This will fail because it's difficult for anyone to tell what links are going to work and what links won't.
Post an article's link to your Twitter account? No paywall.
Post it to your Facebook page? Paywall!
Post it on your blog? No paywall!
Send it in an email? Who knows!
The rules are confusing. People operate on the assumption that if a link works for them, they can share it with everyone. This is going to result in a lot of frustration.
I don't buy your "catching the bad guy" excuse, and here's why: my bank had no idea this was going on. Google never notified them. Not when the adsense attempt happened (which could have been YEARS ago), and not when I attempted to use GCO. Me calling them up to cancel the card was the first they'd heard of it.
I would PREFER if the "bad guy" knew not to use my card anymore. I don't really think we should pretend everything's peachy just so he can continue attempting to use my card. If he gets a "THIS IS BLACKLISTED" message, maybe it will occur to him to stop using the card because someone has caught on. And If the legitimate holder gets this message, then they know to cancel it instead of just assuming buy.com is a crappy website.
Google could have handled it better. I did my part and canceled when they told me, but shouldn't they be obligated to inform me that my account had possibly been compromised?
I had problems with GCO from the start. Apparently, someone had attempted to pay with their adsense account with my card number, but didn't have the name, expiration date, or 3 digit security code. This was still enough to put my card on their internal blacklist. So, because someone else unsuccessfully tried using my card number, it was forever untrustable in Google's eyes.
It was a hell of a time getting that information from Google, though. I got about three mysterious "order cancelled" messages with no indication of what the problem was. I was convinced it was buy.com's fault. It took three or four messages to customer service and 2-3 weeks before someone finally explained this to me. It doesn't make sense to me that *I* was put on their blacklist because someone had unsuccessfully tried to use my card, and there was nothing I could do to prove to them that I was myself. I did cancel the card, and my new debit card works fine with GCO, but it felt like they could have been a little more up-front about it instead of expecting me to magically know how to solve the matter.
I'd wager the low satisfaction level has something to do with this general disorganization, but also with the stores they associate with. Buy.com, the Sports Authority online, and bluefly.com are all stores that have notoriously bad customer service. People were shopping at places they normally wouldn't touch because of the GCO discount, and found out that dealing with them probably wasn't worth the $10 or $20 they saved.
Agreed. My main fear about the "ultimate convergence machine" is battery life. Do I really want to be stranded without a phone because I was listening to music all day? At least with my Razr, I can keep a spare battery in my purse for emergencies. I have a funny feeling that after a year or two, when my iPhone can't hold a charge anymore, Apple is going to want another $100 to "fix" my battery, like they currently do with iPods.
Outside of wanting cell phones that are not delicate mini-computers, I'd say people are rarely clamoring for things that "do one thing well". Simplicity IS being "easy to use" (and learn). When most people ask for a simple design, this is what they mean--not one that is so basic that it only does one thing. People love using many features and learning to customize. They just don't want this to be an obstacle in actually using the product as intended.
I suggest leaving your youngest child at home to take care of the place. Leave adequate supplies, like paint buckets, firecrackers, cardboard cutouts of famous people, some 1950s gangster films (that you wouldn't let him watch otherwise), a tarantula, and a blowtorch. That should take care of everything.
"How different is it than MSFT placing its products (Internet Explorer) in a premium marketing position (embedded in the OS)?"
When Microsoft does it, there's not a link to Firefox directly underneath the link to IE.
A search for "email" reveals that Google was more than happy to sell AOL some ad space above their search results. Not to mention that Yahoo! mail leads the actual results. I'd be a lot more concerned if Google artificially ranked themselves at the top of the results for all of these searches, instead of just giving themselves ad space.
News Feed highlights what's going on in and around your Facebook network by listing the latest stories about your friends on your Facebook home page. You will only be notified of actions that you would have been able to see by clicking around the site. We also display external news articles that might be of interest to you. It's like we started delivering the mail to you instead of forcing you to pick it up on your own.
They buy them from friends. My roommate freshman year was diagnosed as having ADD. She was supposed to take FOUR Adderall pills a day. She only took her meds if she "needed" to concentrate, which she apparently didn't need very much, because her grades were fine. The rest went to people she knew, or people that lived in our dorm, or even people that were willing to pay for it. She saved up some for finals week and made quite a bit of money.
This is college we're talking about. No one's a minor and everyone is overmedicated already (on MAOIs, ritalin/adderall, birth control, Accutane, etc). It's next to impossible to track who is taking what and whether they're allowed to without seriously invading everyone's privacy.
Ford will recycle your old car....for free! As soon as your Mustang gets a few scuffs on it and you want a brand new one, bring it in and they will take it off your hands and crush it into a cube! At absolutely no cost to you! Wow, what an amazingly environmentally conscious company!
