This isn't too surprising because profits went in the tank last quarter, even though EA sales went through the roof. However, the next few months may be the time to buy: as the new management team dumps over-valued assets and generally cleans house, reported profits may go negative for a while, even though the general trend is that the company is making money.
I'd think "switch view to camera that detects movement" would be a good-enough feature for most places. That would at least alert a live operator to a view where something MIGHT be going on.
As an advertiser, I only care about "high profile, high traffic" websites. That's why I spend with Google and Yahoo's search engine ad programs and don't bother with anyone else. Google's "affliate" program is useless (see my previous post about that), so if Quigo really does make itself a doorway to a significant portion of "high profile, high traffic", I may cut back on Google and send dollars Quigo's way instead.
(If Google's model really is to provide ad content for tiny sites - I'm out!)
I know, but that should be Google's job. That's why they "suck"...
While Google thinks I'm paying for "click-throughs", I'll tell you that in the end I judge my participation in Adwords by whether it makes money. How much does a month cost--and how many (say) rentals of the art fair equipment I rent out bring? I'm just not that fussy about how they deliver the goods, and I think the danger of my ads being run on sites that would "hurt my business" is negligible.
In bigger businesses (like mine) you'll find that VIEW_AD vs. CLICK vs. TRY vs. BUY "conversion" rates are carefully monitored. When we've opened up a few ads to "affiliates", nearly every time total VIEW_ADs shot up, total CLICKs shot up too (thus increasing Google's revenue) but the TRY and BUY rates on "from affiliate" viewers plummetted.
Long story short, Google affiliate advertising isn't a good use of our advertising dollar. We prefer to spend on better targeted opportunities that earn us more qualified leads.
Campaign Summary > [Campaign Name] > Site Exclusion
Remember, that doesn't help unless you know where your ads are. This "feature" is putting the cart before the horse - you can't really start the day saying, "I want to make sure my ad doesn't end up on porn sites" unless you have a tool to tell you which porn sites your ad is listed on.
As a long-time Google customers, I can tell you I'd love to see a viable AdWords competitor. Specifically, the AdWords "affiliate" program sucks: Google won't tell you which sites you are advertised on and certainly doesn't give you the ability to say "I really don't want my product/service advertised on site X, Y or Z". Also, Google's trademark name policies are really bizarre: sometimes you can protect your own name, sometimes you can't. Other times someone will convince Google that a phrase widely used in the industry is a "trademark" and lock out all other industry competitors.
Unfortunately, the ads are going to continue to be sold by the search engines themselves for as far out as I can see, so it's tough to say if these guys will get any of my business.
Another area in which Vista has found to be lacking is gaming
Or visa versa...it sounds like each of software vendors mentioned has some work to do to get up to snuff. It's not like Vista has been some great surprise; beta and then release candidate copies have been available for months.
$50 is, what, less than a single month of broadband internet and cable in the US?
My broadband is only about $19/month. It's a bad price comparison anyway; yet another web service is worth far less than my connection to the Internet, where I have access to dozens of similar products and services for no additional charge.
It's a little better than plain text, but if you can get an agent on a mail server that sends or receives mail (or just break in and take the current contents), your transport encryption buys you nothing. In other words, the messages sent over AUTH TLS are still stored in the clear "at rest" on the hard drive (shudder).
If you want to get serious about encryption in email,you should probably be checking out SMIME (or at least PGP)...
If you're only protecting the transport from spying eyes (with quantum encryption or whatever), that's only a part of what you need to protect your data.
This is the same reason why many, if not most, "SSL-protected" or "SSH-protected" servers are really sitting ducks: interesting data is still sitting in the clear on the endpoint servers' hard drives. (And don't get me started about "AUTH TLS" email forwarding...)
Guess we're not only not reading articles now, but not even reading the summary!!
That's right; I'm a true tech through and through. If manuals are for wimps then TFA is for wussies too. C'mon - Slashdot editors: you need to shorten up those summaries for those of us with post-MTV-era attention spans!
The problem with regular certs is that they are all-or-nothing, so if you disclose your cert to a party, they now have all the information in the cert. For example, consider using a "digital drivers license" to prove your age or using a "digital student ID" to get a student discount; it's totall overkill.
You don't put things like "age" or "student ID" on a cert, and you certainly wouldn't put them on a key. Instead, you could use the verified IDs from certs/keys to look up information from a master DB, much like Brands and dozens of other interchangable knuckleheads are proposing.
Remember, whether you show up to a "verification service" with a magic cookie/ID/BrandsThing or a cert, you're still trusting a third party to only give out a piece of your total profile at a time. All the while, they're probably really selling the whole DB to random spammers, just like your average credit bureau.
When I read "digital credentials" I immediately thought "(SSL/SMIME) certs and (SSH/PGP) keys". Those are two standard and widely implemented forms of "strong" digital authentication. SSL certs are also already available in hardware tokens, etc, if you like the FOB route. (Just ask the DoD about CAC cards...)
I don't know why people keep trying to reinvent the wheel here.
