Assuming this isn't some leftover April Fools gag, I guess this company is legit. But an irritating idea does not a business plan make.
A browser that morphs to display ads? Now I know the Internet is riddled with clueless users, but come on. Nobody is going to put up with this. Microsoft would probably sue "United Virtualities" to the moon if this thing morphed IE (and Big Bill didn't get a cut.) And even if Microsoft didn't, what person would put up with a browser that could be hijacked if there were alternatives available?
Unless United Virtualities has a sure-fire way of morphing every browser out there, and they have a legal team better and more evil than Rambus' legal staff, then their company is doomed. I'll be checking fuckedcompany.com for them. I don't think I'll need to wait long, either.
Why are we wasting time talking about this search engine now? It launches at 5:00 PM Pacific time Monday. At that point, we'll be able to make useful comparisons to Google.
I have to disagree with you here. Satellite TV is a fantastic competitor for cable TV, but that's because ping rates aren't all that important. While satellite technologies can deliver great bandwidth for internet use, they often have lousy latency, which makes everyday web surfing about as pleasant as going through dialup. Cable or DSL is really the only way to go, especially if you are an Unreal Tournament fanatic;)
Was really surprised by the slant of this article. Are we supposed to feel sorry for the cable companies? Here's a couple sentences from the article that make it seem like the cable companies are being handed a raw deal.
Not only must they compete with the city, they must obey regulations from this same entity. A kind of double burden.
The whole reason that cable is regulated is because it's inherently a monopolistic product, in that multiple cable providers can't cost-effectively run multiple cables to every house in a city. So these companies should be constantly under the gun in every way possible. Otherwise, there would be all kinds of pricing abuse.
As I see it, one of the primary advantaes of living in a city is that you should be able to get broadband for far less than you can in the country. If you couldn't, something is be terribly wrong. It's nice to see that LA's Dept. of Water & Power is keeping the cable companies scrambling to provide the best possible deal to consumers. That the cable companies are griping is merely a sign than government is doing its job
This technology, assuming it works, might initially fail to gain popularity if it's not priced right. I doubt many people would pay, say, $100 extra for a phone with this feature. And that's because many people simply don't care if they're irritating the people around them.
But I'd love to see such places as restaurants and bus lines require their customers, who insist on using cellphones on their premises, to use this product. I bet the bulk of customers would support such a rule, and everyone would benefit.
Well, since I publish Vegan.com, that request for comment seems tailor made for me.
You know, I'm not sure there are any ethical considerations to growing "hydroponic" meat. The stuff would not have a brain or the ability to feel pain and fear any more than plants do. It'd be creepy, for sure. But not nearly as creepy as having to kill an animal back here on earth.
The better question is, why would NASA want to create this stuff in the first place? It's obvious that, barring undreamable technology breakthroughs, putting livestock into space is unworkable -- sheesh...it's practically unworkable keeping livestock on earth once the population starts approaching 10 billion;)
One thing that's also obvious is that space food is gonna suck...no matter if it's vegan or made from synthetic veal calves. There are some superb vegan recipes available now, and I think NASA would be better advised to experiment with some of the great flavors that contemporary vegan cooking can produce. It's not like the 1970s, when plant-based foods were blobs of tasteless brown rice and tofu. I think this NASA meat idea is a holdover from 1950s thinking, when everyone thought meat had to be the center of the meal, for both taste and nutrition.
I'd like to see NASA devote its (too scarce) resources to making plant-based foods taste fantastic in a space environement. It sure beats the thought of microwaved synthetic meat. Spending money developing weird meat substitutes seems like a gross misappropriation of this agency's funds, when better and cheaper food alternatives are available. After all, shouldn't Nasa's money, as much as possible, go to space exploration?
Basically, Cringley would like to create an online TV show, but the costs of providing all this bandwidth could bankrupt Saudi Arabia.
The article seems to be about his TV show idea, but really the central question is: "How can I get people with lots of bandwidth to donate it to my cause?"
Many, many people besides Cringely are capable of putting together great programming that deserves a wide audience. But there's no mechanism in place to find sufficient bandwidth for aspiring alternative TV producers. If someone could start an alternative TV bandwidth clearinghouse, we'd have a world-changing resource for niche TV producers everywhere.
