That's one 'feature' that i'd love to see beat into the ground. Just about every product that has competitors (as most do) include those stupid @*()#&@( popups to reassociate them with format x. If i wanted program y associated with format x, i woulda left it checked when i installed the bloody thing.
At least most have the option to never show this again... realplayer is just a complete bitch for this, which is why i don't use it. ever. i'm also quickly getting fed up with quicktime's 'UPGRADE TO QUICKTIME PRO', adobe's "THERES MORE TO ACROBAT THAN JUST READER!", and winamp's "VERSION XXX IS NOW OUT! DOWNLOAD?".
but what pisses me off the most is no matter how often you uncheck or say no to all these things, they somehow get mysteriously 'reset' every few weeks.
And is it just me, or are those 'never show this message again' buttons getting fewer and fewer? nowadays they're buried somewhere in the nether regions of the user preferences section, with ever more obscure wording.
*shock* *gasp* *amazement* MS used underhanded tactics that were exposed in the trial and/or corporate emails. I feel like we're caught in a timewarp.
I wish once and for all that the general public and the US Court would realise that this is just another day at MS, and that we likely won't see the end of this type of MS BS til they actually implement either a breakup, or some other REAL sanctions.
If they won't play nicely with the other children, take away their toys. That's what parents do with spoiled children (at least they did when i was growing up).
it was only a matter of time before some unscrupulous ***hole took advantage of MS's unscrupulous coding to do something like this. The only surprise I got was that it took this long to happen, and is only now getting into the news. While I use IE for browsing, it's just because of things like this that I long ago disabled all active scripting, uninstalled flash, and never installed the MS virtual machine to begin with.
I also block any ad tracking site from setting cookies or sending popups through the nifty 'security' settings. Every time I find a cookie in my temp internet files that I don't recognize, the host automatically goes into 'ad tracking sites'.
Call me paranoid, but if it ain't plain HTML and static images, I don't wanna see it.
Which of course would render all their handy dandy little 'Click here to email this article to a friend!' links useless.
I agree that it's dumb for anyone to try and enforce this legally, but if they try to do it technically, they're screwing themselves too.
The idiotic part of this is, when i click on a deep-link, i often end up going to the homepage and checking out other information as well. They're so not losing anything here. it's silliness... ah well.. long live free enterprise with all its ugly flaws i guess.
www.mailwasher.net it's easy to use (imports your mail addresses directly from most popular mail clients), scans the mail server and gives warnings on possible virii and spam. As a bonus, it not only lets you delete messages on the server before you download them to your email program, it also lets you send back fake bounces to spammers. the interface isn't quite as nice as i'd like, but it does the job.
ohhh this is not by reflex. this is from hours upon hours of having to sit through every pay per view, monday night RAW and thursday night Smackdown when I cant win the battle. While I have appreciation for the athletics involved, the rampant use of steroids (and yes it does go on...), the exploitative use of women (come on.. maybe two of em aren't just big breasts and long legs), the trite dialogue, and use of heros such as "Stone Cold" who exemplify the 'fuck you' attitude, doesn't rank highly in my opinion. It's a soap opera for men, and as an entertainment/escapism show, it ranks high. But as intelligent entertainment.. it's not my cup of tea. What's very sad is that I can now follow along with most of the story lines and history (my SO likes to give background info as we're going along). And yes i know i could leave the room or whatever..but i'd rather spend time with him even doing something i hate than isolating myself for four hours every week, limiting even more of our time together. In retaliation, I make him sit with me and watch Neon Genesis:D
I remember waking up early on saturday mornings to be the first in front of the TV, remote control in hand, ready to battle my brothers for TV supremacy... me fighting for Transformers, Robotech, and other psuedo-anime cartoons, them battling for Hulk Hogan's Rock n Wrestling and other assorted WWF trash.
How times change...
Now I battle with my boyfriend for TV supremacy when I want to watch my Macross and Neon Genesis DVDs or an anime toon marathon while HE wants to watch wrestling... *sigh* i couldn't just pick a fellow geek, could i?
What's that old parable about 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'?
On another note, as much as we might lambast the squeaky-clean lather, rinse, repeat beating the old anime imports took from the network censors, these were what introduced me to the entire genre in the first place. Had it not been for those cheesy edits of Robotech on Saturday mornings, I might never have started picking up the Macross movies when I came across them in the video stores. And god knows they would NEVER have made it on in their original formats... Network Censor "WHAT ARE THOSE?! NIPPLES?! ARE YOU *** CRAZY??"/NetworkCensor
IANA(american)L (but i did go to law schoolin Canada).
