So how much warning did we get about the end of Windows Mobile again? Plays For Now? Zune? Kin?
None. Business decisions were made, losses were cut, and the corporations deployed PR flacks, spin doctors, and social media twits to smooth over the end-user ill will. No big story there. That's how it's done: now, then, and probably for a long time to come.
We draw attention to it when Google does it because of that company's smug stance of "doing no evil" and pretense that they are somehow more morally upright then Microsoft, Apple, Oracle or their other tech-giant peers. They are the corporate equivalent of the preachy "socially conservative" politician who gets caught in the public restroom with an underage rent-boy.
The fact that Microsoft's cash register rings every time some "M$"-hating hipster buys a googlaphone because "It's Open and Free! Wheeee!" is friggin' hysterical.
Authors have EVERYTHING to do with this, fool. The Author's Guild has been fighting this since day one.
Sorry, but you can't cry and whine that it's the E-E-E-E-E-VILLLL *IAA's/licensed distributors (who only rip-off the poor artists anyway) who are leading the fight against piracy this time. The authors are on the front line -- have been since the day Harlan Ellison first sued AOL back in the 90's
It is trivial today for the creator of a manuscript -- an author -- to put his book online, on his own website/blog, at his own pace. Sell a chapter at a time? Give away chapters, or the whole thing? Interact with readers in his own blog forum during the writing process? Add a Facebook and/or Twitter component to the self-promotion? Link his writing work to his speaking work, or other creative and possibly more profitable endeavors? The possibilities are near-endless, and an entire cottage industry to assist and advise authors with marketing their e-books (circumventing traditional publishing houses) is emerging. It's a wonderful, liberating time!
So why in hell would an author give away control over any of that to Google? Fuck Google and fuck Google's Greed! A smart author will put his book (or parts of it) online, and buy the appropriate Google ad words and do all the other SEO bullshit that puts money into Google's pocket for delivering eyeballs to his site. Google is already making money from someone else's creative work -- and that's fine, I get that. But scanning a book without the author's or publisher's permission because -- why? -- it gives them something additional to turn up in search results once indexed, something new to hang ads on? Just wrong in Oh So Many Ways.
Copyright infringement is not stealing. Look it up sometime.
Yeah, and "hacker" refers to a "computer hobbyist."
Now, look *this* up: "Language Evolves."
"Stealing" and "Piracy" are both perfectly equivalent terms for "copyright infringement" as it applies to digital media. But don't take my word for it, you can witness the evolution in the hundreds of thousands of blogs, newspapers, and other online sources that now drive the changes in language.
And since writers are the ones who dictate language evolution to no small degree, and since they're the ones being stolen from in this case, there's a certain... poetic justice to the whole thing, doncha think?
Further blurring the lines between paid advertising and legitimate content. This'll make snydeq's slashvertisements here for Info World look like highway billboards by comparison.
It's not "news for nerds," of course, but it does cause the heads of the shallow-minded Church-hating/privacy&porn-venerating hipsters to explode, and that's always entertaining, so let it slide.
Yeah, that's part of the hilarity with these lulsec/anonymous kids. They keep picking fights with ginormously powerful entities which would not think twice about tossing them into small cells at the bottom of a deep holes, yet they seem to feel these Death Star Agencies and Corporations will back off due to the punks' mad skillz with internet servers.
In Chicago, they call that "bringing a knife to a gun fight."
What's new is that Google has found success (initially, at least; people seem to be wising up lately) among the self-proclaimed and self-absorbed digerati crowd that heretofore viewed themselves somehow above the Marketing that always suckered in the mere mortal consumers beneath them. The smug, sniffy, MS-hating, open source espousing, latte-drinking, Starbucks-frequenting hipsters with fifty-dollar haircuts all fell for the warm gooey spin that using Google products made them better people -- which would have been hilarious just-desserts if it hadn't had the unfortunate side-effect of increasing their market share so much.
No, of course not. Obviously. It's kind of like a neighborhood that's had a spot of high crime deciding to let policemen with cameras station themselves inside each bedroom 24/7.
"Oh, gee, I dunno about that... but maybe it'll be okay if their badges are really, really shiny. I like Shiny...
...and not focusing on the huge footprint Motorola has in the cable set-top box market.
Will consumers be watching videos on their computers, or surfing the Web on their TVs more in years to come? By buying the Motorola hardware, Google doesn't have to guess, their bets are hedged: They are ensured of continued revenue selling your surfing/viewing preferences to advertisers and the NSA no matter how the "connected TV" market shakes down.
the people using Bing are the same people that does not know about the address bar.
