I disagree that they're liable for disabling that feature.
Of course they are. Depends on what the original sales contract says. Oh, no contract for a normal retail sale? Then normal sales laws apply and I'd be very surprised if those laws allow a vendor to change the conditions after the sale.
They have said that feature might go away in the manual
Irrelevant. That text was only available to the purchaser after the sale was made and many retailers do not offer money back guarantees.
it's not advertised on the box.
Irrelevant. It was advertised.
If they informed all potential purchasers who knew about the other OS option that the functionality might be removed, not just not unsupported, before the sale then they are off the hook. Otherwise no.
It is normal and expected that support will be dropped for a product after a fixed amount of time. It is not normal to expect functionality to be deliberately removed. Sony might have an argument if the PSN were not bundled (in other words it was an ongoing rental contract where ongoing conditions could change, not a one-off sales contract) but even then it's dodgy.
You sound like many salesdroids who thinks that half-truths, lies, deceptions and post-the-fact revisionism are somehow okay. You're mistaken.
---
DRM breaks ownership, the basis of capitalism and the free market.
If I know all the twists & turns on a road, I can safely go much faster than some sucker who got lost and has never been on that road before.
Not really because to drive safely you need to drive based on what is visible (e.g. slow down at blind corners or potential road surface problems) and whether you're familiar with the road or not that doesn't change.
And this is different from closed source software how? Fact is that closed source software projects are also run by humans with hangups and have similar problems. It's just that open source projects are more visible to the general community. That's what open source is.
and will always be a locus of justifiable criticism of the FOSS community in general.
Only when people like you acknowledge that these problems apply equally to any large project involving people. Until then you're being bigoted.
Move along. Nothing new to see here.
I get very tired of people making claims about open or closed source software that apply equally to all software. Makes me wonder if they've got an agenda.
---
Don't waste your life on marketing drivel/nonsense
When you have editors going around deleting articles because they don't even believe that entire subdisciplines exist, it's hard to trust the details or scholarship in any of the articles relating to such a discipline.
Actually, I've found that often it isn't the articles in wikipedia that are the problem. It's often the people complaining about the articles in wikipedia that are the problem. As in, they're often loons or people with an agenda (such as the pay encyclopedias engaged in wholesale lying astroturf).
Any large project like wikipedia is going to attract such people like flies. When their voice is effectively ignored they just complain louder. It is a problem if such people get editing access to wikipedia articles but given the numbers (large numbers of ordinary people, small numbers of loons) it usually works out ok. Just like any public space.
Incidentally, having a discipline with multiple journals doesn't necessarily mean much - many nutters vanity "publish" like crazy.
---
The USA is <5% of the world's population. It is statistically insignificant.
A hearing aid is specifically designed, manufactured, marketed, and dispensed, for one and only one purpose:
That sounds impressive but doesn't actually mean anything.
to treat a human disease.
Most hearing loss is due to age or physical injury, not disease as such. Just like legs and feet.
It is not intended to be used, nor can it safely be used, by people with normal hearing.
Exactly like shoes of the wrong size or fit.
By its very nature, it modifies the function of the human body.
Like any personal effect, including shoes.
It is not in any way comparable to an article of clothing, or an mp3 player, whose fit and function can be ascertained by a layman
It is directly comparable actually. Laymen are perfectly capable of determining whether something is too loud or not. Just like earbuds.
and which can be worn or used safely by virtually anyone.
Like properly designed hearing aids, shoes and earbuds.
Using an improperly made hearing aid, or even a properly made one that isn't specifically prescribed for you, would certainly cause you harm, including potentially irreversible nerve damage, and hearing loss.
And improperly designed or fitted shoes and earbuds listened to too loudly can do the same.
And a layman, end-user, who bought one over the counter, is not qualified to determine whether it is functioning correctly, or appropriately for his hearing deficit.
Of course they are. Your so-called expert is just recording what the "layman" patient is telling them when they do a hearing test.