But then, perhaps Cringely has offered his own solution for would-be alternative TV producers: start out on the net, and cultivate a huge audience by publishing weekly articles. When you get popular enough, tell your readership that you want to switch to TV format, but they need to foot the bill. Then cross you fingers.
Cringely's admittedly unorthodox approach seems like it might be a work -- for him. We'll see. In the meantime, hopefully, other superior mechanisms for bootstrapping your homemade TV show onto the Internet will evolve.
Yet, oddly, I don't have any problem nitpicking posts other people make. From the summary of this article:
Overall a neat toy, but most of all very reasonably priced for those who like to rip their tunes at the highest compression rates.
I'm pretty sure the poster meant either lowest compression rates or highest bit rates. The point being that a 100 gig drive will let you store a whole mess of MP3s, even when they are ripped at highest quality.
In law, what's on the lawbooks is critical. But not everything can be codified in lawbooks. Many rulings handed down by Judges are based, not on written laws, but on how past judges have ruled on similar cases.
I think this case sets a great precedent. And other Judges are likely to follow this way of thinking.
Before the Internet, there were two ways to reach agreement on something: verbally or in writing. The verbal agreement works beautifully, but only if both parties are honest and don't try to back out of the deal. That's why if you were dealing with someone unfamiliar or untrustworthy, you should get the deal on paper as soon as possible. A spoken word cannot be verified, and it therefore should almost never hold up as a binding contract.
Email strikes me as a halfway point. Let me give two examples of a deal gone bad, to illustrate why this Judge's ruling makes sense.
In the first example, you negotiate terms with me by telephone to buy my house. I lead you on a good three months. You make offers and counteroffers, and finally I tell you, "We have a deal. I hope you enjoy your new place on 123 Main St...by far the most scenic part of Elizabeth NJ."
Once we reach these terms, if you don't rush out and get me to sign a written contract, shame on you. Since all our communication is verbal, there's nothing that can stand up in a courtroom. That's how it should be. It doesn't make the seller any less sleazy, but the seller should not be held to a verbal deal since nothing can be proven.
However, if we did this exchange by email, you would have a written record of me leading you on for months. Sure, these headers might be forged, but in most cases the plaintiff could do a bit of investigating with the ISP, and get the defendent to stipulate (meaning: not contest) that the emails are genuine.
The written word should always count for more than the spoken word. It makes sense for the Judge to rule that email is a binding contract, if it is clear that the defendent has led on the plaintiff, and has in no uncertain terms written that an agreement is final.
Written contracts should always count for more than extended email correspondence. But in cases where somebody, after lengthy email correspondence, backs out of a deal, it's wise for a Judge to count those emails as a written contract.
The Information can be worth more than the laptop
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Laptop Anti-Theft Devices
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Pogue's article had some great things to say about the technology of tracking down stolen laptops. It would have been good to make the point that, many times, the information on the laptop is worth far more than the laptop itself.
About 18 months ago Qualcomm's CEO had his laptop swiped during a conference. The laptop was thought to have all kinds of trade secrets. Losing a several-thousand dollar laptop was a trivial loss for the CEO. But shareholders were rightfully worried that Qualcomm's strategies for implementing CDMA rollout were now in the hands of rivals. To my knowledge, they never got the laptop back. And the theft was, I suspect, for the hard drive's trade secrets rather than for the actual laptop.
I accidentally posted this thread as a general response to the article, rather than as a response the post about shooting rubber bands at cats. If Slashdot had a delete feature, I would have gotten rid of this thread, and kept the one I later posted correctly.
Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
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Rubber Band Machine Gun
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
I wonder who the moderaters were who modded that kitty post up? That's pathetic. If shooting rubber bands at cats is funny, then shooting them with bb guns must be hilarious.
"We must always take sides; neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented" --Elie Wiesel
Who were the moderaters who modded that kitty post up? That's pathetic. If shooting rubber bands at cats is funny, then shooting them with bb guns must be hilarious.
"We must always take sides; neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented" --Elie Wiesel
Pmancini said some interesting things, but he confuses self-publishing with vanity presses. There's a big difference between the two. In a nutshell, self-publishing is for smart people and vanity presses are for idiots.
With self-publishing, you pay for book design and printing, which sets you back less than two bucks a book. When you hire a vanity press to do that, they deliver the books to you for perhaps ten bucks apiece. At that price, you can't afford to give standard wholesale discounts, and you lose your shirt. Most vanity books end up in a big pile in the author's garage.
