Seriously, anyone here not able to think of at least a handful companies that ONLY exist because consumers are effin' stupid, and that would do the world (and their industry) a huge favor if they just vanished?
Pretty much all the big ones, because fucking over the customer is the most successful business model in the short run, and since investors only care for the next quarter anymore...
That were true if it were reasonably easy to make an informed decision.
Sadly, we live in a time where manufacturers are pretty much guaranteed to lie to you. Just finding out what's in the stuff you buy can be a challenge.
Representative democracy, yes. It's one of the worst government systems ever invented, and pretty much guaranteed to break down into lobbyism, corruption and self-perpetuating in-group circle-jerking sooner or later.
You need a paper to demonstrate that other people making decisions for you is not necessarily in your best interest? Seriously?
And yes, they make the decisions. You are a fool if you think that it's just suggestions. I've worked in corporate environments long enough to know that the people who "prepare" the decision are really the ones making it, because by the selection you make, the way you present the alternatives and the data you choose to use or discard, you can pretty much make sure that any of the choices left is in your interest.
I am a native German speaker and I am quite sure you got that right. Post the actual card text and I will elaborate. Without knowing it, my best guess is that the word is "erleiden" which would be the equivalent of "take" not "damage", the the re-translation would be "suffer three points of damage".
Speak for yourself, will you? Who are you to decide whose life is worth extending and whose isn't ? Maybe even the most oppressed and poorest still value theirs? Maybe a longer life would give them more incentive to improve their lot? Maybe all that simply isn't yours to decide, but theirs?
The answer is, of course, No. Because the answer to questions asked in headlines is always no.
The real answer is a bit more tricky. A simple no doesn't cut it, because for some use-cases, web-apps are really great. And for some, native apps are better.
Asking "web- or native app?" is like asking "hammer or screwdriver?" - well, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
Please get a real journalist on this, not some blogger. A tiny bit of research will tell you a few interesting things that put things into perspective.
For example, we have an election upcoming, so obviously the government has to appear to be doing something about it, because the people don't like it. My bets are firmly on this dragging out until the election (of course, with constant reminders and "progress" reports) and afterwards, it'll quickly be forgotten.
For example, there are still laws in place from the end of WW2 and the times of the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany that guarantee the allies spying rights. One of those agreements has just been revoked, to great PR effect. Almost all the mainstream media ignored that other agreements to the same effect still stand.
For example, the german equivalent, the BND, has been accused of working closely with the NSA, to the point of providing them with raw data. And our current prime minister would sell the whole country to her american friends if it gave her a benefit (a friendly hug would probably suffice). So one likely result is that they will agree the US stops spying, then the NSA lents its spy stations to the BND, who shares the data with the NSA, so everything remains the same, but technically, the NSA isn't spying within Germany anymore.
If you think the government or the current breed of corrupt egomanics that have taken over politics is there to protect you, you've been living under a rock the past twenty years.
There is solicited advertisement. When I need stuff for my office, I find a catalog from a supplier useful. When I'm looking for software solutions, I might go to a trade fair. When I'm interested in buying some hardware, I will visit the website of producers I trust to make quality products.
All of these displayes of their products and services count as advertisement, but they aren't forced on me and that's the difference.
If you bother to take a deep dive into reality, there are tens-of-thousands of long-tail websites that rely on advertising to remain online and perhaps even pay salaries.
I run a long-tail website, a free online game with about a thousand players. Been doing that for over 12 years. Never had a single banner ad anywhere.
You can run a small website without advertisement. For my game, player donations keep it running, and they are much higher than I would've ever thought. For a site with less interaction and shorter visits like an online magazine, that probably won't work, but I still challenge your assumption that advertisement is the only way to finance the long-tail websites. It isn't. There are many other ways.
But the ad industry works both ways. It not only sells us to their advertisement customers, it also sells itself to their customers by convincing them that advertisement is necessary, beneficial, or the only way to get paid anymore in this world.
And on that, you need to remember rule #1: Spammers lie.
Well I run a site (see "homepage" link) that wasn't made for advertising, but it has allowed me, for a brief time at least, to devote my time to researching the information and purchasing materials for researching the information.