A layman is perfectly capable of doing a self-administered computer based hearing test, answering a few multiple choice questions, pressing a button and having a hearing aid programmed with the appropriate response curve. Or failing that just have off-the-shelf hearing aids with adjustable sensitivity with frequency response curves typical for various categories such as aging or music loss.
It could be producing levels at certain frequencies that cause long-term damage, and he would never know it, until it was too late.
It could be. That's why you don't design them that way. Same as shoes and earbuds.
So, it is absolutely in no way analogous or comparable to a pair of track shoes, or an mp3 player.
Actually it is. You haven't given any reason to say otherwise.
A hearing aid is obviously a medical device, and correctly regulated as such, in my opinion,
Not really in my opinion.
because it must be dispensed properly,
Which is a fancy way of saying "sold"
and must perform correctly, or it can cause serious adverse health effects for its user.
Just like shoes or ear buds.
Face it, the markets for hearing aids (and glasses also) as currently structured are just a racket. "Specialists" add a tiny amount of value by optimizing hearing aid fitting in ways impossible for a mass market item however they charge like a wounded bull for that privilege. I wouldn't mind but in addition engage in what should be wholesale anti-trust to block real competition and a mass market developing.
---
"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." --Leo Tolstoy
The GPL proponents believe that proprietary software is morally wrong,
Not necessarily. They often believe proprietary software is not a valid model e.g. artificial scarcity doesn't reflect the real world. People's motivations are complex.
---
The patent mafia: When all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
What you are saying, basically, is that your opinion is more valid/correct than GP's.
No, I'm saying like many marketing parasites he's misusing language to exaggerate and mislead. "Stunning" has specific meanings that both he and you are misusing.
More so since you admit it does look better, if even a little. I too would use the words "stunning" to describe more current 3D animation in BD as compared to DVD. But its a question of taste and appreciation, and no amount of shouting down and arm waving is going to make either of us correct.
Give it a rest. You're bullshitting and you know it.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it can have negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
A hearing aid helps me hear better, must be fitted and can potentially cause serious accidents. Track shoes help me run better, must be fitted and can potentially cause serious accidents. There is no medical difference.
The pricing of hearing aids is simply because foolish people will pay for it, there's price fixing going on and the FDA bureacracy has arbitrarily decided to treat hearing aids and shoes differently.
---
Modern marketing - a great substitute for a quality product.
This is a centrally managed computer system; maybe somebody in the central office has figured out a way to illegally tack on and collect out-of-town taxi charges indirectly.
Or maybe the computer system is recording the charges incorrectly due to a bug.
Who's to watch the watchers...
---
Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.
nd it was truly stunning... you will definitely notice how fantastic it looks
It doesn't look "stunning" or "fantastic", that's just marketing drivel. It looks a little better. And just like music and mp3's most consumers these days don't give a shit. Most will probably buy into it eventually but only if the cost difference is marginal.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it can have negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
I suppose to be pedantic I'm protecting against the financial impact of loss, not the loss itself, but that's really splitting hairs.
I guess I wasn't clear as I think you misunderstand what I said. Insurance pays for nothing - it's merely a bet with the insurance company. You betting with the insurance company that you will be robbed, they're betting that you won't and they price that bet to cover their overheads.
Either you pay when you're robbed or you pay the insurance company a regular sum who in turn pay when you're robbed. The insurance company is in it for a profit so they're never going to price the bet so they make a loss, meaning you come out ahead. Because of their overheads you should never buy insurance for anything you can cover with your own cash flow unless you are confident the insurance company is underpricing the bet for you which is unlikely given their experience.
The only time you should voluntarily buy insurance is for large items where they have much deeper pockets than you and can cover things you can't. That's rarer than you might think though; even with insurance there's going to be catastrophes which aren't covered because of a loophole, act of god or because the insurance company has gone bust, so you can never have complete peace of mind.
I agree about everything being tradeoffs, intangible or tangible. There's no such thing as perfect security.
