While I don't agree with "mangling" a user's connection, I completely agree with blocking outbound TCP port 25 in residential connections. My ISP used to have an option in the web management of my account that let me enable it at my own risk. They ended up removing it and you can only connect via their own SMTP server.
You can still use SMTP in non-standard ports, OR use SSL/TLS for SMTP which doesn't run on port 25.
My dad repairs electronics. He's a service rep for several brands, and it's amazing how much people feel they're being ripped off because they bought this stereo and it burned when using it at a party! at 100% volume for several hours straight. Same analogy. You can get a stereo, play it as loud as you want for a few songs, but eventually you have to turn it down. Do you need it to be LOUD for hours every night? Get a Pro Audio system. The kind DJs use. There's a reason why they have such big, heavy and expensive boxes. Your stereo is supposed to be used at home, not at a party with 300 people.
I have a friend, he sells networking gear. He has his own company (himself, because he's a control freak). He considers himself better than the technicians. He doesn't keep techs in payroll, but recommends techs in a case-by-case basis. He calls me sometimes (for the really difficult jobs because I'm better skilled than them. That is: i can do anything they can do AND i can do more).
The difference between him and me: I don't consider myself a better PERSON than the other techs. I know how to wire a RJ45 connector, but that doesn't mean I want to do it (unless it's for my own house...). So for those cases, I'm happy to work with other techs who are happy to do that. I deal with the routing and network design, they deal with the cabling.
The problem is my friend: he sees himself in an upper position. Techs are shit, they are mostly idiots. If he makes $X, there's no reason they should be making $X too. They ARE lower than him, so they should be making $X/4 tops.
I'm his friend and I've tried to reason with him. He calls me from time to time but he knows the only way I will take a job is that if I set the price and not him. For example: sometimes he sells a $20 router and wants me to drive over to the customer's house to set it up for him but "don't charge him too much, I told him you're charging him $10". I don't take that kind of shit.
I think this guy is an example of how people see any kind of "tech" work. Plumber, electrician, gardener, networking tech, computer repair guy... it's all the same for them. We techs are "lower beings", and we should earn minimum wage, live in a ghetto, drive a shitty truck, and be on call 24/7. My friend? Oh he only works mon-fri 9-5 and the rest of the time he turns off his cell phone.
Needless to say: he's having a hard time finding people willing to work for him. One of his employees left "and stole all of his customers". Now, I know that guy. He didn't "steal" any of his customers. They just went with him. A company doesn't need to buy "a switch" from you and call someone else to install it. A company needs "to connect all these computers and put them online". And that's what my friend doesn't understand: value added. His only customer? Government. Because the government here has their own IT staff, so they buy "raw materials" (cable, routers, fiber, etc) and install themselves.
Same in android. Permissions aren't granular enough. For example, when an app request "sd card access", android gives it FULL access. Not a sandbox to the app's directory or something. Very silly.
Well, since the iphone came out, the BYOD movement got interesting. In all these years, I suppose, RIM saw that people wanted to carry only 1 phone, and, as it was, it wasn't going to be a BB.
They failed at delivering a decent, modernized UI that didn't depend on the touchpad/joystick thing. People wanted BIG SCREENS and TOUCH. I haven't seen the Z10 but i suppose that was going to be THE ipod/android competitor. But it was too late to the game. About 3 years too late.
I guess BB is transitioning into a software company. BB server, and not much later, BB CLOUD server. Throw around buzzwords like CLOUD and BYOD, and you have an excellent sales pitch for a CIO.
So? Google doesn't get to tell me where i can watch a video.
I want to watch a video on my phone while i'm taking a shit. FUCK google, I will do it if i damn please. And even more: I WILL block the ads too. If i'm already "violating the TOS" for "consuming content on an unauthorized device" I might as well violate it completely and also block ads.
Google isn't a fucking leaf of openness and free culture, for fuck's sake!
Want GMAIL OFFLINE? Well, get chrome. The "labs" plugin, which did that for firefox, has been removed. FUCK YOU FIREFOX!! HAHAHA!!! Want to play hidden Angry Birds levels? Well, get chrome. They will appear if you do. FUCK YOU FOREFOX!! HAHAHA!!!
