To get retailers to start carding everybody for games?
I don't think retailers being responsible would help much. Kids could just as easily jump on (insert preferred P2P service here) and download the game and it's keygen/reghack/ect.
The upshot of this would be an increase in HDTV offerings on cable. One of the major problems cable providers have right now is insufficient bandwidth for all the HDTV channels that they might otherwise want to offer, many of which HDTV owners would be willing to pay for. You'll see the dropped SDTV channels replaced by more HDTV channels and on demand services as the market sorts out what people are willing to pay for.
Another downside is for true a la carte pricing to work, everyone will have to have a digital converter box so the cableco can authorize the individual channels. Digital tuners make unattended programming of TV quite difficult.
Fair enough... but in my book, a format isn't open if I'm not allowed to create a derivative standard (under a new name). I should be allowed to innovate and come up with a variant of OpenDocument (and call it "UberTextFormat!" or whatever), or come up with a new kind of screw or electrical socket, based on current designs. Whether or not the standard becomes widely implemented is another question altogether. It is in our general interest to use a small set of standards to get our work done efficiently. But having a particular standard immune to evolution does not serve our goals.
Are you going to make UberTextFormat open as well?
If not, then this sounds just like what happened to the web. Microsoft and Netscape Navigator can both read HTML 2.0, then they both began "innovating" and came up with variant formats that would only work in their respective browsers, and they would not make those changes open, so now the open standard of HTML 2.0 becomes the variants owned by corporations. The probelm is, those new "standards" become popular for their extra enhancments and people began having to choose sides when they should have had their choice of any browser they want and have the document (website) look the same.
It really doesn't matter so much that M$ and Netscape both claimed their websites were websites and not Netsites or Microsites, the blame lays with the content creators who had to have their bells and whistles rather than sticking with the standard. If the HTML extensions had not come into widespread use, there would not be such a mess as today.
And this is the probelm with allowing a standard to be changed by a company when they have access to such a large chunk of the potential users.
The Firefox method is even less standardized (if you haven't actually defined the keyword with a bookmark like the way I explained it in IE, as all it does is run an "I'm feeling lucky" search on Google. So if a type in "miserable failure" it's going to go to GW Bush's biography since the Google result has been googlebombed.
why would these online publications ever want google to quit freely advertising their products.
Many people only read the first paragraph or so of articles when they get them as RSS feeds, the they don't always go to read the rest. If everyone goes to Google News and reads the first paragraph of the article, the online publication wont get as many people to view the ads on their own article page.
their ad revenue would be related to that of google news'. google news is a value-adding party, not a competitor. any leagal action would be out of spite that google makes any money off of someone else's publication.
And you don't think businesses would do this? They hate the thought of anyone making money off their content besides themselves. Kinda like a guy would hate having a leech drinking off his leg even if it wasn't effecting his health and he couldn't feel it. They don't see the logic of Google's extra exposure.
we should ask why other applications don't have "Beta" on their packaging.
I don't see why I should pay for software the company is going label as 'beta' and absolve all responsabilities for. If the software company wants me to beta test their software, they should be paying me.
That, and you can't uninstall the old ones because it'll break all of them.
You were supposed to uninstall the old version before you install the new one. That would prevent the duplicate entries in Add/Remove Programs. Your bookmarks/cookies/extensions/ect would be safe because they are stored in the profile folder, which is not removed when you uninstall Firefox.
Re:All ad-based information companies work this wa
on
The Google Caste System
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Think about TV. Who runs things, the people selling air time for commercials or the station manager who chooses what shows appear and what the format is when the network isn't forcing its agenda? Or even at network level, what directs them - people who sell ads or creative people who think their program could be a hit?
From what I can tell, this example doesn't apply. The Ad people are the ones who run the company when it comes to TV. The quality of programming continues to decline to pandering for whatever will get the most viewship, becuase more viewers means more eyes at commercial break and higher rates commanded for ads in that timeslot. When a major sponsor of a show doesn't like the political/ethical fork a show's storyline takes, does the network tell the writers to edit the script? Or the sponsor to live with the story or find another show?
It works in IE, too. Only the keyword is not separate from the title of Favorites entry. So if I bring up the firefox page and then add it to my favorites (shortening the page name down to just "Firefox") I can now type "firefox" in the address bar and it will work. Another limitation of the IE version is it only works on favorites in the root level of the Favorites menu. Organize your favorites into subfolders, and it stops working.
Maybe it's not the play button that's doing it on mine then. Perhaps it's from me pushing the tray in instead of pushing the open/close button to have it retract. I seem to recall that being a "quick-start" feature of my DVD player. Or maybe I'm just imagining that since it's not recommended you push the tray back in my any DVD player maker usually. This is a cheap little silver player I bought at Wal-Mart. But it is progressive scan with component out...
