The truth of the matter is these people are going to poke fun and crack jokes no matter what... if they're that against Gentoo.
Hell, even many of us Gentoo users make jokes about the compile time. Installing Gentoo 2004.2 on my P4 took nearly a full day. Emerging KDE still makes me shudder.
I'm not knocking the OS at all. I wouldn't build from scratch unless I really wanted to. But it does take some time.
I think you're confused about which program this is talking about.
Indeed, this was the source of my confusion. I was thinking of AdWords. I discovered the second program, AdSense, after checking out Google's site. Really, what my original message addressed was the entire "force advertisers to pay for the clicks" quote by Mr. Reyes.
My suggestion that Google should remove the commission was simply an ill-worded suggestion to alter or scrap the program, since it is so easily abused.
Firstly, if you sign up with Google Ads to show ads on your site then keep clicking on the ads to earn money, you are committing fraud.
Well, I had a peek at the Google AdSense website and found this:
Google AdSense offers more ways for you to earn money while making your site more useful for visitors. Along with targeted advertising for your content pages, you can add a Google search box to your site and show targeted ads on search results pages. When visitors click on these ads, Google pays you.
So I guess Google does offer "commission" after all. I thought that Google Ads merely promoted your site via "sponsored links" and whatnot in return for payment. Could a simple solution be to just remove the commission, then?
f you do a Google search that brings up your competitors ads, then you click on all their ads, you are costing your competitor money and using up their advertising budget. However, you haven't signed any acceptable use policy, so legally I don't see how you are doing anything wrong.
This was pretty much what I was getting at. I didn't know about the second problem above.
...if you're doing it on your own site you're profiting from fraudulent activity.
Maybe my understanding of Google Ads is wrong, but wouldn't clicking those links take you directly to your competitor's site, thus denying your own site any business?
As for profiting via self-hosted scripts and whatnot, you're not. Your competitor is losing money, but you're not making any. There are no referral bonuses with Google Ads, to my knowledge.
It would definitely be to my benefit if I could make you pay out excessive amounts of your advertising budget by repeated clicking on your ad, because you're supposed to be paying Google per click.
But this is what I was getting at. You're paying Google "per click" as per your agreement. It's not as if this was unknown to you when you signed up for Google Ads. 1,000 clicks from one visitor costs you the same as 1,000 clicks from randon web surfers. The only difference is that one individual is unethically the root of all of these clicks.
I don't know that it would be fraud exactly, because I wouldn't getting money from you under false pretences.
Again, this is why I don't see this as an "illegal" practice.
I'm not disagree with you outright. I just don't see how signing up for a particular business model, and then having an undersirable effects happen to you as a result of pre-agreed upon conditions, is breaking any laws. It just sucks.
Reyes, speaking at an investor conference sponsored by Credit Suisse First Boston, was referring to an illegal practice known as "click fraud" that occurs when individuals click on ad links that appear next to search results in order to force advertisers to pay for the clicks.
I have trouble understanding how this is "illegal". Certainly unethical, but that's not the same thing.
I mean, as an advertiser, you enter into an agreement that you will use this "pay-per-click" model to promote your product. Obviously, this can be tampered with by having someone click your link non-stop. But what constitutes "too many" clicks? If I'm a small business, I can be hurt by even a fraction of clicks that some of the larger corporations can get.
I can see how Google has to take some steps to prevent people from doing this. I can also see how advertisers have to be more aware of this problem. But how exactly is it "illegal" for me to, say, repeatedly click on a link? The people who sponsored that link -- who agreed that they would sell their product via "pay per click" -- knew this and went ahead with it anyway. Can I be indicted for fraud charges for clicking 1,000,000 times? How about 100,000? How about 1,000? Or 100?
That's because taking your car would be an act of theft, leaving you with no car. It is not the same as copying a program, whereby you would not lose anything tangible.
Sure, but consider extending that analogy a little. Instead of stealing his car, you simply head down to his garage in the middle of the night with a team of designers. You scope out his wheels, make some notes, and go back to your own garage wherein you assemble a copy of his car.
A software program isn't simply a collection of parts, much like a car isn't simply a collection of components. It's got style. Possibly poor style, but that's beside the point. Some programs are simple utilities to do simple jobs. Other programs are grandoise applications, each with its own flair and feature set.