This obviously isn't an exhaustive summary of how self-publishing differs from vanity publishing, but I wanted to set the record straight since the term was misused in the above post. I'd suggest people read Dan Poynter's books if they are interested in self publishing.
Yes, publishing contracts are exploitive. And they are probably exploitive no matter who you sign with.
One way to reduce your exposure to exploitive contracts is to sign with a small press. If you're a first-time writer, you're likely to get a level of support and effort behind your book that is better than what you get with the big houses.
And there's another advantage. If you sign with a small press, you develop a close relationship with the owner of the company. My first book was published by a small press, and I've since become good friends with my publisher. There's (sometimes) a limit to how badly you can be screwed by a contract, when you're not dealing with a monolithic corporation, but a person who knows you -- a person who signs your royalty checks and has to look you in the eye.
I've had pretty good success with my first book (25,000 copies sold.) For any writers out there, I strongly suggest you find a competent and energetic small press, or, better yet, publish the thing yourself.
Isn't this the same industry that is complaining that piracy is putting them out of business?
I don't think so. I don't think the movie industry is claiming that piracy is putting them out of business, or even causing great harm at the moment. I think that their argument is that emerging broadband and internet technologies could soon put them out of business, if effective legislation and anti-piracy measures are not enacted.
The primary difference between the recording industry and the movie industry is that the recording people are complaining about what's happening right now, whereas the movie people are acting to prevent a "Napster for Movies" from being possible three years from now.
A pox on both their houses, of course. But I think it's wrong to suggest the movie industry is complaining about piracy ruining their profits today. It's all about what they fear will happen in the near future.
ZDNet reports that Mission Critical Linux who specialized in server clustering, is laying off 90% of their work force of 60 after failing to secure a buyer of the company.:(
Was the frownie taken from the ZDNet article, or was it part of the company's letter to employees and shareholders?
I was actually disappointed by this Steven Levy article. He makes the same points that we've all seen 1000 times on Slashdot -- that all encryption will get broken. And treating your customers like criminals is a surefire way to lose sales.
But there's one question the SSSCA issue brings up that I really haven't seen intelligently discussed on Slashdot. And that is: can a combination of software encryption and hardware disabling make it impossible for a motivated user, with a few hundred bucks of special equipment, to copy a protected DVD to MPEG4 or whatever? With next-generation protected equipment, might we see the case where the protection scheme on DVD's can no longer be broken on the cheap?
I think it's fair to say that CDs can never be meaningfully protected, since the output of audio signals is so basic and so easy to recapture no matter what encryption is present.
But, should the SCCCA pass, can a case be made that a combination of hardware and software will make it essentially impossible to extract unprotected, high-quality versions of movies from a DVD?
I don't have the tech background to answer that question. But it seems like this is the question for which we all need a clear answer.
Why Not Store Preferences on the Net?
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Jef Raskin Talks Skins
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Raskin makes a good point that it's a pain in the butt when you switch to someone else's computer, and they have skins set up in some weird friggin' way that takes time to adjust to.
Various posters here have made the point that it's human nature to want to customize things. Which is true, but this reply is an inadequate response to Raskin's argument that time is wasted whenever you jump to a computer with a foreign skin.
So here's my humble little proposal, and, to my knowledge an original idea. This problem could largely be solved simply by using the net. Why not have a website or registry somewhere that stores YOUR OWN personalized skin? That way, when I go onto your computer and am horified by your choice of screen colors, button preferences, etc...all's I need to do is visit UIpreferences.com and type "Schlemphfer" and my password. Voila. Now your machine has preferences identical to my personal system.
When I finish using your machine, I'd then hit a button which would restore the machine to the owner's preferences.
Seems to me that prior to the net, when we all used non-networked computers, the case for Raskin's "adhere to One True Way" argument was far stronger.
On the plus side, this article has some thorough reporting. Which is a nice departure from the press-release driven slop CNET usually dishes: "AMD announced its high end end processor will jump from 2.3 to 2.4 GHz."
On the down side, there's no attempt at analysis. All we know is Eslambolchi might have donated HIV infected blood to a terribly wounded company. In the short term, @Home clearly benefited from his expertise. But his tenure might have destroyed the company.
This was a good article because it raised some important questions. A great article would have provided answers.
I thought clients sent in payments in exchange for services rendered. Funny, I don't remember receiving any payments.