How in fucking earth are people letting this shit pass with Google? Ah yes, people are easily brived with free stuffs. As long as they are providing search and mail and youtube, Google is good even if they're killing seals or exploting children in africa.
As with anything else: take as much as you can for as long as you can, then when they want to charge you, move on to the next one. Welcome to real life.
Soooooooooooooooooooo.... when sony rootkits your machine they're evil? How? They were just ACTIVELY preventing (not you of course) the pirates from keeping them from getting revenue (and often the content producers too).
I'm so sick of this "MS is evil no matter what they do, they are an evil company and i will hate them for ever and ever and ever more. Google is good and it's ok for them to do sleazy things once in a while because their motto is Do No Evil and they SAID the wouldn't, so they won't".
Google is just as scummy as Microsoft is. Don't let the freebies confuse you.
When a torrent site goes down, everyone is up in arms crying out for FREEDOM OF SPEECH. When asked "hey but what about the artists? if you pirate their album they get no revenue" and everyone here is quick to say "oh boo hoo, get a REAL job if you don't like this. You want to make songs AND get paid for them? Go play concerts, and don't expect people to pay for recording musicINFORMATIONWANTSTOBEFREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HACK THE PLANEEEEEEEEET!!".
But if google wants to shove ads down your throat, it's suddenly OK for them to do it "because they pay for costs and infrastructure and,..." blah yeah yeah. you know what? A singer also pays for costs and whatnot. And you say he shouldn't be getting royalties off his album because.... because why exactly, again? Ah yes, because YOU have to show up every day to work and you just hate the fact that an artist gets "money for nothing and the chicks for free".
Sheesh
Slashdot sometimes looks like the hideout of middle-aged 90s hackers, married with children, who can't wear a FUCK THE SYSTEM t-shirt anymore so they go on hating online. It's sad and hillarious at the same time.
Yes, but slashdotters don't understand one simple thing:
COMPANIES ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.
They blame MS for being/having been evil, sleazy, monopolistic and any other adjective they can throw at them. Google is "good" because they give us free stuff. And that free stuff is also good. "Boohoo microsoft was once mean to me and i hate them. The googly is my BFF 3".
They don't see that google is as monopolistic as they come. Buying everyone. And anyone they can't buy, they compete and put out of business. They own search, video distribution (in a sleazy way that pays fractions of a cent to "authors"), mobile communications, location, maps, google street view. They can (and do) go through your email. There's google voice so they can (and they do) listen to your phone. And a million things more. But Google will, sooner or later, become "evil". Of course, a company can't be "evil". A company just "is". Larry/Sergei (assuming they're the "gooddoers") won't be at the top forever, and the top will, someday, change. The new management will see the kind of stuff they're sitting on. Half the planet's names, locations, browsing habits, call logs, emails, EVERYTHING you can ever dream of. How do we know they won't sell it to Syria, Russia or Thailand? For all we know, they give it up for free to the US government.
You can be friends with Joe Mechanic, the guy that's been fixing your car for the past 20 years, and you know he's honest and he's never failed you. Joe Mechanic is a person. Google is not. Microsoft is not. Any "BRAND" is NOT your friend.
So, in short. Companies aren't people. They can't be your friends. When you deal with a company, you do it in their own terms. Use them. Abuse them as much as you can, and move on to the next one. If someone else comes up with a better deal, go with them and don't look back. Don't let "20 years of good service" get in the way. It wouldn't matter to them (google pulls the plug in any services they want, whenever they want to). This is not being evil. This is just doing business. Just like when you switch brands in the supermarket.
Yes but ISPs DO go after business with " You're using our products to make money, and it's totally unfair that we don't get a cut" attitude. Case in point: "Business plans" for internet service. I don't know about where you live, but I can tell you: the local telco will not provide "residential" $20/mo DSL service to "commercial" phone lines. They instead "offer" the cheapest $50/mo "business plan" that offers less speed (3mbit vs 6mbit) but includes "up to 10 email addresses, 50MB of web space" while residential service offers only 1 mailbox and no web space. You can't opt not to have the useless 50MB space or the 10 mailboxes with 100MB storage (combined). There's also no mention of an SLA, and you're stuck with the same 800-number helpdesk when you run into trouble.