I played a great Capcom game last night...Ghost and Goblins for the NES8 on an emulator. I remember when these guys were like the #2 or #3 game provider for the NES8 in the 1980s - anyone know how are they doing today?
Now, honestly....I know that this may not be the nicest thing, but the biggest complaint I hear and have myself is that dell hires techs that sometimes I really can't understand at ALL. Come on people, promote this idea, wouldn't you like to hear someone who spoke english as a first language?
No offense meant here, but I would just like not to have to reconfirm my service tag 5 times until we go over the "b for bowling" "g for gorilla" etc.
There's a danger in a company opening a forum like this when chances are small they'll ever implement more than a tiny fraction of these. People will be hopeful for a short time but then believe they're being ignored if there's no reaction.
I believe they'll have a harder time now with the tired old mantra 'There's no customer demand for Linux.'"
It's not so much that there isn't customer demand for LINUX, it's that there isn't a whole lot of customer demand for individual Linux flavors A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. It's too much of a PITA to worry about qualifying all that different hardware with all the different distros and then worrying about dealing with Red Hat, Novell and all the different suppliers of what's basically a free OS.
Now, if they had a service like "I'll send you the Linux distro I want, please preinstall it on the next 500 computers you ship me," that could be big.
Is the magic gone? Probably, if you've played it non-stop since Christmas. Is it gone for the rest of us? Probably not. In a few years we'll buy a $50 Wii-emulator remote from somewhere, download a Wii emulator and a crap-load of free "ROMs" and we'll be happily entertained for a few hours. (Sorry, I'm almost 30...a little old for the console circuit.)
Some free end-user feedback for you guys ('cause I know you're reading). I'm running this under Windows 2003.
On the config dialog:
- Why don't you read the default sound card selection off of the "Control Panel"? (Audio panel)
- What's up with the "(fix bad sound)" labels? (Audio panel)
- Why do I only have "Desktop" or "MyDocs" as choices for "Recording Directory". (I'd like "D:\Music".) (Audio panel)
- Don't put the "HELP" button in red text. It's 2007 - if people need help, they'll know to look for a help button or just as likely, hit the web. (Same thing for the doc; if you think you have to write the text in red to get people to understand it, it's probably because the doc wasn't that clear in black.)
Next screen:
- What's up with the "Learn about stuff!" titlebar?
- No, it's not true that "You've Upgraded!". I just installed the software for the first time.
- Why is the "show next startup" box checked by default? I don't know any other software program that shows me the release notes with each launch. (Especially when I'm supposed to be relaunching the program several times to check audio settings.)
The actual program:
- Don't bug me with the "Violet needs testers and developers" prompt. WTF do you think I'm doing?
- OK, I loaded a sample. Where's the "play sample" button? (Also, why not tie the sample to the "keyboard" at this point so I can see which pitch I want to play the sample at.)
- Why don't you start with at least one track in a new pattern?
Looks like a good start. I'll try to write something in it over the weekend. (I should also tell you that my favorite tracker is something called "OctaMed" so you know where I'm coming from.)
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't too surprising because profits went in the tank last quarter, even though EA sales went through the roof. However, the next few months may be the time to buy: as the new management team dumps over-valued assets and generally cleans house, reported profits may go negative for a while, even though the general trend is that the company is making money.
I'd think "switch view to camera that detects movement" would be a good-enough feature for most places. That would at least alert a live operator to a view where something MIGHT be going on.
I think we agree...o ld=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=18154654#181549 70
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=224172&thresh
As an advertiser, I only care about "high profile, high traffic" websites. That's why I spend with Google and Yahoo's search engine ad programs and don't bother with anyone else. Google's "affliate" program is useless (see my previous post about that), so if Quigo really does make itself a doorway to a significant portion of "high profile, high traffic", I may cut back on Google and send dollars Quigo's way instead.
(If Google's model really is to provide ad content for tiny sites - I'm out!)
I know, but that should be Google's job. That's why they "suck"...
In bigger businesses (like mine) you'll find that VIEW_AD vs. CLICK vs. TRY vs. BUY "conversion" rates are carefully monitored. When we've opened up a few ads to "affiliates", nearly every time total VIEW_ADs shot up, total CLICKs shot up too (thus increasing Google's revenue) but the TRY and BUY rates on "from affiliate" viewers plummetted.
Long story short, Google affiliate advertising isn't a good use of our advertising dollar. We prefer to spend on better targeted opportunities that earn us more qualified leads.
Remember, that doesn't help unless you know where your ads are. This "feature" is putting the cart before the horse - you can't really start the day saying, "I want to make sure my ad doesn't end up on porn sites" unless you have a tool to tell you which porn sites your ad is listed on.
As a long-time Google customers, I can tell you I'd love to see a viable AdWords competitor. Specifically, the AdWords "affiliate" program sucks: Google won't tell you which sites you are advertised on and certainly doesn't give you the ability to say "I really don't want my product/service advertised on site X, Y or Z". Also, Google's trademark name policies are really bizarre: sometimes you can protect your own name, sometimes you can't. Other times someone will convince Google that a phrase widely used in the industry is a "trademark" and lock out all other industry competitors.
