Why the hell is this needed? You can already track how well a game does by tracking sales. Surely you can track those -- how many boxes did you create? You made the damn things, you better damned well be able to count them.
On the other hand, you can now buy your game market, which is great news for stockholders of game companies. Have a questionable game? Pay off Neilsen to make your mediocre game look better.
And while Neilsen doesn't directly lie (that can be proven, although it is highly likely), chaning polling methods can easily bias a result. Want to under-estimate a program? Don't ask about it. Want to over-estimate a program? Ask about it directly. The "home journal" method of TV ratings isn't their only data source.
1. Produce a usable service with limited-to-no advertising. 2. Gain a large audience through any means required, including bundling Yahoo Toolbars in almost malicious, spyware fashions. 3. Slam it full of ads and quickly make a big chunk of change from the advertising. 4. Revoke features when the users abandon the service due to the obscene number of ads. 5. Reintroduce the feature in after a period of time and start at 1.
The only difference with Flickr and Del.icio.us is that they skipped steps 1 and 2.
People with very little to do and have addictive personalities are prone to get addicted to anything -- WoW or otherwise. For every major addict that ruins his life, there are dozens that enjoy it responsibly. If WoW weren't around, they'd be addicted to something else -- another game, collecting stamps, stalking people, etc. Addictive personalities have existed for a long, long time.
For my boyfriend & I, we use it as an inexpensive form of entertainment. We raid, but nothing insanely hardcore. 2 nights a week, usually. Other couples watch TV, we play WoW. You can't really beat $15/month ($30 for two) for some quality entertainment.
The reason you don't see backlash from the Diablo 2 community is that it is reasonable advertising. Most gamers can easily connect that residual advertising income = continued BattleNet service. If BattleNet didn't generate revenue, there would be little reason to keep the service open.
People generally don't complain or even mind reasonable advertising. Some advertisements are actually helpful.
What companies are discovering with online advertisement is that there is a very fine line between reasonable and unreasonable advertisements. Push too hard and people will backlash.
I came here to point out the same thing. Most rocketeers don't mind the background checks, in fact, I don't know anyone that oposes them. They are no more invasive than employers require these days.
It's the storage requirements that basically block anyone from keeping any of the stuff. Not only are the storage requirements strict, so is the transport. Don't really expect to transport it in the back of your SUV. Obviously there are strict guidelines for storing it near high population areas, but that doesn't really affect hobbyists since they need wide open spaces anyway.
Really, I don't think the strict rules are that bad. At least you can get the stuff, as it is rather dangerous, even if it just burns fast and hot.
Hooray for Google allowing disallusioned bloggers to create mashups of other disallusioned bloggers using data from Google Spreadsheets into a Google Map where you can click on each user and write a message to them through an API to Blogger while simultaneously overlaying sixteen YouTube videoes while embedding a chat control to GTalk and Gmail and embedding a moon phase widget in your Google Pages tray bar along with a world clock showing the time in thirty-seven timezones simultaneously while using Google Sets to locate good stocks to show charts through Google Finanance in an expandable IFrame using Google UI Controls and integrating Google Search and Google News to be tied into the page so it automatically searches Google whenever you click on any word on the page and if you click on a non-alphanumeric it searches through Google Code Search and every image will be linked to Google Image Search and Google Image Labeler.
So what if Intel is making broad use of free publicity? Companies have been doing this for decades. If YouTube and other companies don't like being use for blatent publicity by third party companies they should adjust their business model and terms of service accordingly.
Either that, or wait for the advertisement to gain momentum and replace it with their own advertising that calls out the offending company. Imagine having your thought-out advertising plan to promote Intel Core 2 that links into YouTube suddenly replaced with a video advertising AMD products.
Am I the only one that isn't welcoming this change? There is a benefit in having mail clients of different code bases. Choice is a good thing -- don't be so quick to give that up. I'd rather be able to choose from two quality, well-developed clients than choose from two, nearly identical clients.
Apple should add another random play mode -- one that acts as it does now, and the other mode that grants every song an equal play count. The only thing that would be random is which order. This way users that have a confirmation bias of their iPod favoring certain songs can no longer be paranoid of Apple conspiracies to promote the songs of {{ artist }} or {{ record_label }}.
