"your system is not optimized" or "your system is vulnerable to spyware"
Or my favorite, "Your Computer is broadcasting an IP Address!" I believe these ads are for Evidence Eliminator, the one company scummier than WhenU and Gator.
Clear Channel is getting exactly what they want. Unlike most monopolies, they are actually forward thinking. They are thinking about what they want to monopolize next, which will be XM radio. They already have a stake in it, and I'm sure a full buyout of XM will be coming soon. The idea is to make the FCC regulate FM and AM radio to the extent that anything that's ever so slightly controversial will not be allowed over the airwaves. The only way anyone can broadcast a show such as Howard Stern, Mancow, Bob & Tom, Loveline, etc. will be over XM radio. Hence, there will be more XM subscribers paying $10 a month for what used to be free. Once this happens, you can bet that the price of an XM subscription will skyrocket.
The rent on these places is about half of what it would be a couple of blocks from the tracks in the same neighborhood. This could have a lot to do with why he tolerates the trains. I can see how people deal with a constant noise, like a waterfall. But when its intermittent like that, I have no idea how the body can learn to tune it out.
I say these devices are OK as long as I am also allowed to duct tape the mouths of annoying people whose conversations I don't want to hear. Why do some people think they have the right to decide who gets to talk in a public place? That being said, I do agree that using a phone during a movie is about the rudest thing you can do, but if you were loudly talking to the person next to you, its basically the same thing. What we need is for people to learn these things called manners.
that chirping tone from the two-way walkie talkie feature
This is why I absolutely HATE Nextels. Are they purposely designed to be as annoying as possible? Who needs a loud chirp every 30 seconds just because they have a message waiting?
This is exactly why I haven't bought any Red Hot Chili Peppers CDs. I actually like their music, but if I hear it on the radio every 20 minutes before the CD is even in stores, I'm pretty much sick of it by then. That's the problem with flavor-of-the-week marketing, you've got to get lots of different flavors since they wear out so fast.
Re:Good... down with Real
on
Real Problems
·
· Score: 1
It doesn't seem to take a whole lot of knowledge of business or technology to be able to figure out that pissing off your customers is not a viable long term business strategy.
Re:Good... down with Real
on
Real Problems
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
How about subsidizing the free player with sales of the streaming server products? Oh wait, they already are, but they can't get enough people to buy their overpriced server offerings to make this work. As has been pointed out in previous Real Player discussions, the people at Real have no clue how to run a tech company and are dense as rocks when it comes to making good business decisions.
Providing a vigorous defense, where the client's interests are represented to the fullest, is much different than manufacturing evidence to be used in a baseless lawsuit which is part of a stock scam. If this can all be proven, I'd say Boies could definitely face criminal charges for helping with the fraud along with professional sanctions for legal misconduct, which would probably mean being disbarred. We can only cross our fingers and hope that this scumbag is never allowed to file a lawsuit again.
Trojan - executable file that pretends to be something the luser wants but is really malicious.
In this case, why are programs like Gator not removed by anti-virus software? By all definitions, Gator (or is it now Claria) and similar programs are Trojans. If the user knew what it would do to their system, they would have never installed it. Then there are the reports of "drive by downloading". If this isn't trojan activity, then what is?
Kind of like how SCO created its Linux licensing program to help companies grow their businesses. Seriously, they say that on their website. Companies want you to THINK that everything they do is helpful and for your benefit no matter how hard they are actually screwing you.
This is exactly what French companies must do, and as a result, there is not much economic growth in France. When it costs so much to hire people and its so hard to fire them, not surprisingly companys don't want to hire unless absolutely necessary, which translates into double digit unemployment.
It wouldn't cause any more ridicule than naming a kid Pubert, which is a name I have actually heard of. But seriously, some people should be arrested for child abuse for coming up with some of these horrendously stupid names.
How many people die each year that DO have health insurance? While I definitely agree that its better to have insurance than not, the uninsured do have options in the U.S. In fact, public health care for the uninsured is in some cases better than government run health systems in a lot of other countries. The government does not exactly have a track record of making things cheaper once they get involved. Now if you were arguing for some sort of voucher type of things for lower income families or some new regulation system that would make it cheaper for individuals to purchase insurance, that might be a good idea.
If parts of Windows were found to have been illegally copied from someone else's code (which has happened before), I don't see how the end users could be held responsible since they don't even have access to the source. Not only do they not have a duty to check Microsoft's source for infringing code, they don't even have the ability to do so. With open source products, the end user does have access to the source. Whether the user would be liable for infringement would vary depending on the circumstances, but it is at least more of a possibility. Although it looks like SCO has no case, this are issues that need to be addressed if someone were to come along and make SCO-type of claims and actually have evidence to back them up.
TiVO has only "proven" that people will watch particularly appealing ads. once or twice.
