Others have already pointed out why your comment doesn't apply to what I wrote, but I just wanted to note that I was actually involved in Adblock's development for a time, and created the first widely-available set of filters for it. As a result, I got a bit of a chuckle out of what you said.
Google makes its money by selling ads. You're saying that you heard that they will market a product that hides ads while making it look like they're being shown. There's no way that's even remotely legal (most likely fraud or deceptive business practices; IANAL). Even if they were just planning to block competitors ads, they'd be in major trouble for anti-competitive practices. Considering the current anti-trust investigation by the DoJ, that would be especially silly.
You are correct. There is a decent amount of research being done on this, and it pretty uniformly shows that educational games are less effective than other teaching techniques over the same period of time. Basically, the game is just getting in the way of the learning (every "fun" aspect functions as a distractor from the educational aspects).
They may be more complicated (or expensive) than you're looking for, but MATLAB, R, SPSS, and SAS all run on Linux. Though I wouldn't call SPSS and SAS "good", they're the most common applications used for data analysis some fields.
Astrology differs from most religion and "spirituality" in one very important way (especially to scientists): It is testable. While there is no way to prove or disprove most spiritual things (including the existence of any god or the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God), we know that astrology is 100% wrong. It has been studied scientifically (because it makes testable predictions and claims), and the results always come back the same.
If memory serves, that study has been done. Passengers aren't problematic because they recognize road hazards (or at least your reactions to road hazards) and will temporarily stop talking when the situation calls for it.
Yes, and they should have the insight to wear bullet-proof vests, too, right? That's what you'd say if somewhat started shooting, I assume.
Vandalism is a crime, but the presenters are to blame? Yeah, this was clearly entrapment. Who could resist the lure of shutting off TVs with exposed IR ports?
Where are we at as a society that we blame people for being victims, when they haven't done anything to provoke an attack?
They won't lose any money (that's the whole point of "tasting", isn't it?), but that doesn't mean it wouldn't hurt them. If someone made a script that would search for every possible domain (up to say, 50 characters in length), no other registrar would be able to sell anything. There are enough competitors with enough money and enough at stake to pressure ICANN to take action if that happened. They could also theoretically sue NSI for attempting to create a monopoly (I assume there's some law it would break). Of course, that assumes that NSI doesn't pull the plug quickly enough.
"I think what most Photoshop users don't like about the Gimp really is that the menu entries and shortcuts are so different from Photoshop so that they can't find anything. Well, tough. The Gimp menu structure is no worse than the Photoshop one, and Gimp users are used to it. At least the shortcuts are much easier to change on the Gimp than in Photoshop."
Tough? There are a lot more people using programs like Photoshop than using GIMP. If the goal is to have them switch, you have to address their needs. GIMP is not successful because it's a superior product, it's "successful" because it's free, and people are willing to make sacrifices to save money (and yes, I'm sure there are five people who'd love to point out that they switched because they think GIMP is better, but that's hardly helpful). GIMP will be surpassed by a more user-friendly program if the attitude is "we have all the users we want". Unlike Firefox, which was always commended for its ease of use, GIMP has long been criticized for its interface (even by its own users). Oh, and for the record, I hate Photoshop's interface as much as I hate GIMP's (I'm a long-time Paint Shop Pro user).
Why is this bad? Laying infrastructure is expensive to all parties as well as being a pain (think road closures, etc). If they can increase the useful lifespan of existing wires, why complain (so long as the copper can keep up with demand for speed and they replace it with fiber when it starts failing)?
I almost always save in.odt, and if I need to share a document with someone who doesn't have OpenOffice.org (pretty much everyone), I send them a.pdf. Only on rare occasions, when I need to edit a document on a computer without OpenOffice.org or on the even rarer occasions that I actually want someone else to edit a document do I save in.doc format. I should note, however, that I also use Word somewhat frequently; when someone sends me a.doc, I'm not interested in dealing with conversion issues, and Word also launches faster on XP. As for spreadsheets, I generally use Excel (sorry, Calc just isn't up to snuff yet).
"The solution that stops 90%+ spam is out there, but it costs a little money to implement. It's still less money than what we currently are spending fighting spam. What are they waiting for - government mandates? Fines? Lawsuits? Getting their netblocks in 2,000,000 private blacklists that they have no chance in hell of getting out of?"
