A lot of HOAs and cities consider solar panels to be eyesores and forbid them. That said, of course they'll raise the value of your home. If you spend $20,000 (the price of a very minimal system), you'd sure as hell hope they have some return value on them. Especially since it takes about 25 years (the warrantied life span of the panels, of course) before they start to save you money. $6,000 return for $20,000 investment seems pretty pathetic, to me.
And of course, that's only if the panels feed directly into the grid. If you're looking at storing energy locally, the installation and maintenance of batteries is even more expensive.
Of course, we wouldn't want the reality of the expense and low return on these systems to stop places like "Venture Beat" from boosting the booming solar panel industry. It's not about actually selling something that will save you money. It's about selling you a life-style and a bragging point. It's about selling you an idea. It would be fantastic if solar panels were affordable and had a 30 year life span and paid for themselves in 10 and started saving you money in the 11th year, but that's not the case. Not yet, at least. And until it is, it's just another market to sucker you out of a buck, like the whole "carbon credits" scam.
I love ordering groceries online. I have barely gone shopping for groceries in person in my entire adult life. For $10, I can click a button and have everything delivered into my kitchen the next morning. I don't have to drive around, deal with families and screaming kids and lines and shopping carts and all that crap. I don't have to wander around the store looking for everything. I just click a button and it's done with. It's another thing I don't have to spend precious time from my life doing anymore, like a lot of other things the modern age has afforded us (like banking, going to the video rental store, going to the post office, etc).
The ONLY complaint I have over the almost twelve years I've been doing online grocery shopping is that they'll try and pawn the closer-to-expiration stuff on you if you're not careful. You might get a loaf of bread that expires the day it's delivered. You might get a gallon of milk that expires in five days. Still, I was never a person who enjoyed the grocery store chore, so I live with it and am quite happy.
First of all, I can already have groceries delivered in Denver from Krogers and have for six years. In Portland, I was having my groceries delivered from either Safeway or Albertsons (this was after Webhome/van/peapod/whatever it was back then, because I forget), since about 2000.
Second, I was forced to go grocery shopping at a Wal-Mart twice and they have a TERRIBLE selection. I don't think Wal-Mart is intended to be a place you buy actual groceries. All they had was microwavable meals and candy and soda and canned goods and tons of pre-boxed macaroni and cheese stuff and other crap. It was like a really big 7-11. It's the place I would go to buy junk food, but not *REAL* food (mostly, you know, because they didn't seem to HAVE real food).
I wouldn't exactly call Youtube's advertising "robust". As best I can tell, the only "advertising" they do is by way of occasional sponsored events like the 5 Gum presentation of Coachella live and maybe the "promoted videos" that you often see on the front of youtube which are obviously a form of advertisement and I assume they get paid for. Since I don't waste my time watching videos that are obviously just ads, it doesn't impact me one bit. And when I'm watching live high quality streaming content from the other side of the world for free, I can tolerate a giant "5 Gum" background on the page.
Some collection agencies behave morally. Many do not.
When I was eleven or twelve years old, my mom was being hounded by a collector. One day, we discovered that the outgoing/greeting on the answering machine had been changed to something absolutely repulsive about my mother. I was blamed for it, because my family had no idea that there were default codes to let you set your answering machine voice remotely and the idea that someone could have done this without physical access to the answering machine seemed impossible to them. It was assumed that I was just being a dick and had a friend leave the greeting (because eleven year old kids always have close friends who sound like 45 year old deep voiced guys with a speaking style that clearly indicates they spend all day talking to people on the phone). (And yes, it was obviously a bill collector, because you could tell from his manner of speaking as well as the content of the message).
I know things were different in the late 80s, but I'm pretty sure that action is neither moral nor legal.
Isn't this sadly the directly that Firefox 5.0 is going? All social and dedicated web-app interfaces and crap? I sure hope all the popular browsers don't go the way of the "real keyboard without a bunch of stupid fucking dedicated 'media keys'".
Yeah, sure. Google will just invent a hard-drive disassembling, sorting, and recycling robot. Are you fucking nuts? What's next, Google will just invent some self-driving robot car?!
