his homepage from within IE (the fields were grayed out.) After a quick registry hack he was porn free
Anyway, as long as there's a way for people to make money off the swiss cheese that passes for software security, they're going to do it. The sad thing is most people don't know how to stop these things. The sadder thing is that most people don't remember a time when the internet wasn't about making money (when people were boycotting web sites with banner ads) and don't think there's much wrong with these tactics.
Users may buy a trusted PC even if it won't show a digital video lent by a friend, because it will act less like a temperamental computer and more like a crash-free super-VCR
Saying that copy protecting my computer will make it more reliable is like saying that putting copy protection in my car's CD player will improve my gas mileage.
The biggest problem with /. is that some very smart people who know a lot about one specific field, think they're qualified to comment (and +mod) on things they know nothing about.