Publishing companies aren't known to be the smartest bunch on the block when it comes to technology. Does anyone else remember the general outcry in the late 90's when publishers thought e-books were going to take over within a few years? A lot of the profit gained in book publishing is from the actual printing process -- e-books threatened to reduce their markup potential. Publishers are worried that the gain in sale from people previewing their book won't outweigh the people previewing it and declining to buy such crap. Walking into a bookstore has an emotional tie -- you want a book, so you browse until you find something, even if it wasn't what you intended to buy. Online, however, there isn't emotional attachment (if there is, it is more likely to be attached to the webiste moreso than anything else). If you don't find something you like, you won't buy. Or so the publishers think.
On the contrary, I'd assume the higher number of people previewing it would, for good books, increase sales. Impulse buying is far more rampant in online shopping.
One thing that would probably solve the issue is allowing publishers a hand in the process. Give them certain leeway as to what pages are available as a preview. That way, they can pick the good parts of the book and not reveal any plot. I don't think they should have pure control over it, though, so maybe 50% chosen pages vs. 50% random/Google pages would be a good mix. Google, to appease publishers, could provide data back to them. They could even show different previews to each user and give them stats back of how each preview affected the buyers as well as demographics related to the sales. That's something a conventional book store cannot provide!
While I assume this lawsuit will go nowhere, I hope the judge sets up an injunction against MySpace and forces them to stop their servers while the lawsuit proceeds.
And why will the lawsuit go nowhere? You, as shareholders, are investing in the company. Unless you have a controlling share, you have little control over the company. You invested in their ability. When they sell out for less than you hoped, you obviously invested in stupid people. Stupid people give stupid results, regardless of the industry.
Best not visit my home. Door to door salesmen are a threat to my personal and property safety and, according to Florida law, I can shoot them on sight.
Actually, maybe that's a good way to purge the music industry...
I can see these being very valuable in applications where holding data is forbidden or where the must be destroyed at regular intervals or at the end of a project. Destroying hard drives (and wiping them is time consuming and prone to user error) could get expensive, but replacing a few tiny disks could be very cheap.
Late reply, but your comparison to newspapers is wrong: if you're reading a newspaper, someone, somewhere, paid for that piece of paper with that writing on it.
Does the license of the open source matter to you? Do you have a preferred form of license, e.g., GPL vs. BSD? Obviously, some licenses are better for the developers to make a buck on versus others which aren't designed to hold cash flow.
It doesn't matter to the websites what info you give us. In fact, your fake information helps us more than your real information? Did you say you're 80 years old? Awesome. The stats are skewed similar to the way that election polls are. Certain groups are known to be under-represented so the information is skewed appropriately. While not entirely accurate, it helps.
Again, the websites that pull the info generally couldn't give a shit about your info. The advertisers do, though. Enough people provide real information to make it worth the hastle.
And content isn't free, per se. Freely available, yes, but the expectation is that you read our content and in exchange look at our advertising. No advertising revenue would mean you would only have access to jaded blogs written by 13-year-olds who haven't yet realized it's down the highway, not across the street.
Talk to your doctor. You do not want a DIY solution when someone's life depends on it.
You may also want to look into a managed care facility. You may be able to get them to accept both you and your child so you could continue to care for the child.
Just because we may eventually out-tnature doesn't mean the thousands of injured soliders and civilians want part of their body replaced with robotics if they could have the option of a new, real limb.
There is also no reason both areas of research can't operate simultaneously, nor anything that is restricting them from working coopoeratively.
Small shops may not be able to withstand waiting for someone to get fired. One or two projects that fall behind could easily spell doom for such a shop.
Plus, a computer lab doesn't show anything for the tax payers. I really doubt a city council would like to show the tax payers that the city spent $800,000 on a single computer lab, whereas a new athletic facility is big and flashy.
As to the original question, you may be able to use a local community college to get the classes you want. I know my high school offered that. If you have a cool teacher and aren't a douchebag student, you might be able to convince your school administrators that you can self-teach a class and still get credit for it.
