Where did you get that? I've read that Philips simply decided that they'd make more money off cassette technology if they let everybody use it for free
Well, that's true; if they hadn't let everyone (including Sony) use it for free, they probably *would* have made less money overall.
Two years later. And yes, the graphics and multi-tasking ability of the Amiga kicked the Lisa's ass (and Macintosh's) all over the shop at a fraction of the cost, no doubt about it.
But, as a former Amiga user, I'll still say that the OS 1.x interface wasn't the best GUI ever. They improved quite a lot with 2.x onwards, but that was five years or so later.
If Java was as bad as you say it would NOT be so popular in embedded devices. There is a huge disconnect between the archaic concept of Java as a slow pig and the real world popularity of Java on small systems like printers and cell phones.
Doesn't that use J2ME though? And, I would assume, J2ME gives you less facilities than J2SE and J2EE, so are we comparing like with like?
Not saying, you're wrong, I just want to know if the comparison is valid.
Sony effectively pressured Philips into not charging a license for the use of the Compact Cassette patents in exchange for their support.
Sony must have been in a position of some significance, because Philips rolled over and did this; although when they decided not to charge for the license, they allowed everyone to use it.
As said elsewhere, MiniDisc may have flopped in the US, but it was a major success in Japan. It also made some inroads in Europe in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Admittedly, that was quite a long time after it had been launched in the early 1990s (presumably because it was way too expensive for the target audience- or at least the audience likely to be most receptive to it- back then; I'd written it off myself along with the Digital Compact Cassette by the mid-90s). And, of course, nowadays, it's being eclipsed by iPod and friends, so if it had been a success in Europe when it was launched, it would have had 12 or so years of solid sales instead of 4 or 5 as a minor success.
But all said and done, MiniDisc was not the flop some US-centric views would like to paint it as. Remember that Japan has a major consumer market which tends to be more receptive to this kind of stuff; and that the US is not the only major market outside Japan.
Not that I'm saying I like Sony particularly, or that they haven't produced their share of flops. Just that- in terms of formats they've developed or supported- they've had their share of successes, such as the CD, cassette and 3.5" floppy drive.
In addition to the Compact Disc mentioned elsewhere (major failure), Sony were serious backers of something called the 'Compact Cassette' that Philips developed.
Of course, that one was a major failure, since only *every damn person on the face of the planet* born before 1995 or so owned one, and they only owned between 5 and 500 of the damn things each.
Apparently, Sony's support of this thing was so misguided, they even produced an obscure machine called the 'Walkman' supporting this format.
Ha ha ha! Another Sony failure!
They also developed some unsuccessful, nonstandard thing called the microfloppy (a 3.5" version of the floppy disk) that was included in something called a "Personal Computer".
Computer? What that? I don't think they took off either...
I hate Britney's music as much as the next guy - perhaps more owing to my BFA - Music/Recording degree.
But while being subjected to my young girls' favorite CD (Kids Bop #whatever), I was listening to Oops.
And as pop goes, it really isn't badly written at all. The phrasing matches the lyrics superbly. And it's not really that simple, despite its pop-tart packaging.
Oops I did it again is actually not dissimilar to "...Baby one more time", but not quite as good.
Reason I mention this is that although Britney has released her share of dross, "Baby One More Time" is a *damn* well-written pop song, regardless of whether you like the way she sings it, or the production.
I heard this song several times on the radio *before* I'd ever seen Britney Spears (I didn't know if she was black, white or what); so perhaps I have the benefit I can actually judge it purely on its merits.
(Disclaimer: I know very little about music theory; there are probably technical words for the stuff I'm about to try to describe).
Listen to the way the middle-eight section takes the chorus down to the simple piano and vocal along the lines of the verse but then tapers of somewhere else. Following this, it gradually builds up again with some layers of the verse, then a clever modification of the bridge section that that effortlessly merges back into the chorus.
It's just so damn well done, it doesn't *sound* "clever". Quite the opposite, it's the apparent effortlessness that's "clever".... the effect is like being on a car journey where, after a couple of times along the same road, the driver takes a detour along some country road, goes off somewhere else that isn't quite where you expected to be, and you're wondering how he's going to get back onto the main road. Yet you're driving along and that realise you're suddenly back on track, seamlessly merging with the traffic.
