Health records? I hope the gov't is not taking this too seriously. It was probably stolen because someone needs more room for their mp3's. I would love to think this is some kind of x-file al-queda conspiracy but health records are not going to turn the tide of any war.
This author plays a necro so obviously he's going to be pissed. Necro's are the bastard childs of EQ. They are prehaps the most boring, painful and useless class to play, especially when you start leveling into the 60s.
In my opinion engineers are not seeing the big picture. Coding from the day you graduate to the day you retire is not a realistic goal. A recently graduated engineer has a few years where their responsibilities largely consist of coding. As a Jr or Sr engineer you come to work, make sure your projects are on schedule, do your coding and go home. That is it however there is a turning point where an engineer is asked to be a manager - that is where this article breaks down. It assumes that all engineers code for the rest of their life. Most engineers will move onto bigger things at which point they are no longer engineers but managers. If you are one of those people who do want to code for your entire life then you will probably be passed up by some fresh recruits out of college or an engineer that has enough street smarts to be moved into management. I guess the real question is - does coding have a short lifespan? In my opinion yes but if you have enough ambition to learn how a business works outside of the world of coding then you have a great future.
I should get the 3-click patent just in case they have another 'clever' trick up their sleeves. Then the million$ will roll in. Yes. I will beat them at their own game!
(somehow this reminds me of the 6 minute abs sketch on something about mary)
I'm shocked - bad trekkie movie review on /. ?
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 1
Wow. The/. community will be a little bit more forgiving than your average joe when it comes to sci-fi movies. So for a bad review of star trek to show up on/. the movie has to be a serious dud.
Internet advertising does indeed work? You need to back your statements up with some facts. Performics made the Deloite & Touche Fast 50 in Chicago in 2001. Linkshare did it this year for New York. Commission Junction did it this year for Southern California plus they made the national list. By and large Internet Advertising _does_ work however there are subsets of Internet Advertising that are inefficient. I'm sure doubleclick would be a good authority on inefficent advertising however they seem to leverage CPM and CPC deals from advertisers - so their bottom line is probably not being damaged too bad.
It could be worse. Idealab investors are suing so they can back out of their investment. Atleast in the case of Liquid Audio it appears like the investors have a choice in the matter.
People have worse entertainment addictions than playing computer games. If I am going to be addicted to something, I would choose online gaming over drugs, bowling, gambling, television, or being a baseball fanatic easily...And I will leave you with that. Signing on now... Tenjikiito, level 157 Female Solitus Adventurer, Advisor to the Clan Guild Synergy Factor, the best damn guild on the world of Rubi-Ka, with the best damn virtual people one could ever virtually meet.
Ok. Here are a few points.
1. Addictions to drugs, bowling, gambling or TV are more socially acceptable than addictions to MMORPG's. This explains why MMORPG's are an embarassing topic and why computer illiterate people have trouble understansing this type of addiction.
2. Historically people have been addicted to gambling, drugs, bowling(hey, it's possible...), TV, etc but this list does not include all possible addictions. It is possible to be addicted to anything, even virtual people that virtually meet. If you alter your lifestyle to accomodate your hobby then you have an addiction. It is that simple. If your hobby is underwater basket weaving and you spent your rent money on scuba gear then you have an addiction. Classic symtoms include skipping responsibilities, class, non-essential meals or in my case, avoiding friends and altering my work schedule to fit into my Everquest schedule.
3. Get outside help so you can verify if you have an addiction. As they say, 'denial' ain't just a river in Egypt. Your opinion certainly does matter but an impartial test of your hobby/addiction/whatever is what counts.
I had a major addiction to Everquest. I put in 30+ hours a week for two years. That's 3360 hours in two years or 140 days played. I finally came to realize that an addiction by any other name is still an addiction. Good news is I just got a 25% raise, am going to the gym again and dating - in fact I blew off a date tonight because I plan on doing 16 hours today - next addiction to master will be this workaholic thing, hehe.