>Just because your site isn't making enough money doesn't mean people are merely leeches or thieves, and
>it's insulting to paint them as such (even vegan.com visitors).
I feel as if you've put words in my mouth here. I'm grateful for the thousands of visitors my site gets. But that doesn't mean that they are offering any financial support to the website.
What I tried to do in my last post is to show a dynamic that I think is at work, by which people who regularly visit a website seldom choose to provide financial support. And to do this, I pointed the finger not at my readers, but at my own web surfing habits.
>There are a lot of ways of extracting money from pockets,
>and much of that involves knowing who your clients/customers REALLY are.
>You may not buy from ThinkGeek,
>but enough do to support SlashDot through advertising.
Would you care to back that up with some documentation? Virtually every content oriented site struggles. And I bet Slashdot is not paying its bills thanks to ThinkGeek. I think their funding sources during the dotcom craze have everything to do with what's keeping the site around today. I bet Slashdot's making next to no profit--if it's making any profit at all.
You're undoubtedly right that I could make more money with my website by paying closer attention to my customers. But I pay very close attention already, and thankfully have other business opportunities that have nothing to do with the web. Yes, you can make money off the web as a content provider, but it's incredibly difficult compared to just about any other business opportunity out there in the world. I tried to explain why this is true, but you seemed to take what I had to say as an attack on my readers.
I run a popular but financially struggling website (Vegan.com). Like most web publishers, I need to find ways to generate enough money to pay my hosting bills and get some compensation for all the work that goes into creating a quality site.
Piro makes a pretty good point that it's not money that drives the net, it's respect. But his article mainly looks at the dynamic of decisions made by webmasters.
I think it's more interesting to consider things from the perspective of the user.
The trouble with web publishing is that it encourages a leach mentality amongst readers. As a site owner, I wish my thousands of readers would use my Amazon.com links so that Vegan.com would have some decent revenue. But hardly anyone does, and Vegan.com makes practically no money. There's a part of me that feels disgusted that most people who visit my site every day do nothing to give back, although many undoubtedly shop on Amazon.
But when I surf the web, which I do for at least two hours a day, I notice my own leach tendencies.
I visit Slashdot every day, but I never order a thing from ThinkGeek. I used to read Salon.com every day, but there's no way I'm going to pony up $30 a year for their premium content. I used to send the occasional Blue Mountain card. But when they started imposing a service charge, I switched to Yahoo's greeting cards.
No matter how many sites start trying to charge, I know I'm always going to be able to surf the web and find interesting free content. So I don't pay for anything. Salon.com starts charging? No problem, I'll go to Slate.com. Although I'd prefer to read Salon's articles, there are plenty of other articles I can read for free that will provide nearly equal enjoyment.
This brings up what I see as the main problem confronting web publishers and their audience. Until the web came along, there were basically two ways to get goods and services in the real world. You could be an honest person and purchase them, or you could be a thief and steal them.
With the web, there's now a middle option: you can be a leach, taking whatever you are given for free, and offering nothing in return. When a site you like starts charging, you abandon it and move on to some other free site. It's totally legal. But is it moral?
For some reason, the way the web works encourages leach-like behavior. I've seen both sides of this. I've seen it in my own leach-like decisions in surfing the web, and I've seen it in the decisions made by the thousands of loyal but non-contributing visitors to my site.
Well this article's been posted about twenty minutes and the responses are pouring in. Has everyone read the 16,000 word announcement that was the main link to the Slashdot post? I didn't think so.
One of the key problems here is that everything that ICANN is saying, in both their press release, and their 16,000 word announcement, is written in the most unimaginably dry style possible.
The wretched quality of the writing is, I think, deliberate. Because what people can't understand, they can't criticize.
How much money does ICANN leadership rake in each year? How about giving some competent writer $1500 of that, so that this mega-announcement and its press release can be written up in terms any interested person can get through? As it stands now, very few of us (and certainly not myself) are capable of debating this vitally important announcement. It can't be understood, and perhaps that's the way ICANN wants it.
I happened to be in the process of downloading 10.1.3 when I came across this discussion on Slashdot. The installation was effortless, and it's great to have system software that's less than 24 hours old. But when I rebooted and selected "About This Mac," the box came up saying 10.1.3 is installed, "Copyright 1983-2001 Apple Computer."
Oops! Fortunately, other than that little oversight, 10.1.3 seems amazing so far. Rock solid and gorgeous.