Except that I use Bing and I've been designing computer user interfaces for over twenty years.
The value of Google's results has been steadily declining as it attempts to use its search engine as a springboard/spinal cord for any number of its other ventures. If Google can make an extra nickel that provides you with not the most relevant link, a link instead to one of its many partners/clients/advertisers/science projects, etc. it will do so. Not saying I blame them for doing so -- they're in business to make money -- but be clear: they are sacrificing superior search results for profits.
At least in the US, if this was done and somebody was seriously injured or died and couldn't summon medical attention because of it... there would be lawsuits.
D00d, in the US, there would be lawsuits because it's Tuesday and someone was wearing a green hat.
...will not be between Black and White, or White and Hispanic, or even Rich and Poor. It will be between those who get pensions and employer-provided healthcare and those who don't.
I also [received] more 5-Funny to my credit in the year I've been here than your entire life.
Dood, I get +5 Funny here all the time, and I'm a fuckin' idiot. For the sake of your self-esteem and all that's holy, please don't ascribe any real-life value to slashdot moderations.
I stopped reading when I saw snydeq's name in the byline. He's their corporate communications shill who handles most of the pay-for-press astro-turfing InfoWorld does on slashdot.
The funny part is that InfoWorld is paying for what has been sold as Upper IT Management eyeballs and credibility within the slashdot audience, but the days when slashdot reached that crowd are long gone. These days slashdot readers are predominantly the young gadgeteers, hobbyists, and geek wannabes who most likely don't have any idea why an iPad or iPhone would be a threat to their IT Department. Most probably didn't even know their high school HAD an IT Department...
Videogames are not books or films; they are a different medium altogether. Consequently, videogame developers should be focusing on the interactive aspects of videogame play that are unique, not trying to imitate the linear aspects of other media. Never mind that the videogame stories are inevitably dreadful imitations of book and movie plotlines that have been done before by legitimate storytellers.
And you videogame players that are vocally insistent that developers focus more on story and less on multiplayer and other uniquely interactive aspects of their craft: Stop! Go read a book. You don't attend a ballet and then complain that none of the performers sang; stop complaining about lack of story in your videogames.
Reminds me of an often-told story around these parts...
It's the night shift in Master Control at a major national Cable TV Network. One guy has been there since pre-launch days, let's call him "Joe." Now, Joe is enormous, pushing if not over 300 lbs, sports a perpetual four-day stubble, is known for -- among many other eccentricities -- coming to work in his pajamas. Not that he was a slacker, oh no. Joe is a rock, a superman, the exact guy you want on duty should there be a crisis, or even if there isn't. He's the "Mayor of the Overnight," as the CEO once referred to him. So all Joe's compatriots in Master Control, they do their time, eventually move into daylight shifts, but not Joe. "Not interested," sez Joe. "Like it on the overnights just fine." New generations of Master Control Operators are hired, Joe mentors them, and THEY move on and up. And so his legend grows. Years pass, Joe's an industry icon, his fame grown even beyond his own company.
Then one day -- five years later? seven years later? ten years later? -- he finds he's become an HR Nightmare. See, Joe got top marks on every merit review, got maximum pay raises for his job class, every year -- and now he's making more money than a lot of suits 2-3 pay grades above him. "Can't have that," HR informs Ops. And so Joe is finally prodded and cajoled into the sunlight. Shiny suit, skinny tie, shave and a haircut, congrats Big Guy, Welcome to Management!
He lasted six weeks. Was never clear whose call it was ultimately -- the other suits who now had to deal with "That Fat Guy from Master Control," or the erstwhile Mayor himself who came to finally see first hand what he probably suspected all along, that making banks of machinery and automation systems play nice together was easy compared to any comparable accomplishment involving people.
But HR was happy. With Joe gone, everyone's paychecks once again fit nicely inside the boxes that had been drawn for them.
every hick and their family members are going to come over to ask questions on everything.
You're a classist buffoon.
The next time you look down your nose at a "hick," bear in mind he's probably thinking, "Thank God I've got a real job that let's me work normal hours and pays enough to raise a family -- not like that rude hipster stuck in retail."
Slashdot Mirror
So how much warning did we get about the end of Windows Mobile again? Plays For Now? Zune? Kin?
None. Business decisions were made, losses were cut, and the corporations deployed PR flacks, spin doctors, and social media twits to smooth over the end-user ill will. No big story there. That's how it's done: now, then, and probably for a long time to come.
We draw attention to it when Google does it because of that company's smug stance of "doing no evil" and pretense that they are somehow more morally upright then Microsoft, Apple, Oracle or their other tech-giant peers. They are the corporate equivalent of the preachy "socially conservative" politician who gets caught in the public restroom with an underage rent-boy.
