You do realise that if there are no traffic regulations, then people are free to drive straight over the roundabout, go the wrong way around it, or use it as a meeting place for a pimped-out-bouncy-suspension car convention?
Bad to the point of me thinking the editors might as well just pull this entire posting. Except that'd be too easy on them, I guess. Seriously, though - RTFA, anyone?
Not-particularly-outlandish conspiracy time; the editor(s) in question knew that this would probably be found out as a "mistake" quite quickly, but that it would generate page views (at least) and discussion anyway. And since the majority of Slashdotters aren't subscribers, that's probably how they make most of their money.
Can't say I hold this against them badly; it's just a little commercial pragmatism.
The same goes for "accidental" duplicates of stories that generate good interest and discussion, but are about to fall off the front page.
What gets me is that people will dismiss this (Slashdot editors acting in a mildly cynical but commercially pragmatic manner do something fairly *straightforward*- and not all that evil- that makes commercial sense) as a loony conspiracy theory. Yet they'll continue to believe the alternative, that the editors continue to be employed despite making transparent "mistakes" and displaying supposed incompetence that would verge on the drool-inducing. Get real!
make up your own much more sinister example. Perhaps someone who consistently shows up in media footage of fires for example.
I doubt it would make much difference if Murder, She Wrote is anything to go by. That author was "coincidentally" near *countless* murders, and yet the police never once cottoned on!
Take for example, the red eye problem. To get rid of red eye almost a decade ago took some work. First, you had to scan in the photo if it wasn't digital and then use professional software like Photoshop. You could do it with MS Paint, but the results were not spectacular.
That's putting it mildly! MS Paint was- and is- so crude that the only remotely practical (*) way of fixing redeye was to replace the affected area with a black splodge. If you needed to do anything more advanced than that in a remotely convincing manner, tough!
MS Paint is so incredibly basic by modern standards that I'm convinced that its inclusion in Windows is tongue-in-cheek. It's a total throwback to the days when pixel-based editing and register colours were standard... but even the versions of Deluxe Paint on sale almost 20 years ago had more advanced editing features than the current MS paint!
It does have its uses as a pixel editor, but I suspect that most people use it for "ironically" bad drawings like incredibly bad porn...
(*) Yeah, I know that it's theoretically possible to do any modification you want, pixel-by-pixel. But not remotely practical.
If you know where the killer's house is in order to draw this donut around it, why not just go there and arrest them? If you're arguing that the killing is in a donut, there are an infinite number of donuts that a killing could belong to, so I don't see how that helps you find the killer's house if you have any less than 3-4 body(ies) in different location(s) that are actually arranged in a donut around a central location.
As a Wii owner, I'd not planning to buy casual games for it. [..] Most of my casual friends that have a Wii, on the other hand, don't classify any of the games mentioned as "casual". They won't buy this kind of games.
Strange, I always thought that the Wii *was* focussed more on the casual gamer.
There are no more meals served on planes to save money (well, at least here in the United States; I don't know about Europe where Ryanair operates)
Sorry, realised you were wondering about flight in Europe in general, not just Ryanair.
Well, I don't fly much, but as far as I'm aware the business and first class flights still serve food. Last time I flew business/first/whatever class it was, I got a meal and breakfast in some stupid executive lounge, but there's no way in hell it was worth the massive difference in cost.
There are no more meals served on planes to save money (well, at least here in the United States; I don't know about Europe where Ryanair operates)
Ryanair charge people for *every* piece of baggage they carry. Apparently, they even charge extra for *head pillows*! They removed the pockets from the backs of chairs to speed up plane cleaning turnaround time. Yes, that's how penny-pinching they are (and why they're so cheap). There's no way in hell you're getting *any* free food, let alone a meal, from Ryanair!
Ryanair are the *complete* antithesis of your "golden age of flying" airline, probably even more so than any airline within the US.
So what should a smart airline do? Let's say what it should NOT: try to avoid being compared, which is impossible because someone could still search the comparison site and then search Ryanair's site, and compare, it's not that difficult to do.
"Could" doesn't mean "would"; I'm guessing here that a proportion of people would think "Ryanair's cheap" or "Easyjet's cheap" and go to either or both sites, missing out on less well-known airlines with better offers. And as the other guy mentioned, it's not just about being compared; booking through these sites deprives Ryanair of the ability to cross-sell associated services and other shite.