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming this isn't some leftover April Fools gag, I guess this company is legit. But an irritating idea does not a business plan make.
A browser that morphs to display ads? Now I know the Internet is riddled with clueless users, but come on. Nobody is going to put up with this. Microsoft would probably sue "United Virtualities" to the moon if this thing morphed IE (and Big Bill didn't get a cut.) And even if Microsoft didn't, what person would put up with a browser that could be hijacked if there were alternatives available?
Unless United Virtualities has a sure-fire way of morphing every browser out there, and they have a legal team better and more evil than Rambus' legal staff, then their company is doomed. I'll be checking fuckedcompany.com for them. I don't think I'll need to wait long, either.
Why are we wasting time talking about this search engine now? It launches at 5:00 PM Pacific time Monday. At that point, we'll be able to make useful comparisons to Google.
I have to disagree with you here. Satellite TV is a fantastic competitor for cable TV, but that's because ping rates aren't all that important. While satellite technologies can deliver great bandwidth for internet use, they often have lousy latency, which makes everyday web surfing about as pleasant as going through dialup. Cable or DSL is really the only way to go, especially if you are an Unreal Tournament fanatic ;)
Was really surprised by the slant of this article. Are we supposed to feel sorry for the cable companies? Here's a couple sentences from the article that make it seem like the cable companies are being handed a raw deal.
Not only must they compete with the city, they must obey regulations from this same entity. A kind of double burden.
The whole reason that cable is regulated is because it's inherently a monopolistic product, in that multiple cable providers can't cost-effectively run multiple cables to every house in a city. So these companies should be constantly under the gun in every way possible. Otherwise, there would be all kinds of pricing abuse.
As I see it, one of the primary advantaes of living in a city is that you should be able to get broadband for far less than you can in the country. If you couldn't, something is be terribly wrong. It's nice to see that LA's Dept. of Water & Power is keeping the cable companies scrambling to provide the best possible deal to consumers. That the cable companies are griping is merely a sign than government is doing its job
.This technology, assuming it works, might initially fail to gain popularity if it's not priced right. I doubt many people would pay, say, $100 extra for a phone with this feature. And that's because many people simply don't care if they're irritating the people around them.
But I'd love to see such places as restaurants and bus lines require their customers, who insist on using cellphones on their premises, to use this product. I bet the bulk of customers would support such a rule, and everyone would benefit.
Well, since I publish Vegan.com, that request for comment seems tailor made for me.
You know, I'm not sure there are any ethical considerations to growing "hydroponic" meat. The stuff would not have a brain or the ability to feel pain and fear any more than plants do. It'd be creepy, for sure. But not nearly as creepy as having to kill an animal back here on earth.
The better question is, why would NASA want to create this stuff in the first place? It's obvious that, barring undreamable technology breakthroughs, putting livestock into space is unworkable -- sheesh...it's practically unworkable keeping livestock on earth once the population starts approaching 10 billion ;)
One thing that's also obvious is that space food is gonna suck...no matter if it's vegan or made from synthetic veal calves. There are some superb vegan recipes available now, and I think NASA would be better advised to experiment with some of the great flavors that contemporary vegan cooking can produce. It's not like the 1970s, when plant-based foods were blobs of tasteless brown rice and tofu. I think this NASA meat idea is a holdover from 1950s thinking, when everyone thought meat had to be the center of the meal, for both taste and nutrition.
I'd like to see NASA devote its (too scarce) resources to making plant-based foods taste fantastic in a space environement. It sure beats the thought of microwaved synthetic meat. Spending money developing weird meat substitutes seems like a gross misappropriation of this agency's funds, when better and cheaper food alternatives are available. After all, shouldn't Nasa's money, as much as possible, go to space exploration?
Basically, Cringley would like to create an online TV show, but the costs of providing all this bandwidth could bankrupt Saudi Arabia.
The article seems to be about his TV show idea, but really the central question is: "How can I get people with lots of bandwidth to donate it to my cause?"
Many, many people besides Cringely are capable of putting together great programming that deserves a wide audience. But there's no mechanism in place to find sufficient bandwidth for aspiring alternative TV producers. If someone could start an alternative TV bandwidth clearinghouse, we'd have a world-changing resource for niche TV producers everywhere.