I can actually understand the ISPs on this one. Yes, spam costs a huge amount of money to the economy as a whole, however it's not such a major cost to the ISPs themselves. As businesses, they can't make a case [to their stockholders, etc.] to spend a bunch of cash fixing someone else's problem. If the businesses that were paying the huge tolls created a fund to pay ISPs to fix the problems, then you might see something. Otherwise, government mandates are probably the only solution. As far as ending up on blacklists, major ISPs aren't all that worried; so long as they aren't blocking each other, their customers will be happy. Most people will blame whatever random business is blocking their email rather than their own ISP (after all, most of their email gets where it's supposed to go).
"shadows in DX10 are crisper and more accurate than in DX9. In the image below, the shadow in DX9 has blurry edges while the same shadow in DX10 has sharp and crisp edges"
That's great, except for the fact that shadows don't have crisp edges in the real world. Unless it's illuminated by a point-source (which immediately excludes the sun, lamps, flashlights, and pretty much every other light source you're likely to encounter), there will be a penumbra. The DX9 image here: http://www.hothardware.com/articleimages/item1031/big_stateofdx10_wic_shad.jpg is more realistic.
The parent post ties in rather nicely with a short piece I wrote about two years ago (but never published) in defense of my work on Filterset.G. It may be a bit outdated, but I think it's finally appropriate.
The Economics of Blocking Ads
Preface:
I have nothing against advertisers or advertising. I have no interest in eliminating advertisements from the internet as a whole. Filterset.G is a tool, and is not tied to an ideology; there is no ulterior motive. Many people believe that Adblock, Filterset.G, and similar projects will be "the death of the free internet", and attack people developing tools to block ads (including myself). I have no desire to "destroy" the internet or advertising.
Reducing Costs to Suppliers and Consumers
Advertisements are unwanted distractions to many people (i.e. those who don't buy from ads), and ad-blockers provide an easy way to remove them. Transferring advertisements to people who ignore or don't buy from them is costly to both advertiser and advertisee. Bandwidth isn't free, and the bits often travel thousands of miles through dozens of machines to reach consumers. For those who have no intention of buying advertised products in response to ads, it is a waste, and can become very expensive. The host of the ad pays to transfer it, and many ISPs charge users by the amount of data transferred, so they pay to see it. Advertisers rarely pay sites for ads based on impressions (views, not clicks/sales) anymore, due to the difficulty in gauging its success, so passive ad-viewers (who look, but don't click), needn't be considered.
Increasing Profit Margins
People who don't buy from ads are negative in the expense/profit ratio for advertisers. Eliminating the cost of advertising to non-purchasers increases profits given a constant userbase. The risk, of course, is that people who buy occasionally might also block ads and thereby decrease profits. For this reason, I strongly urge people not to install ad-blocking software on other people's computers unless they express a desire for it. The greatest threat from ad-blocking is from people pushing it on those who do buy from ads.
Demand Keeps Suppliers in Business
Let's hypothetically say that all internet advertising was eliminated overnight (which is not going to happen). That would cut a major source of funding for web sites, which would force many to close, decreasing supply. Demand, however, would still exist. As supply decreases, demand would bring capital to the "best" remaining suppliers. Subscriptions, donations, grants, and sales keep many ad-free sites alive today, and can easily continue to do so in the future. Hosting a small web site is fairly cheap, and the increasing userbase that drives up costs also increases the number of potential donors, subscribers, and purchasers. A worst-case scenario would be a drastic reduction of economically unsustainable sites, which definitionally provide too little benefit to users to warrant their covering the costs of operating it. Many people would call this a "best-case" scenario, separating the wheat from the chaff, though I take no stance.
Making Ads Less Obtrusive
If public perception of ads becomes increasingly negative, they will become decreasingly effective. Advertising strategies will necessarily shift to less offensive and distracting forms. Many users vocally support the replacement of banners and other obtrusive advertising methods by text ads in areas distinct from page content. Unobtrusive, low-bandwidth ads may not be as eye-catching, but they are well tolerated by all but the most aggressive anti-ad folks.
Forcing Ads
Many advertisers and site owners are researching methods of bypassing ad-blocking software. If ad-blocking is only done by those who do not buy from ads, the outcome will become increasingly negative as their efforts increase. Many people are becoming more and more fed-up with in-your-face ads, and are starting to boycott co
The fact is, companies are reacting to demand. There are a lot of people who would ditch Windows in a heartbeat if only for windows-only games.
To be more accurate, companies are interested in whether there are people who would ditch gaming (or at least that company's games) in order to ditch Windows.
