As long as people are hawking their promo codes, I've got a decent one that discounts any yearly (or 2 year) plan by $60: "60SLASHDOT". It also discounts month-to-month plans.
And, full-disclosure: yep, I'm hawking it because I make money off it. That discount comes right out of my referral award (zero-sum game).
It's difficult in many situations to tell the different between EDTV and HDTV. Maybe you can in an A-B situation, but not after you've been sitting on your sofa for 5 minutes. Is anyone (i.e. consumers) actually clammering for MORE resolution?
People tend to forget that most of the "experience" of gaming and movies is in the SOUND, not the video. You want to be on the edge of your seat? Get a kick-ass home theater system (and get some decent room treatments and spend time on speaker placement)--don't waste gobs of money on a few more lines of resolution.
Apple's iPod advertising is a good way of conveying information both intuitively and (for the most part) accurately.
But this approach can be taken to extremes. Anyone flipped by QVC lately and heard them mention a "2.4 gigahertz 'computer brain'?" Now that's a bit much for me. Still worth a chuckle though.:)
In all seriousness, the heart of this issue is the real-world use of computers by normal people. It doesn't sell to tell John Q. Public that this hard drive is 7200 RPM versus 5400 RPM. It sells to tell him that if he wants to digitize and save his old home videos (so he can e-mail them to his brother), the 7200 RPM model is likely to give him fewer headaches.
This is the same reason why most people (including me) couldn't care less about benchmarks. Do I compile programs? No. (Maybe you do, but most people don't.) So I don't care whether Apple picked gcc or Intel's compiler. I care about whether Web pages load faster, programs run faster, the system crashes less, and whether I can have more programs open without degraded performance.
And once again you SWING... and MISS horribly. Read my reply.
How does this affect small-time politicians? You DO realize that's where most of the governing in this country gets done, don't you? Or have you forgotten your Civics?
The posters in this thread seem to be under the delusion that GIA applies only to candidates for the House, Senate, and Presidency. Puh-lease. The GIA wouldn't matter for that. There are already plenty of libelous sites about GWB and Al Gore. The real problem of the GIA would be its effect on local and state politics.
Once again, a stupendous failure to appreciate that this so-called GIA would be most effectively used against local, small-change politicians. The big politicians are the ones who have the resources to combat this sort of thing in the first place. They have the support of volunteers and paid organizations that can go to bat for them. But what about a city alderman?
I get mad at my alderman. I get 10 friends to play along. We do a little research on Mr. Alderman. We publish his phone information. Maybe we do a little bit of amateur spying on him, following him to work or watching him grocery shop. We make a few specious accusations for the helluvit--and because hey, he's a jerk, right?
The big politician can fend that off. The little guy is fighting against you and your 10 friends. And he's not winning.
Remember, kids: you might want to run for office someday. Manage databases and reading Slashdot might get old. But hey, maybe I just have broader aspirations.
Undoubtedly all the knee-jerk anti-government and pro-privacy Slashdot kiddies will jump on this as a slap-in-the-face, right-back-at-ya revenge thing. Well, stop and think.
First of all, not all politicians are bad. Most are good. In fact, those at the local and state level are true public servants -- they're underpaid and overworked. They don't get a lot of recognition.
So great. This tool allows some wacko with a vendetta -- and I'm sure every politician has hundreds, if not thousands of those, even the small-change public servants -- to launch a smear campaign. Yeah, three cheers for that.
This is a pathetic and misguided attempt. Publishing personal information about public servants WITHOUT INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION is tantamount to creating a site that encourages libel.
Here's to hoping MIT and the site admins to SUED ASAP for everything they're worth. That'll teach them a lesson.
Slashdot Mirror
The "777" deal expired.
As long as people are hawking their promo codes, I've got a decent one that discounts any yearly (or 2 year) plan by $60: "60SLASHDOT". It also discounts month-to-month plans.
And, full-disclosure: yep, I'm hawking it because I make money off it. That discount comes right out of my referral award (zero-sum game).
It's difficult in many situations to tell the different between EDTV and HDTV. Maybe you can in an A-B situation, but not after you've been sitting on your sofa for 5 minutes. Is anyone (i.e. consumers) actually clammering for MORE resolution?
People tend to forget that most of the "experience" of gaming and movies is in the SOUND, not the video. You want to be on the edge of your seat? Get a kick-ass home theater system (and get some decent room treatments and spend time on speaker placement)--don't waste gobs of money on a few more lines of resolution.
Apple's iPod advertising is a good way of conveying information both intuitively and (for the most part) accurately.
But this approach can be taken to extremes. Anyone flipped by QVC lately and heard them mention a "2.4 gigahertz 'computer brain'?" Now that's a bit much for me. Still worth a chuckle though. :)
In all seriousness, the heart of this issue is the real-world use of computers by normal people. It doesn't sell to tell John Q. Public that this hard drive is 7200 RPM versus 5400 RPM. It sells to tell him that if he wants to digitize and save his old home videos (so he can e-mail them to his brother), the 7200 RPM model is likely to give him fewer headaches.
This is the same reason why most people (including me) couldn't care less about benchmarks. Do I compile programs? No. (Maybe you do, but most people don't.) So I don't care whether Apple picked gcc or Intel's compiler. I care about whether Web pages load faster, programs run faster, the system crashes less, and whether I can have more programs open without degraded performance.
And once again you SWING... and MISS horribly. Read my reply.
How does this affect small-time politicians? You DO realize that's where most of the governing in this country gets done, don't you? Or have you forgotten your Civics?
The posters in this thread seem to be under the delusion that GIA applies only to candidates for the House, Senate, and Presidency. Puh-lease. The GIA wouldn't matter for that. There are already plenty of libelous sites about GWB and Al Gore. The real problem of the GIA would be its effect on local and state politics.
Once again, a stupendous failure to appreciate that this so-called GIA would be most effectively used against local, small-change politicians. The big politicians are the ones who have the resources to combat this sort of thing in the first place. They have the support of volunteers and paid organizations that can go to bat for them. But what about a city alderman?
I get mad at my alderman. I get 10 friends to play along. We do a little research on Mr. Alderman. We publish his phone information. Maybe we do a little bit of amateur spying on him, following him to work or watching him grocery shop. We make a few specious accusations for the helluvit--and because hey, he's a jerk, right?
The big politician can fend that off. The little guy is fighting against you and your 10 friends. And he's not winning.
Remember, kids: you might want to run for office someday. Manage databases and reading Slashdot might get old. But hey, maybe I just have broader aspirations.
Undoubtedly all the knee-jerk anti-government and pro-privacy Slashdot kiddies will jump on this as a slap-in-the-face, right-back-at-ya revenge thing. Well, stop and think.
First of all, not all politicians are bad. Most are good. In fact, those at the local and state level are true public servants -- they're underpaid and overworked. They don't get a lot of recognition.
So great. This tool allows some wacko with a vendetta -- and I'm sure every politician has hundreds, if not thousands of those, even the small-change public servants -- to launch a smear campaign. Yeah, three cheers for that.
This is a pathetic and misguided attempt. Publishing personal information about public servants WITHOUT INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION is tantamount to creating a site that encourages libel.
Here's to hoping MIT and the site admins to SUED ASAP for everything they're worth. That'll teach them a lesson.