First thing i'd advise is talking to the local labour board. Find out if this is even legal. Don't assume it is just because they're putting it forth.. i've seen companies do some dirty things when it comes to money and employees to try and make a quick buck. If it is illegal, you might have some recourse with filing complaints, wrongful dismissal for those who get let go, etc etc. It will take some digging, but when a company is pulling crap like this, i'd say it's worth it.
Secondly (and this probably goes without saying) I'd look long and hard at whether you REALLY want to work at a place that pulls shit like this. The last straw for me at my last job was a dirty, below the belt non-compete agreement that we HAD to sign, otherwise we'd be terminated. The agreement basically forbid you to work on the net for gods sake. Almost everyone in our section took them to lawyers and asked a LOT of uncomfortable questions about the agreement. It somehow never got brought up again (at least for the remaining few weeks i was there).
The way an employee acts, in many cases, is a direct reflection of how you're treated by your employer.
In my last (regrettable) job, everyone was treated as an enemy (unless you were related to the boss, but lets not go there). The way people were scrutinized and monitored was ridiculous. Even those of us who'd been there for a while, and had proven ourselves 'loyal' were given this scrutiny. It ended up creating an environment where resentment and suspicion made one feel they were under seige. That atmosphere fostered more employee dishonesty than anywhere i've worked before or since. I still remember the
Of course, the places I worked before and after treated people with a 'we'll trust you until you do something to destroy that trust' mentality, which I'm finding is rarer and rarer these days. But you know what? The crew at the place I'm at now is completely loyal, the turnover is practically nil, and the job satisfaction surveys are at about 90%. Compare that to my last job...
In summary, do unto others yadda yadda... if you treat your employees like criminals from day one, they won't disappoint you.
A related article on using fingerprint technology to protect sensitive information can be found here. Worth a read... discusses low-cost biometric authenticators... testing notes and info.
Ok.. seriously.. i've seen a few postings on identity thefts, the inherent fallacies of fingerprinting technology, the lack of three dimensional recognition... but what really scares me is...
THESE BASTARDS ARE GONNA AD-TARGET ME!
On a serious note though, I'd be more concerned about targetted marketing and advertising from the supermarket itself than identity theft and mistaken fingerprints.
Think about it.. they'll have your name, your address, and your shopping habits. my gramma asks me to nip down to the grocery store for her.. next thing you know, i'm getting samples of preperation H and Depends shipped right to my door.
That time of the month? Don't worry, we've been tracking that too! This handy dandy sample of Playtex tampons will show up JUST IN TIME! (oh wait.. that one could actually be useful).
Gah. No thanks.. think i'll skip the fingerprinting and keep paying with cash. At least til they come out with a wrist chip implant...
There's a simple reason for the lack of good support for companies out there: companies are unwilling to spend the money and give benefits to retain good tech support employees.
Raise your hand anyone out there who's worked some form of tech support/help desk in the past. I have. And just about anyone who has will tell you that 1) It's HARD WORK. even for those who know what they're doing. 2) it's DRAINING work, especially emotionally. Hours upon hours of abuse from some moron who put in his own phone number instead of the phone number he's supposed to dial, and being told you HAVE to fix problem X with program Y because its YOUR FAULT that it broke wears on a person.
The stress leads to burnout. the burnout leads to quitting. The quitting leads to massive overturn, which leads to a scramble for new employees, who are rushed out with improper training, etc etc. It's a vicious cycle.
Here's another reason: Any call centre type environment works on a lowest common denominator level. The tech support workers who DO know what they're doing are lumped in with joe blow who wouldn't know a modem from his ass; extremely disgruntled knowledgeable employees desert in droves for a job that will actually get them some respect ASAP. The low pay and high stress means that for the most part, only people desperate to hold down jobs apply. Call centres are desperate nowadays and take just about anyone who can fill out an application.
No, i'm not saying that every tech support agent is like that. there are SOME who enjoy this work, and all the more power to them. But it's not easy, and it's not going to get any better. Career advancement potential is limited and so are the pay and benefits.
I think I've ranted enough for now so i'll just leave off there and let someone else pick it up later:D
1) Imagine a beowolf cluster... 2) Can that thing run Quake? 3) Finally! A harddrive big enough for my MP3 collection!