But then, perhaps Cringely has offered his own solution for would-be alternative TV producers: start out on the net, and cultivate a huge audience by publishing weekly articles. When you get popular enough, tell your readership that you want to switch to TV format, but they need to foot the bill. Then cross you fingers.
Cringely's admittedly unorthodox approach seems like it might be a work -- for him. We'll see. In the meantime, hopefully, other superior mechanisms for bootstrapping your homemade TV show onto the Internet will evolve.
I hate it when people nitpick my posts.
Yet, oddly, I don't have any problem nitpicking posts other people make. From the summary of this article:
Overall a neat toy, but most of all very reasonably priced for those who like to rip their tunes at the highest compression rates.
I'm pretty sure the poster meant either lowest compression rates or highest bit rates. The point being that a 100 gig drive will let you store a whole mess of MP3s, even when they are ripped at highest quality.In law, what's on the lawbooks is critical. But not everything can be codified in lawbooks. Many rulings handed down by Judges are based, not on written laws, but on how past judges have ruled on similar cases.
I think this case sets a great precedent. And other Judges are likely to follow this way of thinking.
Before the Internet, there were two ways to reach agreement on something: verbally or in writing. The verbal agreement works beautifully, but only if both parties are honest and don't try to back out of the deal. That's why if you were dealing with someone unfamiliar or untrustworthy, you should get the deal on paper as soon as possible. A spoken word cannot be verified, and it therefore should almost never hold up as a binding contract.
Email strikes me as a halfway point. Let me give two examples of a deal gone bad, to illustrate why this Judge's ruling makes sense.
In the first example, you negotiate terms with me by telephone to buy my house. I lead you on a good three months. You make offers and counteroffers, and finally I tell you, "We have a deal. I hope you enjoy your new place on 123 Main St...by far the most scenic part of Elizabeth NJ."
Once we reach these terms, if you don't rush out and get me to sign a written contract, shame on you. Since all our communication is verbal, there's nothing that can stand up in a courtroom. That's how it should be. It doesn't make the seller any less sleazy, but the seller should not be held to a verbal deal since nothing can be proven.
However, if we did this exchange by email, you would have a written record of me leading you on for months. Sure, these headers might be forged, but in most cases the plaintiff could do a bit of investigating with the ISP, and get the defendent to stipulate (meaning: not contest) that the emails are genuine.
The written word should always count for more than the spoken word. It makes sense for the Judge to rule that email is a binding contract, if it is clear that the defendent has led on the plaintiff, and has in no uncertain terms written that an agreement is final.
Written contracts should always count for more than extended email correspondence. But in cases where somebody, after lengthy email correspondence, backs out of a deal, it's wise for a Judge to count those emails as a written contract.Pogue's article had some great things to say about the technology of tracking down stolen laptops. It would have been good to make the point that, many times, the information on the laptop is worth far more than the laptop itself.
About 18 months ago Qualcomm's CEO had his laptop swiped during a conference. The laptop was thought to have all kinds of trade secrets. Losing a several-thousand dollar laptop was a trivial loss for the CEO. But shareholders were rightfully worried that Qualcomm's strategies for implementing CDMA rollout were now in the hands of rivals. To my knowledge, they never got the laptop back. And the theft was, I suspect, for the hard drive's trade secrets rather than for the actual laptop.
I accidentally posted this thread as a general response to the article, rather than as a response the post about shooting rubber bands at cats. If Slashdot had a delete feature, I would have gotten rid of this thread, and kept the one I later posted correctly.
I wonder who the moderaters were who modded that kitty post up? That's pathetic. If shooting rubber bands at cats is funny, then shooting them with bb guns must be hilarious.
"We must always take sides; neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented" --Elie Wiesel
Who were the moderaters who modded that kitty post up? That's pathetic. If shooting rubber bands at cats is funny, then shooting them with bb guns must be hilarious.
"We must always take sides; neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented" --Elie Wiesel
Pmancini said some interesting things, but he confuses self-publishing with vanity presses. There's a big difference between the two. In a nutshell, self-publishing is for smart people and vanity presses are for idiots.
With self-publishing, you pay for book design and printing, which sets you back less than two bucks a book. When you hire a vanity press to do that, they deliver the books to you for perhaps ten bucks apiece. At that price, you can't afford to give standard wholesale discounts, and you lose your shirt. Most vanity books end up in a big pile in the author's garage.