My dad does repair for warranty, extended warranty, and insurance. Extended warranty IS a good deal IF IT'S CHEAP. If you buy a $500 TV and you're offered a 5-year warranty extension for $50 extra, by all means take it, even if it's 3-year extension is still a decent deal. If it's $100 or more... it's not such a good deal anymore. In 3 years your TV can fail. Especially the ultra-flat models with little space for big capacitors (PSUs can die quickly in those conditions). Extended warranty has the SAME CONDITIONS AS THE ORIGINAL WARRANTY: that is, it only responds if the machine "breaks out of nothing". It won't cover lightning, hitting it with a broomstick, falling from the wall mount, etc.
Insurance is also good IF IT'S CHEAP. A home insurance that's $100 a year or less is, believe me, VERY good. Insurance covers lightning and general stupidity. Insurance will pay if you're stupid enough to drop that plasma, and it will pay for that $500 TV that was struck by lightning. And of course, it will also cover for burglary. And after all, it's like $8 a month. So spare that frappuccino and get a decent protection for your home.
In fact, you might even already have protection. My bank account package included home insurance that even covers sending a locksmith if you lock yourself out of the house, or a plumber for that leaky pipe under your sink you found that thursday evening. The trick is: it's cheap enough you don't realize they're charging you for it, and they don't tell you they are. So you don't even know you're protected and never use their service.
the woman decided that ALL of her teleworkers should come in and work in the office EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, after she had to work from home after pregnancy. what a crazy bitch!
For about 99.9% (with a 0.1% error margin) of the people, facebook *IS* the internet. Kids don't look at their email, don't have blogs, don't use IM anymore. They don't even pirate games (as they can play silly facebook games). Kids don't even google things anymore! How many "hey people do you know where i can find X / do you know how i can do Y" posts do you have in your feed? I have more than I'd like. Facebook doesn't even offer a decent search option. Facebook is the complete opposite of what the Internet was supposed to be. Yes, it's a communication medium but it's a closed one. And it's awfully scary how totalitarian it is. You can't customize ANYTHING on facebook. You are forced to use your real name. You are nagged to reveal data like what school you went to, or what city you were born in. But facebook is convenient. It's simple - the lowest common denominator. It doesn't require a powerful computer or a specific OS. You don't need to install anything to chat with your friends. It just works. And people are willing to give up everything for a little convenience.
Hopefully, history will repeat itself. Facebook will be a fad. People will get bored with it. Just like my generation was addicted to MSN Messenger, this generation is addicted to FB. Something else will come sooner or later, and it will push FB into irrelevance, like FB has done with everything else. Like MSN pushed ICQ to irrelevance, and like ICQ did with IRC. (Change MSN/AIM/YIM/ICQ/QQ depending on where you lived), and like web forums killed usenet. FB is already riddled with spam. Ads are everywhere. Business tagging you in their ads (I know I do) is really annoying. (I don't even need to remind people if MySpace and other social networks that lived and failed)
Facebook and to a worse extent, Google, don't understand one thing: People don't like being forced to buy shit. People don't like to be bombarded with ads. People are bored of searching for "something" and google turning the search into "Did you mean: where to buy something". I'm certain that spam will kill facebook. People will be bored of seeing nothing more than advertising in their newsfeed and they will move on to the next big thing.
If we do some extrapolation, MSN messenger was born in 1999. No one knew about it until late 2001/early 2002. EVERYONE had at least 1 messenger account in 2004 (I remember working for an ISP. THE biggest problem was msn down. People didn't care about the web - they only wanted their chat). MSN was steadily popular until about 2008 when facebook chat started to gain traction. By 2009 kids were no longer using it. By 2010 you started to feel it empty. All along 2012, the only persons in my MSN list were my mom and dad. Until MS finally pulled the plug in 2013.
I hope the same will happen to FB. No one had heard about it before 2006. People started using it in 2007. In 2008 everyone had an account and so far it's still in use. We'll have to deal with FB for a couple more years and then it will be a swift death. We can only hope...
I tried to make my facebook page a facebook *place*. Seems the only way you can do this, is to use facebook places, check in to this place (to create it), then go to your page, find the place, claim ownership. After this, I got a facebook message asking me to scan the legal documents for my business and facebook profile, to show I really own this place.
