Re:Is Roland Piquepaille paid for Slashdot stories
on
A Single-Photon Server
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The problem isn't that he is paid to have stories placed in media. That is called PR. The problem is that most of Slashdot suspects he is paying off the editors or has some sort of special relationship that allows him to get regularly posted and there is ZERO disclosure about it and none of the editors will say a word about it in response to all the hundreds of negative Roland posts that are made.
You know, I honestly think part of the problem and the reason people are still really pissed about what happened with cable are the following two reasons:
1. There is no full-price option for those who want to pay extra to get an ad-free experience although one would hope in this digital world where that is easy to implement MS would enable that option.
2. There is ZERO transparency. We the users have no idea what kind of savings are being passed on or whether there even ARE savings being passed on. There is nothing to assure us that they are not just keeping this as profit. Want to "save me money" by subjecting me to advertising? Let me see all of the costs involved. Until I can trust you I will despise this.
You know, I never used to question the value of these sorts of things, and still don't for truly unique film artifacts like the original lightsabers or storm trooper helmets, but I have to ask the question...."SERIOUSLY?!"
Something tells me the person buying this would be the same person spending $100 on a piece of cardboa...err, Magic card. The only reason I ask this is because I used to be that kind of person, but now I find myself questioning the wisdom of someone who would toss out that big of a chunk of money for a piece of cloth.
I know that the value assigned to something is determined by what the market will bear...just playing Devil's Advocate is all. Not saying I wouldn't want to own it myself, just not at that price.
In addition to getting info from a friend, feel free to just contact the HR people at companies that you are not applying to. Say you're doing some initial research for your job hunt and you just wanted to check what some of the local salaries are for X position in Y location since you are "not familiar with pay in that area". Or just play the dumb college kid school assignment trick on them.
And while your tip about mentioning a number first and losing is mostly accurate, as long as you give a range you are comfortable in, you can throw out some data and put the ball back in their court without tying things down to an actual number you may not be happy with.
Lets say you're making something in the 30's, but know you're underpaid and are looking for a new job and want the pay jump to come out to more than you should have been making at your previous job. Ok...so you throw out a big ballpark...maybe say something like "well, I have a policy of not disclosing my salary history (perfectly acceptable answer in many cases) but in terms of salary requirements I would be comfortable with a range of say...high 40's to low 60's."
You figure when the time comes they might try to hit you with something in the 40's and you can counter with something in the high 50's and if they bargain well and you bargain well, you should hopefully net out somewhere in the mid 50's. A sizeable increase.
It really comes down to knowing when to be vague and when to be specific as well as knowing how to be firm yet reasonable about your requirements. If they low ball you based on your history you can calmly explain that while you were making X at your previous job, based on X,Y,Z skills you acquired and X,Y,Z things you accomplished, you feel you would make a valuable asset to their company and that you feel an amount of Y% more than what they offered sounds a bit more competitive with other offers you have on the table.
A note about that.....be careful about naming where else you are interviewing....try not to lie but its a powerful bargaining chip when a company is offering you X and another is offering X+10%. ALWAYS try to play them off each other. If you are indeed that valuable and they want you and don't have someone equally skilled who will do it for less, then most of the time you will get what you want.
Of course if you are not that valuable, then you should just feel lucky to have an offer in the first place.
How will they handle copyright infringement? It seems like a no brainer that people will end up making things from their favorite media properties....Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. And while Lucas might be cool with them doing that...I can imagine plenty of others who wouldn't.
I really hope they just make this open ended with some optional physics properties you can attach to parts. That's the magic of Lego...the fact that a piece can be used as part of a gun on one project and then suddenly its an engine in another, etc. Its not just what you build, its how what you build works.
As a geek who lacks the advanced education in this field...it is unfortunate that the barrier to entry for people looking to contribute is so high. I wish there were a way us "laymen" could assist even though we might not have the technical knowledge to do so. Can anybody suggest some methods by which I might help? What about some good "entry level" reading material on the subject?
Waaaay too complicated. Why not use the inkjet printed edible paper that's big at that Chicago restaurant now? Made with real ingredients turned into ink form?
And I for one will be looking for flash mobs to join to protest carrying billboards of competing brands, signage with olympic logos pointing out the ridiculousness of the situation etc. Let them try to arrest us, it would make great press for them.
