The Encyclopaedia Britannica *was* originally a British (more specifically, Scottish) company for 130 years, before it was taken over by Americans around the start of the 20th century.
...is that some sites like Yahoo Mail still "delay" one's surfing experience with a warning of how your display settings might not work well with the site.
They should get some of those 256-colour animated icons from 10 or 11 years ago that said "best viewed at 1024 x 768 with Internet Explorer 4" or somesuch shit. (Yeah, because I'm really going to change my sodding browser and/or screen resolution just to view your badly-designed site. Twonks...).
And then they could put the left-hand vertical menu in a frame for that added 90s feel. Then host the whole damn thing on a Geocities site- they own(ed) that, after all.
The entire -point- of netbooks is that they are small.
Let's be honest- whether or not it counts as an "official" characteristic of a netbook- the other thing associated with them, and as much a raison d'etre for their initial popularity as the size, was the fact that they were *cheap*.
Now that they're pretty much touching the lower-end "ordinary" laptops in both size and price, I'd question whether such machines are actually "netbooks" in the sense that people first associated with the name 18+ months ago. The term has pretty much been massaged out of any meaningful existence by marketers.
Your theory is flawed because it assumes that capitalism is a zero-sum game (i.e. it neglects to point out that while the company they work for has taken a cut, overall it brings them more stuff at cheaper prices).
It also uses a contrived situation between two people capable of working together and making agreements, when that sort of behaviour doesn't scale at all well, similar to how money works better than barter when you have more than a few people.
Then you say things like this:-
Result: both the lumberjack and the carpenter built a chair for free, paid to buy it
No, they were *paid* to build the chair, you said it yourself.
You're probably going to dismiss me as some pro-capitalist; not really, I consider my views fairly centrist by the standards of where I live (the UK), and probably quite left-wing compared to your average American. However, it doesn't change the fact that your argument was stupid and ill thought-out.
MTV already replaced radio for this function a long time ago. You mentioned Britney Spears; I didn't hear her on the radio, rather I "heard" her first single on Carson Daily's TRL. MTV is quickly being replaced by YouTube, ala OK Go.
Damn Brit was hot as a 17 year old school girl though (before you say anything, I was 16 at the time)
I'm no rabid Britney fan, but Baby One More Time was a damn good pop song. I heard it on the radio a couple of times and went out to buy it before I even knew what she looked like (I didn't know if she was black or white then).
I'm kind of ashamed that when I saw the cover I almost had second thoughts about buying what looked like an over-commercialised tween/teen-oriented pop single (and even then I kind of copped out by buying it on cassette instead of on CD, when it was otherwise a song I easily liked enough to justify the extra money).
Was it a good song due to her or the songwriting/production team? I wasn't really bothered. (FWIW, I later found out that they were Swedish, which explains the solidly Europop underpinnings beneath the Rn'B trimmings).
She's done some other decent tracks as well- first time I heard "Toxic" on the radio I didn't know it was her, and I thought it was damn good.
I'm certainly not denying that she's also released an awful lot of disposable pap, but I don't agree with the "Britney Spears automatically equals crap" argument.
If this was an academic study, then the raw data was (or should have been) typified (anonymized). Therefore it would not be useful for identifying real world "friends" responsible for "profit-threatening behavior". Rather, it would be a group analysis tool.
Except that there has been at least one Slashdot story in the past year or so explaining how supposedly "anonymized" data can be associated with real people, or at least different accounts on websites associated with each other.
And if anonymized accounts can be associated with each other, it's quite possible- if not probable- that they could be associated with one or more non-anonymized accounts- even if that particular account was used for some innocuous purpose- destroying the anonymity of them *all*.
Of course, you couldn't do this by hand; but that's what computers are for- data processing is a great way to spot patterns and guess which accounts might be the same person. The more advanced data mining software gets, the easier it becomes to have it automatically associate different accounts via patterns and trends.
(Of course, in some cases, it's not even that hard- searching for names- ego-surfing or looking up friends and family- is a big clue if not complete giveaway to anyone looking at (e.g.) a Google search history, if that info hasn't been anonymized as well).
Even if the websites were unwilling to share account info with each other, I suspect that one could write a screen-scraper for information and posts on the most popular sites, and group all the public info associated with a particular account anyway- which is probably enough.
To reiterate the point above- if you have a large number of anonymous or anonymised accounts that you reckon are associated with each other, you only need to make a connection between *one* of them and some non-anonymous source for anonymity to be blown on all of them.
And even if you were to take more care from now on, there's probably a mass of info you've left out there already, and it won't all go away in a hurry, if at all. And even if today's data mining wasn't powerful enough to tie it all together, it's quite plausible that it could improve significantly in the near future, changing its nature completely.