But the other day I was looking at some 'Enviro-Logs' I bought. They are like Duraflame logs, but they are made from recycled 'waxed cardboard' (which they can't use for making new cardboard.)
The label touted them as being environmentally friendly because they took the cardboard out of the waste stream and landfill. But is burning it even worse?
Well, if you weren't burning the Enviolag you'd be burning a real one.
So which is worse:
1) Taking waxed paper out of the line to the landfill and making fireplace fuel out of it?
2) Leaving the cardboard to rot in the dump and chopping down trees to burn in your fireplace (yeah, I know. You probably use branches that have already naturally fallen off trees, but anyway).
"...mobile gaming will not be a focus until 2007. Nokia is concentrating on mobile music for the rest of this year, and next year's main push will be on driving mobile television."
Google itself? Is it afraid of itself becoming and doing evil eventually?
Was anybody else reminded of that scene from The Empire Strikes Back where Luke goes into the cave on Dagobah to confront his worse fear and its Darth Vader, only when Vader's mask blows off we see Luke's face was underneath. That just popped into my head when I read this.
I don't mind automated systems, most of the time. Given the choice between waiting 10 minutes for a human to take my call, and an automated system instantly picking up, I'll take the latter. 90 percent of the time, the automated system is perfectly adequate, and a lot of times, it's better.
I agree, I find automated systems okay for the most part, provided they are well designed. Many people prefer them when doing financial transactions with companies, as they feel more secure typing their credit card number into the keypad for an IVR than telling it to a CSR. Sometimes I actually prefer an automated system, I guess becuase some numbers I've called have such clueless reps on the phones I find I know more about the company and it's products than the rep does (kinda like shopping at Best Buy).
What bothers me is when automated systems
Don't have a plainly labeled option for speaking with an operator within the first three levels of the system. Some situations are far more quickly handled if they can just be explained to a human being. I recently tried to call my insurance company to find out if I could get reimbursed for my flu shot and couldn't get any information as the automated system didn't tell me and had to option to just talk to a person.
When they don't offer 'back to previous menu' option. The automated system I use to chage options on my voicemail has no way to back up in some areas. So the only way to get to the previous section is to hang up and call back into the system (adding extra cell phone minutes to the call).
The automated message has me enter in my account number before having me directed to the correct operator. At that point the guy (or girl) at the other end asks me for my account number. It drives me nuts....Why implement such a system?
The phone system might have been set up for software that doesn't exist anymore or is not used in all locations. I worked for a company where this happened. The phone system asked you for the phone number on the account and then I asked them for the same thing. When the company decides to outsource support, sometimes the systems they have set up to automatically transfer that info to the answering agent does not work. They also sometimes change accounting software and break compatability. Many times the bureaucracy of the company keeps the loose ends from being tied up. So the system continues to ask for account info when nobody uses it because they don't want to hassle with changing the phone system.
Also, some automated systems will tell the customer if they are in an outage or not if they recognise the customer as being in an effected area from their account information. This cuts down on reps getting 50 phone calls where all they say is "you're in an outage, we're working on it".
The BBC has an article about how chinese bloggers hate BBC interviews, as from their point of view all the Beeb cares about is censorship in China.
Well, why else would the BBC care about a Chinese blog? Few blogs (Chinese or those based in the UK or USA) are big enough, widely read enough, or interesting enough to be worthy of major media attention. Look at all the people who post on Slashdot and I don't think I've ever heard it mentioned in the media. The Brits do care about people being punished by communist regimes and denied the ability to speak out against their rulers, though. And since blogs and other internet activities have allowed many to do so, it's going to be a topic of conversation when the foreign press calls.
Perhaps it's because they (say: democrats) live by the old cliche: "The enemy (republicans) of my enemy (libertarians/other 3rd party) is my friend" ?
I don't think the Libertarians are really seen as a threat to the Democrats. But the Republicans are the ones with a support group in the same league as the Democrats' so your cliche really doesn't make any sense in this case. It's just a case of mutual disagreement with the Libertarian party as to whether there is anything to worry about or not.
Perhaps the libertarians are just paranoid twerps and believe their low vote percentage is part of some massive bi-partisan conspiracy and not really the result of almost all Americans disagreeing with their platform.
Once we all stop trying to fit everyone into a narrow laundry list of beliefs and compete on things issue by issue, then we can start to see what sort of individuals America really does want to lead it.
