From the first day the service was announced, a lot of us "long timers" in computers and I.T. were left scratching our heads, wondering what the point was in the entire thing? I mean, Twitter was essentially nothing more than yet *another* IM client of sorts, except with arbitrarily short limits on the length of messages.
Twitter is more than just another IM client. They invented, or at least brought to mainstream popularity, the concepts of the follow and the timeline, which were imitated by Facebook, Instagram, and a number of blogging platforms. Companies and users love the follow, because it realises the ancient mindshare goal of finely-controlled (voluntary) content push, without the clunkiness of channels and email notifications. Once you have permission to push, revenue options open up.
Twitter is not exploiting this power well. They could be earning a cut of the sales made, valuable insights gained, and joy discovered when the information channeled through their platform helps someone choose a product, make a decision, or find something entertaining. I'm not talking about ads and affiliate links.
There are tools like Genius that allow web pages to be annotated beyond the control of the publisher (attaching comments to highlighted text), allowing lies to be challenged in-situ, before their sharing reaches critical mass.
But for this to make a difference, you'd have to ensure that the annotations are widely seen. An annotation system should come with the default install of web browsers (including the Facebook internal one), and if not enabled by default, the user should be asked whether they want it enabled.
But this wouldn't fix the problem of fake articles being popular simply because they tell people something shocking that panders to what they want to hear. Readers sometimes don't care about the truth. They want the entertainment, smugness, and social bonding of an interesting and validating lie. The National Enquirer problem. So it's acceptable if annotations just damp the problem down, rather than eliminate it.
The problem with Season 6 is that Season 5 ended on such a good episode, indeed the rated number one episode of the show ever, that it was hard to beat it. I suspect Rob Grant just went, "well, that's it for me, I'm off".
Of course, the actual classic parts of the series was Series 2 to 5, and it lost a fair bit when Rob Grant left the series, so Seasons 6-9 were variable, what I've seen of Season 10 was good in the Season 6-9 scale.
I'd include Series 6 as part of the golden age. In fact, I'd rank it as the best overall. Rob Grant left after Series 6, so his contribution must have been key, likely including the ability to weave in interesting science fiction concepts.
Series 7 and 8 were dire, except for Cassandra in Season 8.
I watched Series 10. While not dire, I didn't find any to be a keeper. The first episode of Series 11 is getting good reviews, though I worry that this is due to deprived fans just thankful it isn't a total disaster.
I can personally say that until something gives I've personally already pulled my Youtube Red subscription.
Please don't cancel your Red subscription. It's the correct answer to this problem of advertising not being compatible with more-adult content. The problem is that, at least when Red was announced, you couldn't turn on monetisation in such a way to get Red revenue but not ad revenue — useful if you wanted to be rewarded for your work but didn't want to subject your (non-ad-blocker) viewers to ads, but now it's clear that it's essential to support non-family-friendly content.
Please YouTube, allow Red monetisation without ad monetisation.
Many of the handset OEMs have direct experience with being box-stuffers for Wintel PCs; and the ones that don't have had plenty of time to observe the ones that do.
Moral of the story, you are a low-margin, interchangeable, and largely expendable partner if you don't provide either the OS or the high-value components; with conditions moderately better for companies that can at least make money on SoCs or screens or batteries.
A smartphone, even one running stock Android, has many more points of meaningful differentiation than a typical desktop PC, such as
Timely software updates over a long period (the software supplier, Google, doesn't provide them, unlike Microsoft on desktops),
A good battery life,
A good touchscreen,
A quality build that has a lower chance of developing faults, and more robust against damage,
Good display, cameras, and sensors, and
An ergonomic form-factor.
I for one would love to be able to buy such a quality non-Google vanilla-Android phone.
Why do mobile websites disable zoom, when zoom is most useful on mobile devices?
Probably because it's too easy to accidentally zoom when you're scrolling around and clicking on buttons and links. Perhaps such sites should have a permanent enable/disable zoom button or gesture.
There's a simple solution for that: You can vote as many times as you want, but only your most recent vote counts.