"Ooops..." cuts the middle-eight down to almost nothing, but isn't really as complex or interesting there. And it's a bit too derivative of "Baby one more time" to be truly great in its own right.
Anyway, the thing that surprised me about "Baby one more time" was that it was basically europop; granted, it had some all-American frosting and plenty of R n'B sprinkles on top- but it was still basically europop at a time (even then) that R n'B was pretty dominant in US music, and europop-style music was never popular in the US. OTOH, there were quite a few euro-style US hits in the late 1990s (Barbie Girl, Max Martin proteges, etc.)
Oh yeah, Max Martin. After thinking this, was I *not* entirely surprised when I found out the production team behind it was Swedish. (IIRC it was actually recorded in Sweden). And I guess they deserve more credit than Britney, but.... does it matter? It's a great song.
Oh yeah, and I liked 'Toxic' too, and I didn't know that was a Britney song first time I heard it either. So there:-P
Being depressed is not crying. When you cry, you cry. So what? There's no point in feeling good all the time. If you're ALWAYS on the top, the curve is flat. Life consists of variations, mountains and valleys, thankfully! A child, when you look at it, will cry with its whole body. What we as adults have forgotten, the child does naturally. This will free so much stress from the system! When a child cries, it cries, it doesn't think so much, doesn't analyse a whole lot, or focus on the obstacles.
Trite; you blame the learned behaviour for childrens' depression; well, it's hard to say, and I'm not buying that without a more convincing case.
Basically, I figured out that on some level I've been (to put it crudely) depressed by some degree pretty much as far back as I can remember. This doesn't really tie in well with what you say.
I'm sorry, but your stuff about children just comes across as more inadequately-backed-up and excessively propogated self-help pseudo-science.
The way out of depression is to care about others, then your own problems will become smaller!
On the contrary, that's a pat solution, and not necessarily true. A lot of people get depressed because they have been brought up to care about others, and feel guilty about putting themselves first.
With respect (I noticed your link), I think this is where religious/spiritual "solutions" have conflicting interests; most of them aren't going to put their own communities second to helping someone out of depression.
Some (cults, and some mainstream religions) are positively dangerous, in that they'll suck people with these problems in, and make them feel worse when the person realises that the religion isn't the solution, and tries to leave.
I'm pretty sure that being in the upper 50% of intelligence would give you the feeling of being smarter than everybody else because you ARE smarter than everybody else.
Evidently, you aren't that smart then. Being in the upper 50% of people by intelligence simply means that you're smarter (not necessarily by a large amount) than the 50% of people in the lower half.
As stated by two previous ACs, one of the main observations of the Buddha is that all life is suffering.
That's not necessarily true; I believe the word 'suffering' is a possibly misleading translation of the word 'dukkha'. This is hard to translate, but could possibly be phrased as 'unsatisfactoriness'.
(I am not a linguistics scholar, nor a Buddhist, so no-one reading this should quote the above in their PhD thesis).
If you don't take the "free gift" of "forgiveness" for perceived sins of any magnitude, you get an infinite (all eternity) amount of punishment in God's private dungeon, which is disproportionate to *any* amount of sin one could conceivably commit in a lifetime. This is the definition of coercion.
Wow! I'm glad I don't live in the US; there's no way He would get away with that sort of thing under EU law...
I'd say I was a relatively depressive git, and I don't find unhappy/depressed people necessarily interesting. On the other hand, there are stupidly/vapidly/selfishly happy people who do nothing for me; yet other 'happy' people can be happy and outgoing and make you feel better.
What I dislike is the stupid minded, over-simplistic assumptions from the some 'selfishly' happy people who figure that because *they* are happy, there is something wrong with those that aren't, or can't think themselves into someone else's mind.
That having been said, I do agree with *some* of the stuff you said in your first (full) paragraph.
Have you seen a child? It is never depressed. A child cannot be depressed. It learns that behaviour from the environment, which it eagerly emulates, and when put under stress for a long time.
On what basis do you come to this conclusion, and how do you define depression?
No offense intended, but this does have the ring of one of those psychological urban myths (or unproven theories that at some stage become accepted 'fact') that get propogated by even 'reputable' people because it sounds good on TV and in help books.