It's funny when the nerds and geeks chastise the US for not being popular enough.
From my study of Catholic cultural intervention
Your knowledge of history seems pretty poor. You must have gone to public school.
The fact that Microsoft's cash register rings every time some "M$"-hating hipster buys a googlaphone because "It's Open and Free! Wheeee!" is friggin' hysterical.
Why does your pre-teen daughter have an e-mail account to begin with?
Why would you *ever* trust Google with anything "personal?" Google makes its money by *selling* people.
Which sort of makes the whole Google-account-for-a-pre-teen-daughter-thing not just bad parenting, but creepy as well...
Authors have nothing to do with this.
Authors have EVERYTHING to do with this, fool. The Author's Guild has been fighting this since day one.
Sorry, but you can't cry and whine that it's the E-E-E-E-E-VILLLL *IAA's/licensed distributors (who only rip-off the poor artists anyway) who are leading the fight against piracy this time. The authors are on the front line -- have been since the day Harlan Ellison first sued AOL back in the 90's
It is trivial today for the creator of a manuscript -- an author -- to put his book online, on his own website/blog, at his own pace. Sell a chapter at a time? Give away chapters, or the whole thing? Interact with readers in his own blog forum during the writing process? Add a Facebook and/or Twitter component to the self-promotion? Link his writing work to his speaking work, or other creative and possibly more profitable endeavors? The possibilities are near-endless, and an entire cottage industry to assist and advise authors with marketing their e-books (circumventing traditional publishing houses) is emerging. It's a wonderful, liberating time!
So why in hell would an author give away control over any of that to Google? Fuck Google and fuck Google's Greed! A smart author will put his book (or parts of it) online, and buy the appropriate Google ad words and do all the other SEO bullshit that puts money into Google's pocket for delivering eyeballs to his site. Google is already making money from someone else's creative work -- and that's fine, I get that. But scanning a book without the author's or publisher's permission because -- why? -- it gives them something additional to turn up in search results once indexed, something new to hang ads on? Just wrong in Oh So Many Ways.
Copyright infringement is not stealing. Look it up sometime.
Yeah, and "hacker" refers to a "computer hobbyist."
Now, look *this* up: "Language Evolves."
"Stealing" and "Piracy" are both perfectly equivalent terms for "copyright infringement" as it applies to digital media. But don't take my word for it, you can witness the evolution in the hundreds of thousands of blogs, newspapers, and other online sources that now drive the changes in language.
And since writers are the ones who dictate language evolution to no small degree, and since they're the ones being stolen from in this case, there's a certain... poetic justice to the whole thing, doncha think?
When a slashdotter thinks he is being funny but is only displaying his ignorance, then he is funniest of all.
I collect epub's, mobi's, azw's, lit's, pdf's, and even cbr's and read them all on my Nook.
How are those boots tasting? Lick harder, I want a good polish.
Spoken like a true cube-dweller wheel-cog who has never produced anything worth stealing in his wretched little life.
Further blurring the lines between paid advertising and legitimate content. This'll make snydeq's slashvertisements here for Info World look like highway billboards by comparison.
It's hardly "news for nerds"
It's not "news for nerds," of course, but it does cause the heads of the shallow-minded Church-hating/privacy&porn-venerating hipsters to explode, and that's always entertaining, so let it slide.
Yeah, that's part of the hilarity with these lulsec/anonymous kids. They keep picking fights with ginormously powerful entities which would not think twice about tossing them into small cells at the bottom of a deep holes, yet they seem to feel these Death Star Agencies and Corporations will back off due to the punks' mad skillz with internet servers.
In Chicago, they call that "bringing a knife to a gun fight."
What's new is that Google has found success (initially, at least; people seem to be wising up lately) among the self-proclaimed and self-absorbed digerati crowd that heretofore viewed themselves somehow above the Marketing that always suckered in the mere mortal consumers beneath them. The smug, sniffy, MS-hating, open source espousing, latte-drinking, Starbucks-frequenting hipsters with fifty-dollar haircuts all fell for the warm gooey spin that using Google products made them better people -- which would have been hilarious just-desserts if it hadn't had the unfortunate side-effect of increasing their market share so much.
is it a good idea to let them?
No, of course not. Obviously. It's kind of like a neighborhood that's had a spot of high crime deciding to let policemen with cameras station themselves inside each bedroom 24/7.
"Oh, gee, I dunno about that... but maybe it'll be okay if their badges are really, really shiny. I like Shiny...
...and not focusing on the huge footprint Motorola has in the cable set-top box market.