I've been running a free online game for over 12 years. I take donations from my players, and the amount that people are donating still surprise me. It pays the hosting fees and then some.
There are ways other than advertisement. I'm not saying the model would work for you, but I've experimented with various business models, and my experience is that if you do something that is of value to people, you can get their money by simply asking for it and being an honest, open person. I sold a piece of software a few years ago and let people decide their own price. Wasn't to my disadvantage, almost half of the people paid more than my minimum asking price. I think Humble Bundle made a similar experience a while ago.
Just a thought, I haven't looked at your site, but experimenting with other models might work for you and allow you to move away from advertisement.
I'm still waiting for integration of AdBlock plus.
You shouldn't. ABP has been sold and the new owners are... an advertisement agency. There are a couple good articles out there, go Google it. Their business model these days is to approach ad companies and basically take protection money from them - for putting them on the internal whitelist. Also, they boost their own business because, of course, the ads of companies in their own network are not blocked.
That's what was really behind all the "acceptable advertisement whitelist" that made the headlines a while ago. It's not about acceptable, it's about having an excuse - any excuse - for allowing some ads through. Your own and those of people who paid you to let them through.
tl;dr: ABP has turned evil. Switch to one of the forks.
Aggressive advertisement is the tragedy of the commons in action, and few people see it.
This is not a zero-sum game. You are paying for this, with your attention and mind. Yeah, we have become great at filtering out all the crap they throw at us, both with technology (on the Internet) and with our mind (for billboards, etc.) - but both comes at a price. A price that we pay, not the advertisers.
These parasites are grazing their cattle on our common space. Our bandwidth, our public spaces, our visual field.
And they don't know their place. They should be thankful we let them, they should wonder every morning why we don't make them pay for wasting our resources. Not the building they nail their billboard to, or the site they mess up with pop-up-under-obnoxious crap, but us, the owners of the public resources they contaminate.
Instead, they whine and cry and demand more. They are like really badly behaved children, and need to be treated that way. If someone doesn't understand the value of what he's been given for free, the best way to teach him is to take it away. Sao Paolo needs to become an example for cities world-wide.
I live in Germany, so by your words one of the countries where it works. And like most things that work it does so by a system of checks and balances. While employers do have to jump through quite a few hoops to get someone fired, this system also gives them a fairly good assurance that if they followed all the procedures, they have a pretty solid position in a court of law. In fact, most cases I know of where the courts found for the ex-employee where cases with employers who took shortcuts.
Yes, it is a cultural matter. US attitude is "hire and fire", in most of Europe we are only slowly emerging from a culture where employment was often for life - which does have its advantages for both sides. I can't count the number of times that C-level executives complained to me about employee loyalty and motivation. I used to represent the employees of my company, you know? Elected position, 2400 people I spoke for. And the thing I heard most often from employees was that if the company provides for them, they will provide for the company. Quid pro quo. If the employer expects the employees to go above and beyond their contractual duties, he should be ready to do the same for them.
your BattleMaster is one of such recipients, I'd prefer to not use PayPal for payments
I offer direct bank transfers as an alternative, I just don't advertise it much because it is a ton more work for me and, quite frankly, people donating two or three Euros per bank transfer cost me more money in time and effort than I get.
I would love for the banking industry to set up a PayPal-like system where you can transfer money to my bank account world-wide at low fees and I can plug in a backend to process your transfer in whatever way I need to. I would use it immediately.
People who were ripped off -- it's their own fault?
Didn't say that. If you go into the dirty part of town with a bulging wallet, it is still the robber who is the criminal - and still most people will agree that your risk management strategy was not exactly perfect. That doesn't make the robbery your fault - but it does make the quantity of the damage partially your fault, because a more reasonable approach would have reduced the damage.
I feel for everyone who got their accounts locked, and I don't think it is ok. I alsol think it is stupid to leave tens of thousands of $ in a PayPal account.
Because it is detrimental to society to let the big ego psychopaths run the show. We could've stayed with anarchy if that's what we wanted. I think we've done fairly well with some more civilization, and not letting bullies get away with everything is a big part of that.
I've been fired before, and it sucked, but I got over it.
