"During the height of the IT boom I was wokring for an internet startup. One of the other teams in the company was writing some spyware (not particularly happy about it, but work is work). "
Work is work? During the height of the boom? You have to be shitting me....every highschooler who was smart enough to put down "internet, HTML, webpage design" on their resume got a job.
I'm curious as to the personality of the people working on that project if you happen to know. Were they having serious ethical issues with the task they were given? Seriously, I'd love to know more about the people who write, or contract people to write, spyware and what goes through their minds. Ask Slashdot anyone?
" standing in their corner, wathcing with there deadly blue eyes, as SCO prances around like an idiot.
When the bell rings, IBM will calmly walk to the center of the ring, and rip SCOs spine out.
"
Anybody else get goosebumps (the good kind) from reading about all these dramatizations of the legal battle to come? Seriously....someone should do a Flash dramatization.
" Hmm... I can see the next project at IBM being a supercomputer capable of playing an intricate game that requires thinking ahead many moves to counter opponent's moves... it'll be called "Deep Tort"."
No no, you got it all wrong. IBM's next project will be a supercomputer that will finally be able to search through their database of patents they own.
" You do know that we're just part of a 10 billion year computer program on Earth, the greatest computer ever built in space and time, and commissioned by mice?"
Which is exactly why any merger of computers and biology will be USELESS! The only answer you'd get would be 42.
"If clamping down on crazy drivers doing 2x the speed limit, then why not? "
My question to you then is what happens when they decide "hey, we can make even MORE money from tickets if we clamp down on people going 5 over the limit." Suddenly it isn't the crazy drivers anymore......its everybody else.
"We're talking about stopping people who are driving half to one and a half ton potential killing machines."
Keyword being "potential". Everybody drives one and a half ton POTENTIAL killing machines. Its the few crazy people and accidents that screw up the equation.
Yeah....and you know....I love anime and always preach about how subtitles are better than dubs....but jesus....have you heard Yugi's voice? He looks like a prepubescent teen.....but his voice is that of a burly lunberjack. What kind of message is that sending to the kids? WONT SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!
is how effective that commerc....err...."movie" was. Especially given the target audience. What is even scarier is how effective things like pokemon and Yugi-O are. It's all a long ass pitch to get you to buy stuff, but at that age, kids are the perfect targets for such a pitch. Think you're immune....well....we'll see soon enough. What with every major newspaper having run stories about how video games are the next big entertainment market....guess what media is going to be hit BIG TIME by the evil corporations soon. The scariest thing is that you'll be paying (unless they ACTUALLY decided to give the game away for free) about $50 for a long, interactive, playable ad.
I'm going into advertising for a career...but you can be DAMN sure that I'm going to be warning anybody I can about the perils of oversaturating yet another form of media.
" Note how Lawrence Lessig focuses on balance, while Matt Oppenheim focuses on saying what consumers are allowed to do. (Lessig does not explicitly refer to people at "citizens," but Oppenheim does at least once refer to individuals as "consumers.") This shows their respective trains of thinking quite well."
Is anybody besides me EXTREMELY fed up with being called a consumer? I'm a CUSTOMER god dammit. You will treat me with respect, and attempt to get my patronage, if you fail to do this, you won't get my money PERIOD. Everytime I hear the word "consumer" I feel like a disgusting sheep who pays companies money on a monthly basis because i'm obligated to (for the good of the corporations of course), regardless of the quality of the product being offered.
"It's pretty clear that SCO is trying to get IBM customers to pressure IBM to settle this. "
That's not a problem. IBM just has to send a small booklet (well, 400 page book is more like it) of the "stats" of their legal team. Kinda like the lineup for an NBA team.
"And now.....your.....I...B...M......LEGAL TEAM!!!!!!!!!!!" (crowd goes wild as men in black suits run into the court room)
" we see somebody on the highway writing email with one hand, eating with the other hand, and using their shoulder to hold onto a cell phone and using their feet to steer?"
Ya know...its things like this that make me think that cars that are on autopilot might not be nearly as bad as we think. Yeah I'd want to have control over it most of the time....but think of all the things you could do just by letting it take you somewhere on autopilot...it could probably go a lot faster too because it would be a lot more organized. I think that as we move out of the Information Age and into the Productivity Age, we'll get this, and I think it will revolutionize many things.