Things are changing all the time- this story being just one demonstration. Assuming you'll be safe because you're using anonymous or anonymised accounts gives a very dangerous sense of false security.
When will we get Alien vs Predator vs Terminator vs Kindergarton Cop?
There's no chance of such a ludicrous thing happening. They'd never want to risk any of those valuable franchises becoming tainted by a string of increasingly ludicrous sequels and crossovers...
Oh, wait.
Erm.... well, on second thoughts, they'd never risk the valuable Kindergarten Cop franchise becoming tainted by a string of increasingly ludicrous sequels and crossovers.
Is "Alien vs. Predator" and "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem" part of the canon? Will it be for this prequel?
I was going to ask the same thing. I've not seen it, and have no real desire to do so, but according to Wikipedia, Alien vs. Predator was intentionally a prequel to Alien (and a sequel to Predator) and deliberately took some effort- and altered its own setting- to avoid a situation where the events in Alien would be rendered implausible if not impossible. (Primarily, they couldn't set it in a city because everyone would then have been aware of the existence of the aliens before Alien took place).
Only five years ago, people would have laughed at the idea of music and video on computers
I'm guessing the OP meant to say "on phones", not "on computers".
Even on phones, I doubt people would have been laughed at the idea five years ago. Remember that the Motorola Rokr (the iTunes compatible phone) was out almost four years ago, and it's not like playing MP3s on your phone seemed such a big deal even then.
Ten years ago, perhaps. It's almost exactly 10 years since Napster arrived, and most people at that time hadn't even heard of- let alone listened to- MP3s. The first style/youth-oriented phone, the Nokia 3210, had only just arrived as well, offering (*gasp*!) customisable ring tones- customisable monophonic beeps that is.
So, ten years ago, the embryonic parts of today's market had literally just arrived on the scene, though perhaps it wasn't obvious at the time. However, five years ago, I doubt that (given the ever-increasing power of electronics) MP3 and video on phones in the near future would have seemed that far fetched.
Riiiiight because there are no other places for us to shop then Walmart
You. Really. Have. To. Spell. Things. Out. For. Some. People.
I went out of my way to explicitly make clear that I was arguing specifically...
against the general principle that I hear over and over again that "no monopoly lasts forever"
And even after that you still can't grasp that someone can attack and criticise a particular and specific stupid argument and/or technique without them necessarily being a supporter of the thing you were arguing against.
I put that disclaimer in to avoid *exactly* that sort of kneejerk thinking, because it's all too common around here, despite Slashdotters' supposed reputation of being logical and smart.
And even after that some people still don't get it.
The other replier to your comment got it *exactly* right by the way:-
I'm pretty sure he wasn't saying that Wal-Mart is a monopoly. The GP post was talking about monopolies in general, and that's what he responded to. He quoted the line. He never says anything about Wal-Mart at all.
Oh, and FWIW, even if I had been arguing the point you mistakenly think I was arguing about, I'm not wasting 25 minutes watching Penn and Teller, who- while they sometimes make some valid attacks- are blatantly partisan in favour of their own libertarian viewpoint and not really interested in presenting a balanced case.
Yes you get 0.5L glasses, which are bigger! What is not to love?
Only if you're talking about those teensy little American pints (473ml); the imperial pint, as used in the UK, is 568ml- quite a bit more than half a litre.
Yeah, that's right. We've got the big man-sized real pints, whereas the size-obsessed Americans can't even beat the European half-litre. Ner ner ner-ner ner!;-P
The key word is "claims". Until this is tested in court, anyone can say anything.
I've heard that EA initially tried to claim that it held the copyright to all works created with Deluxe Paint (which originally came out in the mid-1980s).
Don't know when or why they stopped claiming that (legal or PR reasons?)
This is obviously a far from identical case, but it has some of that flavour.
Deliberately posting as near the start of the discussion as possible to link to this comment which makes clear that this whole story is blatantly misleading and relies on misintepreting EMI's position.
From a post by 'chpthrlls' in the zeropaid thread via the linked comment: "First of all "One Stops" DOES NOT mean Wal-mart and Best Buy. A one stop is a distributor that buys from the labels and sells to retailers. Most indie stores get their product from one stops anyway."
Even before I'd read the correct explanation, I'd already realised that this didn't sound plausible, even for the death-wish record industry. My initial guess was that EMI were making them buy through their distributors (as normally happens anyway) and someone had- either through ignorance and/or a vested interest in their own position- misinterpreted this as the "story" that we were presented with.
