Sorry about that, but I need the beard for work so that they'll take me seriously when I talk about Git and package management on Linux. If I came in with a Don Draper look, it wouldn't work.
Excellent point. Print magazines are in many ways the ideal ad medium. They allow advertisers to choose the type of content that the ad is attached to, but it's impractical to target individual users.
Which is why Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends presentations keep showing an out-of-proportion percentage of ad spending going to print, and lower percentages going to more trackable media.
The final decision on this is probably above the OP's pay grade, but consider putting employees on the "Bring your Own Laptop" plan. One of your biggest expenses at a company this size (unless you have very expensive vertical market software) is desktop hardware. Company-owned machines take a lot of hard use, and somehow people's own property lasts longer.
You need to be able to recover from a crash anyway, so why write both: infrequently used but critical crash recovery and frequently used, but not always run clean shutdown? Just crash. Crash-only software: More than meets the eye
Before Google, "search engine optimization" was basically choosing a good page title, then stuffing the page with keywords.
Then Google came along, and PageRank saved the web from crap keyword-stuffed pages. All of a sudden, placement was based on whether or not a page could attract inbound links. Life was good.
Now, Google is tracking click-throughs using JavaScript, resulting in putting less and less weight on PageRank, and more and more weight on...keyword stuffing. Yes, you're using Google Math to weed out the auto-generated crap and duplicate pages, but keyword stuffing is back in a big way. (If I were wrong about this, Demand Media and other "content farms" of crap pages would not exist.)
I'm not worried about Google making us "stoopid" but are we making Google stoopid?
This new book has a pretty solid intro to shell scripting, enough to get you started, along with some other basics such as Apache configuration and something that's vital for new users who actually want to use their Linux box on real projects: ssh. (Here's another review of the same title, which I wrote.)
Since it's just regular people's computers getting attacked, no big deal. If you want the US government to take action, just rent some time on the botnet to distribute copies of a movie. Threats don't count until they affect the people who have Senators' private lines on speed dial.
Remember Netscape Navigator? Nothing is stopping MSFT from introducing a $0 or low-priced Windows/Office bundle for low-end machines. The question is whether desktop Linux will sell well enough to motivate them to do this. The hardware vendors can get more profit per machine just by having a credible threat of desktop Linux.
I had fun recording this podcast with Paul Kim and Eugene Chang at Everex. Yes, Paul got a call at 3:00am from his Microsoft contact, asking about what MSFT can do for them.
That kind of patronizing attitude from Mainstream Medicine is exactly what drives people to the "alternative" sources. We're not talking about some mythical "average consumer". People don't pick their medical information needs. We're talking about a person who needs to make a medical decision and is motivated to find out more about it. And people do want the details. Look at how much info is in the mass-market books for pregnant women. A lot of what's in the big medical journals is written for the average MD, who might have a higher reading level but not the pressing need to find out as much as possible on one specific condition.
The quack stuff is not at a simple reading level either. A lot of it is harder to get through than the articles written for MDs.
What do you expect, when medical titles such as JAMA (where this appeared, but they won't show it to you, neener neener) and the Massachusetts Medical Society's New England Journal of Medicine are behind expensive paywalls, and the quackery gets the full search engine optimization treatment?
If mainstream MDs and researchers care about getting their point of view out to patients, so that people who find out they have a disease don't have to learn about it from YouTube, spam, and pharmaceutical company sites, they're going to have to start using more Open Access journals or get their existing journals to go Open Access.
I have never seen a site using this. Any company that had a professional PR firm would probably stop, since the PR firm would point out that many journalists use Firefox.
I spot-check our site logs for ad blockers, and so far, nothing to worry about. Many easier opportunities to get more traffic with usability tweaks.
There is a simple AJAX technique for detecting ad blockers, of course, and it also spots MSIE users.
d00d, trolling is a business model now. It's turned all commercial and stuff just like virus writing. It used to be trolls were just out to show you a gross-out picture or something, just like virus writers were out to trash your hard drive. Now trolling drives the monetizable web 2.0 eyeball traffic, or something like that. And all the gifted amateur trolls have gone pro.
It shouldn't really take three hours, now that there's a known working letter you can borrow from.
1. Get Dave's letter.
2. Put your info in. Print and send.
3. This is Slashdot -- people should know what step 3 is by now.
I strongly disagree. There are things Google could do in this matter to earn "Support and cooperation" -- but immediately and silently censoring what was one of the top results for a search on "Scientology" isn't one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry about that, but I need the beard for work so that they'll take me seriously when I talk about Git and package management on Linux. If I came in with a Don Draper look, it wouldn't work.
Excellent point. Print magazines are in many ways the ideal ad medium. They allow advertisers to choose the type of content that the ad is attached to, but it's impractical to target individual users.
http://zgp.org/targeted-advertising-considered-harmful/#what-does-print-have-that-online-doesnt
Which is why Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends presentations keep showing an out-of-proportion percentage of ad spending going to print, and lower percentages going to more trackable media.