Hmm, maybe if advertisers made their commercials more appealing and relevant and stopped showing the same damn commercial during every commercial break for 2 months straight, people just might watch them! I know commercials are expensive to produce, but if a commercial is supposed to be funny, witty, entertaining, etc. it is most definitely going to lose its appeal the 500th time I've seen it.
I think that laws should definitely be passed that make it a lot harder to run a company based on patent squatting. Unfortunately, laws requiring the patent holder to have a commercial interest in their patented item would be easy to work around. A company like CrapFlood (sorry, IdeaFlood) would merely have to come up with some 'product' that would be for sale on their website, such as a 'subdomain configurator'. Nevermind that it would be worthless and nobody would actually buy it, it would count as commercial use under such a law. Nonetheless, I certainly agree with you that patents should not be commoditized like they currently are. I just think it will be difficult to legally define this without leaving room for loopholes.
They'll just have to come up with a regulatory structure that encourages compliance, not avoidance. SBC regularly gets fined for anticompetitive behavior regarding local competition and DSL providers, but continues to do it and thinks of the fines as just another business expense. If they were bigger, I doubt that would be the case.
This would work about as well as "competitive" DSL, where the phone company monopoly ensures that nobody else can compete (and stay in business, that is).
Although there's something to be said for gambling causing societal problems, it is not the government's job to protect people from themselves. If someone has poor money management skills, they will find a way to piss away all their cash, whether gambling is legal or not. A fool and his money are soon parted, no matter how many laws are passed.
Nobody really agreed to abide by it, once they actually understood the thing. It sounded great at first but then nations realized it would bankrupt their manufacturing economy. And before anyone says it was a Bush thing, the senate voted, before Bush took office, 98-0 in favor of scrapping it. Clinton signed it in his final days to make himself look good, knowing he wouldn't be around for the fallout.
Goodbye free email as well. I'm sure there will be various administrative costs associated with this new system (to ensure that your server can never be used for spam) that will be a lot more than 2 grand a year. It will be a lot harder for Hotmail and Yahoo to justify having free email access.
I'm just really interested to see if society ever reaches an advertising saturation point, where people become immune to ads because they see so damn many of them. Or when the ads become so invasive that people are turned off and offended by them. Who am I kidding, there are people who still buy penis enlargement pills from spammers! Advertising has a long future ahead.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always said that if cars weren't so useful, they would have been banned a long time ago for safety reasons.
"your system is not optimized" or "your system is vulnerable to spyware"
Or my favorite, "Your Computer is broadcasting an IP Address!" I believe these ads are for Evidence Eliminator, the one company scummier than WhenU and Gator.
Clear Channel is getting exactly what they want. Unlike most monopolies, they are actually forward thinking. They are thinking about what they want to monopolize next, which will be XM radio. They already have a stake in it, and I'm sure a full buyout of XM will be coming soon. The idea is to make the FCC regulate FM and AM radio to the extent that anything that's ever so slightly controversial will not be allowed over the airwaves. The only way anyone can broadcast a show such as Howard Stern, Mancow, Bob & Tom, Loveline, etc. will be over XM radio. Hence, there will be more XM subscribers paying $10 a month for what used to be free. Once this happens, you can bet that the price of an XM subscription will skyrocket.
The rent on these places is about half of what it would be a couple of blocks from the tracks in the same neighborhood. This could have a lot to do with why he tolerates the trains. I can see how people deal with a constant noise, like a waterfall. But when its intermittent like that, I have no idea how the body can learn to tune it out.
I say these devices are OK as long as I am also allowed to duct tape the mouths of annoying people whose conversations I don't want to hear. Why do some people think they have the right to decide who gets to talk in a public place? That being said, I do agree that using a phone during a movie is about the rudest thing you can do, but if you were loudly talking to the person next to you, its basically the same thing. What we need is for people to learn these things called manners.
that chirping tone from the two-way walkie talkie feature
This is why I absolutely HATE Nextels. Are they purposely designed to be as annoying as possible? Who needs a loud chirp every 30 seconds just because they have a message waiting?
This is exactly why I haven't bought any Red Hot Chili Peppers CDs. I actually like their music, but if I hear it on the radio every 20 minutes before the CD is even in stores, I'm pretty much sick of it by then. That's the problem with flavor-of-the-week marketing, you've got to get lots of different flavors since they wear out so fast.
It doesn't seem to take a whole lot of knowledge of business or technology to be able to figure out that pissing off your customers is not a viable long term business strategy.
How about subsidizing the free player with sales of the streaming server products? Oh wait, they already are, but they can't get enough people to buy their overpriced server offerings to make this work. As has been pointed out in previous Real Player discussions, the people at Real have no clue how to run a tech company and are dense as rocks when it comes to making good business decisions.