Vote buyers would insist on the votes being cast just before the polls close, though that does create a manpower bottleneck if you want to buy lots of votes, unless they keep a watch on all their sellers via video link.
One way to do a secret online ballot would be to have each voter attend a place of registration, where their identity is checked before they get to choose one unique voting card from among thousands. Each card contains online voting codes, which could be used for dozens of ballots.
The main problem with this is that it makes vote-selling easier than it is with physical poll attendance.
Remote secret ballots that prevent vote-selling may be impossible, because if you have to verify your identity remotely, there's always the possibility of shenanigans that link this to your subsequent vote, no matter how much the authorities say they are separated.
One thing the blockers have on their side is that legally Facebook have to mark posts as "sponsored" (or a limited number of synonyms). If a blocking rule can match this in HTML text, and can find the right parent or similarly-positioned block to hide, this should be hard for them to counter.
While I agree that there is moral pressure to stop using sites with ads you can't tolerate, and also that ads are intrinsically bad, there's often an unstated understanding that those who block ads can continue to use a site because of their contribution to either a site's content or its viral propagation. For example, either you tolerate Slashdot ads, you've chosen to hide your subscriber star, or you believe that your posts and moderations are an adequate quid-pro-quo.
Such an understanding is less likely to be present the more aggressively a site blocks ad-blockers, and the more prominent their pleas for users to turn off their blockers.
That's what I don't get about Facebook. I could send pictures of my cats to everyone because they make me happy, but the things that make me happy have already made me happy it adds nothing for me to share them.
Most people are also made happy by the validation they get when people like (and Like) their stuff. Any critics are shamed or blocked as trolls and haters, so it's one big soma love-fest that you never want to leave.
Even the rare interesting ad is sus because its aim is to sell, not to tell the whole truth about the product. Better to get your info on new products from "what's new?" editorial. There are good ways to fund them other than through advertising.
Small and big businesses alike have stopped displaying their own websites in ads and have opted instead to provide a Facebook URL or simply say visit (of like us) on Facebook. The Facebook experience is becoming all to persistent.
Yes, this is because, unlike websites, Facebook provides businesses with both a push subscription service (Like) and a viral propagation service (share).
The best way to view Slashdot today would be to make invisible anything which has an equal number of +1 and -1 votes. If one troll faction hates it and the other troll faction loves it, it's probably not worth reading.
That touches on the problem of thumb-up/thumb-down moderation often turning into agree/disagree. Slashdot tried to avoid this by naming the different downmods. But this may becoming less effective as newer users moderate as thumbs.
So you switched because your doctor focused on medical issues rather than providing you with emotionally comforting talk therapy?
You are not alone. If you look at doctor review sites, by far the biggest reason for low ratings is a rude receptionist. The 2nd biggest reason is doctors that avoided chit-chat. Actual quality of treatment and medical outcomes are rarely even mentioned.
It wasn't chit-chat I was missing. It was someone who could concentrate on listening to me and asking the right questions, instead of on data entry. My current doctor does this. He must update my record after I've left.
It's not only outside of consultations that doctors can spend time entering data. I once switched doctors because he spent most of every consultation oriented towards his screen and keyboard, entering symptoms, treatments, and medication into my medical record, and little time speaking with me face-to-face.
Large corporations are usually not very innovative.
Often true. But Apple seems to be an exception. This may be one legacy of Steve Jobs. A willingness to take time to perfect things, to relentlessly improve their offerings without getting distracted trying to clone the current-big-thing, to bet the company on an opportunity, and to aggressively steer a large company faster than would be possible without a BDL as CEO.
Perhaps the need for time and space to perfect their products is the origin of Apple's notorious secrecy.
Slashdot Mirror
From the first day the service was announced, a lot of us "long timers" in computers and I.T. were left scratching our heads, wondering what the point was in the entire thing? I mean, Twitter was essentially nothing more than yet *another* IM client of sorts, except with arbitrarily short limits on the length of messages.