Yeah. The 360 and the PS3 are the $300-$400 hardware from 2005 that we're talking about, Einstein. (Yeah, I know the PS3 actually launched higher than that, but you get the point).
Because, they are selling a low end commodity product. The are selling an entire system of parts for half the price of a modern PC video card, because they perceive the consumer market as being too fucking cheap (and possibly rightfully so) to spend anything more than $300 or $400 on a gaming system that they're going to use for the next five or ten years. I enjoy gaming. I love eye-candy. I love lots of amazing stuff going on at any time time, visually and AI-wise. I love games with more people, better performance, 60fps, and all that. I am more than happy to spend $800 or $1,000 or even more on a very high end console that I'll be playing for the next decade. In the long run, it's still ten times cheaper than building a new gaming rig every 12-18 months over that same time period.
But . . . they would likely seriously suffer in sales. So it's a lowest common denominator proposition.
Yeah, I have been sticking with the PC for strategy, MMO, and certain FPS games. Going with the console for everything else (because I can sit on an 8' bean bag in front of a 65" television with an audio system that cost more than the last brand new car I bought a fwe years ago). However, I find myself slowly migrating back to PC for titles that I have come to feel weren't necessary to play on the PC - simply because 2011 hardware beats the shit out of low-end commodity hardware from 2005 that was being sold all together for $300 or $400 even back then.
Unfortunately, it's just not so easy, because developers focus on consoles. Even the ones who are traditionally PC developers. The PC version is usually - at best - a red headed step child. It may not be what we normally consider a "port", but it's still developed using much of the resources and limitations that result from focusing on the console. For example, with Dragon Age II, you had to register your game, login to an EA.com account, tie your game to it, enter a code, find the HD res textures bundle, download it (over 1gb), then run an installer. Just to get non-console texture resolutions in a game that was an almost PC-exclusive experience and development a year before.
So, we all suffer.
But hey, by the holiday Season of 2014, we'll finally get low-end 2010 hardware on the console side. So exciting! And by 2023, we'll finally be playing on consoles that match game experience we're getting on PCs (or could get - if developers focused on it) in 2014!
No, this is about the threat of government regulation causing private industry regulation to accomplish the exact same thing, without putting the government into any sort of legal mud. You see the results in nearly every title that is developed to avoid an M rating or to stay within an M rating (nobody carries AO rated games). In effect, what we have is far worse than if the government directly censored, because if the government directly censored it, we could go to court over it and hash it out once and for all.
We're not supposed to have a problem with censorship when it's by private industry, because it's only censorship when the government does it. But if the industry is self-censoring because the only alternative is the threat of the government stepping in and doing it (which would presumably be unconstitutional) and that results in a whole range of content not having distribution and titles that do have distribution being modified so that they have less teeth (think of the most mature game versus the most mature movie you can get at the theater or on DVD) . . . and I have to ask "what's the difference?". One is a result directly mandated by the government and the other result is derived through extortion by the government. Worse, the extortion/threat method allows them to accomplish the same thing through a ratings middle-man in a private industry that keeps them from getting their hands dirty at a legal level.
Not likely. Shining the light on this idiocy and seeing that their fellow citizens don't see them in the same condescending juvenile light that the government does is probably the one thing reassuring them that they're sane and rational adults and that the rest of us recognizing them as adults in a bind using a public service rather than children needing shepherding.
As silly as some motivational attempts by employers can be, it's still a different thing than a government agency providing a service that benefits you in improving your life at the cost of the tax payer that is in your own best interest coddling you like a toddler. We used to have free soda and snacks in the vending machines on the Netscape campus in the late 90s. That wasn't coddling. It wasn't treating me like a child. It was something our employer provided to us, because they valued our service and it was an additional small form of compensation, in a way. It was a nice gesture of appreciation.
That is very different than a government agency using the same sort of "rewarding behavior" action to encourage me to do the very basic things which benefit me directly, like they were clapping for baby to go pee pee in the potty all by himself. When an employer does it (usually, I understand how frustrating your incident could be), it's with a different mentality. Even if it feels silly, it doesn't feel demeaning.