Since there is so much disgust with airlines everywhere, a smart airline should actually charge more than others and advertise all over the place how they're like airlines were back in the good ol' days before the whole industry went down the toilet.
Unfortunately, what people say they'd want and pay for and what they *actually* do don't always tally. People would like your idea, I'm sure, but when it came to paying extra, would they put their money where their mouth is?
Would they pay "good ol' days" prices?
Never underestimate the public's ability to penny pinch, even when it's "penny wise, pound foolish". Some have suggested that once you pay the extras with Ryanair, and once you factor in (e.g.) taxi/bus/train transport due the fact that they fly between semi-obscure airports often located far outside their associated city/destination that Ryanair aren't all that cheap.
All the airlines have BS fees now. Most of them, however, won't fly you off the runway for 5 quid.
Neither will Ryanair- which was my point.
Do you feel less screwed when you pay 20 pounds fees on a 200 pound flight?
Interesting point, but in a sense, I should. Because the £200 flight still costs in the same ballpark, whereas the £5 flight is nothing like that- the fees are being used to not just mask, but to totally obscure the true cost of the flight. And that's assuming the flights are comparable.
This is just an initial attempt by a small airline to see if it can get away with destroying the search sites
"Small airline"? Don't assume that because a company doesn't cover your neck of the woods that they're insignificant- Ryanair is Europe's largest low-cost carrier.
I have this amazing product that will solve all your problems. And to make sure that my business is successful, I will punch anyone who dares to send me customers.
Bet you think that's a clever and insightful analogy to poke at obvious stupidity and pigheadedness by some airline.
Except that if the business model for your new product resembles that of airlines (which it may well *not*), then there are some perfectly sensible reasons from a business point of view why you might not want your company on a comparison site, even if it's "sending you customers".
Whatever you think about Michael O'Leary as a person, (IMHO he's an amoral and dislikable tosser), he's been very successful with Ryanair and hasn't f****d up yet. The problem with Slashdotters is that because they're generally intelligent when it comes to computers and other geek subjects (though nowhere near as good as they'd like to think) and because they're used to the pointy-haired boss stereotype, they see stuff like this and feel clever at pointing out the "obvious" stupidity. (Which your average guy in the street would probably also do in this case).
Except that this is typical Michael O'Leary behaviour and attitude, and whether you think it sucks or not, it's made him rather successful in a field of major failures.
his would be like a third party mirroring Slashdot's stories without Slashdot's advertisements, costing Slashdot revenue.
It's not like that at all. The airlines are selling a product that generates revenue.
The screen scrapers are actually providing customers a way to buy the things that generate revenue.
You're right that the analogy wasn't particularly good, because the business models clearly aren't the same. However, to say that "the airlines are selling a product that generates revenue" ignores what the GP said that they may be relying on the add-ons and the "gravy" to make their real money.
Not that I'm suggesting that anyone owes them a profit, merely that they have a legitimate business reason not to want people to go through the third party site. That's on top of the fact that if people know they can get Ryanair prices from the comparison site they're drawn into competing directly with other airlines in a race to the bottom, and possibly having peoples' attention drawn towards other airlines and permanently away from them. Ryanair are big and well-known enough to get away with this.
If people know they can't get Ryanair's prices from that site, they'll be less likely to go there. As I said, no-one owes Ryanair shit, but from a business perspective, that's at least two perfectly sensible reasons for them not to support comparison sites.
Another recent idiocy is to push cheap tickets (£5 - less than taxes)
Show me anyone who can actually fly for £5 or anything even in that ballpark once the minimum compulsory charges are added on. Otherwise, no offence, but I'll take that as seriously as I do any other "Fly for 59p and a used biro (small print: ex. taxes, charges, compulsory donation to Help Keep RyanEasy Profitable)" offer.
It's intentionally misleading- not merely to, but way beyond- the point of lying, and should be outlawed. Matter of fact, didn't the EU outlaw this kind of BS already anyway? If so, how are Ryanair and similar airlines getting away with it?
Unless you own an iMac, mine is in the shop (AGAIN!) for yet another circuit board and possibly new video card. So that was the best $169 I ever spent.
I'm not surprised your Mac keeps breaking down if you only spent $169 on it!
Plus, I don't know... I thought porn was about _sex_.
The thing about sex is that it's where human obsessions, phobias, repressions, all sorts of social issues come together.