I was right, and I'm neither a genius, nor work in the music industry.
If I spotted this, why did Wayne Rosso, ZeroPaid or Slashdot themselves not figure this out and spend five minutes checking the facts?
Oh yeah, I know. Never question it if it makes a good story, even when it's blatantly fishy to anyone with an ounce of common sense.
If this article is about "The Downsides to Digital Distribution", it begs the question as to what analogue medium the submitter and editors previously got their games on- audio cassette?!
Surprised that I'm the first geek to spot that one.:-)
Walmart (via their purchase of ASDA) have been moderately successful in the UK, but they didn't clean up and Wal-Martise the country like some predicted. Tesco are by far the largest retailer here, and are the ones who look like taking over, not Walmart/ASDA.
Point - No monopoly lasts forever, because there's always someone new willing to knock you off.
Eventually. And until then- for possibly 10, 20, 50, whatever years, the better part of some peoples' lives- you suffer from the effects of the current monopolist.
And then they possibly get replaced by another monopolist with similar results for a similar length of time. But because they're not the *same* monopolist, so it's okay- right?
In itself, the argument that "no monopoly lasts forever" (nothing does!) is a poor reason not to oppose monopolies.
Whether or not K-Mart ever had a monopoly might be open to question; that wasn't the point I was arguing, but rather against the general principle that I hear over and over again that "no monopoly lasts forever" as if that's sufficient reason to tolerate them.
if we get details on a "spam king" I don't see why we can't sign him up for every mass-mailing list (hard-copy AND digital) we can find... Give him a taste of his own medicine.
Won't that add another four inches to his manh00d and end shame at his tiny m3mb3r?
Slashdot Mirror
I hinted at that when I said "still retains its British English spelling".
[my emphasis]
Actually, what you said was
still retains the British English spelling
It's a minor difference for most purposes, but it still weakens the implication you mentioned.
Ceiling cat wanted to know what the big deal was.
Now I *know* ceiling cat has supernatural powers- an image hosted by Ebaumsworld that hasn't been illegally watermarked by them.
It's such a shame how they've gone downhill since that thieving, dishonest piece of shit Eric Bauman sold the company.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica *was* originally a British (more specifically, Scottish) company for 130 years, before it was taken over by Americans around the start of the 20th century.
While Wikipedia is an amazing effort, it will not ever be Britannica
Don't knock Wikipedia - I bet Britannica never had an entry on the various slime pits in the Masters of the Universe, um... universe. :-)
...is that some sites like Yahoo Mail still "delay" one's surfing experience with a warning of how your display settings might not work well with the site.
They should get some of those 256-colour animated icons from 10 or 11 years ago that said "best viewed at 1024 x 768 with Internet Explorer 4" or somesuch shit. (Yeah, because I'm really going to change my sodding browser and/or screen resolution just to view your badly-designed site. Twonks...).
And then they could put the left-hand vertical menu in a frame for that added 90s feel. Then host the whole damn thing on a Geocities site- they own(ed) that, after all.
The entire -point- of netbooks is that they are small.
Let's be honest- whether or not it counts as an "official" characteristic of a netbook- the other thing associated with them, and as much a raison d'etre for their initial popularity as the size, was the fact that they were *cheap*.
Now that they're pretty much touching the lower-end "ordinary" laptops in both size and price, I'd question whether such machines are actually "netbooks" in the sense that people first associated with the name 18+ months ago. The term has pretty much been massaged out of any meaningful existence by marketers.
It also uses a contrived situation between two people capable of working together and making agreements, when that sort of behaviour doesn't scale at all well, similar to how money works better than barter when you have more than a few people.
Then you say things like this:-
Result: both the lumberjack and the carpenter built a chair for free, paid to buy it
No, they were *paid* to build the chair, you said it yourself.
You're probably going to dismiss me as some pro-capitalist; not really, I consider my views fairly centrist by the standards of where I live (the UK), and probably quite left-wing compared to your average American. However, it doesn't change the fact that your argument was stupid and ill thought-out.
The only possible remedy for this situation is to name the chain "Electronics Shanty,"
A traditional seafaring song played on a synthesiser? I don't get it.
MTV already replaced radio for this function a long time ago. You mentioned Britney Spears; I didn't hear her on the radio, rather I "heard" her first single on Carson Daily's TRL. MTV is quickly being replaced by YouTube, ala OK Go. Damn Brit was hot as a 17 year old school girl though (before you say anything, I was 16 at the time)
I'm no rabid Britney fan, but Baby One More Time was a damn good pop song. I heard it on the radio a couple of times and went out to buy it before I even knew what she looked like (I didn't know if she was black or white then).