It's difficult for them to make an objective choice, if for no other reason than the drug company is the only source of information about a drug early in a drug's life cycle. For obvious reasons drug companies are notorious for overselling their products and that "choice" you talk about is pointless if objective information to base it on is not available. In addition one of the biggest problems with the current system is that the drugs are tested by the drug companies themselves, not an objective third party. With the best will in the world they're still biased. No easy solution.
It's not either-or of course. It should be possible to create an intermediate level of auditing that gets experimental drugs out reasonably quickly giving new patients some level of objective safety and assurance of efficacy.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies back door to every network connected country and business on earth.
So even if you play a modern game set in say... Times Square you would vow off the video game because it accurately recreated the real world?
Are you being deliberately obtuse? The whole point of a game is to escape from the real world. When the real world intrudes that's when it stops being fun.
This seems like a stupid (and dishonest) assessment of the world. "I can only have fun if there are no ads in view."
You're the dishonest one. Every single ad is a cognitive load to ignore, a cost to the viewer. The only way to have zero cost is to have zero ad's. Or useful unsolicited ad's. As if. Anybody who makes any purchase decision at all based on unsolicited ads is a fool.
Do you live in a black vault free of marketing's evil reach?
No, he lives in the real world where unsolicited advertising has reached ridiculous levels, costing billions, probably trillions, of manhours for fuck-all in return. And yes, most unsolicited advertising is evil, particularly on hot" media like TV, in that it actively attempts to influence people to make emotional, sub-optimal decisions. Spamming is is merely the extreme end of that spectrum. Unfortunately becoming less extreme all the time.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
You're being foolish. An unobtrusive ad is a pointless ad. Unless you take subliminal advertising seriously the whole point of advertising is to gain your attention and to crowd out alternate points of view. Every single in-game ad is a lost opportunity to put in something entertaining. It reduces the quality of the game. And because the advertising industry doesn't know when to stop (it's an arms race to get mindshare) they can and do keep saturating every media they can get hold of until that media has a net value to you of just above zero. Broadcast TV is already a wasteland because of it and the parasites are trying to destroy every other form of media also.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
While you might be willing to pay, not everyone would.
Yep, and if they're not willing to pay then it never was of much value to them. Whatever amount of time they wasted on it when it was "free". Something that many in the unsolicited advertising industry are in complete denial about. You too apparently since you completely failed to respond to my point and tried to talk around it. Repeating: if they're not willing to pay then it's not important to them.
In any case it's quite straightforward for website owners to embed advertising in their material such that it cannot be easily automatically excised. Just like product placement in movies. Maybe they're scared of the result if they tried.
Personally, I'd be happy to see the entire unsolicited advertising industry die. It's largely parasitic (if you make any purchase decision based on unsolicited advertising then you are a fool) and has very little socially redeeming value (billions of manhours are stolen by it for almost nothing in return).
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
My point though was that if we all thought like you, the internet would shrivel up and die.
No, the junk internet would die. Most of my favourite websites are ad-free or allow subscription. Sites like Ars just repackage (trying to be middlemen in other words), have laughable opinion pieces, and are basically just a net zero.
What people like you fail to realize is that if people aren't willing to pay for your website then your website isn't worth anything to them and they won't care if it goes away. Really. Deal.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
Look at his posting history. Even his username. He's probably an M$ astroturfer trying to create the perception that slashdot is biased because it's independent and doesn't toe the M$ propaganda line.
Standard marketing technique; try to create the "everybody's doing it" vibe to break anti-M$ viewpoints and promote M$ propaganda. Every story about M$ has several posters claiming that/. is biased when there are always posts from all points of view. Many are simply people in M$' reality distortion field who can't cope with alternative points of view but it's pretty consistent suggesting that there may be deliberate astroturf going on also.
Oh, and to preempt one predictable complaint; I'll be happy to remove "M$" from my posts once M$ remove their marketing keys from pretty much every general purpose PC keyboard on the planet.
---
Anonymous company communication is unethical and can and should be highly illegal. Company legal structures require accountability.