I think, in this case, it was intended as motivational (not their job), but because it is so insultingly juvenile, it seems demeaning to anyone with a head on their shoulders. Whether they're on the outside or if they're the actual people using the services. Hell, even children recognize this. There were plenty of times when I was a child (and you probably experienced these, too) where I was aware of how adults (usually in the role of a teacher or other school authority) treating me like an infant and it was wholly infuriating.
When they are ready to act like adults by getting jobs, we'll treat them like adults.
When you are ready to act like an adult by acknowledging that most unemployment is a result of deliberate public policies meant to keep wages low and profits high, and not of some immaturity on the part of the unemployed, we'll treat you like an adult. Until then, go away, the big people are talking now.
The potential of getting a job should be all the motivation necessary to utilize services that help you find jobs. Jobs are not plentiful and unemployment agencies do a terrible job at matching you up with positions for your experience and they can certainly be demoralizing places for demoralizing experiences. However, that doesn't change the fact that a potential job should be all you need to encourage you to try and get a job. If that's not enough, then any sort of gold star behavior rewarding treatment isn't going to help you, either.
In this incident, I think that the intention was absolutely to replicate that same first-grade mentality of your teacher rewarding you for doing something you should do or your parents rewarding you for using the toilet or brushing your teeth. Of course, any reasonably intelligent person sees the action as demeaning. As if, again, they're children that need to be coddled and encouraged to do the things that are basic to their very own well-being and continued survival and self-sufficiency.
That sounds like even more motivation to get a job, to me.
Seriously, are you suggesting to me that when jobs are scarce and you are desperate for money to pay bills, you need more motivation than you would otherwise need when jobs are abundant? That is fucking absurd. What else do you need external motivation for? Washing your own car? Taking your own suit to the dry cleaners?
I absolutely don't want to be unemployed, but if I were, I wouldn't need a cape and gold stars or any other sort of motivation to try and take advantage of services offered to me to help me locate a matching job. I would go to the employment office and utilize their services, because I want to be employed. Being employed is all the motivation I need.
The people marking my above comment as "troll" seriously concern me. I didn't realize that our society now viewed being employed as an obligation. As a FAVOR that you are doing for SOMEONE ELSE. That the potential for finding work and making money isn't reward enough for trying to find a job and that they need some sort of grade-school type reward from the government to make use of public services to help them hunt for (scarce and therefore even more valuable) jobs. To pay their bills and take care of themselves.
What does that have to do with anything? Getting a job is hard, so you need motivation to get a job? How is wanting to be employed not motivation in itself? I don't care if you're employed or not. Have your own motivation, like being able to pay your rent and bills and feed yourself? If you need some sort of goofy motivation, then get out of the way and let the next guy take your spot as I'm sure there are plenty of people out there for whom a paying job is its own motivation and don't want trivial grade school bullshit thrown at them. What's next, capes and gold stars to "motivate" you to get unemployment benefits?
Motivational? How about getting a job and earning money so you can take care of yourself? What more motivation does one need? I'd like to know if this came after giving everyone gold stars and whether it commenced with nap time.
All I ever saw at eHow was a bunch of useless shit, like "how to sext" and "how to wear a chunky necklace" and "how to have phone sex" and "how to name your dog" and "how to landscape" (with such insightful comments as sweeping your patio and mowing your lawn -- wow!).
I recall a time - for a few weeks - when eHow seemed like it had some potential. It very quickly dwindled into a sibling of Yahoo! Answers.
I'm not sure what is involved with GetSatisfaction, but I know that the Rip Off Reports guy thumbs his nose at everyone and will absolutely never take anything down unless he is paid. And there is no requirement for putting something up (in fact, false accusations are known to be made very frequently not by consumers or visitors, but the site's own staff). You just create an account and post whatever you like and libel people (not merely companies, but even your next door neighbor or an ex or your coworker) and it will never be taken down, unless you join their expensive program, at which point you can suddenly have such things removed. (Oh, also note that you can't have an accusation removed even if you are the one that wrote it and later changed your mind). The guy behind it is about as shady as you can be - even for the internet.