Why (for example) do you think that some men enjoy being submissive with dominatrixes, or others enjoy seeing women dressed up as nuns, or.... etc., you get the picture. People's character and mindset drives a lot of the way they go about their sexual behaviour and feel attraction towards others.
They had that weird "push the cartridge in, then lock it down" setup
As far as I'm aware, Nintendo deliberately tried to do as much as they could to make the NES appear different to previous consoles such as the Atari VCS. The reason for this was apparently that people (especially retailers) got badly burned during the early-1980s downturn in the video game market and were reluctant to go there again. Nintendo (for example) tried to make the loading more like a video recorder, and so on.
The simple fact is for cheap+tough you really couldn't beat those all-in-one computers.
If you think about it, they weren't really "all in one"; sure, the keyboard and the computer itself were on the same box, but that was it. The hard disk drive (okay, *not* on a cheap early 80s computer), floppy drive (if you were pretty well off) or horrifically slow cassette deck (everyone else) required for storage weren't integrated on most of them as the secondary storage is on modern PCs. (*)
Most of the biggest successes (Vic, C64, Sinclair Spectrum) didn't have an inbuilt monitor either- almost certainly for cost reasons. Desktop/tower PCs don't either, but laptops do.
(*) Yes, some higher-end machines like the PET did, along with monitors... such all-in-one units did exist, but they looked kind of kitsch in that 1970s space age way.
I'm wondering if dirt/grease in the scratches is as much of a culprit as the scratches themselves.
Don't some scratch-fixers work by filling in the scratches with a substance that has a very similar refractive index to the plastic of the CD itself (thus making them near-invisible to the laser)?
Slashdot Mirror
Use a roundabout instead of a 4-way stop.
You do realise that if there are no traffic regulations, then people are free to drive straight over the roundabout, go the wrong way around it, or use it as a meeting place for a pimped-out-bouncy-suspension car convention?
Bad to the point of me thinking the editors might as well just pull this entire posting. Except that'd be too easy on them, I guess. Seriously, though - RTFA, anyone?
Not-particularly-outlandish conspiracy time; the editor(s) in question knew that this would probably be found out as a "mistake" quite quickly, but that it would generate page views (at least) and discussion anyway. And since the majority of Slashdotters aren't subscribers, that's probably how they make most of their money.
Can't say I hold this against them badly; it's just a little commercial pragmatism.
The same goes for "accidental" duplicates of stories that generate good interest and discussion, but are about to fall off the front page.
What gets me is that people will dismiss this (Slashdot editors acting in a mildly cynical but commercially pragmatic manner do something fairly *straightforward*- and not all that evil- that makes commercial sense) as a loony conspiracy theory. Yet they'll continue to believe the alternative, that the editors continue to be employed despite making transparent "mistakes" and displaying supposed incompetence that would verge on the drool-inducing. Get real!
make up your own much more sinister example. Perhaps someone who consistently shows up in media footage of fires for example.
I doubt it would make much difference if Murder, She Wrote is anything to go by. That author was "coincidentally" near *countless* murders, and yet the police never once cottoned on!
Take for example, the red eye problem. To get rid of red eye almost a decade ago took some work. First, you had to scan in the photo if it wasn't digital and then use professional software like Photoshop. You could do it with MS Paint, but the results were not spectacular.
That's putting it mildly! MS Paint was- and is- so crude that the only remotely practical (*) way of fixing redeye was to replace the affected area with a black splodge. If you needed to do anything more advanced than that in a remotely convincing manner, tough!
MS Paint is so incredibly basic by modern standards that I'm convinced that its inclusion in Windows is tongue-in-cheek. It's a total throwback to the days when pixel-based editing and register colours were standard... but even the versions of Deluxe Paint on sale almost 20 years ago had more advanced editing features than the current MS paint!
It does have its uses as a pixel editor, but I suspect that most people use it for "ironically" bad drawings like incredibly bad porn...
(*) Yeah, I know that it's theoretically possible to do any modification you want, pixel-by-pixel. But not remotely practical.
I just spent about 10 minutes, and I can recall what I had all of my meals for the past week
Yeah, but I bet that's because you eat nothing but instant noodles...
(obviously not posted due to it being boring)
...ha ha, I was right ;)
If you know where the killer's house is in order to draw this donut around it, why not just go there and arrest them? If you're arguing that the killing is in a donut, there are an infinite number of donuts that a killing could belong to, so I don't see how that helps you find the killer's house if you have any less than 3-4 body(ies) in different location(s) that are actually arranged in a donut around a central location.