So yeah: anyone can create a business page, but it's a big issue to create a "facebook place" no one gives a fuck about.
Sounds like an actual genuine legal problem if someone is misrepresenting your prices. Why didn't you ask a lawyer?
Because I'm in Argentina, and facebook is in the United States. Brands don't have "global" protection. If I register my trademark in Argentina, it's only valid in Argentina. (Wanna know a stupid thing about Argentina's trademark system? They require a legal address in Buenos Aires. I'm 1000km away from there, and I can't afford paying a lawyer to keep my trademark registered at his office). If my trademark was registered in the US, *maybe* I could have done something about it. Obviously this isn't the case.
Not to mention, when your argument to Facebook is "hey I'm real and he's fake", how are they to know you are telling the truth?
My facebook *PAGE* (page=business) has been online since 2009. This rogue facebook *PROFILE* (profile=person) was up for only a few days. This person used the photos on my page, and cropped the watermarks out of my images! The watermark was the url to my official page. It was very clear, to any non-retard, that this guy was a scam.
I don't have any love for Facebook, but what exactly were you hoping for?
An investigation, at least. Why do they put a "report" button, which tens of people clicked, reporting the profile as a fake, if they aren't going to do shit about it? Maybe I should have lied and report it as BIG BAD SINFUL PORN and that would have made it disappear in an instant. They claim they have people around the clock to wipe the dirty porn off their beautiful garden. How come they don't have something similar for this?
No difference for them. Facebook doesn't care because all they care about is serving ads. More pages=more ads.
I had a problem a couple months ago. I have a business and a business page on facebook with nearly 2500 fans. I worked years to get it to where it is now. One day, suddenly, a fake profile appears, using all of my images, texts, etc... all except the prices: he claimed everything was half of what i posted on my true page. It took "orders" (send your money and i'll send your order).
A couple of customers alerted me. So i asked all my facebook friends AND my customers to report the profile. It was still there for days, still active, friending more and more people. People even started coming into my shop asking and getting mad because "on facebook you told me half this price!" and i had to explain that it was a fake profile (mad people don't reason - they went away angry at ME!). Eventually I confronted the fake profile, told him everything i knew, and told him i had already contacted the police. Minutes later the profile was inactive.
It wasn't facebook who deactivated it. I had to do it. Facebook NEVER gave a shit. I'm a facebook CUSTOMER (because I PAY THEM REAL LIFE MONEY FOR ADVERTISING). And I didn't get a phone number, mail address or anything. Just a useless contact form directed straight to/dev/null.
Facebook has people checking "flagged" things - you will never see porn on fb because they kill that kind of content within minutes. But when it comes "edge cases" like mine, it's a big fuck from them.
Do i still work with them? Yes. I have no other choice. I spent months developing a website. One that worked and that I kept updated. For 10 visits a week vs facebook page's ~500 visitors/mo. 5x that if i pay for ads. Right now, as of 2013, facebook has become "the internet". It has already killed Windows Live Messenger (THE IM system for spanish-speaking people).
Facebook doesn't give a fuck about business pages either. They don't offer a "chat" option for pages (people actually want to chat. they don't want to "send a message", but the stupid antisocial asperger-syndrome driven facebook developer doesn't understand the power of "live chat with a real person"). They don't offer an option to "schedule" album posts. And to make things worse: they force you to pay now. Your reach will be minimal if people haven't added you to their "interest lists", and for 90% of your customers, your post won't appear unless you pay $5 to promote it for 3 days (which is an outrageous amount considering that, to keep your page "alive", you need to post at least once a day). I don't want to pay $150/mo to facebook - sorry.
Yes. I don't understand: what's the point of hardware-accelerated WM if you're not using transparency effects? I liked windows because it actually did the transparency right. Subtle, yet it's there. It's not invasive and it's actually useful (the transparent taskbar doesn't mess your wallpaper).
Slashdot Mirror
I get my micros from microchipdirect. I can be certain they're not screwing me... right?
While I don't agree with "mangling" a user's connection, I completely agree with blocking outbound TCP port 25 in residential connections. My ISP used to have an option in the web management of my account that let me enable it at my own risk. They ended up removing it and you can only connect via their own SMTP server.