It's not about being fired, it's about how. There is, by now, extensive scientific literature about the benefits of delayed execution. The human mind is not a one-track machine, there are circuits for immediate reaction, and they don't include the circuits for actually thinking something through (because that takes too long in a life-or-death situation, where 5 seconds make the difference between having and being dinner).
Forcing someone to put something in writing also slows him down so much that the "this might not be the best idea" circuits in his brain have time to kick in. Because especially in a situation like this, where the CEO does something in front of everyone, even if he thinks "that was dumb" seconds later, very, very few people are great enough to admit their mistake in front of everyone. Most CEOs will believe they need to prove they are strong by following it through.
'Genderism' is going too far when women are mocked for wanting to be and see more females in positions that are not normally available to them.
Fuck you, too. No, I mean it, this is pure hatespeech coming from your mouth, it is just on the side of the debate that has taken a monopoly on morale.
If you want a TV series with a female time lord, by all means lobby BBC to create a spin-off, there's already a Torchwood spin-off, so it can be done, and there are plenty of female time lords in Doctor Who that can be used, or a new one can be invented.
Turning Doctor Who female is stupid, and it does you a female character at the cost of a male one. You win by taking things away from others. That is not cooperative, that is not friendly, that is not positive.
I'm all for equal rights. I'm totally for having more women in jobs that don't have many women in them. I am strongly opposed to arriving at that goal by discriminating against men. You're trying to fight a century old evil by applying it to the other side, and that is pure evil, period.
Gender based discrimination is the fact that the roles women receive are hardly ever lead heroes and are pretty much always sexualized.
And there are many offenders that are worse than Doctor Who and do it for no good reason. Seriously, this is just kicking a popular show into the face to get publicity, that's all it is. Doctor Who is a great show for people who believe in equality of the sexes. The women are strong and independent. In the Amy/Rory relationship, Amy is the stronger partner. River Song holds her own against the Doctor. There are equally many male and female opponents. And in which episode did you last see gratuituous female nudity?
The only thing a batshit crazy feminazi could whine about is the gender of the main character. Well, he's male. What the fuck is so hard about that? If you were really interested in equality, you would accept that some characters - about half to be exact - are male, period.
Discrimination sucks. It is not an excuse to lash out randomly at absolutely everything no matter how stupid.
The Doctor's hair is, so why should we care what skin color, age, or gender "he" is?
Because he is an established character, and has consistently been male. Rewriting Romeo and Julia to be about two gay characters is an interesting piece of explorative fiction, but it shouldn't claim it is the same thing, because by historical and social context, the story would run a different course. Again, exploring that is all good, and I might even be interested in reading it, but it ain't Romeo and Julia anymore.
Again: You want a female time lord riding around in a TARDIS? No problem. But messing with an established character for purely political reasons has such a taste, I'm not sure how blind you have to be to not notice it. Imagine it were done not for a feminist agenda but, say, for a communist, or a religious, or some other agenda.
you can put a period there, that's all there is to say about it.
If you trust an e-mail service run by Kim, you are a stupid idiot. The guy ratted out people to the authorities before, when it served him.
One thing is right about this idea, though: If you want a secure e-mail provider, it absolutely has to be located outside the USA. Nothing on US grounds can be considered secure anymore.
My country requires firings to be done in writing, with a signature, specifically to prevent stunts like this. As a matter of fact, a lot of countries have similar laws. In most of the civilized world, this termination would be legally null and void. In some countries, doing it this way would also bar you from following up with a legally correct termination.
which gets a straight F for pretty much the same reasons you claim for PayPal. I'm not a friend of PayPal and would move elsewhere if that were a serious option, but they have worked well for me for about 8 years now. Maybe because I understand that they're not a bank and never have more than a few hundred bucks in my account.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, anyone here not able to think of at least a handful companies that ONLY exist because consumers are effin' stupid, and that would do the world (and their industry) a huge favor if they just vanished?
Pretty much all the big ones, because fucking over the customer is the most successful business model in the short run, and since investors only care for the next quarter anymore...
That were true if it were reasonably easy to make an informed decision.
Sadly, we live in a time where manufacturers are pretty much guaranteed to lie to you. Just finding out what's in the stuff you buy can be a challenge.
Representative democracy, yes. It's one of the worst government systems ever invented, and pretty much guaranteed to break down into lobbyism, corruption and self-perpetuating in-group circle-jerking sooner or later.