I think the grandparent meant that it was bigger than it should have been when compared to projects designed to cure diseases and the like - moving its userbase over to a project that lets them work on a selection of causes is a very nice idea.
While I agree disease cures are a little higher priority than finding extra-terrestrials, who's to dictate what these people do with their spare cycles? If there are more people interested in finding aliens than finding cures it just means the other project isn't as popular. I say: too bad, so sad.
What do they expect from a country with the priorities of paying a basketball players millions of dollars but making teachers unionize to get a cost of living increase in salary?
I know you were modded up informative but the law does not say police have carte blanch to search your car. They do have every right to use drug dogs if they pull your car over but they can't go further if dogs turn up nothing.
Sure they do. They'll ask you politely to let them search the vehicle. If you agree, they get to search your vehicle. If you refuse, they say that since you refused you must have something to hide, therefore they have "probable cause" to search the car now.
That being said though, I'm pissed off at Yahoo now, since I signed up for a month to try it out and was possibly scammed since someone had "messaged" me before I signed up, but never messaged after I contacted them back.
They same thing happened to me on match.com! Someone interesting looking popped up when my sub was soon to be expiring, after I'd renewed it seemed she suddenly had second thoughts on communicating with me.
Actually something really funny happened a week or so ago. I recieved an email from match telling me someone had viewed my profile (they recently started allowing you to see what members have been viewing your profile, if you're a subscriber). And they were egging me on to resubscribe so I could see who it was.
The funny thing is my profile has been Hidden for months now (because I got involved with someone I met in real life).
Fortunately I've since been tipped off to the existence of 100% free sites like http://www.craigslist.com/ and http://www.plentyoffish.com/ which don't require you to pay. Plenty of Fish makes their money from Google advertising instead of scamming people with fake people.
There are also sites that charge per transaction, so if a relationship fizzles out after a few emails you haven't wasted a whole $25 if nothing else comes up in the next 30 days. One of them wasAct For Love, but as I check now it appears they have moved to a normal subscription scheme, although it is less than many other sites. The more focused interest group it promotes may mean people who are closer to what other members are looking for and make up for the smaller pool when compared to match, yahoo, ect.
Slashdot Mirror
To get retailers to start carding everybody for games?
I don't think retailers being responsible would help much. Kids could just as easily jump on (insert preferred P2P service here) and download the game and it's keygen/reghack/ect.
The upshot of this would be an increase in HDTV offerings on cable. One of the major problems cable providers have right now is insufficient bandwidth for all the HDTV channels that they might otherwise want to offer, many of which HDTV owners would be willing to pay for. You'll see the dropped SDTV channels replaced by more HDTV channels and on demand services as the market sorts out what people are willing to pay for.
Another downside is for true a la carte pricing to work, everyone will have to have a digital converter box so the cableco can authorize the individual channels. Digital tuners make unattended programming of TV quite difficult.
Score another one against Fair Use.
Fair enough... but in my book, a format isn't open if I'm not allowed to create a derivative standard (under a new name). I should be allowed to innovate and come up with a variant of OpenDocument (and call it "UberTextFormat!" or whatever), or come up with a new kind of screw or electrical socket, based on current designs. Whether or not the standard becomes widely implemented is another question altogether. It is in our general interest to use a small set of standards to get our work done efficiently. But having a particular standard immune to evolution does not serve our goals.
Are you going to make UberTextFormat open as well?
If not, then this sounds just like what happened to the web. Microsoft and Netscape Navigator can both read HTML 2.0, then they both began "innovating" and came up with variant formats that would only work in their respective browsers, and they would not make those changes open, so now the open standard of HTML 2.0 becomes the variants owned by corporations. The probelm is, those new "standards" become popular for their extra enhancments and people began having to choose sides when they should have had their choice of any browser they want and have the document (website) look the same.
It really doesn't matter so much that M$ and Netscape both claimed their websites were websites and not Netsites or Microsites, the blame lays with the content creators who had to have their bells and whistles rather than sticking with the standard. If the HTML extensions had not come into widespread use, there would not be such a mess as today.
And this is the probelm with allowing a standard to be changed by a company when they have access to such a large chunk of the potential users.
The Firefox method is even less standardized (if you haven't actually defined the keyword with a bookmark like the way I explained it in IE, as all it does is run an "I'm feeling lucky" search on Google. So if a type in "miserable failure" it's going to go to GW Bush's biography since the Google result has been googlebombed.
why would these online publications ever want google to quit freely advertising their products.
Many people only read the first paragraph or so of articles when they get them as RSS feeds, the they don't always go to read the rest. If everyone goes to Google News and reads the first paragraph of the article, the online publication wont get as many people to view the ads on their own article page.
their ad revenue would be related to that of google news'. google news is a value-adding party, not a competitor. any leagal action would be out of spite that google makes any money off of someone else's publication.