Seriously though, it's nice to see these companies working together to further common platforms. And running linux! If this doesn't show the power of linux scalability, nothing EVER will.
Someone's doing something right! It's about time they attempted a business model that's more in line with the price/times.
One can only hope that this doesn't fall flat on its face. I'd hate to see this service cancelled because the record companies scream too much about 'lost revenue' due to trades/etc. But from the few details in the article, they have a decent business model set up.
Having said all that, there are still alot of questions that need answering. The article's short on technical details. I'd love to hear from someone who's familiar with the business. What format will the songs be in? Have they come up with a proprietary file type? How'd they manage to get the record companies to agree? How do they control who gets to download the music (ie - can I download from their site even though I'm not in India) ?
I'd be very interested in statistics on usage, downloads, burn rate, etc. This is going to be a fun one to track.
There are so many reasons that disallowing the sale of used books is silly that I can't even begin to list them all.. so I'll just elaborate on my own personal experiences.
I read a lot. And do I ever mean a LOT. I average two to three books a week, I'm a card carrying discount member of four bookstores, and I'm in two book of the month clubs. I buy a lot of new books.
I also buy a lot of used books. Why? Because while I make a good salary, I'm far from rich. A new book in paperback costs in the range of 9 - 12 dollars canadian (first one that makes a 'what is that, 10 cents US joke?' gets a huge smack). For hardcovers, my preferred format, you're looking at 25 - 40 CDN. My book habit ends up costing me more than most addicts' crack habits.
So where do i turn? Used books. Roughly 25% of my books are used. When I want to try a new series, or the book kinda looks ok but i'm not sure, or i'm looking for something that's out of print, I'm going to head to the used book store.
Does this mean I buy fewer new books? nope. In fact, the opposite is often true. If I like a new author (new to me anyway), i'll often go and buy an entire series of their books, all shiny new, dropping as much as 1 - 200 CDN in a single trip, and if i don't like the book, then most likely it was under $5 so no harm no foul.
It's a lot of money, but for a book junkie/collecter, there's nothing quite so satisfying as an uncreased, undamaged book sitting on the shelf that you know will be there for years. As great as getting a book at a discount is, they're rarely in pristine condition. They're usually dog-eared and slightly rumpled with creases in the spine. For display-phobes like me, I want that clean, crisp cover with the perfectly preserved dust jacket. A silly obsession i know, but hey... how many stero fanatics out there spend thousands on getting 'just the right sound'?
I also lend/borrow/trade books with friends. Better place me on the top ten wanted list. Hell, even the RIAA doesn't try to regulate the sale of used CDs and casettes.
Unfortunately, there are a few (isolated) cases in which legislation would be nice.
Spamming is one of those cases, and here's why:
In any other advertising medium, from television to magazines to radio, the burden is on the advertiser to pay for the production of the ad, pay for the timeslot its played in. The medium through which we receive this ad (be it a radio station or whatever) sells space to the advertiser to balance out the cost of providing radio entertainment to the masses. If you don't want to hear that ad, you turn it off. It doesn't affect you.
Now, let's turn to spam. The creater of a spam email generally uses free/cheap/cracked software. At most they're shelling out for a cheap dialup, or using one of the many 'free AOL for a month' CDs to not pay anything at all. The spammer then routes that email for free through open relays to hide where the email is coming from to make it harder for people to track him/her, passing on the cost of the bandwidth they use to the ISP. The ISP, who has to pay for that bandwidth, isn't going to take it out of their own pockets (this is a capitalist society after all), they're going to pass the bill on to the consumer, resulting in fee increases.
The receiver of the email has no choice but to sort through email to delete it. We've all heard the argument that 'it only takes a few seconds to delete an email'. But what happens when you are deluged with hundreds of spam emails a day? Multiply that by 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and those seconds add up. Now, while some people might not think those few seconds are worth anything, I personally find it incredibly annoying when I have to take half an hour out of every week sorting through email to figure out what's crap and what isn't.
Filtering? Ok. as long as the spammer is kind enough to place a big "ADV" in the header. What about those that don't (which is the vast majority). How does one distinguish between a spammer and a friend who use re: your question as the subject?
One could go all the way and only those who you know to email you, but that doesn't really cut it if you're using email for business purposes (like I do).
If you follow these arguments to their conclusions, we can either a: track down each spammer in a sort of internet vigilante justice and disable them, which is illegal, time consuming, and wouldn't do a damn thing, or b: give those who are taken advantage of by spammers a lawful way to make these people pay for the bandwidth they suck up in their quest to bring penis enlargers and hot barely legal teens to the world.