Bonzi is pretty complicated and these ads are just the tip of the iceberg. First off Bonzi is genearting high volumes of low quality traffic then trying to resell it. Not a big deal but it's kind of shady. The major problem with Bonzi is their relationship with Whenu and SaveNow. SaveNow is commonly called scumware or parasiteware. The basic idea is SaveNow is hijacking online commissions. It works like this. There is such thing as CPA(cost per action) advertising whereby if an end user clicks on a banner then buys a product then the website that hosted that banner will receive a commission for that sale. This is all tracked with http requests to tracking servers. So basically if you own a website and your visitors are clicking on banners and buying products then you will receive a commission. However if the person making the sale has SaveNow running on their machine then that sale will be hijacked. SaveNow will interecept the http request to the tracking servers, overwrite it to suit its own needs, and in the end the commission that you should have received just went to Whenu(the makers of SaveNow).
In a nut shell, Bonzi is facilitating the distribution of these scumware applications - the end result being all websites involved in CPA advertising could be losing revenue due to stolen commissions. This is one way how Kazza, CyDoor, WhenU, and almost all other P2P file sharing networks are generating revenue.
Spielberg - quit while you are ahead!
on
Spielberg's Taken
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· Score: 0
I did not see the show but why bother? TV was overflowing with alien abduction movies a few years ago. Anything that Spielberg can put together has already been done. More power to Spielberg because he is a talented guy but this idea ranks up there with Travolta's sequel to Battlefield Earth.
Someone should do an article on how seq is an integral part of EQ. Most high level guilds would not exist if it were not for seq. The reason for seq is because competition for spawns is fierce. For those non-eq people I will explain. The important mobs spawn once every few days or week. If you are a high level guild then you need these mobs for gear, keys, spells, etc. One way to get the jump on another guild is to use seq and constantly scout for these mobs. It's pretty common for people to have one account with half a dozen characters that are scattered all over the game. You log onto the characters one by one checking for high level spawns. Soon as a spawn appears, you notify your guild and a few minutes later there are 30-60 people there to kill the mob. With mobs like Ragefire or Tormax I have seen a zone go from a dozen people to 200-300 people in a matter of minutes. It's pretty crazy and all possible due to seq. Seq has been around for several years now and can almost be considered a feature in EQ - it would be hard to imagine EQ without seq. The high level guilds would certainly suffer substantially if seq could not exist.
For some reason this reminds me of the startup.com movie. The best part of that movie was when the guys were trying to secure an angel investor and before they had signed a deal, they were in a taxi cab talking about taking the company public. The economny has no room for people looking for get rich quick schemes - which seems to be what this program is encouraging.
Sometimes/. is a little too biased. It's ok to bash windows but try not be such an idiot about the situation. If anyone gets the porsche catalog every month then they know porsche sells everything from watches to bikes. A market does exist for these types of things and the buyers care more about the brand name than the value of the product.
Hmm. If you are complaining over a few hundred dollars or even a few thousand then ebay does not care about your problems. Taking care of fraud for the little guys may the the right thing to do but realistically it's not good business. On the other hand if you are sending tens of thousands of dollars of business ebays way each month then you probably have a voice, probably have someone at ebay listening, and are not part of this complaint.
People are not being realistic. Lets say you have an item for $5000. I do not know what ebay's commission is but I am going to give a high guess of 3% of sale or $150. If there is fraud in this $5000 auction then what kind of motiviation does ebay have to correct the situation? $150. That's not much weight. Now lets consider the fact that most people with these complaints do auctions from $10-$500. Ebay's motivation to correct any fraud is going to be extremely low.
There's something called the 80/20 rule, where 80% of your revenue is driven by 20% of your traffic. If you are part of that 80% of traffic that generates 20% of the revenue then do not bitch when things do not go your way. Thems are the breaks and people are more then welcome to chose another solution provider. I just saw someone posting a complaint about losing $1000/month due to ebay auctions and they wonder why ebay does not give them the attention they deserve?