Seriously, apple has a vested interest in keeping people buying new computers, not used ones. Most major computer manufacturers have this sort of program, and it amazes me that some people think that because THEY have no use for their computer, no one does, and it has to be destroyed somehow. I know a lot of those morons would just throw it in the garbage otherwise, but still--let's not celebrate Apple for being a different, progressive company. They're not doing anything special.
Cost to press isn't as important as cost to make. Your average Hollywood blockbuster costs a whole lot more to cast, shoot, edit, and distribute than a textbook, especally a tenth edition textbook that is 97% old material.
When did you go to college? Most textbooks come out with new editions every 2-3 years. This means that, on average, two of my classes require a NEW $140 textbook every semester that will immediately drop to $70 resale the minute I leave the bookstore. Even if a class doesn't require a new edition, they'll ask me to buy 3-4 older books that total well over $50. Sharing textbooks is completely impractical, especially in math classes with nightly homework. In additon, the older editions tend to have the same material, but it's always shuffled around and the homework problems are changed to ensure I can't get by with last year's book.
Your point about "making sacrifices" is just ridiculous. Are you really under the assumption that everyone attending college HAS the choice between textbooks and a car, or textbooks and new clothes? Some of us don't HAVE those luxuries to "sacrifice" in order to be able to afford astronomical books. Textbooks are not an "investment." If textbooks were truly an "investment" they wouldn't immediately lose half their value as soon as I crack them open. This is an artificially inflated cost.
As for your last point, I don't see how it is the fault of the STUDENTS that publishers stuff their textbooks with pretty graphs, "interactive" CDs that NO ONE ever uses, color photos, nice paper, etc. I'd gladly revert back to text and black-and-white photos if it meant cheaper books, and I am guessing 99% of college students feel exactly the same way. WE didn't demand books that look super nice; the publishers just threw that stuff in to justify charging more.
Your arguments just seem to be telling me that I have cheaper alternatives, and choices in the matter, when none exist. I shop around to find the best deals for my books, and still end up with $500-$600 worth of books to buy every single semester, that sell back for about half as much (of the ones that sell back at all--many end up listed for $10 at half.com). Books don't lose anything after someone reads them, so there is absolutely no reason for such a sharp change in retail value and resale value. It's purely publishers and bookstores ripping me off at every turn, and despite your claims of "choosing" glitzy textbooks and "choosing" more expensive textbooks that have fewer mistakes, I don't have a choice in the matter.
This is just another effort to get the young men back into watching TV. The 18-24 males have pretty much disappeared as far as ratings by demographic go. I guess the G4 higher-ups realized that talking about video games and the internet all the time is counter-productive when they're trying to lure men AWAY from those forms of entertainment.
The truth is, a whole lot of stories get reported on digg. They're reported by users, and after a number of users report, the story gets removed from the home page. That's a catch with a system like they have set up. Say person X links to personX.com where they blog about inflammatory junk for pageviews (microsoft to buy out apple? what?!). Digg community diggs without clicking on story, or doesn't realize story is created from a questionable source for pageviews. Story hits front page, and sensible people see the story for what it really is. Story is marked lame OR spam OR inaccurate (oftentimes more than one is correct). Story is removed from homepage (but not from digg completely--you can still see these stories in your digg history and search for them). Person X freaks out and cries censorship. And don't forget the marketing shills who have 10 accounts so they can digg each of their submitted stories up.
There's a LOT of crap on digg, and I'd rather have it overmodded than undermodded and full of spam, junk, dupes, and flamebait. However, when a lot of person Xs get their stories thrown out and their page views drop, it's not shocking that they become very vocal about the "censorship" that cuts into their adsense numbers.
Adding to that, who are we really studying here? 100 male undergraduates in a small age bracket who go to a single university. Likely either participating in this for class extra credit (for which we can assume this only applies to male Psych 100 students or whatever) or as individuals answering a call for volunteers for a study (what kind of male responds to an "experiment involving video games" flyer?). Even with the small sample size and completely nonrandom sample, where's the hard data on how MUCH more likely they are to be "permissive" in their attitudes? Did we have 2 people change their minds after playing GTA, but only 1 changing his mind after the Simpsons? What a shock, after following 3 links, the real study is only available to members of the AMA or people who pay a subscription fee. Good thing I have the media to interpret studies I can't see and tell me what they mean!