There is no point in natural selection it just happens.
Amen. Even people who are 'experts' on evolution seem to forget this; my 'purpose' is not necessarily to reproduce- it *just so happens* that the process that gave rise to me will make me more likely to carry it on.
To ascribe a 'purpose' to this may be a useful (and arguably valid) shortcut when discussing evolution (otherwise discussion may become verbose); but *only* if those using it are conscious of its literal incorrectness.
Of course, evolution may be directed by 'external' forces (e.g. domestication of animals), but this is just superimposing one pseudo-'purpose' onto another, and doesn't change the root issue.
Of course not. Are you implying that I should refrain from pointing out what I consider to be obvious because Slashdot is a "free" site? I'm not sure that makes sense, or is even relevant.
Why do you care?
I'm not really that bothered per se. I just think the explanation that all the dupes are down to simple incompetence has become rather implausible.... it's the five-ton elephant in the middle of the room that no-one notices. Perversely, the more commonplace it becomes, the more it seems to get accepted; it started off being joked about, and now people are used to it, no-one stops to think how implausible the whole "incompetent editors" thing is, in spite of the increasing silliness of that explanation in light of recent dupes.
I mean, Zonk posted both stories himself.
I don't get this whole "OMG its a dupe" fad that's come into being
I don't either; and for a different reason- namely that for all the bitching about dupes that goes on, it's always complaining about the supposed incompetence of the editors.
I mean, there are footprints all over the butter, and they aren't even considering the elephant in the fridge as a possible cause!
Is this just the post-modern version of the "neither news for nerds, NOR stuff that matters!" troll
No, I'm not a troll (check my posting history; plenty of lightweight crap, but nothing really trollish). I'm just someone who, having read the same "OMG its a dupe, the editors suck"-type post several times, then seeing someone else who'd spotted the elephant in the room had to reply to it.
I really think you missed the point when you put this done as another "OMG it's a dupe!!!" post. It's *about* the lack of insight in such posts as much as it's about the dupes themselves.
Anyway, Slashdot are a free site, so I'm not going to lay into them for trying to increase their pageviews; I'm just not going along with the 'incompetence' nonsense.
Even a/c counts as a page view from a traffic standpoint. An intelligent conversation devoid of a/c and flaming gets many fewer posts and thus fewer total ads served. If it that complicated?
My feelings exactly. How naive do you have to be exactly to believe that all those "dupes" are really down the incompetence of the editors?
Slashdot is a large, well-visited site, with paid editors, and we're asked to believe that they're not capable of spotting stuff like this?
Sorry, it happens often enough that if it weren't deliberate, they'd have hired someone with two brain cells to rub together by now. Simple acknowledgements of the dupe or even of their supposed incompetence have become so much of a Slashdot "tradition" that it obscures the bleedingly obvious lack of plausibility these repeated "mistakes" have.
But in this case, I'm glad of the dupe, because without it, I'd have missed the banner advert for another gimmicky boy's toy^w^w^w brain-expanding, uh... glowy thing from ThinkGeek that I *must* buy!
I think MACs are toys. Prove me wrong. [freepay.com]
Offtopic, but what *exactly* are you trying to say in your sig?
"Get me a free iMac, so I can see that they're not a toy"?
Either this is the most blatantly cynical "Free iPod/Mac Mini/whatever spam sig" ever, or you know the Apple fanboys better than me, and they really *will* help you get a free Mac Mini to prove you how great they are.
Firefox is the biggest piece of shit I've ever used. I hope all users of it die !
That's quite probable; Firefox is a nice browser, but I don't recall seeing "confers immortality on all who use it" as a listed feature (unlike Internet Explorer, obviously).
Perhaps they'll add that in the next release. Then we'll see who's laughing.... forever!!! Muwahahahahahah!
Its not like they are tracking were I click the most on the webpage
What do you mean "it's not like they are". Who are *they*?
*They* are everyone who runs a website you might visit, and besides, we were discussing what they *could* do; not just what they are presently doing.
Your just a random number to website owners nobody cares that much about you personally website only care about the mass.
"They" only care about the mass? Who are "they" again?
If you mean they only collate bulk data for statistics, well... probably not true. On the contrary, it's more beneficial to them if they know what a particular customer wants to buy, etc.