He is not necessarily the world's most prolific inventor but simply the one with the most patents. They are not the same thing despite what the patent lobby would have you believe.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
Not to mention that writing that H.264 is proprietary is wrong.
No, it's right actually. Proprietary means of property, in particular patents. The fact that a group of companies own it collectively rather than an individual company, and that documentation is available, is irrelevant. People can only use it by paying a non-nominal fee and that makes it proprietary.
actually pay the government for the mere privilege of creating stuff?
No. The privilege of stopping billions of people from making a copy, in other words restricting the free speech of billions of people, and arbitrarily enforcing artificial scarcity.
A small annual fee is chickenfeed for that huge privilege.
How could you set a proxy preference in Firefox, and not allow it to be changed by the user?
Use a transparent/intercepting proxy like Squid. As numerous organizations do. What web browser you're using and what its proxy settings are should be irrelevant. Whenever I see a visible proxy that's an indication to me I'm dealing with amateurs.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
If I don't see a tampon commercial, I consider my life better. Frankly, I have no objection to more-targeted advertising as long as it's not more advertising. (That is, if I'm going to see the ads anyway, show me targeted ones.)
Since "targetting" means that 2 ad's in 10,000 are relevant instead of 1 ad in 10,000 then it's pointless from your point of view. In addition, if the "targetting" is partial, as all "targetting" is, it's going to be more distracting and more of a waste of time. Bring on the tampon commercials; at least with them you can filter their crap more quickly. If you take unsolicited advertising seriously you need to get a life.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree that they're liable for disabling that feature.
Of course they are. Depends on what the original sales contract says. Oh, no contract for a normal retail sale? Then normal sales laws apply and I'd be very surprised if those laws allow a vendor to change the conditions after the sale.
They have said that feature might go away in the manual
Irrelevant. That text was only available to the purchaser after the sale was made and many retailers do not offer money back guarantees.
it's not advertised on the box.
Irrelevant. It was advertised.
If they informed all potential purchasers who knew about the other OS option that the functionality might be removed, not just not unsupported, before the sale then they are off the hook. Otherwise no.
It is normal and expected that support will be dropped for a product after a fixed amount of time. It is not normal to expect functionality to be deliberately removed. Sony might have an argument if the PSN were not bundled (in other words it was an ongoing rental contract where ongoing conditions could change, not a one-off sales contract) but even then it's dodgy.
You sound like many salesdroids who thinks that half-truths, lies, deceptions and post-the-fact revisionism are somehow okay. You're mistaken.
---
DRM breaks ownership, the basis of capitalism and the free market.
If I know all the twists & turns on a road, I can safely go much faster than some sucker who got lost and has never been on that road before.
Not really because to drive safely you need to drive based on what is visible (e.g. slow down at blind corners or potential road surface problems) and whether you're familiar with the road or not that doesn't change.
---
Has your software been deliberately crippled?
The cult of personality and hubris,
And this is different from closed source software how? Fact is that closed source software projects are also run by humans with hangups and have similar problems. It's just that open source projects are more visible to the general community. That's what open source is.
and will always be a locus of justifiable criticism of the FOSS community in general.
Only when people like you acknowledge that these problems apply equally to any large project involving people. Until then you're being bigoted.
Move along. Nothing new to see here.
I get very tired of people making claims about open or closed source software that apply equally to all software. Makes me wonder if they've got an agenda.
---
Don't waste your life on marketing drivel/nonsense
When you have editors going around deleting articles because they don't even believe that entire subdisciplines exist, it's hard to trust the details or scholarship in any of the articles relating to such a discipline.
Actually, I've found that often it isn't the articles in wikipedia that are the problem. It's often the people complaining about the articles in wikipedia that are the problem. As in, they're often loons or people with an agenda (such as the pay encyclopedias engaged in wholesale lying astroturf).