You can still use SMTP in non-standard ports, OR use SSL/TLS for SMTP which doesn't run on port 25.
My dad repairs electronics. He's a service rep for several brands, and it's amazing how much people feel they're being ripped off because they bought this stereo and it burned when using it at a party! at 100% volume for several hours straight. Same analogy. You can get a stereo, play it as loud as you want for a few songs, but eventually you have to turn it down. Do you need it to be LOUD for hours every night? Get a Pro Audio system. The kind DJs use. There's a reason why they have such big, heavy and expensive boxes. Your stereo is supposed to be used at home, not at a party with 300 people.
I have a friend, he sells networking gear. He has his own company (himself, because he's a control freak). He considers himself better than the technicians. He doesn't keep techs in payroll, but recommends techs in a case-by-case basis. He calls me sometimes (for the really difficult jobs because I'm better skilled than them. That is: i can do anything they can do AND i can do more).
The difference between him and me: I don't consider myself a better PERSON than the other techs. I know how to wire a RJ45 connector, but that doesn't mean I want to do it (unless it's for my own house...). So for those cases, I'm happy to work with other techs who are happy to do that. I deal with the routing and network design, they deal with the cabling.
The problem is my friend: he sees himself in an upper position. Techs are shit, they are mostly idiots. If he makes $X, there's no reason they should be making $X too. They ARE lower than him, so they should be making $X/4 tops.
I'm his friend and I've tried to reason with him. He calls me from time to time but he knows the only way I will take a job is that if I set the price and not him. For example: sometimes he sells a $20 router and wants me to drive over to the customer's house to set it up for him but "don't charge him too much, I told him you're charging him $10". I don't take that kind of shit.
I think this guy is an example of how people see any kind of "tech" work. Plumber, electrician, gardener, networking tech, computer repair guy... it's all the same for them. We techs are "lower beings", and we should earn minimum wage, live in a ghetto, drive a shitty truck, and be on call 24/7. My friend? Oh he only works mon-fri 9-5 and the rest of the time he turns off his cell phone.
Needless to say: he's having a hard time finding people willing to work for him. One of his employees left "and stole all of his customers". Now, I know that guy. He didn't "steal" any of his customers. They just went with him. A company doesn't need to buy "a switch" from you and call someone else to install it. A company needs "to connect all these computers and put them online". And that's what my friend doesn't understand: value added. His only customer? Government. Because the government here has their own IT staff, so they buy "raw materials" (cable, routers, fiber, etc) and install themselves.
Same in android. Permissions aren't granular enough. For example, when an app request "sd card access", android gives it FULL access. Not a sandbox to the app's directory or something. Very silly.
Well, since the iphone came out, the BYOD movement got interesting. In all these years, I suppose, RIM saw that people wanted to carry only 1 phone, and, as it was, it wasn't going to be a BB.
They failed at delivering a decent, modernized UI that didn't depend on the touchpad/joystick thing. People wanted BIG SCREENS and TOUCH. I haven't seen the Z10 but i suppose that was going to be THE ipod/android competitor. But it was too late to the game. About 3 years too late.
I guess BB is transitioning into a software company. BB server, and not much later, BB CLOUD server. Throw around buzzwords like CLOUD and BYOD, and you have an excellent sales pitch for a CIO.
Legal doesn't mean moral.
So?
Google doesn't get to tell me where i can watch a video.
I want to watch a video on my phone while i'm taking a shit. FUCK google, I will do it if i damn please. And even more: I WILL block the ads too. If i'm already "violating the TOS" for "consuming content on an unauthorized device" I might as well violate it completely and also block ads.
Google isn't a fucking leaf of openness and free culture, for fuck's sake!
Want GMAIL OFFLINE? Well, get chrome. The "labs" plugin, which did that for firefox, has been removed. FUCK YOU FIREFOX!! HAHAHA!!!
Want to play hidden Angry Birds levels? Well, get chrome. They will appear if you do. FUCK YOU FOREFOX!! HAHAHA!!!
How in fucking earth are people letting this shit pass with Google? Ah yes, people are easily brived with free stuffs. As long as they are providing search and mail and youtube, Google is good even if they're killing seals or exploting children in africa.