And you're right; of course they don't care about me *personally*. That doesn't mean "they" (or *some* of them) aren't a threat, because after all, the people who would like to steal my credit card number probably don't care about me personally either, but it's still harmful to *me* specifically, and similar problems arise with the leaking of personal information.
You are porbably the one of those users who delete all google cookies because you think google will own your computer through cookies and know everything about you..
Well, let's be paranoid here. I'm on dial-up at present; previously I was on broadband at the same address for days or weeks on end. Even if I deleted the cookies, they still have a good idea who I am if they *really* wish to find that out.
Anyhow, believe what you like. Considering the possibilities doesn't mean I have to act upon them, but at least I like to know what's possible.
The problem with Java applets is they require too much to be installed on the client side. This has big security and performance implications
Security? XMLHttpRequest is very cool, but (albeit for reasons not the same as those you gave for Java), it's likely to fall off its pedestal very soon in the face of these security problems.
In short, assuming you have the functionality turned on (I assume there is a way to turn it off in present browsers, though I haven't checked), XMLHttpRequest breaks the assumption that web pages only record what you're doing when you "submit" a request (don't think this applies to Flash, but it's normally obvious when a flash app is being used).
In short, it's theoretically possible for a site to be receiving information about pretty much every action you carry out within a browser window, and practically *quite* possible (and likely) for less than trustworthy sites to be receiving information you'd rather they didn't (if you knew about it); I could go further, but the article pretty much explains it well.
Slashdot Mirror
Where did you get that? I've read that Philips simply decided that they'd make more money off cassette technology if they let everybody use it for free
Well, that's true; if they hadn't let everyone (including Sony) use it for free, they probably *would* have made less money overall.
Anyway; here's Sony's take on it.
Two years later. And yes, the graphics and multi-tasking ability of the Amiga kicked the Lisa's ass (and Macintosh's) all over the shop at a fraction of the cost, no doubt about it.
But, as a former Amiga user, I'll still say that the OS 1.x interface wasn't the best GUI ever. They improved quite a lot with 2.x onwards, but that was five years or so later.
If Java was as bad as you say it would NOT be so popular in embedded devices. There is a huge disconnect between the archaic concept of Java as a slow pig and the real world popularity of Java on small systems like printers and cell phones.
Doesn't that use J2ME though? And, I would assume, J2ME gives you less facilities than J2SE and J2EE, so are we comparing like with like?
Not saying, you're wrong, I just want to know if the comparison is valid.
Sony effectively pressured Philips into not charging a license for the use of the Compact Cassette patents in exchange for their support.
Sony must have been in a position of some significance, because Philips rolled over and did this; although when they decided not to charge for the license, they allowed everyone to use it.
As said elsewhere, MiniDisc may have flopped in the US, but it was a major success in Japan. It also made some inroads in Europe in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Admittedly, that was quite a long time after it had been launched in the early 1990s (presumably because it was way too expensive for the target audience- or at least the audience likely to be most receptive to it- back then; I'd written it off myself along with the Digital Compact Cassette by the mid-90s). And, of course, nowadays, it's being eclipsed by iPod and friends, so if it had been a success in Europe when it was launched, it would have had 12 or so years of solid sales instead of 4 or 5 as a minor success.
But all said and done, MiniDisc was not the flop some US-centric views would like to paint it as. Remember that Japan has a major consumer market which tends to be more receptive to this kind of stuff; and that the US is not the only major market outside Japan.
Not that I'm saying I like Sony particularly, or that they haven't produced their share of flops. Just that- in terms of formats they've developed or supported- they've had their share of successes, such as the CD, cassette and 3.5" floppy drive.
In addition to the Compact Disc mentioned elsewhere (major failure), Sony were serious backers of something called the 'Compact Cassette' that Philips developed.
Of course, that one was a major failure, since only *every damn person on the face of the planet* born before 1995 or so owned one, and they only owned between 5 and 500 of the damn things each.
Apparently, Sony's support of this thing was so misguided, they even produced an obscure machine called the 'Walkman' supporting this format.
Ha ha ha! Another Sony failure!
They also developed some unsuccessful, nonstandard thing called the microfloppy (a 3.5" version of the floppy disk) that was included in something called a "Personal Computer".