And you don't think businesses would do this? They hate the thought of anyone making money off their content besides themselves. Kinda like a guy would hate having a leech drinking off his leg even if it wasn't effecting his health and he couldn't feel it. They don't see the logic of Google's extra exposure.
we should ask why other applications don't have "Beta" on their packaging.
I don't see why I should pay for software the company is going label as 'beta' and absolve all responsabilities for. If the software company wants me to beta test their software, they should be paying me.
That, and you can't uninstall the old ones because it'll break all of them.
You were supposed to uninstall the old version before you install the new one. That would prevent the duplicate entries in Add/Remove Programs. Your bookmarks/cookies/extensions/ect would be safe because they are stored in the profile folder, which is not removed when you uninstall Firefox.
Think about TV. Who runs things, the people selling air time for commercials or the station manager who chooses what shows appear and what the format is when the network isn't forcing its agenda? Or even at network level, what directs them - people who sell ads or creative people who think their program could be a hit?
From what I can tell, this example doesn't apply. The Ad people are the ones who run the company when it comes to TV. The quality of programming continues to decline to pandering for whatever will get the most viewship, becuase more viewers means more eyes at commercial break and higher rates commanded for ads in that timeslot. When a major sponsor of a show doesn't like the political/ethical fork a show's storyline takes, does the network tell the writers to edit the script? Or the sponsor to live with the story or find another show?
For insight into the correct answers, check out such movies as The Insider and the currently playing Good Night, and Good Luck .
sure, but it's not standard by any means.
Mozilla: http://www.firefox.com/
Internet Explorer: http:///?%20firefox (with a The page cannot be displayed error)
It works in IE, too. Only the keyword is not separate from the title of Favorites entry. So if I bring up the firefox page and then add it to my favorites (shortening the page name down to just "Firefox") I can now type "firefox" in the address bar and it will work. Another limitation of the IE version is it only works on favorites in the root level of the Favorites menu. Organize your favorites into subfolders, and it stops working.
Maybe it's not the play button that's doing it on mine then. Perhaps it's from me pushing the tray in instead of pushing the open/close button to have it retract. I seem to recall that being a "quick-start" feature of my DVD player. Or maybe I'm just imagining that since it's not recommended you push the tray back in my any DVD player maker usually. This is a cheap little silver player I bought at Wal-Mart. But it is progressive scan with component out...
Neither of my DVD players will allow me to play a DVD without the remotes (they have a play button, but no method of choosing items on the DVD menu).
That's what the Play button is for. Pushing it is the same as choosing "play movie" on the front menu. At least that's what happens on my DVD player.
But the other day I was looking at some 'Enviro-Logs' I bought. They are like Duraflame logs, but they are made from recycled 'waxed cardboard' (which they can't use for making new cardboard.)
The label touted them as being environmentally friendly because they took the cardboard out of the waste stream and landfill. But is burning it even worse?
Well, if you weren't burning the Enviolag you'd be burning a real one.
So which is worse:
1) Taking waxed paper out of the line to the landfill and making fireplace fuel out of it?
2) Leaving the cardboard to rot in the dump and chopping down trees to burn in your fireplace (yeah, I know. You probably use branches that have already naturally fallen off trees, but anyway).
"...mobile gaming will not be a focus until 2007. Nokia is concentrating on mobile music for the rest of this year, and next year's main push will be on driving mobile television."
When are they going to focus on mobile calling?
No, Engine != Motor.
Engine - Converts chemical energy to mechanical energy.
Motor - Converts electrical energy to mechanical energy.
I don't do Turkey for both. Might I suggest a fine Christmas Ham instead?
Google itself? Is it afraid of itself becoming and doing evil eventually?
Was anybody else reminded of that scene from The Empire Strikes Back where Luke goes into the cave on Dagobah to confront his worse fear and its Darth Vader, only when Vader's mask blows off we see Luke's face was underneath. That just popped into my head when I read this.
I agree, I find automated systems okay for the most part, provided they are well designed. Many people prefer them when doing financial transactions with companies, as they feel more secure typing their credit card number into the keypad for an IVR than telling it to a CSR. Sometimes I actually prefer an automated system, I guess becuase some numbers I've called have such clueless reps on the phones I find I know more about the company and it's products than the rep does (kinda like shopping at Best Buy).
What bothers me is when automated systems
The automated message has me enter in my account number before having me directed to the correct operator. At that point the guy (or girl) at the other end asks me for my account number. It drives me nuts....Why implement such a system?