This is the most ridiculous article I've read in a while.
Yes a lot of sites are going to subscriptions for premium content, but there are, and always will be, THOUSANDS of sites out there that offer free content, or at least some free content with premiums for those who subscribe.
Yes popup ads are annoying. But who among us is so dumb as to not know how to disable these things?
And yes, MS has gotten a lot of people into a chokehold and continues to offer inferior products at outrageous prices. But damnit people, we have ALTERNATIVES.
As bleak as this future is, it's the future for those who are uneducated and unsophisticated enough to fall for the idiocy that these businesses push. Those of us with two brain cells to rub together will always be able to find alternative sources of news/information/software.
And in my final rant of the hour, the DMCA is a US law. Believe it or not, it doesn't apply to the entire world, and one would hope that the rest of the free world can grasp the fact that some of us do indeed have a seperate legal system.
Now, I wasn't there for this, but I do recall a few stories of how, when TV first became a household item, people would watch constantly, even taking it into the dining room to watch during dinner.
The novelty soon wore off, with the parental units now demanding that the tv be off during mealtimes (at least in my home), and that tv was for after homework.
The same goes for the Net as an entertainment medium. While the use of the net for work (email, conferencing, etc) has increased steadily, the stats have been showing for quite some time that pure 'silly' surfing has declined. And after using a computer all day, every day for years during my work life, the LAST thing i want to do when I get home is sit in front of another computer screen.
For me, I just got bored with the whole thing. Other than a few staples (like uffie and/.), unless something's relevent to me personally (local news for example), I'm just not interested in surfing the net for nonsense anymore. The sheer glut of porn and badly designed, useless sites has increased to an insane degree; the new sites i find that actually hold my interest for more than two clicks of a mouse are few and far between. Sure, it was fun when the net was new, but nowadays I'd sooner read a book.
At one point I'd probably have qualified as an internet 'compulsive', chatting constantly, losing out on sleep and socializing cause I HAD to be on the net, surfing with one hand while typing frantically in chat rooms with the other... now I chat rarely (in 5 to 10 minute bursts every few days), and my morning surf lasts about 30 minutes tops as I check news and information sites for my fix. Things change, people evolve... personally, I see this as A Good Thing (tm). If i ever started slipping back into my old habits, i'd toss my computer straight onto the garbage heap.
K yah. swap in RIAA for MPAA *slaps forehead*. I forgot to proofread. How on earth did i confuse one huge, money grubbing entity for another huge, money grubbing entity? Bad me. and sometimes that 2 minute posting delay is a huge PITA:P
heh. yah i know.. i posted a reply to my own comment when i'd realised what i'd done... gee.. how i managed to confuse two power-hungry money-grubbing entertainment entities just baffles me... but yah it was a dumb mistake *grins* which i realised just after i hit "submit" of course.
FINALLY someone realises that hey, it's not the software that's doing the pirating. The software has actual legal (albeit underutilized) applications.
The users on the other hand, are the ones who take the tool and turn it to evil (insert diabolical music track here), depriving the MPAA of their hard-earned money. Except well, most of the 'bad users' buy a lot more music than the 'good users' anyway.. and the MPAA execs don't actually create the music they sell.. hrmm...
It'll be interesting to see what impact, if any, this will have on filesharing software in North America. Given the typical 'Our laws apply to you but yours don't apply to us' view of the US legal system, I'd say not much. Eh, at best it might give the software producers a safe haven in which to register their businesses. Go global village.
I use a lot of email and i read a lot of online texts... i'm a tech geek at heart. I love new technologies, gadgets, and gizmos as much as anyone. But there's a very good reason I'll never give up paper totally: Comfort. It's like the person who eats out at gourmet restaurants all the time, but can't resist a grilled cheese sandwich with canned tomato soup. It's comfort food for the mind. I love the smell of paper, the texture of it, and the way the printed word looks on it. Paper is a very tactile thing. It's there, you feel it. it's a part of your physical world. Words on a view screen will never compete with it, at least not for me. As an added bonus, I can read a book for 8 hours straight and not want to dig my eyes out with a spoon.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen to that.
That's one 'feature' that i'd love to see beat into the ground. Just about every product that has competitors (as most do) include those stupid @*()#&@( popups to reassociate them with format x. If i wanted program y associated with format x, i woulda left it checked when i installed the bloody thing.