I (rather suddenly) came down with carpal tunnel syndrome, cubital tunnel syndrome, pronator syndrome, and a handful of tendonitises in both my arms 5 years ago. I found that I had to switch my mouse back and forth between my hands just to surf the web for more than 5 minutes (sadly not an exaggeration), take an extended break at least every 20 minutes or so, and severely limit my total computer usage. Luckily, I had an old Trackman Wheel sitting around (I had replaced it with a 5-button Kensington mouse a few years prior), so I can attest to the dramatic difference it can make in arm strain. While I can now use a mouse for longer periods of time (had surgery on my arms 3 years ago), there's still really no comparison. I've tried the larger ball styles, but the far more limited range of movement necessary to control a thumb trackball is much better for me. While I'll never be able to play computer games again, I can honestly say that if not for my Trackman Wheel, I wouldn't be able to waste time on Slashdot right now.
That doesn't provide evidence of anything on its own. How many people died of cancer the year before? The prior decade? How old were the residents? Did any of the residents work in the same place? Were there any changes in the quality of water reaching the apartments? Were there any renovations in the building? Any maintenance or pest control?
Even if everything else was controlled, the construction itself could easily be at fault. Construction often places a number of hazardous materials in the air (fine particulate matter, glue fumes, etc.). I'm guessing they also installed extra power and communication lines to feed the antenna, both of which could increase local radiation levels themselves. Heck, one of the construction workers could have had a nasty virus that got passed to the residents and lead to their illnesses.
Psychosomatic factors could be to blame as well, and there is also some probability that it was just a coincidence.
Virtually all "media other than USB" can be connected via USB, so I don't see a big problem.
While external DVD+-R drives are in the $60-70 range right now (compared to $30-40 for internal), there's no reason why they couldn't drop to be just a dollar or two more than an internal drive if demand increased, since there's not a whole lot of extra hardware necessary. Readers for many other types of media (especially flash cards) are only just now being built in to computers, and are more commonly used in readers attached via USB. To put it another way, which would you rather have: A computer with USB as the only means of input/output, or a computer with no USB and only current standard media/connectors (setting aside video, sound, and keyboard/mouse, which the Extio covers)? I think you'd find that after a few years, the USB-only machine would be far better suited to taking advantage of new technologies and present far fewer limitations.
Slashdot Mirror
Others have already pointed out why your comment doesn't apply to what I wrote, but I just wanted to note that I was actually involved in Adblock's development for a time, and created the first widely-available set of filters for it. As a result, I got a bit of a chuckle out of what you said.
Google makes its money by selling ads. You're saying that you heard that they will market a product that hides ads while making it look like they're being shown. There's no way that's even remotely legal (most likely fraud or deceptive business practices; IANAL). Even if they were just planning to block competitors ads, they'd be in major trouble for anti-competitive practices. Considering the current anti-trust investigation by the DoJ, that would be especially silly.
You are correct. There is a decent amount of research being done on this, and it pretty uniformly shows that educational games are less effective than other teaching techniques over the same period of time. Basically, the game is just getting in the way of the learning (every "fun" aspect functions as a distractor from the educational aspects).
They may be more complicated (or expensive) than you're looking for, but MATLAB, R, SPSS, and SAS all run on Linux. Though I wouldn't call SPSS and SAS "good", they're the most common applications used for data analysis some fields.
Astrology differs from most religion and "spirituality" in one very important way (especially to scientists): It is testable. While there is no way to prove or disprove most spiritual things (including the existence of any god or the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God), we know that astrology is 100% wrong. It has been studied scientifically (because it makes testable predictions and claims), and the results always come back the same.
Try this page for a start:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html
If memory serves, that study has been done. Passengers aren't problematic because they recognize road hazards (or at least your reactions to road hazards) and will temporarily stop talking when the situation calls for it.
Yes, and they should have the insight to wear bullet-proof vests, too, right? That's what you'd say if somewhat started shooting, I assume.
Vandalism is a crime, but the presenters are to blame? Yeah, this was clearly entrapment. Who could resist the lure of shutting off TVs with exposed IR ports?
Where are we at as a society that we blame people for being victims, when they haven't done anything to provoke an attack?
Firefox 2.0.0.11 on Windows XP: 59%
They won't lose any money (that's the whole point of "tasting", isn't it?), but that doesn't mean it wouldn't hurt them. If someone made a script that would search for every possible domain (up to say, 50 characters in length), no other registrar would be able to sell anything. There are enough competitors with enough money and enough at stake to pressure ICANN to take action if that happened. They could also theoretically sue NSI for attempting to create a monopoly (I assume there's some law it would break). Of course, that assumes that NSI doesn't pull the plug quickly enough.
"I think what most Photoshop users don't like about the Gimp really is that the menu entries and shortcuts are so different from Photoshop so that they can't find anything. Well, tough. The Gimp menu structure is no worse than the Photoshop one, and Gimp users are used to it. At least the shortcuts are much easier to change on the Gimp than in Photoshop."