Friends in my dorms tried to order sodium from the chem lab on campus. A few minutes later the cops showed up to the class wondering who was trying to get ahold of sodium. That plan fell through but we did manage to get jars of 14 molar nitric acid - which works much better than liquid plummer.
I once heard stair way to heaven on the phone - that was back in the day when blue boxing was still around and an exiting friday night meant being on a conference call with 30 other phreaks.
Thought this was appropriate...the Wheel of Fish scene from the movie UHF.
KUNI: Okay, let's play the game! We start with yesterday's winner... Mrs. Phyllis Weaver. Are you ready, Weaver?
PHYLLIS: I sure am, Kuni!
KUNI: Okay, then you get over here and spin the Wheel of Fish! Go ahead, give it a big spin...
The audience cheers as Phyllis runs onto the stage and gives the wheel a big spin. Kuni and Phyllis ad lib various encouragements to the wheel ("come on, baby!", "do it for mama!", "fishy fishy fishy..."). The wheel comes to a stop pointing to a swordfish.
KUNI: A swordfish! Mm, very tasty! Okay, Weaver, now listen carefully...You can hold on to your swordfish, or you can go for what's in the box that Hiro-san is bringing down the aisle right now! What's it gonna be?
Our blonde presenter has taken the swordfish off the wheel and is holding it out in front of Phyllis. Kuni's assistant comes down the aisle holding a large box on a tray. The studio audience calls out to Phyllis ("Keep the fish!"... "Take the box!"). Phyllis looks back and forth between the fish and the box.
PHYLLIS: I... I'll take the box!
KUNI: Okay, Weaver, you took the box! Let's see what's in it...
Hiro-san lifts up the box and there's absolutely nothing underneath it. KUNI (continuing, smiling broadly) Nothing! There's nothing in the box! Stupid...! You're so stupid...!!
Actually spam does work because the cost is much lower than other forms of advertising.
I think it is pretty simple to understand. Consider the cost to serve an ad. With traditional advertising if you serve a million banner ads then you pay for a million banner ads. Now with email marketing you can send out a million emails but you will only pay for those emails that are opened. By default you are going to pay less. Another thing is an opened email will get more attention than a traditional banner ad. So your click through rate is going to be higher. Click through rates are really skewed for text only emails, which make them seem much more attractive to the doubleclicks and encourage their use.
Working for an ad network I see billions of impressions each month by tens of thousands of different websites. The most successful sites are generally those that use direct marketing, opt-in text only emails to be more specific.
I personally hate spam but I can see the logic behind it being used. My best guess as to how to solve this issue is to encourage sites like spamcop. Using the government to regulate spammers seems like a bad idea to me.
For anyone wanting to know how hard it is to count here is a quick training session. This is the uston advanced count. Assign point values to cards such as 2, 8 = +1; 3, 4, 6, 7 = +2; 5 = +3; 9 = -1; 10 = -3; Ace = 0. Now take two cards out. Count down the deck and see if you can predict the value of the two cards that were removed. Then do it in under 20 seconds. Then have friends try to carry on a conversation while you count down the deck and do it for an hour nonstop with no mistakes. Counting is easy but it takes skill to be perfect for long periods of time.
I had my fun counting cards and made decent money in high school. If anything cashing out $1000 as a teenager with a lame fake ID was the hard part. I remember one day when a lady in the cage questioned my fake ID. So she asked her friend for help, Does it have a name and say ID on it? The lady replied, Yes it says Identification in bold letters across the top(that's about ALL it said), then the other laid said It's fine. Too funny. To anyone thinking of counting, good luck. It's not easy. I quit the sport a few years ago.
Hmm. I'm currently working as a data mining analysis for an internet advertising startup. The job has it's moments, like figuring out that credit cards should be sold to women when they make online purchases for makeup(no I am not kidding). However it would be much more exciting to work for a rich and powerful drug cartel... Does the job come with your own personal E15k?
Slashdot Mirror
Health records? I hope the gov't is not taking this too seriously. It was probably stolen because someone needs more room for their mp3's. I would love to think this is some kind of x-file al-queda conspiracy but health records are not going to turn the tide of any war.