If there is someone you dislike, you can get revenge very simply and effectively by destroying their reputation without any possible recourse. Just crate a fake account and go to the website and start making shit up. Accuse them of criminal activities. Of fraud. Hell, accuse them of rape and child abuse. Include their full name and address and place of employment and anything else you like. It will stay there and when other people look up their name, they'll see these complaints on what an ignorant person would otherwise view as a legitimate consumer advocacy website. Pretty effective! Hell, try this out on your competitor, if you're in business.
Anyway, you can google all you like about it. I was pretty astonished when I heard about it and started digging around.
And Twitter isn't about reasoned debate. Or any debate. Twitter is about self-promotion. Either of your personality or your business. The entire reason for Twitter to exist is attention-whoring. Even people who might have great content to provide include so much self-whoring *noise* to the signal that it's worthless. I've tried following people on Twitter (well, RSS feeds of their Twitter feeds, because I don't want to use Twitter, itself) and even the most interesting people have an intolerable noise level.
Social networks are all about self. All about attention whoring. All about providing an hourly update about your most inane thoughts or every single action you are taking during the day. Using social networking for reasoned debate or discussion is like using a screwdriver to hammer a nail. There are already avenues for debate and discussion and thought. They're in places like Slashdot (no, I didn't type that without chuckling -- I know, I know). They are not in places where you are having 140 character retorts between hundreds of people in a single feed and they are not in sites where a comment is nestled between someone's tarot reading above and pointless "Is it Friday yet?" update below.
That seems unfair to those of us in the market for sex change advice from experts.
Also, one of the first things I blocked when Google offered the "block this site from any future results" service recently was Yahoo! Answers and ChaCha and all the other bullshit "answer" sites . . . and then sites like eHow. On rare occasion, you might find something useful on them and they *are* obviously hand written by actual people. It's just that it's still such garbage. There is even an eHow on how you should behave at a sex crime trial. And, increasingly, more of their stuff is just copied and pasted from other sources. Like "what are state gun laws for my state". Then there's the very useful ones, like "how to text message" and "how to have phone sex". Fucking retarded.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of HOAs and cities consider solar panels to be eyesores and forbid them. That said, of course they'll raise the value of your home. If you spend $20,000 (the price of a very minimal system), you'd sure as hell hope they have some return value on them. Especially since it takes about 25 years (the warrantied life span of the panels, of course) before they start to save you money. $6,000 return for $20,000 investment seems pretty pathetic, to me.
And of course, that's only if the panels feed directly into the grid. If you're looking at storing energy locally, the installation and maintenance of batteries is even more expensive.
Of course, we wouldn't want the reality of the expense and low return on these systems to stop places like "Venture Beat" from boosting the booming solar panel industry. It's not about actually selling something that will save you money. It's about selling you a life-style and a bragging point. It's about selling you an idea. It would be fantastic if solar panels were affordable and had a 30 year life span and paid for themselves in 10 and started saving you money in the 11th year, but that's not the case. Not yet, at least. And until it is, it's just another market to sucker you out of a buck, like the whole "carbon credits" scam.
I love ordering groceries online. I have barely gone shopping for groceries in person in my entire adult life. For $10, I can click a button and have everything delivered into my kitchen the next morning. I don't have to drive around, deal with families and screaming kids and lines and shopping carts and all that crap. I don't have to wander around the store looking for everything. I just click a button and it's done with. It's another thing I don't have to spend precious time from my life doing anymore, like a lot of other things the modern age has afforded us (like banking, going to the video rental store, going to the post office, etc).
The ONLY complaint I have over the almost twelve years I've been doing online grocery shopping is that they'll try and pawn the closer-to-expiration stuff on you if you're not careful. You might get a loaf of bread that expires the day it's delivered. You might get a gallon of milk that expires in five days. Still, I was never a person who enjoyed the grocery store chore, so I live with it and am quite happy.
First of all, I can already have groceries delivered in Denver from Krogers and have for six years. In Portland, I was having my groceries delivered from either Safeway or Albertsons (this was after Webhome/van/peapod/whatever it was back then, because I forget), since about 2000.
Second, I was forced to go grocery shopping at a Wal-Mart twice and they have a TERRIBLE selection. I don't think Wal-Mart is intended to be a place you buy actual groceries. All they had was microwavable meals and candy and soda and canned goods and tons of pre-boxed macaroni and cheese stuff and other crap. It was like a really big 7-11. It's the place I would go to buy junk food, but not *REAL* food (mostly, you know, because they didn't seem to HAVE real food).