So i'm confused....I live in Chicago and my girlfriend (can you believe it?) and I were planning on watching tonight....what time can we expect to get the best view? I've seen conflicting times on different sites. If we go to look at 5:00pm would we see it? Or do we need to see it earlier?
Here's a crazy mind-fuck for you down a slightly different path...
1. Site has conversation with PR company about how to drum up traffic and buzz for both the blog and the company. 2. Company pretends to have dispute with blog that blog then makes public drawing in the attention of the masses. 3. After every major online news site relevant to the audiences of both parties is paying close attention and driving massive ammounts of traffic to both sites they "make up". 4. Both parties walk away with millions and millions of dollars in free press and the blog enjoys increased revenue ad sales due to higher traffic. 5. You knew it was coming....PROFIT!!!!
Naw.....a company who published a fake blog would NEVER pull something like this....
yet very few people are willing to pay the price Apple needs to ask to turn a profit per unit, so in the end it's not a very smart business strategy. Steve Jobs keeps making the stupid mistake of maximizing product quality over all else, when a smart business person understands that product quality is just one of many factors that must be balanced to maximize profits.
Last I checked Apple was turning a pretty big profit. When you are able to successfully run a multi-BILLION dollar company and provide amazing value to shareholders, then I think you might be in a position to criticize their business model.
This comment keeps popping up in these types of discussions but unless the company gives a rate for a direct download, and then provides a discounted rate for the P2P download, how are we, the customers, able to confirm that we are indeed getting a discount on what we download? How do we know they are not just pocketing the savings as profit? The problem is there is not sufficient transparency in this equation, and when I'm using my bandwidth that I pay for to support the business of some company, then I had sure as hell better be privy to that information.
As another beta tester who dropped the game quickly and went back to WOW I'd like to expand on your animation comment...
For those expecting flashy combat and spell graphics, forget it. Remember first and foremost that this is Middle-Earth and magic is not big here to begin with. Starting out I couldn't even be sure that a low level loremaster was actually doing anything when his fire spell shot out at the target.
I'm not saying graphics make the game, but the lack of nice animations definitely hurts it, especially when they did such a beautiful job on the terrain.
Pardon the brevity of my response since I'm short on time but I'd like to address your last comment...
If it's entertaining, and people readily know that it's marketing, then it's not really viral in my book. I know it's not part of the standard definition, but I don't really consider something viral marketing unless it attempts to deceive the social network its exploiting into spreading word about it. I draw a line between publicity stunts and an attempt to hoodwink people into watching ads by disguising them as something else. That element of deception is what irritates most people here.
The term viral marketing does not have a subjective definition. It is industry jargon defined as that which is spread via word of mouth. There is no positive or negative associations. You seem to basically be saying, "There may be good viral things, but they can only be called viral if they are evil and manipulative". This is just plain false. So while I respect your opinion, you are factually incorrect.
If the economy of the southern states can manage to do without slavery, I think we could figure out a way for the Republic to survive without marketing. If you're going to try to defend something like this, you need to do it on its own moral terms, rather than the "But it's making us money!" scapegoat.
Why? My point had nothing to do with morals. Our current economy cannot function without marketing/advertising. If you want to bring morals into it, how would you weigh the loss of the millions of jobs that would disappear if we took that industry out of the equation?
Seeing the words "good" and "viral" together like that didn't tip you off that, perhaps, there is no such thing as a good viral marketing campaign?
Are you going to cite an example or just ask a vague question in an attempt to dismiss my point? I'll throw out an easy example...lets say a story about a viral campaign gets Dugg on Digg. Its happened plenty of times before. They show interest in the bad campaigns yet they also show interest in the good campaigns. Proof that there is good viral marketing.
It is possible to hold both the guerrilla advertising campaign and the overzealous reaction to it in contempt. It's where the Eighth Amendment came from.
The law is perfectly able to sort out the situation, however in terms of the marketing value of the campaign, I'd say it was extremely successful as target audience response to it was very positive....which is what my point was....which you completely missed. Thanks for playing.
As someone who has had a couple stories accepted in my tenure here I'll be the first to say that has nothing to do with it. The fact is he makes money off the ad revenue and posts shitty stories containing dubious "science" stories. The other person who responded to you is correct that it used to go to his own blog. I'm not sure what his current arrangement with ZDNet is but I guarantee he gets some kind of kickback from the traffic.