At least most have the option to never show this again... realplayer is just a complete bitch for this, which is why i don't use it. ever. i'm also quickly getting fed up with quicktime's 'UPGRADE TO QUICKTIME PRO', adobe's "THERES MORE TO ACROBAT THAN JUST READER!", and winamp's "VERSION XXX IS NOW OUT! DOWNLOAD?".
but what pisses me off the most is no matter how often you uncheck or say no to all these things, they somehow get mysteriously 'reset' every few weeks.
And is it just me, or are those 'never show this message again' buttons getting fewer and fewer? nowadays they're buried somewhere in the nether regions of the user preferences section, with ever more obscure wording.
*shock* *gasp* *amazement* MS used underhanded tactics that were exposed in the trial and/or corporate emails. I feel like we're caught in a timewarp.
I wish once and for all that the general public and the US Court would realise that this is just another day at MS, and that we likely won't see the end of this type of MS BS til they actually implement either a breakup, or some other REAL sanctions.
If they won't play nicely with the other children, take away their toys. That's what parents do with spoiled children (at least they did when i was growing up).
it was only a matter of time before some unscrupulous ***hole took advantage of MS's unscrupulous coding to do something like this. The only surprise I got was that it took this long to happen, and is only now getting into the news. While I use IE for browsing, it's just because of things like this that I long ago disabled all active scripting, uninstalled flash, and never installed the MS virtual machine to begin with.
I also block any ad tracking site from setting cookies or sending popups through the nifty 'security' settings. Every time I find a cookie in my temp internet files that I don't recognize, the host automatically goes into 'ad tracking sites'.
Call me paranoid, but if it ain't plain HTML and static images, I don't wanna see it.
Which of course would render all their handy dandy little 'Click here to email this article to a friend!' links useless.
I agree that it's dumb for anyone to try and enforce this legally, but if they try to do it technically, they're screwing themselves too.
The idiotic part of this is, when i click on a deep-link, i often end up going to the homepage and checking out other information as well. They're so not losing anything here. it's silliness... ah well.. long live free enterprise with all its ugly flaws i guess.
www.mailwasher.net
it's easy to use (imports your mail addresses directly from most popular mail clients), scans the mail server and gives warnings on possible virii and spam. As a bonus, it not only lets you delete messages on the server before you download them to your email program, it also lets you send back fake bounces to spammers.
the interface isn't quite as nice as i'd like, but it does the job.
ohhh this is not by reflex. this is from hours upon hours of having to sit through every pay per view, monday night RAW and thursday night Smackdown when I cant win the battle. :D
While I have appreciation for the athletics involved, the rampant use of steroids (and yes it does go on...), the exploitative use of women (come on.. maybe two of em aren't just big breasts and long legs), the trite dialogue, and use of heros such as "Stone Cold" who exemplify the 'fuck you' attitude, doesn't rank highly in my opinion.
It's a soap opera for men, and as an entertainment/escapism show, it ranks high. But as intelligent entertainment.. it's not my cup of tea.
What's very sad is that I can now follow along with most of the story lines and history (my SO likes to give background info as we're going along). And yes i know i could leave the room or whatever..but i'd rather spend time with him even doing something i hate than isolating myself for four hours every week, limiting even more of our time together.
In retaliation, I make him sit with me and watch Neon Genesis
I remember waking up early on saturday mornings to be the first in front of the TV, remote control in hand, ready to battle my brothers for TV supremacy... me fighting for Transformers, Robotech, and other psuedo-anime cartoons, them battling for Hulk Hogan's Rock n Wrestling and other assorted WWF trash.
/NetworkCensor
How times change...
Now I battle with my boyfriend for TV supremacy when I want to watch my Macross and Neon Genesis DVDs or an anime toon marathon while HE wants to watch wrestling... *sigh* i couldn't just pick a fellow geek, could i?
What's that old parable about 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'?
On another note, as much as we might lambast the squeaky-clean lather, rinse, repeat beating the old anime imports took from the network censors, these were what introduced me to the entire genre in the first place. Had it not been for those cheesy edits of Robotech on Saturday mornings, I might never have started picking up the Macross movies when I came across them in the video stores. And god knows they would NEVER have made it on in their original formats... Network Censor "WHAT ARE THOSE?! NIPPLES?! ARE YOU *** CRAZY??"
Addendum:
Illinois Labor Board is located at
http://www2.state.il.us/ilrb/index.asp
IANA(american)L (but i did go to law schoolin Canada).