Even if this study gave significant evidence one way or the other, how is this exclusive to video games? How about we compare young men playing video games to young men watching the Sopranos, or young men listening to George Bush talk? How long do the attitudes last? Why aren't we studying the effect GTA has on feelings about helping inner city youth, or breaking down race barriers? This data doesn't really mean a whole lot to me, and it's gonna take a whole lot more to justify the amount of media attention this study is garnering.
I'm guessing it's for people who use a cell phone primarily, and have cut off their landline, but want a backup in case they risk going over their allotted minutes. Also, international calls will probably be a bit cheaper than those made via cell (for example, Cingular currently charges 50 cents a minute to Canada on standard plans--Yahoo can probably beat this). I don't think they plan on anyone using this as their PRIMARY phone--it's just a supplement to the shortcomings of current cell plans.
The catch with libel is you have to print something derogatory that you know is not true. Unless this company can prove that Mr. Doctorow plotted to make up stability issues and harm their reputation, they won't get anywhere with a libel suit--that's why they chose the "harassment" claim, instead.
Not to mention that this is a subscription based game that Mommy and
Daddy were probably paying for. I really doubt a 13 year old had the credit card required to set up his own account, much less the income to pay for it. If he was "addicted" they could have cancelled his subscription.
If this same mom bought her son copious amounts of alcohol and then sued Bacardi when he died of alcohol poisoning, she would be laughed out of court. This is ridiculous.
Free speech involves having and stating an opinion. It has nothing to do with putting money in a politician's pocket. If it did, some people would have speech that was "more free" than others because they had more money. If we're just gonna play a game of "give the crown to whoever gets more money thrown at his campaign" we may as well do away with this whole voting thing.
You may not be deciding to write checks to Gmail or Hotmail, but advertisers are. They have quite a few competing web-based services, all of which are bringing in cash. Just because you don't pay for them yourself doesn't mean they aren't competing for money.
And Google isn't "trapped in a browser"--they have an IM client, a desktop search tool, a photo organizer (Picasa), and Google earth. The list will only get longer unless Microsoft beats them to it. How long until we get a Google browser, Google media player, Google Office? People will adopt these things if they say "Google" on them, even if they are comparable to current apps.
Slashdot Mirror
This will fail because it's difficult for anyone to tell what links are going to work and what links won't.
Post an article's link to your Twitter account? No paywall.
Post it to your Facebook page? Paywall!
Post it on your blog? No paywall!
Send it in an email? Who knows!
The rules are confusing. People operate on the assumption that if a link works for them, they can share it with everyone. This is going to result in a lot of frustration.
I, too, consider all hit films that do not address my own pet causes to be "deeply flawed."
I don't buy your "catching the bad guy" excuse, and here's why: my bank had no idea this was going on. Google never notified them. Not when the adsense attempt happened (which could have been YEARS ago), and not when I attempted to use GCO. Me calling them up to cancel the card was the first they'd heard of it.
I would PREFER if the "bad guy" knew not to use my card anymore. I don't really think we should pretend everything's peachy just so he can continue attempting to use my card. If he gets a "THIS IS BLACKLISTED" message, maybe it will occur to him to stop using the card because someone has caught on. And If the legitimate holder gets this message, then they know to cancel it instead of just assuming buy.com is a crappy website.
Google could have handled it better. I did my part and canceled when they told me, but shouldn't they be obligated to inform me that my account had possibly been compromised?
I had problems with GCO from the start. Apparently, someone had attempted to pay with their adsense account with my card number, but didn't have the name, expiration date, or 3 digit security code. This was still enough to put my card on their internal blacklist. So, because someone else unsuccessfully tried using my card number, it was forever untrustable in Google's eyes.
It was a hell of a time getting that information from Google, though. I got about three mysterious "order cancelled" messages with no indication of what the problem was. I was convinced it was buy.com's fault. It took three or four messages to customer service and 2-3 weeks before someone finally explained this to me. It doesn't make sense to me that *I* was put on their blacklist because someone had unsuccessfully tried to use my card, and there was nothing I could do to prove to them that I was myself. I did cancel the card, and my new debit card works fine with GCO, but it felt like they could have been a little more up-front about it instead of expecting me to magically know how to solve the matter.
I'd wager the low satisfaction level has something to do with this general disorganization, but also with the stores they associate with. Buy.com, the Sports Authority online, and bluefly.com are all stores that have notoriously bad customer service. People were shopping at places they normally wouldn't touch because of the GCO discount, and found out that dealing with them probably wasn't worth the $10 or $20 they saved.
Agreed. My main fear about the "ultimate convergence machine" is battery life. Do I really want to be stranded without a phone because I was listening to music all day? At least with my Razr, I can keep a spare battery in my purse for emergencies. I have a funny feeling that after a year or two, when my iPhone can't hold a charge anymore, Apple is going to want another $100 to "fix" my battery, like they currently do with iPods.