I wouldn't exactly call Youtube's advertising "robust". As best I can tell, the only "advertising" they do is by way of occasional sponsored events like the 5 Gum presentation of Coachella live and maybe the "promoted videos" that you often see on the front of youtube which are obviously a form of advertisement and I assume they get paid for. Since I don't waste my time watching videos that are obviously just ads, it doesn't impact me one bit. And when I'm watching live high quality streaming content from the other side of the world for free, I can tolerate a giant "5 Gum" background on the page.
Some collection agencies behave morally. Many do not.
When I was eleven or twelve years old, my mom was being hounded by a collector. One day, we discovered that the outgoing/greeting on the answering machine had been changed to something absolutely repulsive about my mother. I was blamed for it, because my family had no idea that there were default codes to let you set your answering machine voice remotely and the idea that someone could have done this without physical access to the answering machine seemed impossible to them. It was assumed that I was just being a dick and had a friend leave the greeting (because eleven year old kids always have close friends who sound like 45 year old deep voiced guys with a speaking style that clearly indicates they spend all day talking to people on the phone). (And yes, it was obviously a bill collector, because you could tell from his manner of speaking as well as the content of the message).
I know things were different in the late 80s, but I'm pretty sure that action is neither moral nor legal.
Isn't this sadly the directly that Firefox 5.0 is going? All social and dedicated web-app interfaces and crap? I sure hope all the popular browsers don't go the way of the "real keyboard without a bunch of stupid fucking dedicated 'media keys'".
Well, when *was* the last time you saw Chris DiBona, huh?
Yeah, sure. Google will just invent a hard-drive disassembling, sorting, and recycling robot. Are you fucking nuts? What's next, Google will just invent some self-driving robot car?!
Greenpeace is #1 in standing around and holding banners.
Yeah. The 360 and the PS3 are the $300-$400 hardware from 2005 that we're talking about, Einstein. (Yeah, I know the PS3 actually launched higher than that, but you get the point).
Because, they are selling a low end commodity product. The are selling an entire system of parts for half the price of a modern PC video card, because they perceive the consumer market as being too fucking cheap (and possibly rightfully so) to spend anything more than $300 or $400 on a gaming system that they're going to use for the next five or ten years. I enjoy gaming. I love eye-candy. I love lots of amazing stuff going on at any time time, visually and AI-wise. I love games with more people, better performance, 60fps, and all that. I am more than happy to spend $800 or $1,000 or even more on a very high end console that I'll be playing for the next decade. In the long run, it's still ten times cheaper than building a new gaming rig every 12-18 months over that same time period.
But . . . they would likely seriously suffer in sales. So it's a lowest common denominator proposition.
Yeah, I have been sticking with the PC for strategy, MMO, and certain FPS games. Going with the console for everything else (because I can sit on an 8' bean bag in front of a 65" television with an audio system that cost more than the last brand new car I bought a fwe years ago). However, I find myself slowly migrating back to PC for titles that I have come to feel weren't necessary to play on the PC - simply because 2011 hardware beats the shit out of low-end commodity hardware from 2005 that was being sold all together for $300 or $400 even back then.
Unfortunately, it's just not so easy, because developers focus on consoles. Even the ones who are traditionally PC developers. The PC version is usually - at best - a red headed step child. It may not be what we normally consider a "port", but it's still developed using much of the resources and limitations that result from focusing on the console. For example, with Dragon Age II, you had to register your game, login to an EA.com account, tie your game to it, enter a code, find the HD res textures bundle, download it (over 1gb), then run an installer. Just to get non-console texture resolutions in a game that was an almost PC-exclusive experience and development a year before.
So, we all suffer.
But hey, by the holiday Season of 2014, we'll finally get low-end 2010 hardware on the console side. So exciting! And by 2023, we'll finally be playing on consoles that match game experience we're getting on PCs (or could get - if developers focused on it) in 2014!