You know, funny you should mention this....but pretty much all the porn people download is ALSO pirated....SOMEONE owns the copyright on it. But guess what, the porn industry doesn't hunt people down and force them to cough up their life savings for downloading a 3 minute movie for example. And guess what, porn is one of the very few businesses that is alive and THRIVING on the internet. Coincidence? I think not.
This game deals with a certain time period and a certain kind of "alternate timeline". Does anybody have any information on this kind of setting? This was the same kind of setting as Tale Spin and Porco Rosso. I think it would make an excellent setting for a D20 campaign, but I don't even know what to begin searching for to start gathering information.
How bout this.....you're sitting at home....and you need to buy a bunch of stuff from Wal-Mart.....go to their website....fill out a cart....and either pay with a credit card online...or at the store (i'm getting to that). Then, it prints out a piece of paper with a barcode. You go to the store, and scan the barcode into a little handheld GPS unit. The unit then lights up and shows you graphically where all the products on your list are. If you paid by credit card at home, you walk your cart through the scanner and leave (provided you didn't take anything "extra") and if not, you can pay at the register. Not everything has to be evil....but I will still wear my tin foil hat while shopping at Wal-Mart now.
Ladies and Gentlemen......I give you BF1942 the REAL game. Damn that would be cool.....suddenly flying a plane or driving a tank becomes a lot more fun when you won't physically die from someone tossing a few grenades under it.
If you had read my post in its entirety you would have seen that what I am looking for is more than just a category of "brunettes". Read the post before you make a response.
You know, I'm probably going to be laughed at openly for this.....but deep down you all know you want something that could do that. How sick are you of searching around TGP sites when you know EXACTLY the types of girls you like. What I want is software that can recognize that I like brunettes......and based on the um...length of time I have various images open.....or based on a thumbs up or thumbs down learning system it could learn which facial features and body types I prefer. Then it could sort pr0n for me either on my harddrive, or add this to a massive online pr0n database and BAM, you have porn that is not only filtered by type (which ANYBODY can do now...) but filtered based on your personal views as to what is attractive. Saves you a lot of time, and um......energy.
"In contrast to, say... Microsoft (heh)... all Apple has to do to retain goodwill is not be utter bastards all the time. MS actually sets the bar pretty low in this regard."
However, be wary. I like pretty much everybody else on slashdot is cheering for Apple for actually managing to do something incredibly right in an age where everything else seems so incredibly wrong.
But it is imporant to realize that Apple is still a company, and a publicly held one at that. While it's nice to think that Apple and Steve are in this for the "people", the reality is that they are trying to make a profit just as badly as Microsoft. They just so happen to realize at this juncture that the most profitable course of action is to go against what everybody else has been blasted for, listen to what your customers are saying.....and provide them with this service. Trust me...if you've read some of Steve's ideas for convergence of media and where it's heading in the future......and replaced Apple with M$....you'd be fucking terrified.
But for now, Apple seems to be the good guy for now....so until they do otherwise....GO APPLE!
That would be great except that the people receiving the calls don't get paid a damn cent for this as far as I know.....the government gets the 11K which will go towards supporting this program.
"You acknowledge that you are aware of security and privacy limitations including but not restricted to (1) the limitation of security, privacy and authentication measures and features in the Trepia Services and Information; (2) that data and information on the Trepia Services and Information may be subject to eavesdropping, sniffing, spoofing, forgery, spamming, tampering, breaking passwords, harassment, fraud, electronic trespassing, hacking, system contamination including without limitations, viruses, worms, Trojan horses, causing unauthorized, damaging or harmful access and/or retrieval of information and data on your computer or other security or privacy hazards or may not reach its destination or reach an erroneous address or recipient."
WELL! Now that we've gotten THAT out of the way.......lets go meet some people..........The sad thing is that this should probably be in M$'s EULA too....
"I will repeat, for free market theory, theft is _not_ one of the options."
Fare enough, what IS it called then when theft is included, because right now we're in a society where IP theft online is for the most part simple, and with the exception of a handful of targets of the various --AA's none have really been caught/punished. So do you perhaps have any information regarding this type of economy? Because that is what we have evolving right now. Like it or not, it's here, and it's here to stay.