Outside of wanting cell phones that are not delicate mini-computers, I'd say people are rarely clamoring for things that "do one thing well". Simplicity IS being "easy to use" (and learn). When most people ask for a simple design, this is what they mean--not one that is so basic that it only does one thing. People love using many features and learning to customize. They just don't want this to be an obstacle in actually using the product as intended.
I suggest leaving your youngest child at home to take care of the place. Leave adequate supplies, like paint buckets, firecrackers, cardboard cutouts of famous people, some 1950s gangster films (that you wouldn't let him watch otherwise), a tarantula, and a blowtorch. That should take care of everything.
"How different is it than MSFT placing its products (Internet Explorer) in a premium marketing position (embedded in the OS)?"
When Microsoft does it, there's not a link to Firefox directly underneath the link to IE.
A search for "email" reveals that Google was more than happy to sell AOL some ad space above their search results. Not to mention that Yahoo! mail leads the actual results. I'd be a lot more concerned if Google artificially ranked themselves at the top of the results for all of these searches, instead of just giving themselves ad space.
I know this could still change, but the Vista RC2 handles extensions the same way XP does--hidden until you tell it to show them.
From The Facebook help page:
News Feed highlights what's going on in and around your Facebook network by listing the latest stories about your friends on your Facebook home page. You will only be notified of actions that you would have been able to see by clicking around the site. We also display external news articles that might be of interest to you. It's like we started delivering the mail to you instead of forcing you to pick it up on your own.
So, yeah, they're out to make more money
It does. And, in the case of PC-to-Phone, it does it for a much lower price (US and Canada = free)
They buy them from friends. My roommate freshman year was diagnosed as having ADD. She was supposed to take FOUR Adderall pills a day. She only took her meds if she "needed" to concentrate, which she apparently didn't need very much, because her grades were fine. The rest went to people she knew, or people that lived in our dorm, or even people that were willing to pay for it. She saved up some for finals week and made quite a bit of money.
This is college we're talking about. No one's a minor and everyone is overmedicated already (on MAOIs, ritalin/adderall, birth control, Accutane, etc). It's next to impossible to track who is taking what and whether they're allowed to without seriously invading everyone's privacy.
"Self-selected" does not imply "chosen ones". It's a common statistical term.
Ford will recycle your old car....for free! As soon as your Mustang gets a few scuffs on it and you want a brand new one, bring it in and they will take it off your hands and crush it into a cube! At absolutely no cost to you! Wow, what an amazingly environmentally conscious company!
Seriously, apple has a vested interest in keeping people buying new computers, not used ones. Most major computer manufacturers have this sort of program, and it amazes me that some people think that because THEY have no use for their computer, no one does, and it has to be destroyed somehow. I know a lot of those morons would just throw it in the garbage otherwise, but still--let's not celebrate Apple for being a different, progressive company. They're not doing anything special.
Cost to press isn't as important as cost to make. Your average Hollywood blockbuster costs a whole lot more to cast, shoot, edit, and distribute than a textbook, especally a tenth edition textbook that is 97% old material.
When did you go to college? Most textbooks come out with new editions every 2-3 years. This means that, on average, two of my classes require a NEW $140 textbook every semester that will immediately drop to $70 resale the minute I leave the bookstore. Even if a class doesn't require a new edition, they'll ask me to buy 3-4 older books that total well over $50. Sharing textbooks is completely impractical, especially in math classes with nightly homework. In additon, the older editions tend to have the same material, but it's always shuffled around and the homework problems are changed to ensure I can't get by with last year's book.
Your point about "making sacrifices" is just ridiculous. Are you really under the assumption that everyone attending college HAS the choice between textbooks and a car, or textbooks and new clothes? Some of us don't HAVE those luxuries to "sacrifice" in order to be able to afford astronomical books. Textbooks are not an "investment." If textbooks were truly an "investment" they wouldn't immediately lose half their value as soon as I crack them open. This is an artificially inflated cost.
As for your last point, I don't see how it is the fault of the STUDENTS that publishers stuff their textbooks with pretty graphs, "interactive" CDs that NO ONE ever uses, color photos, nice paper, etc. I'd gladly revert back to text and black-and-white photos if it meant cheaper books, and I am guessing 99% of college students feel exactly the same way. WE didn't demand books that look super nice; the publishers just threw that stuff in to justify charging more.