How come there is no editor response? Seriously, every Roland story there are TONS of +4 and +5 comments bashing him (rightfully so), often times at the top of the comments, and yet the editors remain suspiciously silent. It is a slap in the face as a reader to be ignored like this when so much of the community is up in arms over this guy. Why do the editors refuse to give any comment on him?
Has anybody been able to do a rough calculation of how much he makes when his stories show up? Also, has anybody tried to contact ZDNet about him to complain?
But back to the core of the matter, Taco, why do you ignore us when we are all up in arms over this? It is only serving to make the editors look guilty even when that may not be the case at all. Prove us wrong!
How you got modded up to +5 insightful is beyond me. Ask any successful businessman whether or not we can abide with marketing and the answer will be no. The reason why is that our capitalist society DEPENDS on it. The only way for a business to grow is to increase sales and the only way to do that is to get the word out. Guess how you get the word out? Oh right, marketing.
I always find it interesting to read the comments on/. for stories about advertising and marketing. People love to bash it but do not realize how absolutely necessary it is for our economy. For starters, try doing some research to determine the percentage of our country that is employed in some capacity in marketing/advertising. That's a LOT of jobs we're talking about there. The other thing I'd like to point out is that everybody loves to bash negative things and those are the one that tend to form our impressions about other related things. What about all the GOOD viral marketing that you've seen and gone "oh, cool, thats entertaining". Case in point, I wonder how many slashdotters read about this Aqua Teen Hunger Force campaign and thought it was awesome, not necessarily the whole hoopla that it caused, but the actual LED moonenite thing. Yeah, that's what I thought.
They only need to look as far as the crew on a submarine to see what makeup can last a year. AFIK they are all male crew.
Right...because there are absolutely NO gay submariners and even if there were they would be completely immune to the psychological stress of wanting that which you cannot have.
Lets face it, all of these types of extended missions are calculated risks. There is no telling what may or may not happen ultimately, but one thing is certain...humans inherently want that which they do not have. It is how we got to be where we are today. I say give astronauts sex...or pills to kill their sex drive, or a Real Doll or Fleshlight or something. But to try to deny their human nature while doing nothing to supress the desires is foolish.
no way do I want to see any of these "actors" in HD, either format.
Yeah, god forbid a woman have any imperfections on her. I understand this is porn and its supposed to be fantasy where all women are perfect but come on...Honestly, if my beautiful girlfriend didn't have a few small imperfections on her I'd be a little creeped out I think. And if you don't have a girlfriend (I honestly wouldn't be surprised with this being/. and all), that kind of mindset will work against you if you try to get one. Trust me, I speak from first hand experience. Porn is great but it can and will cause you to have unrealistic expectations for women in real life.
The grind is what kills the sandbox. The grind is what players play for even if they don't admit it. Its the carrot at the end of the stick that keeps them going. With a sandbox, its more like the carrot is figuring out what cool new things you can do. One is a linear path, the other is random. The two play styles appeal to two very different types of mindset.
The fun of sandboxes come from all of the "mini-games" you intentionally or unintentionally create as you play. I remember creating stunt runs in GTA for myself, or seeing how many cops I could kill using only a sword, etc. Whether this is sustainable fun is up to the game itself. Clearly GTA did it right and created the right amount of fun from that. Other games, like say...ATiTD...didn't really make sandbox style play fun. And that was about as literal as you get for the term sandbox. I'm sorry but even I as a huge fan of trade skills got bored of making bricks pretty quickly.
What I think needs to happen before we start seeing sandbox games really take over (and they inevitably will I believe) is much better in-game physics. Every new game with physics seems to push the boundaries of the box a bit further out but none truly gets rid of them (even Source). Humans inherently come up with creative uses for the things in our environment. If we had a game that truly let us explore that, it would be amazing. But we are a LONG ways away from computing power that can handle that on a massively multiplayer scale. Think Second Life, but with the interactivity of the grid in Snow Crash or Neuromancer.