As with anything else: take as much as you can for as long as you can, then when they want to charge you, move on to the next one. Welcome to real life.
Soooooooooooooooooooo....
when sony rootkits your machine they're evil? How? They were just ACTIVELY preventing (not you of course) the pirates from keeping them from getting revenue (and often the content producers too).
I'm so sick of this "MS is evil no matter what they do, they are an evil company and i will hate them for ever and ever and ever more. Google is good and it's ok for them to do sleazy things once in a while because their motto is Do No Evil and they SAID the wouldn't, so they won't".
Google is just as scummy as Microsoft is. Don't let the freebies confuse you.
When a torrent site goes down, everyone is up in arms crying out for FREEDOM OF SPEECH. When asked "hey but what about the artists? if you pirate their album they get no revenue" and everyone here is quick to say "oh boo hoo, get a REAL job if you don't like this. You want to make songs AND get paid for them? Go play concerts, and don't expect people to pay for recording musicINFORMATIONWANTSTOBEFREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HACK THE PLANEEEEEEEEET!!".
But if google wants to shove ads down your throat, it's suddenly OK for them to do it "because they pay for costs and infrastructure and,..." blah yeah yeah. you know what? A singer also pays for costs and whatnot. And you say he shouldn't be getting royalties off his album because .... because why exactly, again? Ah yes, because YOU have to show up every day to work and you just hate the fact that an artist gets "money for nothing and the chicks for free".
Sheesh
Slashdot sometimes looks like the hideout of middle-aged 90s hackers, married with children, who can't wear a FUCK THE SYSTEM t-shirt anymore so they go on hating online. It's sad and hillarious at the same time.
Google gives idiots free stuff. That's the difference. TANSTAAFL doesn't apply to Google, duuuuh.
Yes, but slashdotters don't understand one simple thing:
COMPANIES ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.
They blame MS for being/having been evil, sleazy, monopolistic and any other adjective they can throw at them. Google is "good" because they give us free stuff. And that free stuff is also good. "Boohoo microsoft was once mean to me and i hate them. The googly is my BFF 3".
They don't see that google is as monopolistic as they come. Buying everyone. And anyone they can't buy, they compete and put out of business. They own search, video distribution (in a sleazy way that pays fractions of a cent to "authors"), mobile communications, location, maps, google street view. They can (and do) go through your email. There's google voice so they can (and they do) listen to your phone. And a million things more.
But Google will, sooner or later, become "evil". Of course, a company can't be "evil". A company just "is". Larry/Sergei (assuming they're the "gooddoers") won't be at the top forever, and the top will, someday, change. The new management will see the kind of stuff they're sitting on. Half the planet's names, locations, browsing habits, call logs, emails, EVERYTHING you can ever dream of. How do we know they won't sell it to Syria, Russia or Thailand? For all we know, they give it up for free to the US government.
You can be friends with Joe Mechanic, the guy that's been fixing your car for the past 20 years, and you know he's honest and he's never failed you. Joe Mechanic is a person. Google is not. Microsoft is not. Any "BRAND" is NOT your friend.
So, in short. Companies aren't people. They can't be your friends. When you deal with a company, you do it in their own terms. Use them. Abuse them as much as you can, and move on to the next one. If someone else comes up with a better deal, go with them and don't look back. Don't let "20 years of good service" get in the way. It wouldn't matter to them (google pulls the plug in any services they want, whenever they want to). This is not being evil. This is just doing business. Just like when you switch brands in the supermarket.
ah, "featurephone"... another word no one will never use.
let me guess: do you also get mad when newspapers use the word HACKER when they should have said CRACKER or at least BLACK HAT HACKER?
grow up.
sooo someone who can't afford to pay $200,000 in cash for a house shouldn't be buying one?
Yes but ISPs DO go after business with " You're using our products to make money, and it's totally unfair that we don't get a cut" attitude.
Case in point: "Business plans" for internet service. I don't know about where you live, but I can tell you: the local telco will not provide "residential" $20/mo DSL service to "commercial" phone lines. They instead "offer" the cheapest $50/mo "business plan" that offers less speed (3mbit vs 6mbit) but includes "up to 10 email addresses, 50MB of web space" while residential service offers only 1 mailbox and no web space. You can't opt not to have the useless 50MB space or the 10 mailboxes with 100MB storage (combined).