Twitter is more than just another IM client. They invented, or at least brought to mainstream popularity, the concepts of the follow and the timeline, which were imitated by Facebook, Instagram, and a number of blogging platforms. Companies and users love the follow, because it realises the ancient mindshare goal of finely-controlled (voluntary) content push, without the clunkiness of channels and email notifications. Once you have permission to push, revenue options open up.
Twitter is not exploiting this power well. They could be earning a cut of the sales made, valuable insights gained, and joy discovered when the information channeled through their platform helps someone choose a product, make a decision, or find something entertaining. I'm not talking about ads and affiliate links.
Stalking by an employee of an Uber-like company was the subject of an episode of Elementary.
Genius annotations have up/down thumbs, so a well-argued one will likely have greater prominence.
To prevent agree/disagree wars, I'd actually get rid of the down-mods, or at least name them like Slashdot.
There are tools like Genius that allow web pages to be annotated beyond the control of the publisher (attaching comments to highlighted text), allowing lies to be challenged in-situ, before their sharing reaches critical mass.
But for this to make a difference, you'd have to ensure that the annotations are widely seen. An annotation system should come with the default install of web browsers (including the Facebook internal one), and if not enabled by default, the user should be asked whether they want it enabled.
But this wouldn't fix the problem of fake articles being popular simply because they tell people something shocking that panders to what they want to hear. Readers sometimes don't care about the truth. They want the entertainment, smugness, and social bonding of an interesting and validating lie. The National Enquirer problem. So it's acceptable if annotations just damp the problem down, rather than eliminate it.
The problem with Season 6 is that Season 5 ended on such a good episode, indeed the rated number one episode of the show ever, that it was hard to beat it. I suspect Rob Grant just went, "well, that's it for me, I'm off".
Back to Reality is my favourite episode as well. But Rob Grant did co-write all of Season 6.
Of course, the actual classic parts of the series was Series 2 to 5, and it lost a fair bit when Rob Grant left the series, so Seasons 6-9 were variable, what I've seen of Season 10 was good in the Season 6-9 scale.
I'd include Series 6 as part of the golden age. In fact, I'd rank it as the best overall. Rob Grant left after Series 6, so his contribution must have been key, likely including the ability to weave in interesting science fiction concepts.
Series 7 and 8 were dire, except for Cassandra in Season 8.
I watched Series 10. While not dire, I didn't find any to be a keeper. The first episode of Series 11 is getting good reviews, though I worry that this is due to deprived fans just thankful it isn't a total disaster.
OK thanks. Now I think about it, 4.4.4 did run OK, it was the upgrade to 5.x that caused barely-tolerable lag.
What version does Nexus 7 (2012) work well on? 4.1, 4.2? 4.4 runs like a dog.
I can personally say that until something gives I've personally already pulled my Youtube Red subscription.
Please don't cancel your Red subscription. It's the correct answer to this problem of advertising not being compatible with more-adult content. The problem is that, at least when Red was announced, you couldn't turn on monetisation in such a way to get Red revenue but not ad revenue — useful if you wanted to be rewarded for your work but didn't want to subject your (non-ad-blocker) viewers to ads, but now it's clear that it's essential to support non-family-friendly content.
Please YouTube, allow Red monetisation without ad monetisation.
Many of the handset OEMs have direct experience with being box-stuffers for Wintel PCs; and the ones that don't have had plenty of time to observe the ones that do.
Moral of the story, you are a low-margin, interchangeable, and largely expendable partner if you don't provide either the OS or the high-value components; with conditions moderately better for companies that can at least make money on SoCs or screens or batteries.
A smartphone, even one running stock Android, has many more points of meaningful differentiation than a typical desktop PC, such as
I for one would love to be able to buy such a quality non-Google vanilla-Android phone.
Why do mobile websites disable zoom, when zoom is most useful on mobile devices?
Probably because it's too easy to accidentally zoom when you're scrolling around and clicking on buttons and links. Perhaps such sites should have a permanent enable/disable zoom button or gesture.