If I had built myself a custom hotrod, all pimped out and dressed to the nines in spiffy hand-designed accessories, and somebody had come around and copied it, I'd be a little pissed off. So while it may not be illegal (trespassing overlooked), it's understandably aggrivating. I imagine that a number of people might want to "protect" their work from this type of thing.
Just looking at it from the other side. I'm more of an abandonware-as-freely-available supporter myself.
Consumer: "I'd like ProgramX, please." Producer: "I'm sorry, we stopped making ProgramX a few years ago." Consumer: "Oh, well where can I purchase a copy then?" Producer: "I'm sorry, you cannot purchase a copy of ProgramX." Consumer: "What if I copy ProgramX from a friend who has it then?" Producer: "Copying ProgramX is illegal, because it denies us a sale." Consumer: "But where can I buy ProgramX?" Producer: "I'm sorry, you cannot purchase a copy of ProgramX."
Not to mention what would happen if you didn't put the bags in a can, and it was a bit too long before the trash man came by...
I had initially thought that, as well, but I think the photodegrading process took a few weeks to really kick-start. You'd have to have a lengthy garbage strike before that became an issue.
I did a quick search, and didn't find anything to support this rumour yet. Then again, this was just before everything under the sun was archived on the Internet.
Biodegradable plastics have been around for a while now and this seems to be more of a marketing gimmick than anything else.
Indeed. I recall (years ago) hearing a push by some company promoting their photodegradable trash bags. They were really driving the whole "it produces less waste" mantra until a number of people pointed out that most bags were buried by a thin layer of dirt to keep in the smell, and to keep out pests, thus rendering the bags useless.
Then again, I didn't do much checking to see whether this was actually the case or not.
would it have killed you, Mr. Gates, to have named the two most commonly-used directories on a Windows box "/Programs" and "/Users"
Well, when Win95 first came out, one of the "features" being touted was the ability to use spaces -- and up to 255 characters -- to be "more like proper English". For a number of people, this was a welcome change to the 8.3 mindset.
Of course, I'm not saying that Microsoft couldn't have provided this ability and still named those folders "Programs" and "Users" respectively, but by doing so, Microsoft was demonstrating their new feature. And they were doing so in such a way that people who wanted this feature would not be content to stick with conventional 8.3 OSes like DOS. It was a simple push to upgrade, as Redmond is so fond of doing.
HAD the election been accidentally given to Bush, now that Kerry has conceded, what would the legal recourse be?
I imagine that a proper recount (somehow) in your scenario would declare Kerry the winner. A concession is not legally binding. See here. If your scenario was the case, Kerry would be the president.
any LCD that uses 30-40 watts is horribly inefficient.
Good to hear that LCDs have improved even more. As I found on the Samsung and LG site in response to another post, their recent CRT offerings are still churning out around 80W each. Your LCD is nearly 25% of their CRTs. Nice.
Well, Samsung's recent 17" CRT consumes 80W, whereas LG's latest consumes 103W. I'd say the info isn't that dated, w.r.t. the companies involved. It's still twice an LCD.
But don't imagine that LCDs are a good environmental option. Almost certainly the single best thing you can do to save energy is to forcibly enable power saving mode for all PCs
But wouldn't a better environmental option be to enable power saving mode with an LCD screen? Double-whammy.
You're thinking (as the businessmen do) in terms of dollars and cents. I'm thinking in terms of environmental preservation. Both valid, just different foci.
you should see inventors perusing/searching the patent database on a regular basis
Except that, where I work, engineers are told to avoid looking in the patent database. That way, the company cannot be sued for "willful patent infringement" when they inadvertently develop something that's similar to something that's already patented.
Slashdot Mirror
The truth of the matter is these people are going to poke fun and crack jokes no matter what ... if they're that against Gentoo.
Hell, even many of us Gentoo users make jokes about the compile time. Installing Gentoo 2004.2 on my P4 took nearly a full day. Emerging KDE still makes me shudder.
I'm not knocking the OS at all. I wouldn't build from scratch unless I really wanted to. But it does take some time.
I think you're confused about which program this is talking about.
Indeed, this was the source of my confusion. I was thinking of AdWords. I discovered the second program, AdSense, after checking out Google's site. Really, what my original message addressed was the entire "force advertisers to pay for the clicks" quote by Mr. Reyes.
