They don't have to read every story. They have a database of pages that have been linked to. If they check to see if the page is already in there, they will find that it's been covered before.
I like making fun of millionaires who pull down $90,000 a year in addition to the $7 million they got for their site, who can't even manage to read their own product.
If someone gave me $7 million in Andover stock and 90 grand a year to run my website, I'd get a spell checker and make sure not to run the same article twice on the front page.
I am amazed that a person can become a media pundit by deciding early in life to strap a computer to himself. (Note: I did my undergrad engineering degree in the same class as Steve, and am well acquainted with exactly how much talent Steve does or doesn't have...)
"Actually, I've heard that the number of slashdotters is past a half million. "
Possibly, but I'm pretty sure that the chances of them all going to Slashdot, and then all deciding to hit Hotmail simultaneously, are pretty slim. From the way this site has been performing for me lately, it seems that if they all went to Slashdot simultaneously, they'd probably Slashdot Slashdot.
I unwittingly managed to create a Telemarketer Trap using my answering machine. My message is a very quick "Leave a message after the tone".
The device that calls poor unsuspecting rubes during their dinner will first ensure that someone picked up the phone and said something. Then it tries to connect a telemarketer to that line, but it usually takes about 3 seconds (which is longer than my message). The net result is that the telemarketer gets to hear the sound of my answering machine recording a message.
I get about 2 messages a week consisting of "Hello? Hello? Helllloooooooooo?"
I get great satisfaction out of wasting their time, for a change.
There were numerous comments wondering what exactly happened to Orrin. Everyone's used to seeing him as the enemy, but somehow he came up with a bucketload of common sense on this particular issue.
If you read what Orrin Hatch has been saying during the hearings, you will probably be surprised to find that he has been very fair to the public and has repeatedly called the music industry and their lackeys when their testimony has slid into the bullshit zone.
I've tried to decide which CD I should buy from a particular band, listened to some songs using Napster, and decided to buy all of their CDs.
Napster in my case is like shareware. It's an insurance policy that ensures that I will like what I buy. If I don't like a performer's work, I delete it and don't put it on my shopping list.
So what we have is a souped-up streamed live concert broadcast now, with a roomful of professors who think it'd be really cool to collaborate across the globe, despite the havoc played by any possible lag.
Streaming video has been done before. Internet-based collaborative concerts have been done before, but haven't succeeded in any significant way.
My point is that this story consists of a boring implementation of streaming Audio/Video, along with the half-baked musings of some professors about an inherently flawed "international internet concert" theory that has already been tried, but has failed.
There are many people who have ideas about what they'd like the internet to do, but I don't really think most of them are newsworthy until they come up with something concrete. And more impressive than streaming a concert (even with great sound and video) to Japan.
The musicians aren't in different continents. The viewers and the concert are in different continents. All this is is a high-bandwidth pipe from North America to Japan, carrying a high-quality equivalent of a streamed RealVideo concert.
There is no international or inter-continental collaboration going on here.
But not enough money to pay for every new card that comes down the pike, especially cards that might go for $200-400. Let's say that they have an advertising network that gives them $5 cpm (I'm being generous here). That means that after paying for site overhead, 40 to 80 THOUSAND page views have to happen before the card is paid for.
And that's just for one card. Nobody will take them seriously unless they have several reviews. Let's say the average cost per card is $300, and they need 5 reviews to be considered a "worthwhile net destination". That means they need to come up with 300,000 page views.
It's hard enough designing a site and coming up with content without having to deal with the ongoing hassle of Ebaying your old inventory.
Your experience exactly mirrors mine. I had no desire to go up against Dialogic's (crappy) tech support, except that the non-existent documentation for my cards forced me to. It seemed that the tech support people had the same documentation as me, but very little in the way of problem-solving skills. I know that Dialogic has developers squirrelled away somewhere in their operation. Unfortunately, their ability to develop new hardware far outstrips their capacity to write bug-free drivers for, document, or provide adequate tech support for that hardware.
This is the same Dialogic that had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into supporting Linux. I hassled them (literally) for years, but they gave the usual excuses that nobody used Linux, that it was unreliable, and so on. I told them that there would come a day where lack of Linux support would make them look bad. After that day came, they announced (but didn't ship for quite some time) Linux support.
By the way, beware dealing with Dialogic Tech Support. You may get to talk to a person, but that person probably won't understand your problem. I've got a long laundry list of occasions where Dialogic left me high and dry.
Leaches [sic] exist due to the efforts or output of others. Rob made millions by letting people write on his web page. And you call them leaches [sic].
Slashdot Mirror
They don't have to read every story. They have a database of pages that have been linked to. If they check to see if the page is already in there, they will find that it's been covered before.
I like making fun of millionaires who pull down $90,000 a year in addition to the $7 million they got for their site, who can't even manage to read their own product.
And we sure as hell don't want to smell as bad as you do.
And they could learn to spell. Or run a spell checker.
And they could try to not put the same article twice on the front page.
Lots of room for improvement.
"You can use the needle once and get away with it"
So you aren't correcting that statement.
You are agreeing with that statement.
If someone gave me $7 million in Andover stock and 90 grand a year to run my website, I'd get a spell checker and make sure not to run the same article twice on the front page.