Mmm..... donuts.
OMG!!!!! Homer Simpson is our serial killer!
Thanks, mine's the white boilersuit with the veil and hat on the next peg.
The Register's thattaway, son, and we don't have any of them thar fancy Paris icons and smileys either!
I can't wait for the Barack Software Distribution. There's no way in hell McCain-ix can beat BSD.
Sorry to disappoint you, but Netcraft confirms it- Barack's campaign is dying!
As a Wii owner, I'd not planning to buy casual games for it. [..] Most of my casual friends that have a Wii, on the other hand, don't classify any of the games mentioned as "casual". They won't buy this kind of games.
Strange, I always thought that the Wii *was* focussed more on the casual gamer.
I mean, if left to his own devices next thing you know he'll have a camp Vader screaming 'noooooooooo' at the sky or something.
I've only one response to that idea- "Do Not Want".
There are no more meals served on planes to save money (well, at least here in the United States; I don't know about Europe where Ryanair operates)
Sorry, realised you were wondering about flight in Europe in general, not just Ryanair.
Well, I don't fly much, but as far as I'm aware the business and first class flights still serve food. Last time I flew business/first/whatever class it was, I got a meal and breakfast in some stupid executive lounge, but there's no way in hell it was worth the massive difference in cost.
There are no more meals served on planes to save money (well, at least here in the United States; I don't know about Europe where Ryanair operates)
Ryanair charge people for *every* piece of baggage they carry. Apparently, they even charge extra for *head pillows*! They removed the pockets from the backs of chairs to speed up plane cleaning turnaround time. Yes, that's how penny-pinching they are (and why they're so cheap). There's no way in hell you're getting *any* free food, let alone a meal, from Ryanair!
Ryanair are the *complete* antithesis of your "golden age of flying" airline, probably even more so than any airline within the US.
So what should a smart airline do? Let's say what it should NOT: try to avoid being compared, which is impossible because someone could still search the comparison site and then search Ryanair's site, and compare, it's not that difficult to do.
"Could" doesn't mean "would"; I'm guessing here that a proportion of people would think "Ryanair's cheap" or "Easyjet's cheap" and go to either or both sites, missing out on less well-known airlines with better offers. And as the other guy mentioned, it's not just about being compared; booking through these sites deprives Ryanair of the ability to cross-sell associated services and other shite.
Since there is so much disgust with airlines everywhere, a smart airline should actually charge more than others and advertise all over the place how they're like airlines were back in the good ol' days before the whole industry went down the toilet.
Unfortunately, what people say they'd want and pay for and what they *actually* do don't always tally. People would like your idea, I'm sure, but when it came to paying extra, would they put their money where their mouth is?
Would they pay "good ol' days" prices?
Never underestimate the public's ability to penny pinch, even when it's "penny wise, pound foolish". Some have suggested that once you pay the extras with Ryanair, and once you factor in (e.g.) taxi/bus/train transport due the fact that they fly between semi-obscure airports often located far outside their associated city/destination that Ryanair aren't all that cheap.
All the airlines have BS fees now. Most of them, however, won't fly you off the runway for 5 quid.
Neither will Ryanair- which was my point.
Do you feel less screwed when you pay 20 pounds fees on a 200 pound flight?
Interesting point, but in a sense, I should. Because the £200 flight still costs in the same ballpark, whereas the £5 flight is nothing like that- the fees are being used to not just mask, but to totally obscure the true cost of the flight. And that's assuming the flights are comparable.
This is just an initial attempt by a small airline to see if it can get away with destroying the search sites
"Small airline"? Don't assume that because a company doesn't cover your neck of the woods that they're insignificant- Ryanair is Europe's largest low-cost carrier.
I have this amazing product that will solve all your problems. And to make sure that my business is successful, I will punch anyone who dares to send me customers.
Bet you think that's a clever and insightful analogy to poke at obvious stupidity and pigheadedness by some airline.
Except that if the business model for your new product resembles that of airlines (which it may well *not*), then there are some perfectly sensible reasons from a business point of view why you might not want your company on a comparison site, even if it's "sending you customers".