My suggestion that Google should remove the commission was simply an ill-worded suggestion to alter or scrap the program, since it is so easily abused.
Cheers.
IT'S A BUNCH OF MASCOTS FIGHTING EACHOTHER! The mascots aren't dead.
Well then, you're not using the right key combinations and attacks.
Firstly, if you sign up with Google Ads to show ads on your site then keep clicking on the ads to earn money, you are committing fraud.
Well, I had a peek at the Google AdSense website and found this:
Google AdSense offers more ways for you to earn money while making your site more useful for visitors. Along with targeted advertising for your content pages, you can add a Google search box to your site and show targeted ads on search results pages. When visitors click on these ads, Google pays you.
So I guess Google does offer "commission" after all. I thought that Google Ads merely promoted your site via "sponsored links" and whatnot in return for payment. Could a simple solution be to just remove the commission, then?
f you do a Google search that brings up your competitors ads, then you click on all their ads, you are costing your competitor money and using up their advertising budget. However, you haven't signed any acceptable use policy, so legally I don't see how you are doing anything wrong.
This was pretty much what I was getting at. I didn't know about the second problem above.
Maybe my understanding of Google Ads is wrong, but wouldn't clicking those links take you directly to your competitor's site, thus denying your own site any business?
As for profiting via self-hosted scripts and whatnot, you're not. Your competitor is losing money, but you're not making any. There are no referral bonuses with Google Ads, to my knowledge.
I could be wrong.
It would definitely be to my benefit if I could make you pay out excessive amounts of your advertising budget by repeated clicking on your ad, because you're supposed to be paying Google per click.
But this is what I was getting at. You're paying Google "per click" as per your agreement. It's not as if this was unknown to you when you signed up for Google Ads. 1,000 clicks from one visitor costs you the same as 1,000 clicks from randon web surfers. The only difference is that one individual is unethically the root of all of these clicks.
I don't know that it would be fraud exactly, because I wouldn't getting money from you under false pretences.
Again, this is why I don't see this as an "illegal" practice.
I'm not disagree with you outright. I just don't see how signing up for a particular business model, and then having an undersirable effects happen to you as a result of pre-agreed upon conditions, is breaking any laws. It just sucks.
Reyes, speaking at an investor conference sponsored by Credit Suisse First Boston, was referring to an illegal practice known as "click fraud" that occurs when individuals click on ad links that appear next to search results in order to force advertisers to pay for the clicks.
I have trouble understanding how this is "illegal". Certainly unethical, but that's not the same thing.
I mean, as an advertiser, you enter into an agreement that you will use this "pay-per-click" model to promote your product. Obviously, this can be tampered with by having someone click your link non-stop. But what constitutes "too many" clicks? If I'm a small business, I can be hurt by even a fraction of clicks that some of the larger corporations can get.
I can see how Google has to take some steps to prevent people from doing this. I can also see how advertisers have to be more aware of this problem. But how exactly is it "illegal" for me to, say, repeatedly click on a link? The people who sponsored that link -- who agreed that they would sell their product via "pay per click" -- knew this and went ahead with it anyway. Can I be indicted for fraud charges for clicking 1,000,000 times? How about 100,000? How about 1,000? Or 100?
Unethical, but why illegal?
I've seen NetNation advertised a fair bit. They'll issue .ca domains for $15CAD. Haven't tried them yet, though.
That's because taking your car would be an act of theft, leaving you with no car. It is not the same as copying a program, whereby you would not lose anything tangible.
Sure, but consider extending that analogy a little. Instead of stealing his car, you simply head down to his garage in the middle of the night with a team of designers. You scope out his wheels, make some notes, and go back to your own garage wherein you assemble a copy of his car.
A software program isn't simply a collection of parts, much like a car isn't simply a collection of components. It's got style. Possibly poor style, but that's beside the point. Some programs are simple utilities to do simple jobs. Other programs are grandoise applications, each with its own flair and feature set.
If I had built myself a custom hotrod, all pimped out and dressed to the nines in spiffy hand-designed accessories, and somebody had come around and copied it, I'd be a little pissed off. So while it may not be illegal (trespassing overlooked), it's understandably aggrivating. I imagine that a number of people might want to "protect" their work from this type of thing.
Just looking at it from the other side. I'm more of an abandonware-as-freely-available supporter myself.