*sigh*
No, this is about the threat of government regulation causing private industry regulation to accomplish the exact same thing, without putting the government into any sort of legal mud. You see the results in nearly every title that is developed to avoid an M rating or to stay within an M rating (nobody carries AO rated games). In effect, what we have is far worse than if the government directly censored, because if the government directly censored it, we could go to court over it and hash it out once and for all.
We're not supposed to have a problem with censorship when it's by private industry, because it's only censorship when the government does it. But if the industry is self-censoring because the only alternative is the threat of the government stepping in and doing it (which would presumably be unconstitutional) and that results in a whole range of content not having distribution and titles that do have distribution being modified so that they have less teeth (think of the most mature game versus the most mature movie you can get at the theater or on DVD) . . . and I have to ask "what's the difference?". One is a result directly mandated by the government and the other result is derived through extortion by the government. Worse, the extortion/threat method allows them to accomplish the same thing through a ratings middle-man in a private industry that keeps them from getting their hands dirty at a legal level.
Maybe poor kids in the lunch line would feel better about themselves if they had a pretty red cape to wear?
Not likely. Shining the light on this idiocy and seeing that their fellow citizens don't see them in the same condescending juvenile light that the government does is probably the one thing reassuring them that they're sane and rational adults and that the rest of us recognizing them as adults in a bind using a public service rather than children needing shepherding.
As silly as some motivational attempts by employers can be, it's still a different thing than a government agency providing a service that benefits you in improving your life at the cost of the tax payer that is in your own best interest coddling you like a toddler. We used to have free soda and snacks in the vending machines on the Netscape campus in the late 90s. That wasn't coddling. It wasn't treating me like a child. It was something our employer provided to us, because they valued our service and it was an additional small form of compensation, in a way. It was a nice gesture of appreciation.
That is very different than a government agency using the same sort of "rewarding behavior" action to encourage me to do the very basic things which benefit me directly, like they were clapping for baby to go pee pee in the potty all by himself. When an employer does it (usually, I understand how frustrating your incident could be), it's with a different mentality. Even if it feels silly, it doesn't feel demeaning.
I think, in this case, it was intended as motivational (not their job), but because it is so insultingly juvenile, it seems demeaning to anyone with a head on their shoulders. Whether they're on the outside or if they're the actual people using the services. Hell, even children recognize this. There were plenty of times when I was a child (and you probably experienced these, too) where I was aware of how adults (usually in the role of a teacher or other school authority) treating me like an infant and it was wholly infuriating.
When you are ready to act like an adult by acknowledging that most unemployment is a result of deliberate public policies meant to keep wages low and profits high, and not of some immaturity on the part of the unemployed, we'll treat you like an adult. Until then, go away, the big people are talking now.
The potential of getting a job should be all the motivation necessary to utilize services that help you find jobs. Jobs are not plentiful and unemployment agencies do a terrible job at matching you up with positions for your experience and they can certainly be demoralizing places for demoralizing experiences. However, that doesn't change the fact that a potential job should be all you need to encourage you to try and get a job. If that's not enough, then any sort of gold star behavior rewarding treatment isn't going to help you, either.
In this incident, I think that the intention was absolutely to replicate that same first-grade mentality of your teacher rewarding you for doing something you should do or your parents rewarding you for using the toilet or brushing your teeth. Of course, any reasonably intelligent person sees the action as demeaning. As if, again, they're children that need to be coddled and encouraged to do the things that are basic to their very own well-being and continued survival and self-sufficiency.
That sounds like even more motivation to get a job, to me.
Seriously, are you suggesting to me that when jobs are scarce and you are desperate for money to pay bills, you need more motivation than you would otherwise need when jobs are abundant? That is fucking absurd. What else do you need external motivation for? Washing your own car? Taking your own suit to the dry cleaners?
I absolutely don't want to be unemployed, but if I were, I wouldn't need a cape and gold stars or any other sort of motivation to try and take advantage of services offered to me to help me locate a matching job. I would go to the employment office and utilize their services, because I want to be employed. Being employed is all the motivation I need.
The people marking my above comment as "troll" seriously concern me. I didn't realize that our society now viewed being employed as an obligation. As a FAVOR that you are doing for SOMEONE ELSE. That the potential for finding work and making money isn't reward enough for trying to find a job and that they need some sort of grade-school type reward from the government to make use of public services to help them hunt for (scarce and therefore even more valuable) jobs. To pay their bills and take care of themselves.