I'm kind of ashamed that when I saw the cover I almost had second thoughts about buying what looked like an over-commercialised tween/teen-oriented pop single (and even then I kind of copped out by buying it on cassette instead of on CD, when it was otherwise a song I easily liked enough to justify the extra money).
Was it a good song due to her or the songwriting/production team? I wasn't really bothered. (FWIW, I later found out that they were Swedish, which explains the solidly Europop underpinnings beneath the Rn'B trimmings).
She's done some other decent tracks as well- first time I heard "Toxic" on the radio I didn't know it was her, and I thought it was damn good.
I'm certainly not denying that she's also released an awful lot of disposable pap, but I don't agree with the "Britney Spears automatically equals crap" argument.
If this was an academic study, then the raw data was (or should have been) typified (anonymized). Therefore it would not be useful for identifying real world "friends" responsible for "profit-threatening behavior". Rather, it would be a group analysis tool.
Except that there has been at least one Slashdot story in the past year or so explaining how supposedly "anonymized" data can be associated with real people, or at least different accounts on websites associated with each other.
And if anonymized accounts can be associated with each other, it's quite possible- if not probable- that they could be associated with one or more non-anonymized accounts- even if that particular account was used for some innocuous purpose- destroying the anonymity of them *all*.
Of course, you couldn't do this by hand; but that's what computers are for- data processing is a great way to spot patterns and guess which accounts might be the same person. The more advanced data mining software gets, the easier it becomes to have it automatically associate different accounts via patterns and trends.
(Of course, in some cases, it's not even that hard- searching for names- ego-surfing or looking up friends and family- is a big clue if not complete giveaway to anyone looking at (e.g.) a Google search history, if that info hasn't been anonymized as well).
Even if the websites were unwilling to share account info with each other, I suspect that one could write a screen-scraper for information and posts on the most popular sites, and group all the public info associated with a particular account anyway- which is probably enough.
To reiterate the point above- if you have a large number of anonymous or anonymised accounts that you reckon are associated with each other, you only need to make a connection between *one* of them and some non-anonymous source for anonymity to be blown on all of them.
And even if you were to take more care from now on, there's probably a mass of info you've left out there already, and it won't all go away in a hurry, if at all. And even if today's data mining wasn't powerful enough to tie it all together, it's quite plausible that it could improve significantly in the near future, changing its nature completely.
Things are changing all the time- this story being just one demonstration. Assuming you'll be safe because you're using anonymous or anonymised accounts gives a very dangerous sense of false security.
When will we get Alien vs Predator vs Terminator vs Kindergarton Cop?
There's no chance of such a ludicrous thing happening. They'd never want to risk any of those valuable franchises becoming tainted by a string of increasingly ludicrous sequels and crossovers...
Oh, wait.
Erm.... well, on second thoughts, they'd never risk the valuable Kindergarten Cop franchise becoming tainted by a string of increasingly ludicrous sequels and crossovers.
Is "Alien vs. Predator" and "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem" part of the canon? Will it be for this prequel?
I was going to ask the same thing. I've not seen it, and have no real desire to do so, but according to Wikipedia, Alien vs. Predator was intentionally a prequel to Alien (and a sequel to Predator) and deliberately took some effort- and altered its own setting- to avoid a situation where the events in Alien would be rendered implausible if not impossible. (Primarily, they couldn't set it in a city because everyone would then have been aware of the existence of the aliens before Alien took place).
"it's" means "belonging to it".
I was already aware that that was wrong, but the question is *why*, since the possessive apostrophe applies to almost everything else?
Only five years ago, people would have laughed at the idea of music and video on computers
I'm guessing the OP meant to say "on phones", not "on computers".
Even on phones, I doubt people would have been laughed at the idea five years ago. Remember that the Motorola Rokr (the iTunes compatible phone) was out almost four years ago, and it's not like playing MP3s on your phone seemed such a big deal even then.
Ten years ago, perhaps. It's almost exactly 10 years since Napster arrived, and most people at that time hadn't even heard of- let alone listened to- MP3s. The first style/youth-oriented phone, the Nokia 3210, had only just arrived as well, offering (*gasp*!) customisable ring tones- customisable monophonic beeps that is.
So, ten years ago, the embryonic parts of today's market had literally just arrived on the scene, though perhaps it wasn't obvious at the time. However, five years ago, I doubt that (given the ever-increasing power of electronics) MP3 and video on phones in the near future would have seemed that far fetched.
In all honesty, what you say is meaningless, even as intentional pedantry. :-)
What is analogue about distribution? The quantities? The location? The... it's meaningless, sorry!