Any large project like wikipedia is going to attract such people like flies. When their voice is effectively ignored they just complain louder. It is a problem if such people get editing access to wikipedia articles but given the numbers (large numbers of ordinary people, small numbers of loons) it usually works out ok. Just like any public space.
Incidentally, having a discipline with multiple journals doesn't necessarily mean much - many nutters vanity "publish" like crazy.
---
The USA is <5% of the world's population. It is statistically insignificant.
A hearing aid is specifically designed, manufactured, marketed, and dispensed, for one and only one purpose:
That sounds impressive but doesn't actually mean anything.
to treat a human disease.
Most hearing loss is due to age or physical injury, not disease as such. Just like legs and feet.
It is not intended to be used, nor can it safely be used, by people with normal hearing.
Exactly like shoes of the wrong size or fit.
By its very nature, it modifies the function of the human body.
Like any personal effect, including shoes.
It is not in any way comparable to an article of clothing, or an mp3 player, whose fit and function can be ascertained by a layman
It is directly comparable actually. Laymen are perfectly capable of determining whether something is too loud or not. Just like earbuds.
and which can be worn or used safely by virtually anyone.
Like properly designed hearing aids, shoes and earbuds.
Using an improperly made hearing aid, or even a properly made one that isn't specifically prescribed for you, would certainly cause you harm, including potentially irreversible nerve damage, and hearing loss.
And improperly designed or fitted shoes and earbuds listened to too loudly can do the same.
And a layman, end-user, who bought one over the counter, is not qualified to determine whether it is functioning correctly, or appropriately for his hearing deficit.
Of course they are. Your so-called expert is just recording what the "layman" patient is telling them when they do a hearing test.
A layman is perfectly capable of doing a self-administered computer based hearing test, answering a few multiple choice questions, pressing a button and having a hearing aid programmed with the appropriate response curve. Or failing that just have off-the-shelf hearing aids with adjustable sensitivity with frequency response curves typical for various categories such as aging or music loss.
It could be producing levels at certain frequencies that cause long-term damage, and he would never know it, until it was too late.
It could be. That's why you don't design them that way. Same as shoes and earbuds.
So, it is absolutely in no way analogous or comparable to a pair of track shoes, or an mp3 player.
Actually it is. You haven't given any reason to say otherwise.
A hearing aid is obviously a medical device, and correctly regulated as such, in my opinion,
Not really in my opinion.
because it must be dispensed properly,
Which is a fancy way of saying "sold"
and must perform correctly, or it can cause serious adverse health effects for its user.
Just like shoes or ear buds.
Face it, the markets for hearing aids (and glasses also) as currently structured are just a racket. "Specialists" add a tiny amount of value by optimizing hearing aid fitting in ways impossible for a mass market item however they charge like a wounded bull for that privilege. I wouldn't mind but in addition engage in what should be wholesale anti-trust to block real competition and a mass market developing.
---
"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." --Leo Tolstoy
Hey! Stop interrupting our regularly scheduled M$ hate with your truth!
It's hardly hate to claim "I personally think its ridiculous that MS offers it as an 'alternative browser'".
I'd suggest you try to get out of the M$ reality distortion field and listen to more objective points of view.
---
DRM is the #1 cause of software failure today.
The GPL proponents believe that proprietary software is morally wrong,
Not necessarily. They often believe proprietary software is not a valid model e.g. artificial scarcity doesn't reflect the real world. People's motivations are complex.
---
The patent mafia: When all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
What you are saying, basically, is that your opinion is more valid/correct than GP's.
No, I'm saying like many marketing parasites he's misusing language to exaggerate and mislead. "Stunning" has specific meanings that both he and you are misusing.
More so since you admit it does look better, if even a little. I too would use the words "stunning" to describe more current 3D animation in BD as compared to DVD. But its a question of taste and appreciation, and no amount of shouting down and arm waving is going to make either of us correct.
Give it a rest. You're bullshitting and you know it.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it can have negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
A hearing aid helps me hear better, must be fitted and can potentially cause serious accidents. Track shoes help me run better, must be fitted and can potentially cause serious accidents. There is no medical difference.
