When I said buy I meant as in make the necessary investments in the right local politicians and the choicer real estate, however, BG could probably afford to pick up a few nukes and the odd missle or two on the black market should he need to encourage other countries not to mess with them.
"If anyone wants to get in a slap on the wrist before it's too late..."
Anybody see last Thursday's Cringely? (They're dated on Thursdays but usually don't get posted 'til almost Friday) He offers the opinion that if the cost of settlement goes as high as 2 Billion Dollars that MS will just use the money to buy an island somewhere and move offshore instead. He's not joking. "I have no idea where Microsoft would move, but I know they are considering it. Let me repeat that: I KNOW THEY ARE CONSIDERING IT."
As he further says "As a diplomat, Gates couldn't even be arrested for speeding on visits back to Redmond..."
Thus spaketh sllort (User #442574) "Nobody knows who astronauts are because they don't do anything groundbreaking anymore. It's been done.
Get over it."
They don't do stuff that the public can see as being groundbreaking. In between giant leaps there are periods of incremental, cumulative goundbreakings that aren't particularly glamourous or able to capture the public's fleeting attention, but that set the stage for the next giant leap.
Or we could have another big fatal disaster; that'd garner some name recognition factor, but it's not a method I'd recommend.
Yeah, but have you ever hacked your Dremel? (I have)
Can't resist one more mention of a Register story about a Swedish site that takes the term "hacking" quite literally. Check the "angle grinder" link to see how to overcome those sealed systems.
Slashdot probably got the "dotcom" when they got big enough to realistically fear some unscrupulous low life grabbing it to get undeserved traffic. In other words, they had to do it in self defense once they made "slashdot" something that people would recognize as more than just a couple of punctuation marks pronounced out loud like an old Victor Borge routine. At present the sites "hyphenampersand.com" and "hyphenampersand.org" don't seem to exist, but as soon as someone were to create one and generate some traffic, someone else would grab the other for the coattail effect.
Even if these people registered mySQL.com because they were going to be a business, you would think that they'd also run mySQL.org so that the community could have one site and the business a separate one, or that they'd know enough to have grabbed mySQL.org in self defense as soon as it became apparent that voluntary adherence to standards on the internet evaporated the instant that someone smelled the opportunity to use it to make a buck.
Before you let that sealed system deter you, check out this Register story about a Swedish site and click on the angle grinder link. The pictures more than make up for anything lost by not being able to read Swedish.
That which is supposed to be a "feature" of moderation -- can't post and moderate in the same story -- is also a "bug" -- can't moderate and explain why. If you post to a story all your moderations of posts in that story are undone. Also, I think that when the moderations are undone it doesn't restore the previous karma score of the person receiving the moderation, but I might be confusing that with some other quirk of the process.
Microsoft won't have any problems supporting OEM versions of Windows, they'll just tell the end user to contact the OEM for support, just as they have always done.
Now if only the end user of retail box Microsoft products could do the same as the OEMs, so that they could avoid having the stuff that they specify that they don't want install itself anyway.
Seeing as how this wasn't one of those CDs where RIAA, ASCAP, and BMI grab a big chunk off the top, how could they not make money selling the CDs? Unless you mean selling the CDs *and* providing the service. Or was the post office charging them $11 apiece to provide the retail space?
He/she (it?, they? that's the thing about anonymous posters, they're so...well...anonymous) didn't say that there was an abundance of know-nothing know-it-all posts in the rarified strata which you browse, so you could both easily be right on that point. As far as Slashdot being a good site, it is when one considers the price (free), but if the price went up (which was the thoretical possibility being discussed), then its faults would be more objectionable.
I didn't say whether I cared or didn't care about losing karma, I said that I was willing to. There are more than enough posts richly deserving of being modded down to -1 for all the moderators to whack if they can't find something to mod up. This wasn't one of them. If it had been left alone at the default 0 I wouldn't have given it another thought. I wish my post had been left un-up-moderated. The original plan was that probably no more than 2 people would have bothered to moderate it down, so the original sentiments would have wound up where they started, at 0.
As far as karma going down without corresponding down moderations, are you implying that there is some way to cause that other than meta-moderation, or some way to know who you're metamoderating so as to target someone in particular? I noticed that a post of mine to a different story seems to have been labeled informative without changing the score and without a moderation total appended to the bottom of it. Has someone with too much time on their hands found an exploitable bug in slashcode?
As to why you seem to think that they should have been modded down because somebody said it better on some *other* forum (is there anything said here that isn't?), I am unable to follow your reasoning.
No doubt someone will come along to moderate this post down as off-topic, which, of course, it is, or knock down the score with some other label.
"...do you actually make a significant amount of money off your website's banner ads and pop up windows?"
Compared to what? How much they make providing the website without any money coming in? If the ads drive away users who weren't helping to cover the overhead anyway (but did cause an increase, even if very small, in operating costs), are they supposed to feel bad about that?
I reproduce here a reply to your post that should have been modded up, not down. I'm willing to lose k-points to do so.
Re:Paying model (Score:-1, Troll)
by Anonymous Coward on 11:56 AM July 9th, 2001 EDT (#58)
No offense intended, just brutal honesty:
I honestly doubt Slashdot would get good response with any kind of pay model, at least not in its current incarnation. Insanely biased reporting, grammar and general english-language problems in the article write-ups that would make even a child cringe, an abundance of comments from know-it-alls who actually know nothing (and I'll save you the time, yes this is one of those)... the list goes on and on.