Riiiiight because there are no other places for us to shop then Walmart
You. Really. Have. To. Spell. Things. Out. For. Some. People.
I went out of my way to explicitly make clear that I was arguing specifically...
against the general principle that I hear over and over again that "no monopoly lasts forever"
And even after that you still can't grasp that someone can attack and criticise a particular and specific stupid argument and/or technique without them necessarily being a supporter of the thing you were arguing against.
I put that disclaimer in to avoid *exactly* that sort of kneejerk thinking, because it's all too common around here, despite Slashdotters' supposed reputation of being logical and smart.
And even after that some people still don't get it.
The other replier to your comment got it *exactly* right by the way:-
I'm pretty sure he wasn't saying that Wal-Mart is a monopoly. The GP post was talking about monopolies in general, and that's what he responded to. He quoted the line. He never says anything about Wal-Mart at all.
Oh, and FWIW, even if I had been arguing the point you mistakenly think I was arguing about, I'm not wasting 25 minutes watching Penn and Teller, who- while they sometimes make some valid attacks- are blatantly partisan in favour of their own libertarian viewpoint and not really interested in presenting a balanced case.
When metric is the law, no more pints of beer.
Yes you get 0.5L glasses, which are bigger! What is not to love?
Only if you're talking about those teensy little American pints (473ml); the imperial pint, as used in the UK, is 568ml- quite a bit more than half a litre.
;-P
Yeah, that's right. We've got the big man-sized real pints, whereas the size-obsessed Americans can't even beat the European half-litre. Ner ner ner-ner ner!
Bare arms is funny
Yeah, but so's the right to bear arms, if you ask me. I mean, why the f*** would I want bear arms? To maul someone with?
And doesn't the bear have more right to them than me?
Money may be speech according to the Supreme Court, but it's profane speech.
Is this a reference to the phrase (from Bob Dylan, apparently), "Money doesn't talk, it swears"?
The key word is "claims". Until this is tested in court, anyone can say anything.
I've heard that EA initially tried to claim that it held the copyright to all works created with Deluxe Paint (which originally came out in the mid-1980s).
Don't know when or why they stopped claiming that (legal or PR reasons?)
This is obviously a far from identical case, but it has some of that flavour.
Deliberately posting as near the start of the discussion as possible to link to this comment which makes clear that this whole story is blatantly misleading and relies on misintepreting EMI's position.
From a post by 'chpthrlls' in the zeropaid thread via the linked comment: "First of all "One Stops" DOES NOT mean Wal-mart and Best Buy. A one stop is a distributor that buys from the labels and sells to retailers. Most indie stores get their product from one stops anyway."
Even before I'd read the correct explanation, I'd already realised that this didn't sound plausible, even for the death-wish record industry. My initial guess was that EMI were making them buy through their distributors (as normally happens anyway) and someone had- either through ignorance and/or a vested interest in their own position- misinterpreted this as the "story" that we were presented with.
I was right, and I'm neither a genius, nor work in the music industry.
If I spotted this, why did Wayne Rosso, ZeroPaid or Slashdot themselves not figure this out and spend five minutes checking the facts?
Oh yeah, I know. Never question it if it makes a good story, even when it's blatantly fishy to anyone with an ounce of common sense.
If this article is about "The Downsides to Digital Distribution", it begs the question as to what analogue medium the submitter and editors previously got their games on- audio cassette?!
:-)
Surprised that I'm the first geek to spot that one.
Walmart was successful in the UK
Walmart (via their purchase of ASDA) have been moderately successful in the UK, but they didn't clean up and Wal-Martise the country like some predicted. Tesco are by far the largest retailer here, and are the ones who look like taking over, not Walmart/ASDA.
Point - No monopoly lasts forever, because there's always someone new willing to knock you off.
Eventually. And until then- for possibly 10, 20, 50, whatever years, the better part of some peoples' lives- you suffer from the effects of the current monopolist.
And then they possibly get replaced by another monopolist with similar results for a similar length of time. But because they're not the *same* monopolist, so it's okay- right?
In itself, the argument that "no monopoly lasts forever" (nothing does!) is a poor reason not to oppose monopolies.
Whether or not K-Mart ever had a monopoly might be open to question; that wasn't the point I was arguing, but rather against the general principle that I hear over and over again that "no monopoly lasts forever" as if that's sufficient reason to tolerate them.
if we get details on a "spam king" I don't see why we can't sign him up for every mass-mailing list (hard-copy AND digital) we can find... Give him a taste of his own medicine.
Won't that add another four inches to his manh00d and end shame at his tiny m3mb3r?
Oh... hang on, no it won't.