"Far from being a rational consumer, deciding when you need to do without, when you need to save up, and when you can afford a product, you are like some sort of weird rat-like creature basically eating free food and shitting your own cage until you cannot breath from the fumes, you're dying from cholera and you decide to move somewhere else (music, movies, perhaps?...). Unfortunately, you're still stuck in the cage in terms of anime. No more anime for you, or anyone else, I'm afraid."
Well, aside from the name calling which there is no reason for....I'm wondering then if piracy of anime does not grow to epidemic proportions such that the various production companies no longer can afford to make it.....could the future indefinitely exist where the vast majority have to pay, and those few who know a few tricks can get it for free with little to no risk? If this is the case......perhaps companies need to learn to just live with it, and enjoy the free advertising they are getting out of it, because those people inevitably spread the word in some form or other if they've seen something good. I know I tell all of my friends if i've seen good anime, and many go out and buy it.
" What I'd like to see is for there to be an option in the tivo ad item (main screen) to thumb-down an ad I don't like, or don't even want to watch.."
Interesting concept, however there are a couple of things to consider here.
First is that the networks won't like this, because if an ad doesn't do well, the advertiser could come to the network and say "hey, this is your fault, do something about it or let us buy time at a lower rate, because obviously that spot isn't worth as much as you said it was."
Second, this could really screw with ad agencies in a double-edged way. If they make a tv spot, they really have no way of quantifying it's success....or failure, unless it's tied to some special kind of promotion. But once you throw this into the equation, suddenly it can be a very good thing, or a VERY bad thing. "hey look, we're a good agency, see, people like the tv spot we did for you, you should keep using us." or the flip side "Our tv spot bombed, and you made it, so it's your fault, we want you to fix it for free......or you're never getting our business again, and we'll give it to someone who has gotten consistently better ratings."
Now, I'm not saying whether these things are good or bad, just interesting things to consider. It's funny how technology can have such potentially adverse affects.
That would be Leptoprin. I swear, that is one of the many commercials on tv today that makes me want to physically assault the ad agency who made it. Don't even get me started on the desperate, pathetic fools who actually fell for this. This type of viral marketing is EVERYWHERE. One of the big reasons I am trying to get into the advertising industry is so I can hopefully in the distant future start my own ad agency and fight this kind of crap with classy advertizing. My rule for clients will be "If you have to trick people into buying your product, we're not interested in your business." Call the companies that do this and let them know just what kind of scum they are.
Slashdot Mirror
Work is work? During the height of the boom? You have to be shitting me....every highschooler who was smart enough to put down "internet, HTML, webpage design" on their resume got a job.
I'm curious as to the personality of the people working on that project if you happen to know. Were they having serious ethical issues with the task they were given? Seriously, I'd love to know more about the people who write, or contract people to write, spyware and what goes through their minds. Ask Slashdot anyone?
Anybody else get goosebumps (the good kind) from reading about all these dramatizations of the legal battle to come? Seriously....someone should do a Flash dramatization.
No no, you got it all wrong. IBM's next project will be a supercomputer that will finally be able to search through their database of patents they own.
Which is exactly why any merger of computers and biology will be USELESS! The only answer you'd get would be 42.
My question to you then is what happens when they decide "hey, we can make even MORE money from tickets if we clamp down on people going 5 over the limit." Suddenly it isn't the crazy drivers anymore......its everybody else.
"We're talking about stopping people who are driving half to one and a half ton potential killing machines."
Keyword being "potential". Everybody drives one and a half ton POTENTIAL killing machines. Its the few crazy people and accidents that screw up the equation.
I'm going into advertising for a career...but you can be DAMN sure that I'm going to be warning anybody I can about the perils of oversaturating yet another form of media.
Is anybody besides me EXTREMELY fed up with being called a consumer? I'm a CUSTOMER god dammit. You will treat me with respect, and attempt to get my patronage, if you fail to do this, you won't get my money PERIOD. Everytime I hear the word "consumer" I feel like a disgusting sheep who pays companies money on a monthly basis because i'm obligated to (for the good of the corporations of course), regardless of the quality of the product being offered.