While I'm not sure what THEIR ad guys were thinking, I myself am an ad guy and the general consensus in the industry is that yes...they should have checked with the city to cover their asses before they did this. However now that it has happened it is considered extremely successful. The $2m is NOTHING compared to the tens of millions of dollars they got in free press. Not to mention that the media butchering this has only increased the value of that online at websites that their target audience frequents. If I were the account exec on the ATHF account I'd be really eager to see the ratings for the upcoming months. I can guarantee there was a huge spike immediately following the incident and that will probably level off and stay somewhat higher in the coming months.
Now, the flip side is Turner Broadcasting. If I were a shareholder I would be ROYALLY pissed that the company pulled a stunt that put them at such great risk of massive litigation that could easily have cost them an untold amount of damages all for something that could have been avoided by simply notifying and obtaining permission from the city. In fact, I'm kind of shocked there hasn't been a shareholder lawsuit about this already...
Agreed that this is bullshit. IANAL but is there some way they can sue Viacom for falsely claiming to own the copyright, and asking for damages based on the marketing value of the video being posted on YouTube for the duration it has been down?
I'm curious what Viacom's response would be if I sent a letter out claiming I had the rights to their properties.
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1. There is no full-price option for those who want to pay extra to get an ad-free experience although one would hope in this digital world where that is easy to implement MS would enable that option.
2. There is ZERO transparency. We the users have no idea what kind of savings are being passed on or whether there even ARE savings being passed on. There is nothing to assure us that they are not just keeping this as profit. Want to "save me money" by subjecting me to advertising? Let me see all of the costs involved. Until I can trust you I will despise this.
Something tells me the person buying this would be the same person spending $100 on a piece of cardboa...err, Magic card. The only reason I ask this is because I used to be that kind of person, but now I find myself questioning the wisdom of someone who would toss out that big of a chunk of money for a piece of cloth.
I know that the value assigned to something is determined by what the market will bear...just playing Devil's Advocate is all. Not saying I wouldn't want to own it myself, just not at that price.
And while your tip about mentioning a number first and losing is mostly accurate, as long as you give a range you are comfortable in, you can throw out some data and put the ball back in their court without tying things down to an actual number you may not be happy with.
Lets say you're making something in the 30's, but know you're underpaid and are looking for a new job and want the pay jump to come out to more than you should have been making at your previous job. Ok...so you throw out a big ballpark...maybe say something like "well, I have a policy of not disclosing my salary history (perfectly acceptable answer in many cases) but in terms of salary requirements I would be comfortable with a range of say...high 40's to low 60's."
You figure when the time comes they might try to hit you with something in the 40's and you can counter with something in the high 50's and if they bargain well and you bargain well, you should hopefully net out somewhere in the mid 50's. A sizeable increase.
It really comes down to knowing when to be vague and when to be specific as well as knowing how to be firm yet reasonable about your requirements. If they low ball you based on your history you can calmly explain that while you were making X at your previous job, based on X,Y,Z skills you acquired and X,Y,Z things you accomplished, you feel you would make a valuable asset to their company and that you feel an amount of Y% more than what they offered sounds a bit more competitive with other offers you have on the table.
A note about that.....be careful about naming where else you are interviewing....try not to lie but its a powerful bargaining chip when a company is offering you X and another is offering X+10%. ALWAYS try to play them off each other. If you are indeed that valuable and they want you and don't have someone equally skilled who will do it for less, then most of the time you will get what you want.
Of course if you are not that valuable, then you should just feel lucky to have an offer in the first place.
I really hope they just make this open ended with some optional physics properties you can attach to parts. That's the magic of Lego...the fact that a piece can be used as part of a gun on one project and then suddenly its an engine in another, etc. Its not just what you build, its how what you build works.
1. Site has conversation with PR company about how to drum up traffic and buzz for both the blog and the company.
2. Company pretends to have dispute with blog that blog then makes public drawing in the attention of the masses.
3. After every major online news site relevant to the audiences of both parties is paying close attention and driving massive ammounts of traffic to both sites they "make up".
4. Both parties walk away with millions and millions of dollars in free press and the blog enjoys increased revenue ad sales due to higher traffic.
5. You knew it was coming....PROFIT!!!!
Naw.....a company who published a fake blog would NEVER pull something like this....
Last I checked Apple was turning a pretty big profit. When you are able to successfully run a multi-BILLION dollar company and provide amazing value to shareholders, then I think you might be in a position to criticize their business model.