This author plays a necro so obviously he's going to be pissed. Necro's are the bastard childs of EQ. They are prehaps the most boring, painful and useless class to play, especially when you start leveling into the 60s.
In my opinion engineers are not seeing the big picture. Coding from the day you graduate to the day you retire is not a realistic goal. A recently graduated engineer has a few years where their responsibilities largely consist of coding. As a Jr or Sr engineer you come to work, make sure your projects are on schedule, do your coding and go home. That is it however there is a turning point where an engineer is asked to be a manager - that is where this article breaks down. It assumes that all engineers code for the rest of their life. Most engineers will move onto bigger things at which point they are no longer engineers but managers. If you are one of those people who do want to code for your entire life then you will probably be passed up by some fresh recruits out of college or an engineer that has enough street smarts to be moved into management. I guess the real question is - does coding have a short lifespan? In my opinion yes but if you have enough ambition to learn how a business works outside of the world of coding then you have a great future.
I should get the 3-click patent just in case they have another 'clever' trick up their sleeves. Then the million$ will roll in. Yes. I will beat them at their own game! (somehow this reminds me of the 6 minute abs sketch on something about mary)
Wow. The /. community will be a little bit more forgiving than your average joe when it comes to sci-fi movies. So for a bad review of star trek to show up on /. the movie has to be a serious dud.
Internet advertising does indeed work? You need to back your statements up with some facts. Performics made the Deloite & Touche Fast 50 in Chicago in 2001. Linkshare did it this year for New York. Commission Junction did it this year for Southern California plus they made the national list. By and large Internet Advertising _does_ work however there are subsets of Internet Advertising that are inefficient. I'm sure doubleclick would be a good authority on inefficent advertising however they seem to leverage CPM and CPC deals from advertisers - so their bottom line is probably not being damaged too bad.
It could be worse. Idealab investors are suing so they can back out of their investment. Atleast in the case of Liquid Audio it appears like the investors have a choice in the matter.
People have worse entertainment addictions than playing computer games. If I am going to be addicted to something, I would choose online gaming over drugs, bowling, gambling, television, or being a baseball fanatic easily...And I will leave you with that. Signing on now... Tenjikiito, level 157 Female Solitus Adventurer, Advisor to the Clan Guild Synergy Factor, the best damn guild on the world of Rubi-Ka, with the best damn virtual people one could ever virtually meet.
Ok. Here are a few points.
1. Addictions to drugs, bowling, gambling or TV are more socially acceptable than addictions to MMORPG's. This explains why MMORPG's are an embarassing topic and why computer illiterate people have trouble understansing this type of addiction.
2. Historically people have been addicted to gambling, drugs, bowling(hey, it's possible...), TV, etc but this list does not include all possible addictions. It is possible to be addicted to anything, even virtual people that virtually meet. If you alter your lifestyle to accomodate your hobby then you have an addiction. It is that simple. If your hobby is underwater basket weaving and you spent your rent money on scuba gear then you have an addiction. Classic symtoms include skipping responsibilities, class, non-essential meals or in my case, avoiding friends and altering my work schedule to fit into my Everquest schedule.
3. Get outside help so you can verify if you have an addiction. As they say, 'denial' ain't just a river in Egypt. Your opinion certainly does matter but an impartial test of your hobby/addiction/whatever is what counts.
I had a major addiction to Everquest. I put in 30+ hours a week for two years. That's 3360 hours in two years or 140 days played. I finally came to realize that an addiction by any other name is still an addiction. Good news is I just got a 25% raise, am going to the gym again and dating - in fact I blew off a date tonight because I plan on doing 16 hours today - next addiction to master will be this workaholic thing, hehe.
Never underestimate the power of incentive marketing.