Computer? What that? I don't think they took off either...
I hate Britney's music as much as the next guy - perhaps more owing to my BFA - Music/Recording degree.
:-P
But while being subjected to my young girls' favorite CD (Kids Bop #whatever), I was listening to Oops.
And as pop goes, it really isn't badly written at all. The phrasing matches the lyrics superbly. And it's not really that simple, despite its pop-tart packaging.
Oops I did it again is actually not dissimilar to "...Baby one more time", but not quite as good.
Reason I mention this is that although Britney has released her share of dross, "Baby One More Time" is a *damn* well-written pop song, regardless of whether you like the way she sings it, or the production.
I heard this song several times on the radio *before* I'd ever seen Britney Spears (I didn't know if she was black, white or what); so perhaps I have the benefit I can actually judge it purely on its merits.
(Disclaimer: I know very little about music theory; there are probably technical words for the stuff I'm about to try to describe).
Listen to the way the middle-eight section takes the chorus down to the simple piano and vocal along the lines of the verse but then tapers of somewhere else. Following this, it gradually builds up again with some layers of the verse, then a clever modification of the bridge section that that effortlessly merges back into the chorus.
It's just so damn well done, it doesn't *sound* "clever". Quite the opposite, it's the apparent effortlessness that's "clever".... the effect is like being on a car journey where, after a couple of times along the same road, the driver takes a detour along some country road, goes off somewhere else that isn't quite where you expected to be, and you're wondering how he's going to get back onto the main road. Yet you're driving along and that realise you're suddenly back on track, seamlessly merging with the traffic.
"Ooops..." cuts the middle-eight down to almost nothing, but isn't really as complex or interesting there. And it's a bit too derivative of "Baby one more time" to be truly great in its own right.
Anyway, the thing that surprised me about "Baby one more time" was that it was basically europop; granted, it had some all-American frosting and plenty of R n'B sprinkles on top- but it was still basically europop at a time (even then) that R n'B was pretty dominant in US music, and europop-style music was never popular in the US. OTOH, there were quite a few euro-style US hits in the late 1990s (Barbie Girl, Max Martin proteges, etc.)
Oh yeah, Max Martin. After thinking this, was I *not* entirely surprised when I found out the production team behind it was Swedish. (IIRC it was actually recorded in Sweden). And I guess they deserve more credit than Britney, but.... does it matter? It's a great song.
Oh yeah, and I liked 'Toxic' too, and I didn't know that was a Britney song first time I heard it either. So there
Being depressed is not crying. When you cry, you cry. So what? There's no point in feeling good all the time. If you're ALWAYS on the top, the curve is flat. Life consists of variations, mountains and valleys, thankfully! A child, when you look at it, will cry with its whole body. What we as adults have forgotten, the child does naturally. This will free so much stress from the system! When a child cries, it cries, it doesn't think so much, doesn't analyse a whole lot, or focus on the obstacles.
Trite; you blame the learned behaviour for childrens' depression; well, it's hard to say, and I'm not buying that without a more convincing case.
Basically, I figured out that on some level I've been (to put it crudely) depressed by some degree pretty much as far back as I can remember. This doesn't really tie in well with what you say.
I'm sorry, but your stuff about children just comes across as more inadequately-backed-up and excessively propogated self-help pseudo-science.
The way out of depression is to care about others, then your own problems will become smaller!
On the contrary, that's a pat solution, and not necessarily true. A lot of people get depressed because they have been brought up to care about others, and feel guilty about putting themselves first.
With respect (I noticed your link), I think this is where religious/spiritual "solutions" have conflicting interests; most of them aren't going to put their own communities second to helping someone out of depression.
Some (cults, and some mainstream religions) are positively dangerous, in that they'll suck people with these problems in, and make them feel worse when the person realises that the religion isn't the solution, and tries to leave.
Figure what, exactly?
I'm pretty sure that being in the upper 50% of intelligence would give you the feeling of being smarter than everybody else because you ARE smarter than everybody else.
Evidently, you aren't that smart then. Being in the upper 50% of people by intelligence simply means that you're smarter (not necessarily by a large amount) than the 50% of people in the lower half.
If getting laid isn't working you should be trying Viagra.
No, you'll just be an ugly, out-of-shape, smelly, uncharismatic slob with a permanent hardon.