Example: my senior year of high school, I took 5 AP courses and created a 6th and 7th class where I taught myself C. The teacher had no idea what I was doing. I was graded mostly on self-evaluation and brief papers I had to turn in weekly describing what I did. The other class was rebuilding and managing the school website with the school librarian, also largely self-graded.
You may have to create your own options if your school won't provide them.
I wasn't necessarily saying that the US needs to adopt a central election like India has, only that the differences among the states probably contributes to our continued election woes.
I'd much rather see the states collectively do something outside of the federal framework and take care of the problem themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Why the hell is this needed? You can already track how well a game does by tracking sales. Surely you can track those -- how many boxes did you create? You made the damn things, you better damned well be able to count them.
On the other hand, you can now buy your game market, which is great news for stockholders of game companies. Have a questionable game? Pay off Neilsen to make your mediocre game look better.
And while Neilsen doesn't directly lie (that can be proven, although it is highly likely), chaning polling methods can easily bias a result. Want to under-estimate a program? Don't ask about it. Want to over-estimate a program? Ask about it directly. The "home journal" method of TV ratings isn't their only data source.
Yahoo Circle:
1. Produce a usable service with limited-to-no advertising.
2. Gain a large audience through any means required, including bundling Yahoo Toolbars in almost malicious, spyware fashions.
3. Slam it full of ads and quickly make a big chunk of change from the advertising.
4. Revoke features when the users abandon the service due to the obscene number of ads.
5. Reintroduce the feature in after a period of time and start at 1.
The only difference with Flickr and Del.icio.us is that they skipped steps 1 and 2.
People with very little to do and have addictive personalities are prone to get addicted to anything -- WoW or otherwise. For every major addict that ruins his life, there are dozens that enjoy it responsibly. If WoW weren't around, they'd be addicted to something else -- another game, collecting stamps, stalking people, etc. Addictive personalities have existed for a long, long time.
For my boyfriend & I, we use it as an inexpensive form of entertainment. We raid, but nothing insanely hardcore. 2 nights a week, usually. Other couples watch TV, we play WoW. You can't really beat $15/month ($30 for two) for some quality entertainment.
The reason you don't see backlash from the Diablo 2 community is that it is reasonable advertising. Most gamers can easily connect that residual advertising income = continued BattleNet service. If BattleNet didn't generate revenue, there would be little reason to keep the service open.
People generally don't complain or even mind reasonable advertising. Some advertisements are actually helpful.
What companies are discovering with online advertisement is that there is a very fine line between reasonable and unreasonable advertisements. Push too hard and people will backlash.
I came here to point out the same thing. Most rocketeers don't mind the background checks, in fact, I don't know anyone that oposes them. They are no more invasive than employers require these days.
It's the storage requirements that basically block anyone from keeping any of the stuff. Not only are the storage requirements strict, so is the transport. Don't really expect to transport it in the back of your SUV. Obviously there are strict guidelines for storing it near high population areas, but that doesn't really affect hobbyists since they need wide open spaces anyway.
Really, I don't think the strict rules are that bad. At least you can get the stuff, as it is rather dangerous, even if it just burns fast and hot.
You can't raise or lower the average IQ by definition.
The only thing you can do is alter what the average IQ means.
Hooray for Google allowing disallusioned bloggers to create mashups of other disallusioned bloggers using data from Google Spreadsheets into a Google Map where you can click on each user and write a message to them through an API to Blogger while simultaneously overlaying sixteen YouTube videoes while embedding a chat control to GTalk and Gmail and embedding a moon phase widget in your Google Pages tray bar along with a world clock showing the time in thirty-seven timezones simultaneously while using Google Sets to locate good stocks to show charts through Google Finanance in an expandable IFrame using Google UI Controls and integrating Google Search and Google News to be tied into the page so it automatically searches Google whenever you click on any word on the page and if you click on a non-alphanumeric it searches through Google Code Search and every image will be linked to Google Image Search and Google Image Labeler.
So what if Intel is making broad use of free publicity? Companies have been doing this for decades. If YouTube and other companies don't like being use for blatent publicity by third party companies they should adjust their business model and terms of service accordingly.