Bonzi is pretty complicated and these ads are just the tip of the iceberg. First off Bonzi is genearting high volumes of low quality traffic then trying to resell it. Not a big deal but it's kind of shady. The major problem with Bonzi is their relationship with Whenu and SaveNow. SaveNow is commonly called scumware or parasiteware. The basic idea is SaveNow is hijacking online commissions. It works like this. There is such thing as CPA(cost per action) advertising whereby if an end user clicks on a banner then buys a product then the website that hosted that banner will receive a commission for that sale. This is all tracked with http requests to tracking servers. So basically if you own a website and your visitors are clicking on banners and buying products then you will receive a commission. However if the person making the sale has SaveNow running on their machine then that sale will be hijacked. SaveNow will interecept the http request to the tracking servers, overwrite it to suit its own needs, and in the end the commission that you should have received just went to Whenu(the makers of SaveNow).
In a nut shell, Bonzi is facilitating the distribution of these scumware applications - the end result being all websites involved in CPA advertising could be losing revenue due to stolen commissions. This is one way how Kazza, CyDoor, WhenU, and almost all other P2P file sharing networks are generating revenue.
I did not see the show but why bother? TV was overflowing with alien abduction movies a few years ago. Anything that Spielberg can put together has already been done. More power to Spielberg because he is a talented guy but this idea ranks up there with Travolta's sequel to Battlefield Earth.
Someone should do an article on how seq is an integral part of EQ. Most high level guilds would not exist if it were not for seq. The reason for seq is because competition for spawns is fierce. For those non-eq people I will explain. The important mobs spawn once every few days or week. If you are a high level guild then you need these mobs for gear, keys, spells, etc. One way to get the jump on another guild is to use seq and constantly scout for these mobs. It's pretty common for people to have one account with half a dozen characters that are scattered all over the game. You log onto the characters one by one checking for high level spawns. Soon as a spawn appears, you notify your guild and a few minutes later there are 30-60 people there to kill the mob. With mobs like Ragefire or Tormax I have seen a zone go from a dozen people to 200-300 people in a matter of minutes. It's pretty crazy and all possible due to seq. Seq has been around for several years now and can almost be considered a feature in EQ - it would be hard to imagine EQ without seq. The high level guilds would certainly suffer substantially if seq could not exist.
For some reason this reminds me of the startup.com movie. The best part of that movie was when the guys were trying to secure an angel investor and before they had signed a deal, they were in a taxi cab talking about taking the company public. The economny has no room for people looking for get rich quick schemes - which seems to be what this program is encouraging.
Sometimes /. is a little too biased. It's ok to bash windows but try not be such an idiot about the situation. If anyone gets the porsche catalog every month then they know porsche sells everything from watches to bikes. A market does exist for these types of things and the buyers care more about the brand name than the value of the product.
Hmm. If you are complaining over a few hundred dollars or even a few thousand then ebay does not care about your problems. Taking care of fraud for the little guys may the the right thing to do but realistically it's not good business. On the other hand if you are sending tens of thousands of dollars of business ebays way each month then you probably have a voice, probably have someone at ebay listening, and are not part of this complaint.
People are not being realistic. Lets say you have an item for $5000. I do not know what ebay's commission is but I am going to give a high guess of 3% of sale or $150. If there is fraud in this $5000 auction then what kind of motiviation does ebay have to correct the situation? $150. That's not much weight. Now lets consider the fact that most people with these complaints do auctions from $10-$500. Ebay's motivation to correct any fraud is going to be extremely low.
There's something called the 80/20 rule, where 80% of your revenue is driven by 20% of your traffic. If you are part of that 80% of traffic that generates 20% of the revenue then do not bitch when things do not go your way. Thems are the breaks and people are more then welcome to chose another solution provider. I just saw someone posting a complaint about losing $1000/month due to ebay auctions and they wonder why ebay does not give them the attention they deserve?
Fark is always quicker on the draw with articles...
Another thing, they don't call it Evercrack for nothing.
Friends in my dorms tried to order sodium from the chem lab on campus. A few minutes later the cops showed up to the class wondering who was trying to get ahold of sodium. That plan fell through but we did manage to get jars of 14 molar nitric acid - which works much better than liquid plummer.