Whatever you think about Michael O'Leary as a person, (IMHO he's an amoral and dislikable tosser), he's been very successful with Ryanair and hasn't f****d up yet. The problem with Slashdotters is that because they're generally intelligent when it comes to computers and other geek subjects (though nowhere near as good as they'd like to think) and because they're used to the pointy-haired boss stereotype, they see stuff like this and feel clever at pointing out the "obvious" stupidity. (Which your average guy in the street would probably also do in this case).
Except that this is typical Michael O'Leary behaviour and attitude, and whether you think it sucks or not, it's made him rather successful in a field of major failures.
his would be like a third party mirroring Slashdot's stories without Slashdot's advertisements, costing Slashdot revenue.
It's not like that at all. The airlines are selling a product that generates revenue. The screen scrapers are actually providing customers a way to buy the things that generate revenue.
You're right that the analogy wasn't particularly good, because the business models clearly aren't the same. However, to say that "the airlines are selling a product that generates revenue" ignores what the GP said that they may be relying on the add-ons and the "gravy" to make their real money.
Not that I'm suggesting that anyone owes them a profit, merely that they have a legitimate business reason not to want people to go through the third party site. That's on top of the fact that if people know they can get Ryanair prices from the comparison site they're drawn into competing directly with other airlines in a race to the bottom, and possibly having peoples' attention drawn towards other airlines and permanently away from them. Ryanair are big and well-known enough to get away with this.
If people know they can't get Ryanair's prices from that site, they'll be less likely to go there. As I said, no-one owes Ryanair shit, but from a business perspective, that's at least two perfectly sensible reasons for them not to support comparison sites.
Another recent idiocy is to push cheap tickets (£5 - less than taxes)
Show me anyone who can actually fly for £5 or anything even in that ballpark once the minimum compulsory charges are added on. Otherwise, no offence, but I'll take that as seriously as I do any other "Fly for 59p and a used biro (small print: ex. taxes, charges, compulsory donation to Help Keep RyanEasy Profitable)" offer.
It's intentionally misleading- not merely to, but way beyond- the point of lying, and should be outlawed. Matter of fact, didn't the EU outlaw this kind of BS already anyway? If so, how are Ryanair and similar airlines getting away with it?
*whoosh!*
Unless you own an iMac, mine is in the shop (AGAIN!) for yet another circuit board and possibly new video card. So that was the best $169 I ever spent.
I'm not surprised your Mac keeps breaking down if you only spent $169 on it!
Plus, I don't know... I thought porn was about _sex_.
The thing about sex is that it's where human obsessions, phobias, repressions, all sorts of social issues come together.
Why (for example) do you think that some men enjoy being submissive with dominatrixes, or others enjoy seeing women dressed up as nuns, or.... etc., you get the picture. People's character and mindset drives a lot of the way they go about their sexual behaviour and feel attraction towards others.
it was B A B A, not A B A B.
If you type A, B, B, A it plays "Mamma Mia".
They had that weird "push the cartridge in, then lock it down" setup
As far as I'm aware, Nintendo deliberately tried to do as much as they could to make the NES appear different to previous consoles such as the Atari VCS. The reason for this was apparently that people (especially retailers) got badly burned during the early-1980s downturn in the video game market and were reluctant to go there again. Nintendo (for example) tried to make the loading more like a video recorder, and so on.
What about the cereal?
Going by an eBay auction of an old box of the stuff, the cereal pieces look dinosaur shaped.
:)
Personally, I'd make them human shaped so the kids could play at being dinosaurs and eat all the humans. You know that's what they'd really want
The simple fact is for cheap+tough you really couldn't beat those all-in-one computers.
If you think about it, they weren't really "all in one"; sure, the keyboard and the computer itself were on the same box, but that was it. The hard disk drive (okay, *not* on a cheap early 80s computer), floppy drive (if you were pretty well off) or horrifically slow cassette deck (everyone else) required for storage weren't integrated on most of them as the secondary storage is on modern PCs. (*)
Most of the biggest successes (Vic, C64, Sinclair Spectrum) didn't have an inbuilt monitor either- almost certainly for cost reasons. Desktop/tower PCs don't either, but laptops do.
(*) Yes, some higher-end machines like the PET did, along with monitors... such all-in-one units did exist, but they looked kind of kitsch in that 1970s space age way.
I'm wondering if dirt/grease in the scratches is as much of a culprit as the scratches themselves.
Don't some scratch-fixers work by filling in the scratches with a substance that has a very similar refractive index to the plastic of the CD itself (thus making them near-invisible to the laser)?