The phone system might have been set up for software that doesn't exist anymore or is not used in all locations. I worked for a company where this happened. The phone system asked you for the phone number on the account and then I asked them for the same thing. When the company decides to outsource support, sometimes the systems they have set up to automatically transfer that info to the answering agent does not work. They also sometimes change accounting software and break compatability. Many times the bureaucracy of the company keeps the loose ends from being tied up. So the system continues to ask for account info when nobody uses it because they don't want to hassle with changing the phone system.
Also, some automated systems will tell the customer if they are in an outage or not if they recognise the customer as being in an effected area from their account information. This cuts down on reps getting 50 phone calls where all they say is "you're in an outage, we're working on it".
The BBC has an article about how chinese bloggers hate BBC interviews, as from their point of view all the Beeb cares about is censorship in China.
Well, why else would the BBC care about a Chinese blog? Few blogs (Chinese or those based in the UK or USA) are big enough, widely read enough, or interesting enough to be worthy of major media attention. Look at all the people who post on Slashdot and I don't think I've ever heard it mentioned in the media. The Brits do care about people being punished by communist regimes and denied the ability to speak out against their rulers, though. And since blogs and other internet activities have allowed many to do so, it's going to be a topic of conversation when the foreign press calls.
Perhaps it's because they (say: democrats) live by the old cliche: "The enemy (republicans) of my enemy (libertarians/other 3rd party) is my friend" ?
I don't think the Libertarians are really seen as a threat to the Democrats. But the Republicans are the ones with a support group in the same league as the Democrats' so your cliche really doesn't make any sense in this case. It's just a case of mutual disagreement with the Libertarian party as to whether there is anything to worry about or not.
Perhaps the libertarians are just paranoid twerps and believe their low vote percentage is part of some massive bi-partisan conspiracy and not really the result of almost all Americans disagreeing with their platform.
Once we all stop trying to fit everyone into a narrow laundry list of beliefs and compete on things issue by issue, then we can start to see what sort of individuals America really does want to lead it.
I think the grandparent meant that it was bigger than it should have been when compared to projects designed to cure diseases and the like - moving its userbase over to a project that lets them work on a selection of causes is a very nice idea.
While I agree disease cures are a little higher priority than finding extra-terrestrials, who's to dictate what these people do with their spare cycles? If there are more people interested in finding aliens than finding cures it just means the other project isn't as popular. I say: too bad, so sad.
What do they expect from a country with the priorities of paying a basketball players millions of dollars but making teachers unionize to get a cost of living increase in salary?
I know you were modded up informative but the law does not say police have carte blanch to search your car. They do have every right to use drug dogs if they pull your car over but they can't go further if dogs turn up nothing.
Sure they do. They'll ask you politely to let them search the vehicle. If you agree, they get to search your vehicle. If you refuse, they say that since you refused you must have something to hide, therefore they have "probable cause" to search the car now.
You lose either way.
Multi-session disc inserted.
2 sessions detected.
Select session to use (cr for newest): __
Wait, doesn't the audio session have to occur first on a multisession cd (because a regular CD player expects it to be there)?
So if we hit 'Enter' to pick the default (newest) session, we'll be picking the data session with the rootkit!
That being said though, I'm pissed off at Yahoo now, since I signed up for a month to try it out and was possibly scammed since someone had "messaged" me before I signed up, but never messaged after I contacted them back.
They same thing happened to me on match.com! Someone interesting looking popped up when my sub was soon to be expiring, after I'd renewed it seemed she suddenly had second thoughts on communicating with me.
Actually something really funny happened a week or so ago. I recieved an email from match telling me someone had viewed my profile (they recently started allowing you to see what members have been viewing your profile, if you're a subscriber). And they were egging me on to resubscribe so I could see who it was.
The funny thing is my profile has been Hidden for months now (because I got involved with someone I met in real life).
Fortunately I've since been tipped off to the existence of 100% free sites like http://www.craigslist.com/ and http://www.plentyoffish.com/ which don't require you to pay. Plenty of Fish makes their money from Google advertising instead of scamming people with fake people.
There are also sites that charge per transaction, so if a relationship fizzles out after a few emails you haven't wasted a whole $25 if nothing else comes up in the next 30 days. One of them was Act For Love, but as I check now it appears they have moved to a normal subscription scheme, although it is less than many other sites. The more focused interest group it promotes may mean people who are closer to what other members are looking for and make up for the smaller pool when compared to match, yahoo, ect.
Doesn't everyone already have this? :-/
I know lots of people with Windows installations that pop up ads, even when they aren't doing anything on the internet!