Here's happy birthday, ;)
1121321121631196321332121
I once heard stair way to heaven on the phone - that was back in the day when blue boxing was still around and an exiting friday night meant being on a conference call with 30 other phreaks.
Thought this was appropriate...the Wheel of Fish scene from the movie UHF.
KUNI: Okay, let's play the game! We start with yesterday's winner... Mrs. Phyllis Weaver. Are you ready, Weaver?
PHYLLIS: I sure am, Kuni!
KUNI: Okay, then you get over here and spin the Wheel of Fish! Go ahead, give it a big spin...
The audience cheers as Phyllis runs onto the stage and gives the wheel a big spin. Kuni and Phyllis ad lib various encouragements to the wheel ("come on, baby!", "do it for mama!", "fishy fishy fishy..."). The wheel comes to a stop pointing to a swordfish.
KUNI: A swordfish! Mm, very tasty! Okay, Weaver, now listen carefully...You can hold on to your swordfish, or you can go for what's in the box that Hiro-san is bringing down the aisle right now! What's it gonna be?
Our blonde presenter has taken the swordfish off the wheel and is holding it out in front of Phyllis. Kuni's assistant comes down the aisle holding a large box on a tray. The studio audience calls out to Phyllis ("Keep the fish!"... "Take the box!"). Phyllis looks back and forth between the fish and the box.
PHYLLIS: I... I'll take the box!
KUNI: Okay, Weaver, you took the box! Let's see what's in it...
Hiro-san lifts up the box and there's absolutely nothing underneath it. KUNI (continuing, smiling broadly) Nothing! There's nothing in the box! Stupid...! You're so stupid...!!
The audience joins in with shouts of "Stupid!"
Do we need to translate our questions into d00d speak?
http://www.eskimo.com/~mvargas/hax0r.htm
j00 @r3 31337
http://www.nakedwireless.ca/winudcol.htm
Actually spam does work because the cost is much lower than other forms of advertising.
I think it is pretty simple to understand. Consider the cost to serve an ad. With traditional advertising if you serve a million banner ads then you pay for a million banner ads. Now with email marketing you can send out a million emails but you will only pay for those emails that are opened. By default you are going to pay less. Another thing is an opened email will get more attention than a traditional banner ad. So your click through rate is going to be higher. Click through rates are really skewed for text only emails, which make them seem much more attractive to the doubleclicks and encourage their use.
Working for an ad network I see billions of impressions each month by tens of thousands of different websites. The most successful sites are generally those that use direct marketing, opt-in text only emails to be more specific.
I personally hate spam but I can see the logic behind it being used. My best guess as to how to solve this issue is to encourage sites like spamcop. Using the government to regulate spammers seems like a bad idea to me.
For anyone wanting to know how hard it is to count here is a quick training session. This is the uston advanced count.
Assign point values to cards such as 2, 8 = +1; 3, 4, 6, 7 = +2; 5 = +3; 9 = -1; 10 = -3; Ace = 0.
Now take two cards out. Count down the deck and see if you can predict the value of the two cards that were removed. Then do it in under 20 seconds. Then have friends try to carry on a conversation while you count down the deck and do it for an hour nonstop with no mistakes. Counting is easy but it takes skill to be perfect for long periods of time.
I had my fun counting cards and made decent money in high school. If anything cashing out $1000 as a teenager with a lame fake ID was the hard part. I remember one day when a lady in the cage questioned my fake ID. So she asked her friend for help, Does it have a name and say ID on it? The lady replied, Yes it says Identification in bold letters across the top(that's about ALL it said), then the other laid said It's fine. Too funny. To anyone thinking of counting, good luck. It's not easy. I quit the sport a few years ago.
Hmm. I'm currently working as a data mining analysis for an internet advertising startup. The job has it's moments, like figuring out that credit cards should be sold to women when they make online purchases for makeup(no I am not kidding). However it would be much more exciting to work for a rich and powerful drug cartel... Does the job come with your own personal E15k?