.02c
First thing i'd advise is talking to the local labour board. Find out if this is even legal. Don't assume it is just because they're putting it forth.. i've seen companies do some dirty things when it comes to money and employees to try and make a quick buck. If it is illegal, you might have some recourse with filing complaints, wrongful dismissal for those who get let go, etc etc. It will take some digging, but when a company is pulling crap like this, i'd say it's worth it.
Secondly (and this probably goes without saying) I'd look long and hard at whether you REALLY want to work at a place that pulls shit like this. The last straw for me at my last job was a dirty, below the belt non-compete agreement that we HAD to sign, otherwise we'd be terminated. The agreement basically forbid you to work on the net for gods sake. Almost everyone in our section took them to lawyers and asked a LOT of uncomfortable questions about the agreement. It somehow never got brought up again (at least for the remaining few weeks i was there).
Just my
The way an employee acts, in many cases, is a direct reflection of how you're treated by your employer.
In my last (regrettable) job, everyone was treated as an enemy (unless you were related to the boss, but lets not go there). The way people were scrutinized and monitored was ridiculous. Even those of us who'd been there for a while, and had proven ourselves 'loyal' were given this scrutiny. It ended up creating an environment where resentment and suspicion made one feel they were under seige. That atmosphere fostered more employee dishonesty than anywhere i've worked before or since. I still remember the
Of course, the places I worked before and after treated people with a 'we'll trust you until you do something to destroy that trust' mentality, which I'm finding is rarer and rarer these days. But you know what? The crew at the place I'm at now is completely loyal, the turnover is practically nil, and the job satisfaction surveys are at about 90%. Compare that to my last job...
In summary, do unto others yadda yadda... if you treat your employees like criminals from day one, they won't disappoint you.
A related article on using fingerprint technology to protect sensitive information can be found here. Worth a read... discusses low-cost biometric authenticators... testing notes and info.
Ok.. seriously.. i've seen a few postings on identity thefts, the inherent fallacies of fingerprinting technology, the lack of three dimensional recognition... but what really scares me is...
THESE BASTARDS ARE GONNA AD-TARGET ME!
On a serious note though, I'd be more concerned about targetted marketing and advertising from the supermarket itself than identity theft and mistaken fingerprints.
Think about it.. they'll have your name, your address, and your shopping habits. my gramma asks me to nip down to the grocery store for her.. next thing you know, i'm getting samples of preperation H and Depends shipped right to my door.
That time of the month? Don't worry, we've been tracking that too! This handy dandy sample of Playtex tampons will show up JUST IN TIME! (oh wait.. that one could actually be useful).
Gah. No thanks.. think i'll skip the fingerprinting and keep paying with cash. At least til they come out with a wrist chip implant...
There's a simple reason for the lack of good support for companies out there: companies are unwilling to spend the money and give benefits to retain good tech support employees.
:D
Raise your hand anyone out there who's worked some form of tech support/help desk in the past. I have. And just about anyone who has will tell you that 1) It's HARD WORK. even for those who know what they're doing. 2) it's DRAINING work, especially emotionally. Hours upon hours of abuse from some moron who put in his own phone number instead of the phone number he's supposed to dial, and being told you HAVE to fix problem X with program Y because its YOUR FAULT that it broke wears on a person.
The stress leads to burnout. the burnout leads to quitting. The quitting leads to massive overturn, which leads to a scramble for new employees, who are rushed out with improper training, etc etc. It's a vicious cycle.
Here's another reason:
Any call centre type environment works on a lowest common denominator level. The tech support workers who DO know what they're doing are lumped in with joe blow who wouldn't know a modem from his ass; extremely disgruntled knowledgeable employees desert in droves for a job that will actually get them some respect ASAP. The low pay and high stress means that for the most part, only people desperate to hold down jobs apply. Call centres are desperate nowadays and take just about anyone who can fill out an application.
No, i'm not saying that every tech support agent is like that. there are SOME who enjoy this work, and all the more power to them. But it's not easy, and it's not going to get any better. Career advancement potential is limited and so are the pay and benefits.
I think I've ranted enough for now so i'll just leave off there and let someone else pick it up later
Might as well be me.
1) Imagine a beowolf cluster...
2) Can that thing run Quake?
3) Finally! A harddrive big enough for my MP3 collection!