Bugger Prozac.
On the other hand, trying to have sex with a small pill isn't going to make you feel any better either.
Parent comment is a quote from 'Trainspotting', not flamebait.
Cretins.
As stated by two previous ACs, one of the main observations of the Buddha is that all life is suffering.
That's not necessarily true; I believe the word 'suffering' is a possibly misleading translation of the word 'dukkha'. This is hard to translate, but could possibly be phrased as 'unsatisfactoriness'.
(I am not a linguistics scholar, nor a Buddhist, so no-one reading this should quote the above in their PhD thesis).
If you don't take the "free gift" of "forgiveness" for perceived sins of any magnitude, you get an infinite (all eternity) amount of punishment in God's private dungeon, which is disproportionate to *any* amount of sin one could conceivably commit in a lifetime. This is the definition of coercion.
Wow! I'm glad I don't live in the US; there's no way He would get away with that sort of thing under EU law...
The unhappy people can't stand happy people.
I'd say I was a relatively depressive git, and I don't find unhappy/depressed people necessarily interesting. On the other hand, there are stupidly/vapidly/selfishly happy people who do nothing for me; yet other 'happy' people can be happy and outgoing and make you feel better.
What I dislike is the stupid minded, over-simplistic assumptions from the some 'selfishly' happy people who figure that because *they* are happy, there is something wrong with those that aren't, or can't think themselves into someone else's mind.
That having been said, I do agree with *some* of the stuff you said in your first (full) paragraph.
Have you seen a child? It is never depressed. A child cannot be depressed. It learns that behaviour from the environment, which it eagerly emulates, and when put under stress for a long time.
On what basis do you come to this conclusion, and how do you define depression?
No offense intended, but this does have the ring of one of those psychological urban myths (or unproven theories that at some stage become accepted 'fact') that get propogated by even 'reputable' people because it sounds good on TV and in help books.
> > Yes.. It's human nature to be discontent.. and that separates some of us from the apes.
> I always thought it was the fact that some of us don't fling poo at eachother that seperated us from the apes...
> I guess I was mistaken.
Someone on Slashdot had a very 'bash.org'-ish quote in their sig along the lines of...
"What is it that separates us from the animals?"
"A condom, hopefully."
There is no point in natural selection it just happens.
Amen. Even people who are 'experts' on evolution seem to forget this; my 'purpose' is not necessarily to reproduce- it *just so happens* that the process that gave rise to me will make me more likely to carry it on.
To ascribe a 'purpose' to this may be a useful (and arguably valid) shortcut when discussing evolution (otherwise discussion may become verbose); but *only* if those using it are conscious of its literal incorrectness.
Of course, evolution may be directed by 'external' forces (e.g. domestication of animals), but this is just superimposing one pseudo-'purpose' onto another, and doesn't change the root issue.
I wouldn't go so far as to call Slashdot "evil".
"Cynical", very possibly. But they're neither a monopoly in an important commercial field, nor resorting to Microsoft-style tactics.
Because you must click and post?
Of course not. Are you implying that I should refrain from pointing out what I consider to be obvious because Slashdot is a "free" site? I'm not sure that makes sense, or is even relevant.
Why do you care?
I'm not really that bothered per se. I just think the explanation that all the dupes are down to simple incompetence has become rather implausible.... it's the five-ton elephant in the middle of the room that no-one notices. Perversely, the more commonplace it becomes, the more it seems to get accepted; it started off being joked about, and now people are used to it, no-one stops to think how implausible the whole "incompetent editors" thing is, in spite of the increasing silliness of that explanation in light of recent dupes.
I mean, Zonk posted both stories himself.
I don't get this whole "OMG its a dupe" fad that's come into being
I don't either; and for a different reason- namely that for all the bitching about dupes that goes on, it's always complaining about the supposed incompetence of the editors.
I mean, there are footprints all over the butter, and they aren't even considering the elephant in the fridge as a possible cause!
Is this just the post-modern version of the "neither news for nerds, NOR stuff that matters!" troll
No, I'm not a troll (check my posting history; plenty of lightweight crap, but nothing really trollish). I'm just someone who, having read the same "OMG its a dupe, the editors suck"-type post several times, then seeing someone else who'd spotted the elephant in the room had to reply to it.