But for the medium as a whole, targeting costs revenue.
http://zgp.org/targeted-advertising-considered-harmful/
The less targetable a medium is, the more valuable it is.
The final decision on this is probably above the OP's pay grade, but consider putting employees on the "Bring your Own Laptop" plan. One of your biggest expenses at a company this size (unless you have very expensive vertical market software) is desktop hardware. Company-owned machines take a lot of hard use, and somehow people's own property lasts longer.
You need to be able to recover from a crash anyway, so why write both: infrequently used but critical crash recovery and frequently used, but not always run clean shutdown? Just crash. Crash-only software: More than meets the eye
Before Google, "search engine optimization" was basically choosing a good page title, then stuffing the page with keywords.
Then Google came along, and PageRank saved the web from crap keyword-stuffed pages. All of a sudden, placement was based on whether or not a page could attract inbound links. Life was good.
Now, Google is tracking click-throughs using JavaScript, resulting in putting less and less weight on PageRank, and more and more weight on...keyword stuffing. Yes, you're using Google Math to weed out the auto-generated crap and duplicate pages, but keyword stuffing is back in a big way. (If I were wrong about this, Demand Media and other "content farms" of crap pages would not exist.)
I'm not worried about Google making us "stoopid" but are we making Google stoopid?
I just started as an editor at No Starch Press. The company is already set up for LaTeX and Subversion, and we're introducing git.
I agree. The easiest thing you can do for Software Freedom is to refuse to make or support infringing copies of proprietary software.
This new book has a pretty solid intro to shell scripting, enough to get you started, along with some other basics such as Apache configuration and something that's vital for new users who actually want to use their Linux box on real projects: ssh. (Here's another review of the same title, which I wrote.)
mmmm...Doritos...
I have seen and tried a "solve CAPTCHAs for porn" site. It looks broken now (stuck on the first picture), but when I first found it, via blog spam, it was working.
Since it's just regular people's computers getting attacked, no big deal. If you want the US government to take action, just rent some time on the botnet to distribute copies of a movie. Threats don't count until they affect the people who have Senators' private lines on speed dial.
I had fun recording this podcast with Paul Kim and Eugene Chang at Everex. Yes, Paul got a call at 3:00am from his Microsoft contact, asking about what MSFT can do for them.
The quack stuff is not at a simple reading level either. A lot of it is harder to get through than the articles written for MDs.
If mainstream MDs and researchers care about getting their point of view out to patients, so that people who find out they have a disease don't have to learn about it from YouTube, spam, and pharmaceutical company sites, they're going to have to start using more Open Access journals or get their existing journals to go Open Access.
I spot-check our site logs for ad blockers, and so far, nothing to worry about. Many easier opportunities to get more traffic with usability tweaks.
There is a simple AJAX technique for detecting ad blockers, of course, and it also spots MSIE users.
BTW: ad blocking for MSIE.
Here's the transcript of the interview with Jeremy Allison.
d00d, trolling is a business model now. It's turned all commercial and stuff just like virus writing. It used to be trolls were just out to show you a gross-out picture or something, just like virus writers were out to trash your hard drive. Now trolling drives the monetizable web 2.0 eyeball traffic, or something like that. And all the gifted amateur trolls have gone pro.
The transcript is already started. Watch the LinuxWorld home page or get the RSS feed to be notified when it's up.
It is now. Hit reload.
It shouldn't really take three hours, now that there's a known working letter you can borrow from. 1. Get Dave's letter. 2. Put your info in. Print and send. 3. This is Slashdot -- people should know what step 3 is by now.
I bet the other Linux sites and magazines will get in touch with him now.
1. A low cost system for predicting residential HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) loads based on weather forecasts and local meteorological data. 2. An adaptive system for providing increased energy- and cost-efficient HVAC operation.
I strongly disagree. There are things Google could do in this matter to earn "Support and cooperation" -- but immediately and silently censoring what was one of the top results for a search on "Scientology" isn't one of them.
We will be visiting Google's headquarters IN PERSON to search for Xenu information -- with cameras rolling.
Who: The Mountain View, California Xenu Study Group
(This means you)
What: First meeting: "Finding Facts about Xenu on the Net with Google"
Where: Meet at Dana St. Roasting Company, 744 Dana Street,
Mountain View.
Then, travel to Google HQ.
When: 3:45 PM, Thursday, March 21, 2002
Why: To make sure that accurate information about Xenu is available through Internet search engines.
What to bring: 1. another video camera (we already have at least one, but could use some more shots)
2. Your pen and paper for taking notes about how to find good Xenu (and Scientology) sites.
Contact: Don Marti -- dmarti@zgp.org