Unfortunately, the ads are going to continue to be sold by the search engines themselves for as far out as I can see, so it's tough to say if these guys will get any of my business.
Or visa versa...it sounds like each of software vendors mentioned has some work to do to get up to snuff. It's not like Vista has been some great surprise; beta and then release candidate copies have been available for months.
The next story on SlashDot will be:
"Google Announces Plan to Cure Cancer"
Random VP quoted as, "Fuck, why not? We're burning money on every other non-competency we can think of too."
Hey editors: how about a limit on the number of vaporware PR pieces from any particular corporation in any given week.
Um...it was fun to play with while it was free. $50/year for these toys is a bit much.
It's a little better than plain text, but if you can get an agent on a mail server that sends or receives mail (or just break in and take the current contents), your transport encryption buys you nothing. In other words, the messages sent over AUTH TLS are still stored in the clear "at rest" on the hard drive (shudder).
If you want to get serious about encryption in email,you should probably be checking out SMIME (or at least PGP)...
If you're only protecting the transport from spying eyes (with quantum encryption or whatever), that's only a part of what you need to protect your data.
This is the same reason why many, if not most, "SSL-protected" or "SSH-protected" servers are really sitting ducks: interesting data is still sitting in the clear on the endpoint servers' hard drives. (And don't get me started about "AUTH TLS" email forwarding...)
That's right; I'm a true tech through and through. If manuals are for wimps then TFA is for wussies too. C'mon - Slashdot editors: you need to shorten up those summaries for those of us with post-MTV-era attention spans!
You don't put things like "age" or "student ID" on a cert, and you certainly wouldn't put them on a key. Instead, you could use the verified IDs from certs/keys to look up information from a master DB, much like Brands and dozens of other interchangable knuckleheads are proposing.
Remember, whether you show up to a "verification service" with a magic cookie/ID/BrandsThing or a cert, you're still trusting a third party to only give out a piece of your total profile at a time. All the while, they're probably really selling the whole DB to random spammers, just like your average credit bureau.
When I read "digital credentials" I immediately thought "(SSL/SMIME) certs and (SSH/PGP) keys". Those are two standard and widely implemented forms of "strong" digital authentication. SSL certs are also already available in hardware tokens, etc, if you like the FOB route. (Just ask the DoD about CAC cards...)
I don't know why people keep trying to reinvent the wheel here.
I played a great Capcom game last night...Ghost and Goblins for the NES8 on an emulator. I remember when these guys were like the #2 or #3 game provider for the NES8 in the 1980s - anyone know how are they doing today?
It's not so much that there isn't customer demand for LINUX, it's that there isn't a whole lot of customer demand for individual Linux flavors A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. It's too much of a PITA to worry about qualifying all that different hardware with all the different distros and then worrying about dealing with Red Hat, Novell and all the different suppliers of what's basically a free OS.
Now, if they had a service like "I'll send you the Linux distro I want, please preinstall it on the next 500 computers you ship me," that could be big.
Is the magic gone? Probably, if you've played it non-stop since Christmas. Is it gone for the rest of us? Probably not. In a few years we'll buy a $50 Wii-emulator remote from somewhere, download a Wii emulator and a crap-load of free "ROMs" and we'll be happily entertained for a few hours. (Sorry, I'm almost 30...a little old for the console circuit.)
It makes sense for Red Hat to go it alone, because everyone can run their entire enterprise on 100% Red Hat OS's. Sound about right?
Some free end-user feedback for you guys ('cause I know you're reading). I'm running this under Windows 2003.
On the config dialog:
- Why don't you read the default sound card selection off of the "Control Panel"? (Audio panel)
- What's up with the "(fix bad sound)" labels? (Audio panel)
- Why do I only have "Desktop" or "MyDocs" as choices for "Recording Directory". (I'd like "D:\Music".) (Audio panel)
- Don't put the "HELP" button in red text. It's 2007 - if people need help, they'll know to look for a help button or just as likely, hit the web. (Same thing for the doc; if you think you have to write the text in red to get people to understand it, it's probably because the doc wasn't that clear in black.)
Next screen:
- What's up with the "Learn about stuff!" titlebar?
- No, it's not true that "You've Upgraded!". I just installed the software for the first time.
- Why is the "show next startup" box checked by default? I don't know any other software program that shows me the release notes with each launch. (Especially when I'm supposed to be relaunching the program several times to check audio settings.)
The actual program:
- Don't bug me with the "Violet needs testers and developers" prompt. WTF do you think I'm doing?
- OK, I loaded a sample. Where's the "play sample" button? (Also, why not tie the sample to the "keyboard" at this point so I can see which pitch I want to play the sample at.)
- Why don't you start with at least one track in a new pattern?
Looks like a good start. I'll try to write something in it over the weekend. (I should also tell you that my favorite tracker is something called "OctaMed" so you know where I'm coming from.)