That's not a problem. IBM just has to send a small booklet (well, 400 page book is more like it) of the "stats" of their legal team. Kinda like the lineup for an NBA team.
"And now.....your.....I...B...M......LEGAL TEAM!!!!!!!!!!!" (crowd goes wild as men in black suits run into the court room)
Ya know...its things like this that make me think that cars that are on autopilot might not be nearly as bad as we think. Yeah I'd want to have control over it most of the time....but think of all the things you could do just by letting it take you somewhere on autopilot...it could probably go a lot faster too because it would be a lot more organized. I think that as we move out of the Information Age and into the Productivity Age, we'll get this, and I think it will revolutionize many things.
Um.....yes..........Who thought up the name "Tiger Team"? And did they consider the social consequences in a High School environment?
You know, I'm probably going to be laughed at openly for this.....but deep down you all know you want something that could do that. How sick are you of searching around TGP sites when you know EXACTLY the types of girls you like. What I want is software that can recognize that I like brunettes......and based on the um...length of time I have various images open.....or based on a thumbs up or thumbs down learning system it could learn which facial features and body types I prefer. Then it could sort pr0n for me either on my harddrive, or add this to a massive online pr0n database and BAM, you have porn that is not only filtered by type (which ANYBODY can do now...) but filtered based on your personal views as to what is attractive. Saves you a lot of time, and um......energy.
However, be wary. I like pretty much everybody else on slashdot is cheering for Apple for actually managing to do something incredibly right in an age where everything else seems so incredibly wrong.
But it is imporant to realize that Apple is still a company, and a publicly held one at that. While it's nice to think that Apple and Steve are in this for the "people", the reality is that they are trying to make a profit just as badly as Microsoft. They just so happen to realize at this juncture that the most profitable course of action is to go against what everybody else has been blasted for, listen to what your customers are saying.....and provide them with this service. Trust me...if you've read some of Steve's ideas for convergence of media and where it's heading in the future......and replaced Apple with M$....you'd be fucking terrified.
But for now, Apple seems to be the good guy for now....so until they do otherwise....GO APPLE!
WELL! Now that we've gotten THAT out of the way.......lets go meet some people..........The sad thing is that this should probably be in M$'s EULA too....
Fare enough, what IS it called then when theft is included, because right now we're in a society where IP theft online is for the most part simple, and with the exception of a handful of targets of the various --AA's none have really been caught/punished. So do you perhaps have any information regarding this type of economy? Because that is what we have evolving right now. Like it or not, it's here, and it's here to stay.
"Far from being a rational consumer, deciding when you need to do without, when you need to save up, and when you can afford a product, you are like some sort of weird rat-like creature basically eating free food and shitting your own cage until you cannot breath from the fumes, you're dying from cholera and you decide to move somewhere else (music, movies, perhaps?...). Unfortunately, you're still stuck in the cage in terms of anime. No more anime for you, or anyone else, I'm afraid."
Well, aside from the name calling which there is no reason for....I'm wondering then if piracy of anime does not grow to epidemic proportions such that the various production companies no longer can afford to make it.....could the future indefinitely exist where the vast majority have to pay, and those few who know a few tricks can get it for free with little to no risk? If this is the case......perhaps companies need to learn to just live with it, and enjoy the free advertising they are getting out of it, because those people inevitably spread the word in some form or other if they've seen something good. I know I tell all of my friends if i've seen good anime, and many go out and buy it.
Interesting concept, however there are a couple of things to consider here.
First is that the networks won't like this, because if an ad doesn't do well, the advertiser could come to the network and say "hey, this is your fault, do something about it or let us buy time at a lower rate, because obviously that spot isn't worth as much as you said it was."
Second, this could really screw with ad agencies in a double-edged way. If they make a tv spot, they really have no way of quantifying it's success....or failure, unless it's tied to some special kind of promotion. But once you throw this into the equation, suddenly it can be a very good thing, or a VERY bad thing. "hey look, we're a good agency, see, people like the tv spot we did for you, you should keep using us." or the flip side "Our tv spot bombed, and you made it, so it's your fault, we want you to fix it for free......or you're never getting our business again, and we'll give it to someone who has gotten consistently better ratings."
Now, I'm not saying whether these things are good or bad, just interesting things to consider. It's funny how technology can have such potentially adverse affects.