There's also no mention of an SLA, and you're stuck with the same 800-number helpdesk when you run into trouble.
I didn't say I lived in the US. Fucking faggot troll.
My dad does repair for warranty, extended warranty, and insurance.
Extended warranty IS a good deal IF IT'S CHEAP. If you buy a $500 TV and you're offered a 5-year warranty extension for $50 extra, by all means take it, even if it's 3-year extension is still a decent deal. If it's $100 or more... it's not such a good deal anymore. In 3 years your TV can fail. Especially the ultra-flat models with little space for big capacitors (PSUs can die quickly in those conditions). Extended warranty has the SAME CONDITIONS AS THE ORIGINAL WARRANTY: that is, it only responds if the machine "breaks out of nothing". It won't cover lightning, hitting it with a broomstick, falling from the wall mount, etc.
Insurance is also good IF IT'S CHEAP. A home insurance that's $100 a year or less is, believe me, VERY good. Insurance covers lightning and general stupidity. Insurance will pay if you're stupid enough to drop that plasma, and it will pay for that $500 TV that was struck by lightning. And of course, it will also cover for burglary. And after all, it's like $8 a month. So spare that frappuccino and get a decent protection for your home.
In fact, you might even already have protection. My bank account package included home insurance that even covers sending a locksmith if you lock yourself out of the house, or a plumber for that leaky pipe under your sink you found that thursday evening. The trick is: it's cheap enough you don't realize they're charging you for it, and they don't tell you they are. So you don't even know you're protected and never use their service.
Not necessarily. my shop is called "arcana" and i wanted a .na domain: "arca.na". it was available (and I dont live in Namibia) but for $2K/yr...
the woman decided that ALL of her teleworkers should come in and work in the office EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, after she had to work from home after pregnancy. what a crazy bitch!
For about 99.9% (with a 0.1% error margin) of the people, facebook *IS* the internet. Kids don't look at their email, don't have blogs, don't use IM anymore. They don't even pirate games (as they can play silly facebook games).
Kids don't even google things anymore! How many "hey people do you know where i can find X / do you know how i can do Y" posts do you have in your feed? I have more than I'd like.
Facebook doesn't even offer a decent search option. Facebook is the complete opposite of what the Internet was supposed to be. Yes, it's a communication medium but it's a closed one. And it's awfully scary how totalitarian it is. You can't customize ANYTHING on facebook. You are forced to use your real name. You are nagged to reveal data like what school you went to, or what city you were born in.
But facebook is convenient. It's simple - the lowest common denominator. It doesn't require a powerful computer or a specific OS. You don't need to install anything to chat with your friends. It just works. And people are willing to give up everything for a little convenience.
Hopefully, history will repeat itself. Facebook will be a fad. People will get bored with it. Just like my generation was addicted to MSN Messenger, this generation is addicted to FB. Something else will come sooner or later, and it will push FB into irrelevance, like FB has done with everything else. Like MSN pushed ICQ to irrelevance, and like ICQ did with IRC. (Change MSN/AIM/YIM/ICQ/QQ depending on where you lived), and like web forums killed usenet. FB is already riddled with spam. Ads are everywhere. Business tagging you in their ads (I know I do) is really annoying. (I don't even need to remind people if MySpace and other social networks that lived and failed)
Facebook and to a worse extent, Google, don't understand one thing: People don't like being forced to buy shit. People don't like to be bombarded with ads. People are bored of searching for "something" and google turning the search into "Did you mean: where to buy something". I'm certain that spam will kill facebook. People will be bored of seeing nothing more than advertising in their newsfeed and they will move on to the next big thing.
If we do some extrapolation, MSN messenger was born in 1999. No one knew about it until late 2001/early 2002. EVERYONE had at least 1 messenger account in 2004 (I remember working for an ISP. THE biggest problem was msn down. People didn't care about the web - they only wanted their chat). MSN was steadily popular until about 2008 when facebook chat started to gain traction. By 2009 kids were no longer using it. By 2010 you started to feel it empty. All along 2012, the only persons in my MSN list were my mom and dad. Until MS finally pulled the plug in 2013.