The pricing of hearing aids is simply because foolish people will pay for it, there's price fixing going on and the FDA bureacracy has arbitrarily decided to treat hearing aids and shoes differently.
---
Modern marketing - a great substitute for a quality product.
This is a centrally managed computer system; maybe somebody in the central office has figured out a way to illegally tack on and collect out-of-town taxi charges indirectly.
Or maybe the computer system is recording the charges incorrectly due to a bug.
Who's to watch the watchers...
---
Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.
nd it was truly stunning ... you will definitely notice how fantastic it looks
It doesn't look "stunning" or "fantastic", that's just marketing drivel. It looks a little better. And just like music and mp3's most consumers these days don't give a shit. Most will probably buy into it eventually but only if the cost difference is marginal.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it can have negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
I suppose to be pedantic I'm protecting against the financial impact of loss, not the loss itself, but that's really splitting hairs.
I guess I wasn't clear as I think you misunderstand what I said. Insurance pays for nothing - it's merely a bet with the insurance company. You betting with the insurance company that you will be robbed, they're betting that you won't and they price that bet to cover their overheads.
Either you pay when you're robbed or you pay the insurance company a regular sum who in turn pay when you're robbed. The insurance company is in it for a profit so they're never going to price the bet so they make a loss, meaning you come out ahead. Because of their overheads you should never buy insurance for anything you can cover with your own cash flow unless you are confident the insurance company is underpricing the bet for you which is unlikely given their experience.
The only time you should voluntarily buy insurance is for large items where they have much deeper pockets than you and can cover things you can't. That's rarer than you might think though; even with insurance there's going to be catastrophes which aren't covered because of a loophole, act of god or because the insurance company has gone bust, so you can never have complete peace of mind.
I agree about everything being tradeoffs, intangible or tangible. There's no such thing as perfect security.
---
Insisting on absolute safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world.
-- Mary Shafer, risks researcher, NASA
Shouldn't it be their choice?
It's difficult for them to make an objective choice, if for no other reason than the drug company is the only source of information about a drug early in a drug's life cycle. For obvious reasons drug companies are notorious for overselling their products and that "choice" you talk about is pointless if objective information to base it on is not available. In addition one of the biggest problems with the current system is that the drugs are tested by the drug companies themselves, not an objective third party. With the best will in the world they're still biased. No easy solution.
It's not either-or of course. It should be possible to create an intermediate level of auditing that gets experimental drugs out reasonably quickly giving new patients some level of objective safety and assurance of efficacy.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies back door to every network connected country and business on earth.
So even if you play a modern game set in say... Times Square you would vow off the video game because it accurately recreated the real world?
Are you being deliberately obtuse? The whole point of a game is to escape from the real world. When the real world intrudes that's when it stops being fun.
This seems like a stupid (and dishonest) assessment of the world. "I can only have fun if there are no ads in view."
You're the dishonest one. Every single ad is a cognitive load to ignore, a cost to the viewer. The only way to have zero cost is to have zero ad's. Or useful unsolicited ad's. As if. Anybody who makes any purchase decision at all based on unsolicited ads is a fool.
Do you live in a black vault free of marketing's evil reach?
No, he lives in the real world where unsolicited advertising has reached ridiculous levels, costing billions, probably trillions, of manhours for fuck-all in return. And yes, most unsolicited advertising is evil, particularly on hot" media like TV, in that it actively attempts to influence people to make emotional, sub-optimal decisions. Spamming is is merely the extreme end of that spectrum. Unfortunately becoming less extreme all the time.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
if it's unobtrusive
You're being foolish. An unobtrusive ad is a pointless ad. Unless you take subliminal advertising seriously the whole point of advertising is to gain your attention and to crowd out alternate points of view. Every single in-game ad is a lost opportunity to put in something entertaining. It reduces the quality of the game. And because the advertising industry doesn't know when to stop (it's an arms race to get mindshare) they can and do keep saturating every media they can get hold of until that media has a net value to you of just above zero. Broadcast TV is already a wasteland because of it and the parasites are trying to destroy every other form of media also.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
protect against loss through insurance.