Tough? There are a lot more people using programs like Photoshop than using GIMP. If the goal is to have them switch, you have to address their needs. GIMP is not successful because it's a superior product, it's "successful" because it's free, and people are willing to make sacrifices to save money (and yes, I'm sure there are five people who'd love to point out that they switched because they think GIMP is better, but that's hardly helpful). GIMP will be surpassed by a more user-friendly program if the attitude is "we have all the users we want". Unlike Firefox, which was always commended for its ease of use, GIMP has long been criticized for its interface (even by its own users). Oh, and for the record, I hate Photoshop's interface as much as I hate GIMP's (I'm a long-time Paint Shop Pro user).
Many LCDs use power bricks (several Dell LCD models I've worked with as well as the the Acer AL2051W I'm using right now, for example).
Why is this bad? Laying infrastructure is expensive to all parties as well as being a pain (think road closures, etc). If they can increase the useful lifespan of existing wires, why complain (so long as the copper can keep up with demand for speed and they replace it with fiber when it starts failing)?
I almost always save in .odt, and if I need to share a document with someone who doesn't have OpenOffice.org (pretty much everyone), I send them a .pdf. Only on rare occasions, when I need to edit a document on a computer without OpenOffice.org or on the even rarer occasions that I actually want someone else to edit a document do I save in .doc format. I should note, however, that I also use Word somewhat frequently; when someone sends me a .doc, I'm not interested in dealing with conversion issues, and Word also launches faster on XP. As for spreadsheets, I generally use Excel (sorry, Calc just isn't up to snuff yet).
"The solution that stops 90%+ spam is out there, but it costs a little money to implement. It's still less money than what we currently are spending fighting spam. What are they waiting for - government mandates? Fines? Lawsuits? Getting their netblocks in 2,000,000 private blacklists that they have no chance in hell of getting out of?"
I can actually understand the ISPs on this one. Yes, spam costs a huge amount of money to the economy as a whole, however it's not such a major cost to the ISPs themselves. As businesses, they can't make a case [to their stockholders, etc.] to spend a bunch of cash fixing someone else's problem. If the businesses that were paying the huge tolls created a fund to pay ISPs to fix the problems, then you might see something. Otherwise, government mandates are probably the only solution. As far as ending up on blacklists, major ISPs aren't all that worried; so long as they aren't blocking each other, their customers will be happy. Most people will blame whatever random business is blocking their email rather than their own ISP (after all, most of their email gets where it's supposed to go).
"shadows in DX10 are crisper and more accurate than in DX9. In the image below, the shadow in DX9 has blurry edges while the same shadow in DX10 has sharp and crisp edges"
That's great, except for the fact that shadows don't have crisp edges in the real world. Unless it's illuminated by a point-source (which immediately excludes the sun, lamps, flashlights, and pretty much every other light source you're likely to encounter), there will be a penumbra. The DX9 image here: http://www.hothardware.com/articleimages/item1031/big_stateofdx10_wic_shad.jpg is more realistic.
Simple flash example: http://www.goalfinder.com/Downloads/Shadows.swf
The parent post ties in rather nicely with a short piece I wrote about two years ago (but never published) in defense of my work on Filterset.G. It may be a bit outdated, but I think it's finally appropriate.
The Economics of Blocking Ads
Preface:
I have nothing against advertisers or advertising. I have no interest in eliminating advertisements from the internet as a whole. Filterset.G is a tool, and is not tied to an ideology; there is no ulterior motive. Many people believe that Adblock, Filterset.G, and similar projects will be "the death of the free internet", and attack people developing tools to block ads (including myself). I have no desire to "destroy" the internet or advertising.
Reducing Costs to Suppliers and Consumers
Advertisements are unwanted distractions to many people (i.e. those who don't buy from ads), and ad-blockers provide an easy way to remove them. Transferring advertisements to people who ignore or don't buy from them is costly to both advertiser and advertisee. Bandwidth isn't free, and the bits often travel thousands of miles through dozens of machines to reach consumers. For those who have no intention of buying advertised products in response to ads, it is a waste, and can become very expensive. The host of the ad pays to transfer it, and many ISPs charge users by the amount of data transferred, so they pay to see it. Advertisers rarely pay sites for ads based on impressions (views, not clicks/sales) anymore, due to the difficulty in gauging its success, so passive ad-viewers (who look, but don't click), needn't be considered.