This obviously isn't an exhaustive summary of how self-publishing differs from vanity publishing, but I wanted to set the record straight since the term was misused in the above post. I'd suggest people read Dan Poynter's books if they are interested in self publishing.
Yes, publishing contracts are exploitive. And they are probably exploitive no matter who you sign with.
One way to reduce your exposure to exploitive contracts is to sign with a small press. If you're a first-time writer, you're likely to get a level of support and effort behind your book that is better than what you get with the big houses.
And there's another advantage. If you sign with a small press, you develop a close relationship with the owner of the company. My first book was published by a small press, and I've since become good friends with my publisher. There's (sometimes) a limit to how badly you can be screwed by a contract, when you're not dealing with a monolithic corporation, but a person who knows you -- a person who signs your royalty checks and has to look you in the eye.
I've had pretty good success with my first book (25,000 copies sold.) For any writers out there, I strongly suggest you find a competent and energetic small press, or, better yet, publish the thing yourself.
The summary reads:
Isn't this the same industry that is complaining that piracy is putting them out of business?
I don't think so. I don't think the movie industry is claiming that piracy is putting them out of business, or even causing great harm at the moment. I think that their argument is that emerging broadband and internet technologies could soon put them out of business, if effective legislation and anti-piracy measures are not enacted.
The primary difference between the recording industry and the movie industry is that the recording people are complaining about what's happening right now, whereas the movie people are acting to prevent a "Napster for Movies" from being possible three years from now.
A pox on both their houses, of course. But I think it's wrong to suggest the movie industry is complaining about piracy ruining their profits today. It's all about what they fear will happen in the near future.
From the Slashdot Summary:
Chinese scientists are claiming a great leap forward in human cloning.Surely, I can't be the only person who gets nervous when the word "Chinese" appears in the same sentence as the phrase, "great leap forward."
Was the frownie taken from the ZDNet article, or was it part of the company's letter to employees and shareholders?
I was actually disappointed by this Steven Levy article. He makes the same points that we've all seen 1000 times on Slashdot -- that all encryption will get broken. And treating your customers like criminals is a surefire way to lose sales.
But there's one question the SSSCA issue brings up that I really haven't seen intelligently discussed on Slashdot. And that is: can a combination of software encryption and hardware disabling make it impossible for a motivated user, with a few hundred bucks of special equipment, to copy a protected DVD to MPEG4 or whatever? With next-generation protected equipment, might we see the case where the protection scheme on DVD's can no longer be broken on the cheap?
I think it's fair to say that CDs can never be meaningfully protected, since the output of audio signals is so basic and so easy to recapture no matter what encryption is present.
But, should the SCCCA pass, can a case be made that a combination of hardware and software will make it essentially impossible to extract unprotected, high-quality versions of movies from a DVD?
I don't have the tech background to answer that question. But it seems like this is the question for which we all need a clear answer.
Raskin makes a good point that it's a pain in the butt when you switch to someone else's computer, and they have skins set up in some weird friggin' way that takes time to adjust to.
Various posters here have made the point that it's human nature to want to customize things. Which is true, but this reply is an inadequate response to Raskin's argument that time is wasted whenever you jump to a computer with a foreign skin.
So here's my humble little proposal, and, to my knowledge an original idea. This problem could largely be solved simply by using the net. Why not have a website or registry somewhere that stores YOUR OWN personalized skin? That way, when I go onto your computer and am horified by your choice of screen colors, button preferences, etc...all's I need to do is visit UIpreferences.com and type "Schlemphfer" and my password. Voila. Now your machine has preferences identical to my personal system.
When I finish using your machine, I'd then hit a button which would restore the machine to the owner's preferences.
Seems to me that prior to the net, when we all used non-networked computers, the case for Raskin's "adhere to One True Way" argument was far stronger.
On the plus side, this article has some thorough reporting. Which is a nice departure from the press-release driven slop CNET usually dishes: "AMD announced its high end end processor will jump from 2.3 to 2.4 GHz."
On the down side, there's no attempt at analysis. All we know is Eslambolchi might have donated HIV infected blood to a terribly wounded company. In the short term, @Home clearly benefited from his expertise. But his tenure might have destroyed the company.
This was a good article because it raised some important questions. A great article would have provided answers.
I thought clients sent in payments in exchange for services rendered. Funny, I don't remember receiving any payments.