Will consumers be watching videos on their computers, or surfing the Web on their TVs more in years to come? By buying the Motorola hardware, Google doesn't have to guess, their bets are hedged: They are ensured of continued revenue selling your surfing/viewing preferences to advertisers and the NSA no matter how the "connected TV" market shakes down.
the people using Bing are the same people that does not know about the address bar.
Except that I use Bing and I've been designing computer user interfaces for over twenty years.
The value of Google's results has been steadily declining as it attempts to use its search engine as a springboard/spinal cord for any number of its other ventures. If Google can make an extra nickel that provides you with not the most relevant link, a link instead to one of its many partners/clients/advertisers/science projects, etc. it will do so. Not saying I blame them for doing so -- they're in business to make money -- but be clear: they are sacrificing superior search results for profits.
At least in the US, if this was done and somebody was seriously injured or died and couldn't summon medical attention because of it ... there would be lawsuits.
D00d, in the US, there would be lawsuits because it's Tuesday and someone was wearing a green hat.
...will not be between Black and White, or White and Hispanic, or even Rich and Poor. It will be between those who get pensions and employer-provided healthcare and those who don't.
I also [received] more 5-Funny to my credit in the year I've been here than your entire life.
Dood, I get +5 Funny here all the time, and I'm a fuckin' idiot. For the sake of your self-esteem and all that's holy, please don't ascribe any real-life value to slashdot moderations.
I stopped reading when I saw snydeq's name in the byline. He's their corporate communications shill who handles most of the pay-for-press astro-turfing InfoWorld does on slashdot.
The funny part is that InfoWorld is paying for what has been sold as Upper IT Management eyeballs and credibility within the slashdot audience, but the days when slashdot reached that crowd are long gone. These days slashdot readers are predominantly the young gadgeteers, hobbyists, and geek wannabes who most likely don't have any idea why an iPad or iPhone would be a threat to their IT Department. Most probably didn't even know their high school HAD an IT Department...
The mere fact of a tweet containing an exclamation mark or a smiley face meant that odds were a woman was tweeting
or a Mac user.
Videogames are not books or films; they are a different medium altogether. Consequently, videogame developers should be focusing on the interactive aspects of videogame play that are unique, not trying to imitate the linear aspects of other media. Never mind that the videogame stories are inevitably dreadful imitations of book and movie plotlines that have been done before by legitimate storytellers.
And you videogame players that are vocally insistent that developers focus more on story and less on multiplayer and other uniquely interactive aspects of their craft: Stop! Go read a book. You don't attend a ballet and then complain that none of the performers sang; stop complaining about lack of story in your videogames.
Reminds me of an often-told story around these parts...
It's the night shift in Master Control at a major national Cable TV Network. One guy has been there since pre-launch days, let's call him "Joe." Now, Joe is enormous, pushing if not over 300 lbs, sports a perpetual four-day stubble, is known for -- among many other eccentricities -- coming to work in his pajamas. Not that he was a slacker, oh no. Joe is a rock, a superman, the exact guy you want on duty should there be a crisis, or even if there isn't. He's the "Mayor of the Overnight," as the CEO once referred to him. So all Joe's compatriots in Master Control, they do their time, eventually move into daylight shifts, but not Joe. "Not interested," sez Joe. "Like it on the overnights just fine." New generations of Master Control Operators are hired, Joe mentors them, and THEY move on and up. And so his legend grows. Years pass, Joe's an industry icon, his fame grown even beyond his own company.
Then one day -- five years later? seven years later? ten years later? -- he finds he's become an HR Nightmare. See, Joe got top marks on every merit review, got maximum pay raises for his job class, every year -- and now he's making more money than a lot of suits 2-3 pay grades above him. "Can't have that," HR informs Ops. And so Joe is finally prodded and cajoled into the sunlight. Shiny suit, skinny tie, shave and a haircut, congrats Big Guy, Welcome to Management!
He lasted six weeks. Was never clear whose call it was ultimately -- the other suits who now had to deal with "That Fat Guy from Master Control," or the erstwhile Mayor himself who came to finally see first hand what he probably suspected all along, that making banks of machinery and automation systems play nice together was easy compared to any comparable accomplishment involving people.
But HR was happy. With Joe gone, everyone's paychecks once again fit nicely inside the boxes that had been drawn for them.
every hick and their family members are going to come over to ask questions on everything.
You're a classist buffoon.
The next time you look down your nose at a "hick," bear in mind he's probably thinking, "Thank God I've got a real job that let's me work normal hours and pays enough to raise a family -- not like that rude hipster stuck in retail."