That doesn't protect against loss, it merely changes the payment plan.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
While you might be willing to pay, not everyone would.
Yep, and if they're not willing to pay then it never was of much value to them. Whatever amount of time they wasted on it when it was "free". Something that many in the unsolicited advertising industry are in complete denial about. You too apparently since you completely failed to respond to my point and tried to talk around it. Repeating: if they're not willing to pay then it's not important to them.
In any case it's quite straightforward for website owners to embed advertising in their material such that it cannot be easily automatically excised. Just like product placement in movies. Maybe they're scared of the result if they tried.
Personally, I'd be happy to see the entire unsolicited advertising industry die. It's largely parasitic (if you make any purchase decision based on unsolicited advertising then you are a fool) and has very little socially redeeming value (billions of manhours are stolen by it for almost nothing in return).
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
My point though was that if we all thought like you, the internet would shrivel up and die.
No, the junk internet would die. Most of my favourite websites are ad-free or allow subscription. Sites like Ars just repackage (trying to be middlemen in other words), have laughable opinion pieces, and are basically just a net zero.
What people like you fail to realize is that if people aren't willing to pay for your website then your website isn't worth anything to them and they won't care if it goes away. Really. Deal.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
Just felt like bitching? Check.
Look at his posting history. Even his username. He's probably an M$ astroturfer trying to create the perception that slashdot is biased because it's independent and doesn't toe the M$ propaganda line.
Standard marketing technique; try to create the "everybody's doing it" vibe to break anti-M$ viewpoints and promote M$ propaganda. Every story about M$ has several posters claiming that /. is biased when there are always posts from all points of view. Many are simply people in M$' reality distortion field who can't cope with alternative points of view but it's pretty consistent suggesting that there may be deliberate astroturf going on also.
Oh, and to preempt one predictable complaint; I'll be happy to remove "M$" from my posts once M$ remove their marketing keys from pretty much every general purpose PC keyboard on the planet.
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Anonymous company communication is unethical and can and should be highly illegal. Company legal structures require accountability.
He is not necessarily the world's most prolific inventor but simply the one with the most patents. They are not the same thing despite what the patent lobby would have you believe.
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Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
Not to mention that writing that H.264 is proprietary is wrong.
No, it's right actually. Proprietary means of property, in particular patents. The fact that a group of companies own it collectively rather than an individual company, and that documentation is available, is irrelevant. People can only use it by paying a non-nominal fee and that makes it proprietary.
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Who owns the copy?
actually pay the government for the mere privilege of creating stuff?
No. The privilege of stopping billions of people from making a copy, in other words restricting the free speech of billions of people, and arbitrarily enforcing artificial scarcity.
A small annual fee is chickenfeed for that huge privilege.
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DRM is the #1 cause of software failure today.
How could you set a proxy preference in Firefox, and not allow it to be changed by the user?
Use a transparent/intercepting proxy like Squid. As numerous organizations do. What web browser you're using and what its proxy settings are should be irrelevant. Whenever I see a visible proxy that's an indication to me I'm dealing with amateurs.
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Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
it was as if 1000's of OSS nerds cried out and then were silent.
As opposed to the CSS nerds who live in blissful ignorance. And are proud of it.
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Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
If I don't see a tampon commercial, I consider my life better. Frankly, I have no objection to more-targeted advertising as long as it's not more advertising. (That is, if I'm going to see the ads anyway, show me targeted ones.)
Since "targetting" means that 2 ad's in 10,000 are relevant instead of 1 ad in 10,000 then it's pointless from your point of view. In addition, if the "targetting" is partial, as all "targetting" is, it's going to be more distracting and more of a waste of time. Bring on the tampon commercials; at least with them you can filter their crap more quickly. If you take unsolicited advertising seriously you need to get a life.
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Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.