I hope the same will happen to FB. No one had heard about it before 2006. People started using it in 2007. In 2008 everyone had an account and so far it's still in use. We'll have to deal with FB for a couple more years and then it will be a swift death. We can only hope...
I tried to make my facebook page a facebook *place*. Seems the only way you can do this, is to use facebook places, check in to this place (to create it), then go to your page, find the place, claim ownership.
After this, I got a facebook message asking me to scan the legal documents for my business and facebook profile, to show I really own this place.
So yeah: anyone can create a business page, but it's a big issue to create a "facebook place" no one gives a fuck about.
Because I'm in Argentina, and facebook is in the United States.
Brands don't have "global" protection. If I register my trademark in Argentina, it's only valid in Argentina. (Wanna know a stupid thing about Argentina's trademark system? They require a legal address in Buenos Aires. I'm 1000km away from there, and I can't afford paying a lawyer to keep my trademark registered at his office). If my trademark was registered in the US, *maybe* I could have done something about it. Obviously this isn't the case.
My facebook *PAGE* (page=business) has been online since 2009. This rogue facebook *PROFILE* (profile=person) was up for only a few days. This person used the photos on my page, and cropped the watermarks out of my images! The watermark was the url to my official page. It was very clear, to any non-retard, that this guy was a scam.
An investigation, at least. Why do they put a "report" button, which tens of people clicked, reporting the profile as a fake, if they aren't going to do shit about it?
Maybe I should have lied and report it as BIG BAD SINFUL PORN and that would have made it disappear in an instant. They claim they have people around the clock to wipe the dirty porn off their beautiful garden. How come they don't have something similar for this?
Yes. A million points for you. But, not being a "fortune 500" company, I can't afford to do that.
No difference for them. Facebook doesn't care because all they care about is serving ads. More pages=more ads.
I had a problem a couple months ago. I have a business and a business page on facebook with nearly 2500 fans. I worked years to get it to where it is now. One day, suddenly, a fake profile appears, using all of my images, texts, etc... all except the prices: he claimed everything was half of what i posted on my true page. It took "orders" (send your money and i'll send your order).
A couple of customers alerted me. So i asked all my facebook friends AND my customers to report the profile. It was still there for days, still active, friending more and more people. People even started coming into my shop asking and getting mad because "on facebook you told me half this price!" and i had to explain that it was a fake profile (mad people don't reason - they went away angry at ME!). Eventually I confronted the fake profile, told him everything i knew, and told him i had already contacted the police. Minutes later the profile was inactive.
It wasn't facebook who deactivated it. I had to do it. Facebook NEVER gave a shit. I'm a facebook CUSTOMER (because I PAY THEM REAL LIFE MONEY FOR ADVERTISING). And I didn't get a phone number, mail address or anything. Just a useless contact form directed straight to /dev/null.
Facebook has people checking "flagged" things - you will never see porn on fb because they kill that kind of content within minutes. But when it comes "edge cases" like mine, it's a big fuck from them.
Do i still work with them? Yes. I have no other choice. I spent months developing a website. One that worked and that I kept updated. For 10 visits a week vs facebook page's ~500 visitors/mo. 5x that if i pay for ads. Right now, as of 2013, facebook has become "the internet". It has already killed Windows Live Messenger (THE IM system for spanish-speaking people).
Facebook doesn't give a fuck about business pages either. They don't offer a "chat" option for pages (people actually want to chat. they don't want to "send a message", but the stupid antisocial asperger-syndrome driven facebook developer doesn't understand the power of "live chat with a real person"). They don't offer an option to "schedule" album posts. And to make things worse: they force you to pay now. Your reach will be minimal if people haven't added you to their "interest lists", and for 90% of your customers, your post won't appear unless you pay $5 to promote it for 3 days (which is an outrageous amount considering that, to keep your page "alive", you need to post at least once a day). I don't want to pay $150/mo to facebook - sorry.
Yes. I don't understand: what's the point of hardware-accelerated WM if you're not using transparency effects? I liked windows because it actually did the transparency right. Subtle, yet it's there. It's not invasive and it's actually useful (the transparent taskbar doesn't mess your wallpaper).