Don't get me wrong, it's a good site, and I check it every day, but it's nothing I couldn't get somewhere else. Make me pay and I won't return. There are plenty of other places to go.
Slashdot Mirror
When I said buy I meant as in make the necessary investments in the right local politicians and the choicer real estate, however, BG could probably afford to pick up a few nukes and the odd missle or two on the black market should he need to encourage other countries not to mess with them.
Anybody see last Thursday's Cringely? (They're dated on Thursdays but usually don't get posted 'til almost Friday) He offers the opinion that if the cost of settlement goes as high as 2 Billion Dollars that MS will just use the money to buy an island somewhere and move offshore instead. He's not joking. "I have no idea where Microsoft would move, but I know they are considering it. Let me repeat that: I KNOW THEY ARE CONSIDERING IT."
As he further says "As a diplomat, Gates couldn't even be arrested for speeding on visits back to Redmond..."
It's worth a read.
Yeah, but Structured Query Language is a little more generic than say Texaco or Kleenex or even Pascal.
Somewhat ironically, details of my Dremel hack will have to wait until later this afternoon after I get back from the dentist.
Well, yeah, except for that SQL part.
"Nobody knows who astronauts are because they don't do anything groundbreaking anymore. It's been done.
Get over it."
They don't do stuff that the public can see as being groundbreaking. In between giant leaps there are periods of incremental, cumulative goundbreakings that aren't particularly glamourous or able to capture the public's fleeting attention, but that set the stage for the next giant leap.
Or we could have another big fatal disaster; that'd garner some name recognition factor, but it's not a method I'd recommend.
Can't resist one more mention of a Register story about a Swedish site that takes the term "hacking" quite literally. Check the "angle grinder" link to see how to overcome those sealed systems.
Even if these people registered mySQL.com because they were going to be a business, you would think that they'd also run mySQL.org so that the community could have one site and the business a separate one, or that they'd know enough to have grabbed mySQL.org in self defense as soon as it became apparent that voluntary adherence to standards on the internet evaporated the instant that someone smelled the opportunity to use it to make a buck.
Before you let that sealed system deter you, check out this Register story about a Swedish site and click on the angle grinder link. The pictures more than make up for anything lost by not being able to read Swedish.
That which is supposed to be a "feature" of moderation -- can't post and moderate in the same story -- is also a "bug" -- can't moderate and explain why. If you post to a story all your moderations of posts in that story are undone. Also, I think that when the moderations are undone it doesn't restore the previous karma score of the person receiving the moderation, but I might be confusing that with some other quirk of the process.
You're thinking of that other ark, the ark of the covenant, in which they kept the stone tablets on which the ten commandments were carved.
Now if only the end user of retail box Microsoft products could do the same as the OEMs, so that they could avoid having the stuff that they specify that they don't want install itself anyway.
1) Consistancy
2) Predictability
3) Simplicity
4) Standardization "
Funny, those are the problems I have with MS stuff.
Maybe it's just computers in general that aren't ready for prime-time.
Yeah, that'll work.
I thought that was the lad from wherever Robert Frost was from.
I thought I was the only one with mod box trouble on heavily replied to stories. Glad to see the problem is external to my system.
The drug laws have banned the manufacture of the "real" Coca-Cola since before anybody here was born.
Seeing as how this wasn't one of those CDs where RIAA, ASCAP, and BMI grab a big chunk off the top, how could they not make money selling the CDs? Unless you mean selling the CDs *and* providing the service. Or was the post office charging them $11 apiece to provide the retail space?
He/she (it?, they? that's the thing about anonymous posters, they're so...well...anonymous) didn't say that there was an abundance of know-nothing know-it-all posts in the rarified strata which you browse, so you could both easily be right on that point. As far as Slashdot being a good site, it is when one considers the price (free), but if the price went up (which was the thoretical possibility being discussed), then its faults would be more objectionable.
As far as karma going down without corresponding down moderations, are you implying that there is some way to cause that other than meta-moderation, or some way to know who you're metamoderating so as to target someone in particular? I noticed that a post of mine to a different story seems to have been labeled informative without changing the score and without a moderation total appended to the bottom of it. Has someone with too much time on their hands found an exploitable bug in slashcode?
As to why you seem to think that they should have been modded down because somebody said it better on some *other* forum (is there anything said here that isn't?), I am unable to follow your reasoning.
No doubt someone will come along to moderate this post down as off-topic, which, of course, it is, or knock down the score with some other label.
I'll live.
Generally when radio stations fire you they aren't that nice about it.
Compared to what? How much they make providing the website without any money coming in? If the ads drive away users who weren't helping to cover the overhead anyway (but did cause an increase, even if very small, in operating costs), are they supposed to feel bad about that?
Re:Paying model (Score:-1, Troll)
... the list goes on and on.
by Anonymous Coward on 11:56 AM July 9th, 2001 EDT (#58)
No offense intended, just brutal honesty:
I honestly doubt Slashdot would get good response with any kind of pay model, at least not in its current incarnation. Insanely biased reporting, grammar and general english-language problems in the article write-ups that would make even a child cringe, an abundance of comments from know-it-alls who actually know nothing (and I'll save you the time, yes this is one of those)
Don't get me wrong, it's a good site, and I check it every day, but it's nothing I couldn't get somewhere else. Make me pay and I won't return. There are plenty of other places to go.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
MS wants a cut? Please. When people get nickle-and-dimed to death, they want to be the ones getting each and every last nickle and dime.
Not to mention that moderators who replied to the post they moderated would undo that moderation.