Providing a vigorous defense, where the client's interests are represented to the fullest, is much different than manufacturing evidence to be used in a baseless lawsuit which is part of a stock scam. If this can all be proven, I'd say Boies could definitely face criminal charges for helping with the fraud along with professional sanctions for legal misconduct, which would probably mean being disbarred. We can only cross our fingers and hope that this scumbag is never allowed to file a lawsuit again.
Trojan - executable file that pretends to be something the luser wants but is really malicious.
In this case, why are programs like Gator not removed by anti-virus software? By all definitions, Gator (or is it now Claria) and similar programs are Trojans. If the user knew what it would do to their system, they would have never installed it. Then there are the reports of "drive by downloading". If this isn't trojan activity, then what is?
Kind of like how SCO created its Linux licensing program to help companies grow their businesses. Seriously, they say that on their website. Companies want you to THINK that everything they do is helpful and for your benefit no matter how hard they are actually screwing you.
This is exactly what French companies must do, and as a result, there is not much economic growth in France. When it costs so much to hire people and its so hard to fire them, not surprisingly companys don't want to hire unless absolutely necessary, which translates into double digit unemployment.
It wouldn't cause any more ridicule than naming a kid Pubert, which is a name I have actually heard of. But seriously, some people should be arrested for child abuse for coming up with some of these horrendously stupid names.
Why don't you post the URL of that site here so we can take a look at this fine site. It sounds like a slashdotting is exactly what it needs.
How many people die each year that DO have health insurance? While I definitely agree that its better to have insurance than not, the uninsured do have options in the U.S. In fact, public health care for the uninsured is in some cases better than government run health systems in a lot of other countries. The government does not exactly have a track record of making things cheaper once they get involved. Now if you were arguing for some sort of voucher type of things for lower income families or some new regulation system that would make it cheaper for individuals to purchase insurance, that might be a good idea.
If parts of Windows were found to have been illegally copied from someone else's code (which has happened before), I don't see how the end users could be held responsible since they don't even have access to the source. Not only do they not have a duty to check Microsoft's source for infringing code, they don't even have the ability to do so. With open source products, the end user does have access to the source. Whether the user would be liable for infringement would vary depending on the circumstances, but it is at least more of a possibility. Although it looks like SCO has no case, this are issues that need to be addressed if someone were to come along and make SCO-type of claims and actually have evidence to back them up.
TiVO has only "proven" that people will watch particularly appealing ads. once or twice.
Hmm, maybe if advertisers made their commercials more appealing and relevant and stopped showing the same damn commercial during every commercial break for 2 months straight, people just might watch them! I know commercials are expensive to produce, but if a commercial is supposed to be funny, witty, entertaining, etc. it is most definitely going to lose its appeal the 500th time I've seen it.
I think that laws should definitely be passed that make it a lot harder to run a company based on patent squatting. Unfortunately, laws requiring the patent holder to have a commercial interest in their patented item would be easy to work around. A company like CrapFlood (sorry, IdeaFlood) would merely have to come up with some 'product' that would be for sale on their website, such as a 'subdomain configurator'. Nevermind that it would be worthless and nobody would actually buy it, it would count as commercial use under such a law. Nonetheless, I certainly agree with you that patents should not be commoditized like they currently are. I just think it will be difficult to legally define this without leaving room for loopholes.
They'll just have to come up with a regulatory structure that encourages compliance, not avoidance. SBC regularly gets fined for anticompetitive behavior regarding local competition and DSL providers, but continues to do it and thinks of the fines as just another business expense. If they were bigger, I doubt that would be the case.
This would work about as well as "competitive" DSL, where the phone company monopoly ensures that nobody else can compete (and stay in business, that is).
Although there's something to be said for gambling causing societal problems, it is not the government's job to protect people from themselves. If someone has poor money management skills, they will find a way to piss away all their cash, whether gambling is legal or not. A fool and his money are soon parted, no matter how many laws are passed.
Nobody really agreed to abide by it, once they actually understood the thing. It sounded great at first but then nations realized it would bankrupt their manufacturing economy. And before anyone says it was a Bush thing, the senate voted, before Bush took office, 98-0 in favor of scrapping it. Clinton signed it in his final days to make himself look good, knowing he wouldn't be around for the fallout.
Goodbye free email as well. I'm sure there will be various administrative costs associated with this new system (to ensure that your server can never be used for spam) that will be a lot more than 2 grand a year. It will be a lot harder for Hotmail and Yahoo to justify having free email access.
I'm just really interested to see if society ever reaches an advertising saturation point, where people become immune to ads because they see so damn many of them. Or when the ads become so invasive that people are turned off and offended by them. Who am I kidding, there are people who still buy penis enlargement pills from spammers! Advertising has a long future ahead.