But maybe I'm just a bit too detail-oriented.
Steve Mann is a one-trick pony.
I am amazed that a person can become a media pundit by deciding early in life to strap a computer to himself. (Note: I did my undergrad engineering degree in the same class as Steve, and am well acquainted with exactly how much talent Steve does or doesn't have...)
Well, Slashdot's strategy would probably be affected by the several million that Andover has lying around in the bank.
This topic is supposed to be about what the "little guy" can do in this situation. Slashdot doesn't fit in that category.
If you aren't happy with Amazon behaving this way, you'll really be peeved with the kind of things that Credit Card companies do.
I don't really mind, myself.
If memory serves me right, it's been posted at least twice before.
Is there some sort of Slashdot office pool involving the number of times this one goes up on the site?
See Octothorpe.
"Actually, I've heard that the number of slashdotters is past a half million. "
Possibly, but I'm pretty sure that the chances of them all going to Slashdot, and then all deciding to hit Hotmail simultaneously, are pretty slim. From the way this site has been performing for me lately, it seems that if they all went to Slashdot simultaneously, they'd probably Slashdot Slashdot.
I unwittingly managed to create a Telemarketer Trap using my answering machine. My message is a very quick "Leave a message after the tone".
The device that calls poor unsuspecting rubes during their dinner will first ensure that someone picked up the phone and said something. Then it tries to connect a telemarketer to that line, but it usually takes about 3 seconds (which is longer than my message). The net result is that the telemarketer gets to hear the sound of my answering machine recording a message.
I get about 2 messages a week consisting of "Hello? Hello? Helllloooooooooo?"
I get great satisfaction out of wasting their time, for a change.
What if the extraterrestrials we detect are great a breaking codes?
There were numerous comments wondering what exactly happened to Orrin. Everyone's used to seeing him as the enemy, but somehow he came up with a bucketload of common sense on this particular issue.
If you read what Orrin Hatch has been saying during the hearings, you will probably be surprised to find that he has been very fair to the public and has repeatedly called the music industry and their lackeys when their testimony has slid into the bullshit zone.
I've tried to decide which CD I should buy from a particular band, listened to some songs using Napster, and decided to buy all of their CDs.
Napster in my case is like shareware. It's an insurance policy that ensures that I will like what I buy. If I don't like a performer's work, I delete it and don't put it on my shopping list.
So what we have is a souped-up streamed live concert broadcast now, with a roomful of professors who think it'd be really cool to collaborate across the globe, despite the havoc played by any possible lag.
Streaming video has been done before.
Internet-based collaborative concerts have been done before, but haven't succeeded in any significant way.
My point is that this story consists of a boring implementation of streaming Audio/Video, along with the half-baked musings of some professors about an inherently flawed "international internet concert" theory that has already been tried, but has failed.
There are many people who have ideas about what they'd like the internet to do, but I don't really think most of them are newsworthy until they come up with something concrete. And more impressive than streaming a concert (even with great sound and video) to Japan.
The musicians aren't in different continents. The viewers and the concert are in different continents. All this is is a high-bandwidth pipe from North America to Japan, carrying a high-quality equivalent of a streamed RealVideo concert.
There is no international or inter-continental collaboration going on here.
Yes they make money reviewing cards.
But not enough money to pay for every new card that comes down the pike, especially cards that might go for $200-400. Let's say that they have an advertising network that gives them $5 cpm (I'm being generous here). That means that after paying for site overhead, 40 to 80 THOUSAND page views have to happen before the card is paid for.
And that's just for one card. Nobody will take them seriously unless they have several reviews. Let's say the average cost per card is $300, and they need 5 reviews to be considered a "worthwhile net destination". That means they need to come up with 300,000 page views.
It's hard enough designing a site and coming up with content without having to deal with the ongoing hassle of Ebaying your old inventory.
Anyone using addr.com as a hosting provider has my deepest sympathy. They are atrocious.
I guess I shouldn't call them "they", because when I dealt with them, it seemed like a one-man-with-a-cell-phone operation.
I don't know about anything else, but the thought of doing anything involving a lawyer gives me the creeps. Even nailing a spammer.
They have their rabid audience and piles of money.
Why should they worry about such trifles as correct spelling, duplicated articles or having to write summaries?
Your experience exactly mirrors mine. I had no desire to go up against Dialogic's (crappy) tech support, except that the non-existent documentation for my cards forced me to. It seemed that the tech support people had the same documentation as me, but very little in the way of problem-solving skills. I know that Dialogic has developers squirrelled away somewhere in their operation. Unfortunately, their ability to develop new hardware far outstrips their capacity to write bug-free drivers for, document, or provide adequate tech support for that hardware.
This is the same Dialogic that had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into supporting Linux. I hassled them (literally) for years, but they gave the usual excuses that nobody used Linux, that it was unreliable, and so on. I told them that there would come a day where lack of Linux support would make them look bad. After that day came, they announced (but didn't ship for quite some time) Linux support.
By the way, beware dealing with Dialogic Tech Support. You may get to talk to a person, but that person probably won't understand your problem. I've got a long laundry list of occasions where Dialogic left me high and dry.
Leaches [sic] exist due to the efforts or output of others. Rob made millions by letting people write on his web page. And you call them leaches [sic].