>Just because your site isn't making enough money doesn't mean people are merely leeches or thieves, and>it's insulting to paint them as such (even vegan.com visitors).
I feel as if you've put words in my mouth here. I'm grateful for the thousands of visitors my site gets. But that doesn't mean that they are offering any financial support to the website.
What I tried to do in my last post is to show a dynamic that I think is at work, by which people who regularly visit a website seldom choose to provide financial support. And to do this, I pointed the finger not at my readers, but at my own web surfing habits.
>There are a lot of ways of extracting money from pockets,>and much of that involves knowing who your clients/customers REALLY are.
>You may not buy from ThinkGeek,
>but enough do to support SlashDot through advertising.
Would you care to back that up with some documentation? Virtually every content oriented site struggles. And I bet Slashdot is not paying its bills thanks to ThinkGeek. I think their funding sources during the dotcom craze have everything to do with what's keeping the site around today. I bet Slashdot's making next to no profit--if it's making any profit at all.
You're undoubtedly right that I could make more money with my website by paying closer attention to my customers. But I pay very close attention already, and thankfully have other business opportunities that have nothing to do with the web. Yes, you can make money off the web as a content provider, but it's incredibly difficult compared to just about any other business opportunity out there in the world. I tried to explain why this is true, but you seemed to take what I had to say as an attack on my readers.
I run a popular but financially struggling website (Vegan.com). Like most web publishers, I need to find ways to generate enough money to pay my hosting bills and get some compensation for all the work that goes into creating a quality site.
Piro makes a pretty good point that it's not money that drives the net, it's respect. But his article mainly looks at the dynamic of decisions made by webmasters.
I think it's more interesting to consider things from the perspective of the user.
The trouble with web publishing is that it encourages a leach mentality amongst readers. As a site owner, I wish my thousands of readers would use my Amazon.com links so that Vegan.com would have some decent revenue. But hardly anyone does, and Vegan.com makes practically no money. There's a part of me that feels disgusted that most people who visit my site every day do nothing to give back, although many undoubtedly shop on Amazon.
But when I surf the web, which I do for at least two hours a day, I notice my own leach tendencies.
I visit Slashdot every day, but I never order a thing from ThinkGeek. I used to read Salon.com every day, but there's no way I'm going to pony up $30 a year for their premium content. I used to send the occasional Blue Mountain card. But when they started imposing a service charge, I switched to Yahoo's greeting cards.
No matter how many sites start trying to charge, I know I'm always going to be able to surf the web and find interesting free content. So I don't pay for anything. Salon.com starts charging? No problem, I'll go to Slate.com. Although I'd prefer to read Salon's articles, there are plenty of other articles I can read for free that will provide nearly equal enjoyment.
This brings up what I see as the main problem confronting web publishers and their audience. Until the web came along, there were basically two ways to get goods and services in the real world. You could be an honest person and purchase them, or you could be a thief and steal them.
With the web, there's now a middle option: you can be a leach, taking whatever you are given for free, and offering nothing in return. When a site you like starts charging, you abandon it and move on to some other free site. It's totally legal. But is it moral?
For some reason, the way the web works encourages leach-like behavior. I've seen both sides of this. I've seen it in my own leach-like decisions in surfing the web, and I've seen it in the decisions made by the thousands of loyal but non-contributing visitors to my site.
Well this article's been posted about twenty minutes and the responses are pouring in. Has everyone read the 16,000 word announcement that was the main link to the Slashdot post? I didn't think so.
One of the key problems here is that everything that ICANN is saying, in both their press release, and their 16,000 word announcement, is written in the most unimaginably dry style possible.
The wretched quality of the writing is, I think, deliberate. Because what people can't understand, they can't criticize.
How much money does ICANN leadership rake in each year? How about giving some competent writer $1500 of that, so that this mega-announcement and its press release can be written up in terms any interested person can get through? As it stands now, very few of us (and certainly not myself) are capable of debating this vitally important announcement. It can't be understood, and perhaps that's the way ICANN wants it.
I happened to be in the process of downloading 10.1.3 when I came across this discussion on Slashdot. The installation was effortless, and it's great to have system software that's less than 24 hours old. But when I rebooted and selected "About This Mac," the box came up saying 10.1.3 is installed, "Copyright 1983-2001 Apple Computer."
Oops! Fortunately, other than that little oversight, 10.1.3 seems amazing so far. Rock solid and gorgeous.