Your arguments just seem to be telling me that I have cheaper alternatives, and choices in the matter, when none exist. I shop around to find the best deals for my books, and still end up with $500-$600 worth of books to buy every single semester, that sell back for about half as much (of the ones that sell back at all--many end up listed for $10 at half.com). Books don't lose anything after someone reads them, so there is absolutely no reason for such a sharp change in retail value and resale value. It's purely publishers and bookstores ripping me off at every turn, and despite your claims of "choosing" glitzy textbooks and "choosing" more expensive textbooks that have fewer mistakes, I don't have a choice in the matter.
This is just another effort to get the young men back into watching TV. The 18-24 males have pretty much disappeared as far as ratings by demographic go. I guess the G4 higher-ups realized that talking about video games and the internet all the time is counter-productive when they're trying to lure men AWAY from those forms of entertainment.
The truth is, a whole lot of stories get reported on digg. They're reported by users, and after a number of users report, the story gets removed from the home page. That's a catch with a system like they have set up. Say person X links to personX.com where they blog about inflammatory junk for pageviews (microsoft to buy out apple? what?!). Digg community diggs without clicking on story, or doesn't realize story is created from a questionable source for pageviews. Story hits front page, and sensible people see the story for what it really is. Story is marked lame OR spam OR inaccurate (oftentimes more than one is correct). Story is removed from homepage (but not from digg completely--you can still see these stories in your digg history and search for them). Person X freaks out and cries censorship. And don't forget the marketing shills who have 10 accounts so they can digg each of their submitted stories up.
There's a LOT of crap on digg, and I'd rather have it overmodded than undermodded and full of spam, junk, dupes, and flamebait. However, when a lot of person Xs get their stories thrown out and their page views drop, it's not shocking that they become very vocal about the "censorship" that cuts into their adsense numbers.
Adding to that, who are we really studying here? 100 male undergraduates in a small age bracket who go to a single university. Likely either participating in this for class extra credit (for which we can assume this only applies to male Psych 100 students or whatever) or as individuals answering a call for volunteers for a study (what kind of male responds to an "experiment involving video games" flyer?). Even with the small sample size and completely nonrandom sample, where's the hard data on how MUCH more likely they are to be "permissive" in their attitudes? Did we have 2 people change their minds after playing GTA, but only 1 changing his mind after the Simpsons? What a shock, after following 3 links, the real study is only available to members of the AMA or people who pay a subscription fee. Good thing I have the media to interpret studies I can't see and tell me what they mean!
Even if this study gave significant evidence one way or the other, how is this exclusive to video games? How about we compare young men playing video games to young men watching the Sopranos, or young men listening to George Bush talk? How long do the attitudes last? Why aren't we studying the effect GTA has on feelings about helping inner city youth, or breaking down race barriers? This data doesn't really mean a whole lot to me, and it's gonna take a whole lot more to justify the amount of media attention this study is garnering.
I'm guessing it's for people who use a cell phone primarily, and have cut off their landline, but want a backup in case they risk going over their allotted minutes. Also, international calls will probably be a bit cheaper than those made via cell (for example, Cingular currently charges 50 cents a minute to Canada on standard plans--Yahoo can probably beat this). I don't think they plan on anyone using this as their PRIMARY phone--it's just a supplement to the shortcomings of current cell plans.
The catch with libel is you have to print something derogatory that you know is not true. Unless this company can prove that Mr. Doctorow plotted to make up stability issues and harm their reputation, they won't get anywhere with a libel suit--that's why they chose the "harassment" claim, instead.
Not to mention that this is a subscription based game that Mommy and Daddy were probably paying for. I really doubt a 13 year old had the credit card required to set up his own account, much less the income to pay for it. If he was "addicted" they could have cancelled his subscription. If this same mom bought her son copious amounts of alcohol and then sued Bacardi when he died of alcohol poisoning, she would be laughed out of court. This is ridiculous.
Free speech involves having and stating an opinion. It has nothing to do with putting money in a politician's pocket. If it did, some people would have speech that was "more free" than others because they had more money. If we're just gonna play a game of "give the crown to whoever gets more money thrown at his campaign" we may as well do away with this whole voting thing.
Trillian & Gaim feature request: no new buddies without my permission.
Can I get some documentation of this being "illegal to use" ? Also, I haven't checked lately, but last I looked, allofmp3.com accepted Paypal.
You may not be deciding to write checks to Gmail or Hotmail, but advertisers are. They have quite a few competing web-based services, all of which are bringing in cash. Just because you don't pay for them yourself doesn't mean they aren't competing for money.
And Google isn't "trapped in a browser"--they have an IM client, a desktop search tool, a photo organizer (Picasa), and Google earth. The list will only get longer unless Microsoft beats them to it. How long until we get a Google browser, Google media player, Google Office? People will adopt these things if they say "Google" on them, even if they are comparable to current apps.