What does that have to do with anything? Getting a job is hard, so you need motivation to get a job? How is wanting to be employed not motivation in itself? I don't care if you're employed or not. Have your own motivation, like being able to pay your rent and bills and feed yourself? If you need some sort of goofy motivation, then get out of the way and let the next guy take your spot as I'm sure there are plenty of people out there for whom a paying job is its own motivation and don't want trivial grade school bullshit thrown at them. What's next, capes and gold stars to "motivate" you to get unemployment benefits?
Motivational? How about getting a job and earning money so you can take care of yourself? What more motivation does one need? I'd like to know if this came after giving everyone gold stars and whether it commenced with nap time.
All I ever saw at eHow was a bunch of useless shit, like "how to sext" and "how to wear a chunky necklace" and "how to have phone sex" and "how to name your dog" and "how to landscape" (with such insightful comments as sweeping your patio and mowing your lawn -- wow!).
I recall a time - for a few weeks - when eHow seemed like it had some potential. It very quickly dwindled into a sibling of Yahoo! Answers.
I'm not sure what is involved with GetSatisfaction, but I know that the Rip Off Reports guy thumbs his nose at everyone and will absolutely never take anything down unless he is paid. And there is no requirement for putting something up (in fact, false accusations are known to be made very frequently not by consumers or visitors, but the site's own staff). You just create an account and post whatever you like and libel people (not merely companies, but even your next door neighbor or an ex or your coworker) and it will never be taken down, unless you join their expensive program, at which point you can suddenly have such things removed. (Oh, also note that you can't have an accusation removed even if you are the one that wrote it and later changed your mind). The guy behind it is about as shady as you can be - even for the internet.
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-02-01/news/the-real-rip-off-report/1/
http://www.97thfloor.com/blog/public-spam-report-google-your-honeymoon-with-rip-off-report-has-to-stop/
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/chris-bennet-on-rip-off-report
If there is someone you dislike, you can get revenge very simply and effectively by destroying their reputation without any possible recourse. Just crate a fake account and go to the website and start making shit up. Accuse them of criminal activities. Of fraud. Hell, accuse them of rape and child abuse. Include their full name and address and place of employment and anything else you like. It will stay there and when other people look up their name, they'll see these complaints on what an ignorant person would otherwise view as a legitimate consumer advocacy website. Pretty effective! Hell, try this out on your competitor, if you're in business.
Anyway, you can google all you like about it. I was pretty astonished when I heard about it and started digging around.
Actually, it's 140 characters.
And Twitter isn't about reasoned debate. Or any debate. Twitter is about self-promotion. Either of your personality or your business. The entire reason for Twitter to exist is attention-whoring. Even people who might have great content to provide include so much self-whoring *noise* to the signal that it's worthless. I've tried following people on Twitter (well, RSS feeds of their Twitter feeds, because I don't want to use Twitter, itself) and even the most interesting people have an intolerable noise level.
Social networks are all about self. All about attention whoring. All about providing an hourly update about your most inane thoughts or every single action you are taking during the day. Using social networking for reasoned debate or discussion is like using a screwdriver to hammer a nail. There are already avenues for debate and discussion and thought. They're in places like Slashdot (no, I didn't type that without chuckling -- I know, I know). They are not in places where you are having 140 character retorts between hundreds of people in a single feed and they are not in sites where a comment is nestled between someone's tarot reading above and pointless "Is it Friday yet?" update below.
That seems unfair to those of us in the market for sex change advice from experts.
Also, one of the first things I blocked when Google offered the "block this site from any future results" service recently was Yahoo! Answers and ChaCha and all the other bullshit "answer" sites . . . and then sites like eHow. On rare occasion, you might find something useful on them and they *are* obviously hand written by actual people. It's just that it's still such garbage. There is even an eHow on how you should behave at a sex crime trial. And, increasingly, more of their stuff is just copied and pasted from other sources. Like "what are state gun laws for my state". Then there's the very useful ones, like "how to text message" and "how to have phone sex". Fucking retarded.