A solution would be to allow multiple votes, that all appear to go through, but to allow a vote to be sent as unalterable.
You still have the problem of most people not being good liars.
There's a simple solution for that: You can vote as many times as you want, but only your most recent vote counts.
Vote buyers would insist on the votes being cast just before the polls close, though that does create a manpower bottleneck if you want to buy lots of votes, unless they keep a watch on all their sellers via video link.
One way to do a secret online ballot would be to have each voter attend a place of registration, where their identity is checked before they get to choose one unique voting card from among thousands. Each card contains online voting codes, which could be used for dozens of ballots.
The main problem with this is that it makes vote-selling easier than it is with physical poll attendance.
Remote secret ballots that prevent vote-selling may be impossible, because if you have to verify your identity remotely, there's always the possibility of shenanigans that link this to your subsequent vote, no matter how much the authorities say they are separated.
Yes, it could be a war.
One thing the blockers have on their side is that legally Facebook have to mark posts as "sponsored" (or a limited number of synonyms). If a blocking rule can match this in HTML text, and can find the right parent or similarly-positioned block to hide, this should be hard for them to counter.
While I agree that there is moral pressure to stop using sites with ads you can't tolerate, and also that ads are intrinsically bad, there's often an unstated understanding that those who block ads can continue to use a site because of their contribution to either a site's content or its viral propagation. For example, either you tolerate Slashdot ads, you've chosen to hide your subscriber star, or you believe that your posts and moderations are an adequate quid-pro-quo.
Such an understanding is less likely to be present the more aggressively a site blocks ad-blockers, and the more prominent their pleas for users to turn off their blockers.
That's what I don't get about Facebook. I could send pictures of my cats to everyone because they make me happy, but the things that make me happy have already made me happy it adds nothing for me to share them.
Most people are also made happy by the validation they get when people like (and Like) their stuff. Any critics are shamed or blocked as trolls and haters, so it's one big soma love-fest that you never want to leave.
Even the rare interesting ad is sus because its aim is to sell, not to tell the whole truth about the product. Better to get your info on new products from "what's new?" editorial. There are good ways to fund them other than through advertising.
Small and big businesses alike have stopped displaying their own websites in ads and have opted instead to provide a Facebook URL or simply say visit (of like us) on Facebook. The Facebook experience is becoming all to persistent.
Yes, this is because, unlike websites, Facebook provides businesses with both a push subscription service (Like) and a viral propagation service (share).
The best way to view Slashdot today would be to make invisible anything which has an equal number of +1 and -1 votes. If one troll faction hates it and the other troll faction loves it, it's probably not worth reading.
That touches on the problem of thumb-up/thumb-down moderation often turning into agree/disagree. Slashdot tried to avoid this by naming the different downmods. But this may becoming less effective as newer users moderate as thumbs.
So you switched because your doctor focused on medical issues rather than providing you with emotionally comforting talk therapy?
You are not alone. If you look at doctor review sites, by far the biggest reason for low ratings is a rude receptionist. The 2nd biggest reason is doctors that avoided chit-chat. Actual quality of treatment and medical outcomes are rarely even mentioned.
It wasn't chit-chat I was missing. It was someone who could concentrate on listening to me and asking the right questions, instead of on data entry. My current doctor does this. He must update my record after I've left.
It's not only outside of consultations that doctors can spend time entering data. I once switched doctors because he spent most of every consultation oriented towards his screen and keyboard, entering symptoms, treatments, and medication into my medical record, and little time speaking with me face-to-face.
Large corporations are usually not very innovative.
Often true. But Apple seems to be an exception. This may be one legacy of Steve Jobs. A willingness to take time to perfect things, to relentlessly improve their offerings without getting distracted trying to clone the current-big-thing, to bet the company on an opportunity, and to aggressively steer a large company faster than would be possible without a BDL as CEO.
Perhaps the need for time and space to perfect their products is the origin of Apple's notorious secrecy.
Life or Pokemon?
Pay-to-Win is the definition of capitalism.