Direct democracy is a very different animal.
The older version translates to "the target of the lightning strike suffers 3 points of damage".
The new version translates to "the lightning strike inflicts a creature or player of your choice 3 points of damage".
You need a paper to demonstrate that other people making decisions for you is not necessarily in your best interest? Seriously?
And yes, they make the decisions. You are a fool if you think that it's just suggestions. I've worked in corporate environments long enough to know that the people who "prepare" the decision are really the ones making it, because by the selection you make, the way you present the alternatives and the data you choose to use or discard, you can pretty much make sure that any of the choices left is in your interest.
got that wrong, of course. Early in the morning, sorry.
I am a native German speaker and I am quite sure you got that right. Post the actual card text and I will elaborate. Without knowing it, my best guess is that the word is "erleiden" which would be the equivalent of "take" not "damage", the the re-translation would be "suffer three points of damage".
Uh, the article. IS about preventing AGING, so... not sure how to explain that, but no aging kinda is like eternal youth, you know?
Speak for yourself, will you? Who are you to decide whose life is worth extending and whose isn't ? Maybe even the most oppressed and poorest still value theirs? Maybe a longer life would give them more incentive to improve their lot? Maybe all that simply isn't yours to decide, but theirs?
The answer is, of course, No. Because the answer to questions asked in headlines is always no.
The real answer is a bit more tricky. A simple no doesn't cut it, because for some use-cases, web-apps are really great. And for some, native apps are better.
Asking "web- or native app?" is like asking "hammer or screwdriver?" - well, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
Please get a real journalist on this, not some blogger. A tiny bit of research will tell you a few interesting things that put things into perspective.
For example, we have an election upcoming, so obviously the government has to appear to be doing something about it, because the people don't like it. My bets are firmly on this dragging out until the election (of course, with constant reminders and "progress" reports) and afterwards, it'll quickly be forgotten.
For example, there are still laws in place from the end of WW2 and the times of the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany that guarantee the allies spying rights. One of those agreements has just been revoked, to great PR effect. Almost all the mainstream media ignored that other agreements to the same effect still stand.
For example, the german equivalent, the BND, has been accused of working closely with the NSA, to the point of providing them with raw data. And our current prime minister would sell the whole country to her american friends if it gave her a benefit (a friendly hug would probably suffice). So one likely result is that they will agree the US stops spying, then the NSA lents its spy stations to the BND, who shares the data with the NSA, so everything remains the same, but technically, the NSA isn't spying within Germany anymore.
If you think the government or the current breed of corrupt egomanics that have taken over politics is there to protect you, you've been living under a rock the past twenty years.
I doesn't need fixing.
There is solicited advertisement. When I need stuff for my office, I find a catalog from a supplier useful. When I'm looking for software solutions, I might go to a trade fair. When I'm interested in buying some hardware, I will visit the website of producers I trust to make quality products.
All of these displayes of their products and services count as advertisement, but they aren't forced on me and that's the difference.
If you bother to take a deep dive into reality, there are tens-of-thousands of long-tail websites that rely on advertising to remain online and perhaps even pay salaries.
I run a long-tail website, a free online game with about a thousand players. Been doing that for over 12 years. Never had a single banner ad anywhere.
You can run a small website without advertisement. For my game, player donations keep it running, and they are much higher than I would've ever thought. For a site with less interaction and shorter visits like an online magazine, that probably won't work, but I still challenge your assumption that advertisement is the only way to finance the long-tail websites. It isn't. There are many other ways.
But the ad industry works both ways. It not only sells us to their advertisement customers, it also sells itself to their customers by convincing them that advertisement is necessary, beneficial, or the only way to get paid anymore in this world.
And on that, you need to remember rule #1: Spammers lie.
Well I run a site (see "homepage" link) that wasn't made for advertising, but it has allowed me, for a brief time at least, to devote my time to researching the information and purchasing materials for researching the information.
I've been running a free online game for over 12 years. I take donations from my players, and the amount that people are donating still surprise me. It pays the hosting fees and then some.