Seriously though, it's nice to see these companies working together to further common platforms. And running linux! If this doesn't show the power of linux scalability, nothing EVER will.
Someone's doing something right! It's about time they attempted a business model that's more in line with the price/times.
One can only hope that this doesn't fall flat on its face. I'd hate to see this service cancelled because the record companies scream too much about 'lost revenue' due to trades/etc. But from the few details in the article, they have a decent business model set up.
Having said all that, there are still alot of questions that need answering. The article's short on technical details. I'd love to hear from someone who's familiar with the business. What format will the songs be in? Have they come up with a proprietary file type? How'd they manage to get the record companies to agree? How do they control who gets to download the music (ie - can I download from their site even though I'm not in India) ?
I'd be very interested in statistics on usage, downloads, burn rate, etc. This is going to be a fun one to track.
*smack*
There are so many reasons that disallowing the sale of used books is silly that I can't even begin to list them all.. so I'll just elaborate on my own personal experiences.
I read a lot. And do I ever mean a LOT. I average two to three books a week, I'm a card carrying discount member of four bookstores, and I'm in two book of the month clubs. I buy a lot of new books.
I also buy a lot of used books. Why? Because while I make a good salary, I'm far from rich. A new book in paperback costs in the range of 9 - 12 dollars canadian (first one that makes a 'what is that, 10 cents US joke?' gets a huge smack). For hardcovers, my preferred format, you're looking at 25 - 40 CDN. My book habit ends up costing me more than most addicts' crack habits.
So where do i turn? Used books. Roughly 25% of my books are used. When I want to try a new series, or the book kinda looks ok but i'm not sure, or i'm looking for something that's out of print, I'm going to head to the used book store.
Does this mean I buy fewer new books? nope. In fact, the opposite is often true. If I like a new author (new to me anyway), i'll often go and buy an entire series of their books, all shiny new, dropping as much as 1 - 200 CDN in a single trip, and if i don't like the book, then most likely it was under $5 so no harm no foul.
It's a lot of money, but for a book junkie/collecter, there's nothing quite so satisfying as an uncreased, undamaged book sitting on the shelf that you know will be there for years. As great as getting a book at a discount is, they're rarely in pristine condition. They're usually dog-eared and slightly rumpled with creases in the spine. For display-phobes like me, I want that clean, crisp cover with the perfectly preserved dust jacket. A silly obsession i know, but hey... how many stero fanatics out there spend thousands on getting 'just the right sound'?
I also lend/borrow/trade books with friends. Better place me on the top ten wanted list.
Hell, even the RIAA doesn't try to regulate the sale of used CDs and casettes.
Unfortunately, there are a few (isolated) cases in which legislation would be nice.
Spamming is one of those cases, and here's why:
In any other advertising medium, from television to magazines to radio, the burden is on the advertiser to pay for the production of the ad, pay for the timeslot its played in. The medium through which we receive this ad (be it a radio station or whatever) sells space to the advertiser to balance out the cost of providing radio entertainment to the masses. If you don't want to hear that ad, you turn it off. It doesn't affect you.
Now, let's turn to spam. The creater of a spam email generally uses free/cheap/cracked software. At most they're shelling out for a cheap dialup, or using one of the many 'free AOL for a month' CDs to not pay anything at all. The spammer then routes that email for free through open relays to hide where the email is coming from to make it harder for people to track him/her, passing on the cost of the bandwidth they use to the ISP. The ISP, who has to pay for that bandwidth, isn't going to take it out of their own pockets (this is a capitalist society after all), they're going to pass the bill on to the consumer, resulting in fee increases.
The receiver of the email has no choice but to sort through email to delete it. We've all heard the argument that 'it only takes a few seconds to delete an email'. But what happens when you are deluged with hundreds of spam emails a day? Multiply that by 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and those seconds add up. Now, while some people might not think those few seconds are worth anything, I personally find it incredibly annoying when I have to take half an hour out of every week sorting through email to figure out what's crap and what isn't.
Filtering? Ok. as long as the spammer is kind enough to place a big "ADV" in the header. What about those that don't (which is the vast majority). How does one distinguish between a spammer and a friend who use re: your question as the subject?
One could go all the way and only those who you know to email you, but that doesn't really cut it if you're using email for business purposes (like I do).
If you follow these arguments to their conclusions, we can either a: track down each spammer in a sort of internet vigilante justice and disable them, which is illegal, time consuming, and wouldn't do a damn thing, or b: give those who are taken advantage of by spammers a lawful way to make these people pay for the bandwidth they suck up in their quest to bring penis enlargers and hot barely legal teens to the world.