I really think you missed the point when you put this done as another "OMG it's a dupe!!!" post. It's *about* the lack of insight in such posts as much as it's about the dupes themselves.
Anyway, Slashdot are a free site, so I'm not going to lay into them for trying to increase their pageviews; I'm just not going along with the 'incompetence' nonsense.
Even a/c counts as a page view from a traffic standpoint. An intelligent conversation devoid of a/c and flaming gets many fewer posts and thus fewer total ads served. If it that complicated?
My feelings exactly. How naive do you have to be exactly to believe that all those "dupes" are really down the incompetence of the editors?
Slashdot is a large, well-visited site, with paid editors, and we're asked to believe that they're not capable of spotting stuff like this?
Sorry, it happens often enough that if it weren't deliberate, they'd have hired someone with two brain cells to rub together by now. Simple acknowledgements of the dupe or even of their supposed incompetence have become so much of a Slashdot "tradition" that it obscures the bleedingly obvious lack of plausibility these repeated "mistakes" have.
But in this case, I'm glad of the dupe, because without it, I'd have missed the banner advert for another gimmicky boy's toy^w^w^w brain-expanding, uh... glowy thing from ThinkGeek that I *must* buy!
I think MACs are toys. Prove me wrong. [freepay.com]
Offtopic, but what *exactly* are you trying to say in your sig?
"Get me a free iMac, so I can see that they're not a toy"?
Either this is the most blatantly cynical "Free iPod/Mac Mini/whatever spam sig" ever, or you know the Apple fanboys better than me, and they really *will* help you get a free Mac Mini to prove you how great they are.
> > Maybe it's time to stop using vowels
;)
> Why?
Okay, very good.... though isn't "y" considered a vowel in such cases?
Firefox is the biggest piece of shit I've ever used. I hope all users of it die !
That's quite probable; Firefox is a nice browser, but I don't recall seeing "confers immortality on all who use it" as a listed feature (unlike Internet Explorer, obviously).
Perhaps they'll add that in the next release. Then we'll see who's laughing.... forever!!! Muwahahahahahah!
Its not like they are tracking were I click the most on the webpage
What do you mean "it's not like they are". Who are *they*?
*They* are everyone who runs a website you might visit, and besides, we were discussing what they *could* do; not just what they are presently doing.
Your just a random number to website owners nobody cares that much about you personally website only care about the mass.
"They" only care about the mass? Who are "they" again?
If you mean they only collate bulk data for statistics, well... probably not true. On the contrary, it's more beneficial to them if they know what a particular customer wants to buy, etc.
And you're right; of course they don't care about me *personally*. That doesn't mean "they" (or *some* of them) aren't a threat, because after all, the people who would like to steal my credit card number probably don't care about me personally either, but it's still harmful to *me* specifically, and similar problems arise with the leaking of personal information.
You are porbably the one of those users who delete all google cookies because you think google will own your computer through cookies and know everything about you..
Well, let's be paranoid here. I'm on dial-up at present; previously I was on broadband at the same address for days or weeks on end. Even if I deleted the cookies, they still have a good idea who I am if they *really* wish to find that out.
Anyhow, believe what you like. Considering the possibilities doesn't mean I have to act upon them, but at least I like to know what's possible.
All the good words were used up long ago. Maybe it's time to stop using vowels and open up the possibility of words like krggggnx!
'Ajax' floor cleaner is sold under the name 'Krggggnx' in Klingon markets.
The problem with Java applets is they require too much to be installed on the client side. This has big security and performance implications
Security? XMLHttpRequest is very cool, but (albeit for reasons not the same as those you gave for Java), it's likely to fall off its pedestal very soon in the face of these security problems.
In short, assuming you have the functionality turned on (I assume there is a way to turn it off in present browsers, though I haven't checked), XMLHttpRequest breaks the assumption that web pages only record what you're doing when you "submit" a request (don't think this applies to Flash, but it's normally obvious when a flash app is being used).
In short, it's theoretically possible for a site to be receiving information about pretty much every action you carry out within a browser window, and practically *quite* possible (and likely) for less than trustworthy sites to be receiving information you'd rather they didn't (if you knew about it); I could go further, but the article pretty much explains it well.