Increasing Profit Margins
People who don't buy from ads are negative in the expense/profit ratio for advertisers. Eliminating the cost of advertising to non-purchasers increases profits given a constant userbase. The risk, of course, is that people who buy occasionally might also block ads and thereby decrease profits. For this reason, I strongly urge people not to install ad-blocking software on other people's computers unless they express a desire for it. The greatest threat from ad-blocking is from people pushing it on those who do buy from ads.
Demand Keeps Suppliers in Business
Let's hypothetically say that all internet advertising was eliminated overnight (which is not going to happen). That would cut a major source of funding for web sites, which would force many to close, decreasing supply. Demand, however, would still exist. As supply decreases, demand would bring capital to the "best" remaining suppliers. Subscriptions, donations, grants, and sales keep many ad-free sites alive today, and can easily continue to do so in the future. Hosting a small web site is fairly cheap, and the increasing userbase that drives up costs also increases the number of potential donors, subscribers, and purchasers. A worst-case scenario would be a drastic reduction of economically unsustainable sites, which definitionally provide too little benefit to users to warrant their covering the costs of operating it. Many people would call this a "best-case" scenario, separating the wheat from the chaff, though I take no stance.
Making Ads Less Obtrusive
If public perception of ads becomes increasingly negative, they will become decreasingly effective. Advertising strategies will necessarily shift to less offensive and distracting forms. Many users vocally support the replacement of banners and other obtrusive advertising methods by text ads in areas distinct from page content. Unobtrusive, low-bandwidth ads may not be as eye-catching, but they are well tolerated by all but the most aggressive anti-ad folks.
Forcing Ads
Many advertisers and site owners are researching methods of bypassing ad-blocking software. If ad-blocking is only done by those who do not buy from ads, the outcome will become increasingly negative as their efforts increase. Many people are becoming more and more fed-up with in-your-face ads, and are starting to boycott co
As far as effective firewalls for Windows go, I've been quite pleased with Comodo Firewall Pro's simplicity and small footprint. It's free, too.
The fact is, companies are reacting to demand. There are a lot of people who would ditch Windows in a heartbeat if only for windows-only games.
To be more accurate, companies are interested in whether there are people who would ditch gaming (or at least that company's games) in order to ditch Windows.
Try this: http://www.time.gov/
I (rather suddenly) came down with carpal tunnel syndrome, cubital tunnel syndrome, pronator syndrome, and a handful of tendonitises in both my arms 5 years ago. I found that I had to switch my mouse back and forth between my hands just to surf the web for more than 5 minutes (sadly not an exaggeration), take an extended break at least every 20 minutes or so, and severely limit my total computer usage. Luckily, I had an old Trackman Wheel sitting around (I had replaced it with a 5-button Kensington mouse a few years prior), so I can attest to the dramatic difference it can make in arm strain. While I can now use a mouse for longer periods of time (had surgery on my arms 3 years ago), there's still really no comparison. I've tried the larger ball styles, but the far more limited range of movement necessary to control a thumb trackball is much better for me. While I'll never be able to play computer games again, I can honestly say that if not for my Trackman Wheel, I wouldn't be able to waste time on Slashdot right now.
That doesn't provide evidence of anything on its own. How many people died of cancer the year before? The prior decade? How old were the residents? Did any of the residents work in the same place? Were there any changes in the quality of water reaching the apartments? Were there any renovations in the building? Any maintenance or pest control?
Even if everything else was controlled, the construction itself could easily be at fault. Construction often places a number of hazardous materials in the air (fine particulate matter, glue fumes, etc.). I'm guessing they also installed extra power and communication lines to feed the antenna, both of which could increase local radiation levels themselves. Heck, one of the construction workers could have had a nasty virus that got passed to the residents and lead to their illnesses.
Psychosomatic factors could be to blame as well, and there is also some probability that it was just a coincidence.
Virtually all "media other than USB" can be connected via USB, so I don't see a big problem.
While external DVD+-R drives are in the $60-70 range right now (compared to $30-40 for internal), there's no reason why they couldn't drop to be just a dollar or two more than an internal drive if demand increased, since there's not a whole lot of extra hardware necessary. Readers for many other types of media (especially flash cards) are only just now being built in to computers, and are more commonly used in readers attached via USB. To put it another way, which would you rather have: A computer with USB as the only means of input/output, or a computer with no USB and only current standard media/connectors (setting aside video, sound, and keyboard/mouse, which the Extio covers)? I think you'd find that after a few years, the USB-only machine would be far better suited to taking advantage of new technologies and present far fewer limitations.
Happy to help.
Just get Adblock Plus and add a whitelist element after installing.
Please use the Coral CDN: http://www.pierceive.com.nyud.net:8090/