This is the most ridiculous article I've read in a while.
Yes a lot of sites are going to subscriptions for premium content, but there are, and always will be, THOUSANDS of sites out there that offer free content, or at least some free content with premiums for those who subscribe.
Yes popup ads are annoying. But who among us is so dumb as to not know how to disable these things?
And yes, MS has gotten a lot of people into a chokehold and continues to offer inferior products at outrageous prices. But damnit people, we have ALTERNATIVES.
As bleak as this future is, it's the future for those who are uneducated and unsophisticated enough to fall for the idiocy that these businesses push. Those of us with two brain cells to rub together will always be able to find alternative sources of news/information/software.
And in my final rant of the hour, the DMCA is a US law. Believe it or not, it doesn't apply to the entire world, and one would hope that the rest of the free world can grasp the fact that some of us do indeed have a seperate legal system.
You actually had me going there for five minutes you bastards. I had to look twice, think about it, then realise hey, it's april fool's.
Now I think I'll go call my mother and tell her I'm pregnant out of wedlock. That should turn a few hairs grey.
Now, I wasn't there for this, but I do recall a few stories of how, when TV first became a household item, people would watch constantly, even taking it into the dining room to watch during dinner.
/.), unless something's relevent to me personally (local news for example), I'm just not interested in surfing the net for nonsense anymore. The sheer glut of porn and badly designed, useless sites has increased to an insane degree; the new sites i find that actually hold my interest for more than two clicks of a mouse are few and far between. Sure, it was fun when the net was new, but nowadays I'd sooner read a book.
The novelty soon wore off, with the parental units now demanding that the tv be off during mealtimes (at least in my home), and that tv was for after homework.
The same goes for the Net as an entertainment medium. While the use of the net for work (email, conferencing, etc) has increased steadily, the stats have been showing for quite some time that pure 'silly' surfing has declined. And after using a computer all day, every day for years during my work life, the LAST thing i want to do when I get home is sit in front of another computer screen.
For me, I just got bored with the whole thing. Other than a few staples (like uffie and
At one point I'd probably have qualified as an internet 'compulsive', chatting constantly, losing out on sleep and socializing cause I HAD to be on the net, surfing with one hand while typing frantically in chat rooms with the other... now I chat rarely (in 5 to 10 minute bursts every few days), and my morning surf lasts about 30 minutes tops as I check news and information sites for my fix. Things change, people evolve... personally, I see this as A Good Thing (tm). If i ever started slipping back into my old habits, i'd toss my computer straight onto the garbage heap.
K yah. swap in RIAA for MPAA *slaps forehead*. I forgot to proofread. How on earth did i confuse one huge, money grubbing entity for another huge, money grubbing entity? Bad me. :P
and sometimes that 2 minute posting delay is a huge PITA
heh. yah i know.. i posted a reply to my own comment when i'd realised what i'd done...
gee.. how i managed to confuse two power-hungry money-grubbing entertainment entities just baffles me... but yah it was a dumb mistake *grins* which i realised just after i hit "submit" of course.
FINALLY someone realises that hey, it's not the software that's doing the pirating. The software has actual legal (albeit underutilized) applications.
The users on the other hand, are the ones who take the tool and turn it to evil (insert diabolical music track here), depriving the MPAA of their hard-earned money. Except well, most of the 'bad users' buy a lot more music than the 'good users' anyway.. and the MPAA execs don't actually create the music they sell.. hrmm...
It'll be interesting to see what impact, if any, this will have on filesharing software in North America. Given the typical 'Our laws apply to you but yours don't apply to us' view of the US legal system, I'd say not much. Eh, at best it might give the software producers a safe haven in which to register their businesses. Go global village.
I use a lot of email and i read a lot of online texts... i'm a tech geek at heart. I love new technologies, gadgets, and gizmos as much as anyone.
But there's a very good reason I'll never give up paper totally: Comfort.
It's like the person who eats out at gourmet restaurants all the time, but can't resist a grilled cheese sandwich with canned tomato soup. It's comfort food for the mind.
I love the smell of paper, the texture of it, and the way the printed word looks on it. Paper is a very tactile thing. It's there, you feel it. it's a part of your physical world. Words on a view screen will never compete with it, at least not for me.
As an added bonus, I can read a book for 8 hours straight and not want to dig my eyes out with a spoon.