There are ways other than advertisement. I'm not saying the model would work for you, but I've experimented with various business models, and my experience is that if you do something that is of value to people, you can get their money by simply asking for it and being an honest, open person. I sold a piece of software a few years ago and let people decide their own price. Wasn't to my disadvantage, almost half of the people paid more than my minimum asking price. I think Humble Bundle made a similar experience a while ago.
Just a thought, I haven't looked at your site, but experimenting with other models might work for you and allow you to move away from advertisement.
I'm still waiting for integration of AdBlock plus.
You shouldn't. ABP has been sold and the new owners are... an advertisement agency. There are a couple good articles out there, go Google it. Their business model these days is to approach ad companies and basically take protection money from them - for putting them on the internal whitelist. Also, they boost their own business because, of course, the ads of companies in their own network are not blocked.
That's what was really behind all the "acceptable advertisement whitelist" that made the headlines a while ago. It's not about acceptable, it's about having an excuse - any excuse - for allowing some ads through. Your own and those of people who paid you to let them through.
tl;dr: ABP has turned evil. Switch to one of the forks.
This. If they fight you, they are afraid. And we've got them afraid to the price of a full-page ad. That's a small victory, but it is a victory.
Keep it up. Next step: Built-in adblocker, default enabled.
Aggressive advertisement is the tragedy of the commons in action, and few people see it.
This is not a zero-sum game. You are paying for this, with your attention and mind. Yeah, we have become great at filtering out all the crap they throw at us, both with technology (on the Internet) and with our mind (for billboards, etc.) - but both comes at a price. A price that we pay, not the advertisers.
These parasites are grazing their cattle on our common space. Our bandwidth, our public spaces, our visual field.
And they don't know their place. They should be thankful we let them, they should wonder every morning why we don't make them pay for wasting our resources. Not the building they nail their billboard to, or the site they mess up with pop-up-under-obnoxious crap, but us, the owners of the public resources they contaminate.
Instead, they whine and cry and demand more.
They are like really badly behaved children, and need to be treated that way.
If someone doesn't understand the value of what he's been given for free, the best way to teach him is to take it away. Sao Paolo needs to become an example for cities world-wide.
I live in Germany, so by your words one of the countries where it works. And like most things that work it does so by a system of checks and balances. While employers do have to jump through quite a few hoops to get someone fired, this system also gives them a fairly good assurance that if they followed all the procedures, they have a pretty solid position in a court of law. In fact, most cases I know of where the courts found for the ex-employee where cases with employers who took shortcuts.
Yes, it is a cultural matter. US attitude is "hire and fire", in most of Europe we are only slowly emerging from a culture where employment was often for life - which does have its advantages for both sides. I can't count the number of times that C-level executives complained to me about employee loyalty and motivation. I used to represent the employees of my company, you know? Elected position, 2400 people I spoke for. And the thing I heard most often from employees was that if the company provides for them, they will provide for the company. Quid pro quo. If the employer expects the employees to go above and beyond their contractual duties, he should be ready to do the same for them.
your BattleMaster is one of such recipients, I'd prefer to not use PayPal for payments
I offer direct bank transfers as an alternative, I just don't advertise it much because it is a ton more work for me and, quite frankly, people donating two or three Euros per bank transfer cost me more money in time and effort than I get.
I would love for the banking industry to set up a PayPal-like system where you can transfer money to my bank account world-wide at low fees and I can plug in a backend to process your transfer in whatever way I need to. I would use it immediately.
People who were ripped off -- it's their own fault?
Didn't say that. If you go into the dirty part of town with a bulging wallet, it is still the robber who is the criminal - and still most people will agree that your risk management strategy was not exactly perfect. That doesn't make the robbery your fault - but it does make the quantity of the damage partially your fault, because a more reasonable approach would have reduced the damage.
I feel for everyone who got their accounts locked, and I don't think it is ok. I alsol think it is stupid to leave tens of thousands of $ in a PayPal account.
But why *should* we prevent "stunts like this"?
Because it is detrimental to society to let the big ego psychopaths run the show. We could've stayed with anarchy if that's what we wanted. I think we've done fairly well with some more civilization, and not letting bullies get away with everything is a big part of that.
I've been fired before, and it sucked, but I got over it.