For those expecting flashy combat and spell graphics, forget it. Remember first and foremost that this is Middle-Earth and magic is not big here to begin with. Starting out I couldn't even be sure that a low level loremaster was actually doing anything when his fire spell shot out at the target.
I'm not saying graphics make the game, but the lack of nice animations definitely hurts it, especially when they did such a beautiful job on the terrain.
The term viral marketing does not have a subjective definition. It is industry jargon defined as that which is spread via word of mouth. There is no positive or negative associations. You seem to basically be saying, "There may be good viral things, but they can only be called viral if they are evil and manipulative". This is just plain false. So while I respect your opinion, you are factually incorrect.
Why? My point had nothing to do with morals. Our current economy cannot function without marketing/advertising. If you want to bring morals into it, how would you weigh the loss of the millions of jobs that would disappear if we took that industry out of the equation?
Are you going to cite an example or just ask a vague question in an attempt to dismiss my point? I'll throw out an easy example...lets say a story about a viral campaign gets Dugg on Digg. Its happened plenty of times before. They show interest in the bad campaigns yet they also show interest in the good campaigns. Proof that there is good viral marketing.
The law is perfectly able to sort out the situation, however in terms of the marketing value of the campaign, I'd say it was extremely successful as target audience response to it was very positive....which is what my point was....which you completely missed. Thanks for playing.
Has anybody been able to do a rough calculation of how much he makes when his stories show up? Also, has anybody tried to contact ZDNet about him to complain?
But back to the core of the matter, Taco, why do you ignore us when we are all up in arms over this? It is only serving to make the editors look guilty even when that may not be the case at all. Prove us wrong!
I always find it interesting to read the comments on /. for stories about advertising and marketing. People love to bash it but do not realize how absolutely necessary it is for our economy. For starters, try doing some research to determine the percentage of our country that is employed in some capacity in marketing/advertising. That's a LOT of jobs we're talking about there. The other thing I'd like to point out is that everybody loves to bash negative things and those are the one that tend to form our impressions about other related things. What about all the GOOD viral marketing that you've seen and gone "oh, cool, thats entertaining". Case in point, I wonder how many slashdotters read about this Aqua Teen Hunger Force campaign and thought it was awesome, not necessarily the whole hoopla that it caused, but the actual LED moonenite thing. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Slashdot loves its hypocracy.
Right...because there are absolutely NO gay submariners and even if there were they would be completely immune to the psychological stress of wanting that which you cannot have.
Lets face it, all of these types of extended missions are calculated risks. There is no telling what may or may not happen ultimately, but one thing is certain...humans inherently want that which they do not have. It is how we got to be where we are today. I say give astronauts sex...or pills to kill their sex drive, or a Real Doll or Fleshlight or something. But to try to deny their human nature while doing nothing to supress the desires is foolish.
Yeah, god forbid a woman have any imperfections on her. I understand this is porn and its supposed to be fantasy where all women are perfect but come on...Honestly, if my beautiful girlfriend didn't have a few small imperfections on her I'd be a little creeped out I think. And if you don't have a girlfriend (I honestly wouldn't be surprised with this being /. and all), that kind of mindset will work against you if you try to get one. Trust me, I speak from first hand experience. Porn is great but it can and will cause you to have unrealistic expectations for women in real life.
What I think needs to happen before we start seeing sandbox games really take over (and they inevitably will I believe) is much better in-game physics. Every new game with physics seems to push the boundaries of the box a bit further out but none truly gets rid of them (even Source). Humans inherently come up with creative uses for the things in our environment. If we had a game that truly let us explore that, it would be amazing. But we are a LONG ways away from computing power that can handle that on a massively multiplayer scale. Think Second Life, but with the interactivity of the grid in Snow Crash or Neuromancer.
Now, the flip side is Turner Broadcasting. If I were a shareholder I would be ROYALLY pissed that the company pulled a stunt that put them at such great risk of massive litigation that could easily have cost them an untold amount of damages all for something that could have been avoided by simply notifying and obtaining permission from the city. In fact, I'm kind of shocked there hasn't been a shareholder lawsuit about this already...
I'm curious what Viacom's response would be if I sent a letter out claiming I had the rights to their properties.