What's that got to do with copyright?
The argument goes something like this:
Consumer: "I'd like ProgramX, please."
Producer: "I'm sorry, we stopped making ProgramX a few years ago."
Consumer: "Oh, well where can I purchase a copy then?"
Producer: "I'm sorry, you cannot purchase a copy of ProgramX."
Consumer: "What if I copy ProgramX from a friend who has it then?"
Producer: "Copying ProgramX is illegal, because it denies us a sale."
Consumer: "But where can I buy ProgramX?"
Producer: "I'm sorry, you cannot purchase a copy of ProgramX."
Or something like that.
Not to mention what would happen if you didn't put the bags in a can, and it was a bit too long before the trash man came by...
I had initially thought that, as well, but I think the photodegrading process took a few weeks to really kick-start. You'd have to have a lengthy garbage strike before that became an issue.
I did a quick search, and didn't find anything to support this rumour yet. Then again, this was just before everything under the sun was archived on the Internet.
Biodegradable plastics have been around for a while now and this seems to be more of a marketing gimmick than anything else.
Indeed. I recall (years ago) hearing a push by some company promoting their photodegradable trash bags. They were really driving the whole "it produces less waste" mantra until a number of people pointed out that most bags were buried by a thin layer of dirt to keep in the smell, and to keep out pests, thus rendering the bags useless.
Then again, I didn't do much checking to see whether this was actually the case or not.
Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?"
Wouldn't planting your Mac produce an apple tree?
would it have killed you, Mr. Gates, to have named the two most commonly-used directories on a Windows box "/Programs" and "/Users"
Well, when Win95 first came out, one of the "features" being touted was the ability to use spaces -- and up to 255 characters -- to be "more like proper English". For a number of people, this was a welcome change to the 8.3 mindset.
Of course, I'm not saying that Microsoft couldn't have provided this ability and still named those folders "Programs" and "Users" respectively, but by doing so, Microsoft was demonstrating their new feature. And they were doing so in such a way that people who wanted this feature would not be content to stick with conventional 8.3 OSes like DOS. It was a simple push to upgrade, as Redmond is so fond of doing.
Point and Click Linuxcomes with version XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Gee, Linux is way ahead of Apple these days. They're only up to OS X.
HAD the election been accidentally given to Bush, now that Kerry has conceded, what would the legal recourse be?
I imagine that a proper recount (somehow) in your scenario would declare Kerry the winner. A concession is not legally binding. See here. If your scenario was the case, Kerry would be the president.
no longer will GNU be GNU isNot UNIX!
Yes, but GAU Ain't UNIX doesn't have that same academic feel to it...
any LCD that uses 30-40 watts is horribly inefficient.
Good to hear that LCDs have improved even more. As I found on the Samsung and LG site in response to another post, their recent CRT offerings are still churning out around 80W each. Your LCD is nearly 25% of their CRTs. Nice.
Unless, as some have claimed, the LCD manufacturing process hurts the environment more than the CRT manufacturing process.
Fair enough. I must say, though, that I've never heard that argument concerning LCDs before. Any studies on this?
17" specs here. Apparently the "Show 17" monitors" option on LGs site doesn't strip "featured" 19" monitors.
Well, Samsung's recent 17" CRT consumes 80W, whereas LG's latest consumes 103W. I'd say the info isn't that dated, w.r.t. the companies involved. It's still twice an LCD.
But don't imagine that LCDs are a good environmental option. Almost certainly the single best thing you can do to save energy is to forcibly enable power saving mode for all PCs
But wouldn't a better environmental option be to enable power saving mode with an LCD screen? Double-whammy.
You're thinking (as the businessmen do) in terms of dollars and cents. I'm thinking in terms of environmental preservation. Both valid, just different foci.
"Every dolphin wants prosthetic tail fins on their real fins..."
Thin CRTs offer the best of both worlds -- superior picture quality with a slim size.
Of course, one of the other bonuses of LCD screens is their low power consumption. Good for the electricity bill, and for Mother Nature.
At a 20% reduction, that comes out to between 80-90W, compared to 30-40W for LCDs.
you should see inventors perusing/searching the patent database on a regular basis
Except that, where I work, engineers are told to avoid looking in the patent database. That way, the company cannot be sued for "willful patent infringement" when they inadvertently develop something that's similar to something that's already patented.