It's not about being fired, it's about how. There is, by now, extensive scientific literature about the benefits of delayed execution. The human mind is not a one-track machine, there are circuits for immediate reaction, and they don't include the circuits for actually thinking something through (because that takes too long in a life-or-death situation, where 5 seconds make the difference between having and being dinner).
Forcing someone to put something in writing also slows him down so much that the "this might not be the best idea" circuits in his brain have time to kick in. Because especially in a situation like this, where the CEO does something in front of everyone, even if he thinks "that was dumb" seconds later, very, very few people are great enough to admit their mistake in front of everyone. Most CEOs will believe they need to prove they are strong by following it through.
'Genderism' is going too far when women are mocked for wanting to be and see more females in positions that are not normally available to them.
Fuck you, too. No, I mean it, this is pure hatespeech coming from your mouth, it is just on the side of the debate that has taken a monopoly on morale.
If you want a TV series with a female time lord, by all means lobby BBC to create a spin-off, there's already a Torchwood spin-off, so it can be done, and there are plenty of female time lords in Doctor Who that can be used, or a new one can be invented.
Turning Doctor Who female is stupid, and it does you a female character at the cost of a male one. You win by taking things away from others. That is not cooperative, that is not friendly, that is not positive.
I'm all for equal rights. I'm totally for having more women in jobs that don't have many women in them. I am strongly opposed to arriving at that goal by discriminating against men. You're trying to fight a century old evil by applying it to the other side, and that is pure evil, period.
Gender based discrimination is the fact that the roles women receive are hardly ever lead heroes and are pretty much always sexualized.
And there are many offenders that are worse than Doctor Who and do it for no good reason. Seriously, this is just kicking a popular show into the face to get publicity, that's all it is. Doctor Who is a great show for people who believe in equality of the sexes. The women are strong and independent. In the Amy/Rory relationship, Amy is the stronger partner. River Song holds her own against the Doctor. There are equally many male and female opponents. And in which episode did you last see gratuituous female nudity?
The only thing a batshit crazy feminazi could whine about is the gender of the main character. Well, he's male. What the fuck is so hard about that? If you were really interested in equality, you would accept that some characters - about half to be exact - are male, period.
Discrimination sucks. It is not an excuse to lash out randomly at absolutely everything no matter how stupid.
The Doctor's hair is, so why should we care what skin color, age, or gender "he" is?
Because he is an established character, and has consistently been male. Rewriting Romeo and Julia to be about two gay characters is an interesting piece of explorative fiction, but it shouldn't claim it is the same thing, because by historical and social context, the story would run a different course. Again, exploring that is all good, and I might even be interested in reading it, but it ain't Romeo and Julia anymore.
Again: You want a female time lord riding around in a TARDIS? No problem. But messing with an established character for purely political reasons has such a taste, I'm not sure how blind you have to be to not notice it. Imagine it were done not for a feminist agenda but, say, for a communist, or a religious, or some other agenda.
Kim Dotcom as usual enjoys filling the spotlight,
you can put a period there, that's all there is to say about it.
If you trust an e-mail service run by Kim, you are a stupid idiot. The guy ratted out people to the authorities before, when it served him.
One thing is right about this idea, though: If you want a secure e-mail provider, it absolutely has to be located outside the USA. Nothing on US grounds can be considered secure anymore.
Only in the USA...
My country requires firings to be done in writing, with a signature, specifically to prevent stunts like this. As a matter of fact, a lot of countries have similar laws. In most of the civilized world, this termination would be legally null and void. In some countries, doing it this way would also bar you from following up with a legally correct termination.
They are, however, BBB accredited and have an excellent rating:
http://www.bbb.org/sanjose/business-reviews/payment-processing-service/paypal-in-san-jose-ca-210387
Compare that to, say, Steam's mother Valve:
https://www.bbb.org/western-washington/business-reviews/computer-software-publishers-and-developers/valve-corporation-in-bellevue-wa-27030704
which gets a straight F for pretty much the same reasons you claim for PayPal. I'm not a friend of PayPal and would move elsewhere if that were a serious option, but they have worked well for me for about 8 years now. Maybe because I understand that they're not a bank and never have more than a few hundred bucks in my account.
At present, only 12 merchants are using the system
Which makes the "leave wallet at home" statement pure hyperbole.