Either that, or wait for the advertisement to gain momentum and replace it with their own advertising that calls out the offending company. Imagine having your thought-out advertising plan to promote Intel Core 2 that links into YouTube suddenly replaced with a video advertising AMD products.
What happens to third party, open source disk drivers like TrueCrypt?
Am I the only one that isn't welcoming this change? There is a benefit in having mail clients of different code bases. Choice is a good thing -- don't be so quick to give that up. I'd rather be able to choose from two quality, well-developed clients than choose from two, nearly identical clients.
Apple should add another random play mode -- one that acts as it does now, and the other mode that grants every song an equal play count. The only thing that would be random is which order. This way users that have a confirmation bias of their iPod favoring certain songs can no longer be paranoid of Apple conspiracies to promote the songs of {{ artist }} or {{ record_label }}.
Publishing companies aren't known to be the smartest bunch on the block when it comes to technology. Does anyone else remember the general outcry in the late 90's when publishers thought e-books were going to take over within a few years? A lot of the profit gained in book publishing is from the actual printing process -- e-books threatened to reduce their markup potential. Publishers are worried that the gain in sale from people previewing their book won't outweigh the people previewing it and declining to buy such crap. Walking into a bookstore has an emotional tie -- you want a book, so you browse until you find something, even if it wasn't what you intended to buy. Online, however, there isn't emotional attachment (if there is, it is more likely to be attached to the webiste moreso than anything else). If you don't find something you like, you won't buy. Or so the publishers think.
On the contrary, I'd assume the higher number of people previewing it would, for good books, increase sales. Impulse buying is far more rampant in online shopping.
One thing that would probably solve the issue is allowing publishers a hand in the process. Give them certain leeway as to what pages are available as a preview. That way, they can pick the good parts of the book and not reveal any plot. I don't think they should have pure control over it, though, so maybe 50% chosen pages vs. 50% random/Google pages would be a good mix. Google, to appease publishers, could provide data back to them. They could even show different previews to each user and give them stats back of how each preview affected the buyers as well as demographics related to the sales. That's something a conventional book store cannot provide!
While I assume this lawsuit will go nowhere, I hope the judge sets up an injunction against MySpace and forces them to stop their servers while the lawsuit proceeds.
And why will the lawsuit go nowhere? You, as shareholders, are investing in the company. Unless you have a controlling share, you have little control over the company. You invested in their ability. When they sell out for less than you hoped, you obviously invested in stupid people. Stupid people give stupid results, regardless of the industry.
Best not visit my home. Door to door salesmen are a threat to my personal and property safety and, according to Florida law, I can shoot them on sight.
Actually, maybe that's a good way to purge the music industry...
I can see these being very valuable in applications where holding data is forbidden or where the must be destroyed at regular intervals or at the end of a project. Destroying hard drives (and wiping them is time consuming and prone to user error) could get expensive, but replacing a few tiny disks could be very cheap.
Late reply, but your comparison to newspapers is wrong: if you're reading a newspaper, someone, somewhere, paid for that piece of paper with that writing on it.
Breaking them isn't a defect, it's a feature.
Does the license of the open source matter to you? Do you have a preferred form of license, e.g., GPL vs. BSD? Obviously, some licenses are better for the developers to make a buck on versus others which aren't designed to hold cash flow.
It doesn't matter to the websites what info you give us. In fact, your fake information helps us more than your real information? Did you say you're 80 years old? Awesome. The stats are skewed similar to the way that election polls are. Certain groups are known to be under-represented so the information is skewed appropriately. While not entirely accurate, it helps.
Again, the websites that pull the info generally couldn't give a shit about your info. The advertisers do, though. Enough people provide real information to make it worth the hastle.
And content isn't free, per se. Freely available, yes, but the expectation is that you read our content and in exchange look at our advertising. No advertising revenue would mean you would only have access to jaded blogs written by 13-year-olds who haven't yet realized it's down the highway, not across the street.
Talk to your doctor. You do not want a DIY solution when someone's life depends on it.
You may also want to look into a managed care facility. You may be able to get them to accept both you and your child so you could continue to care for the child.
Just because we may eventually out-tnature doesn't mean the thousands of injured soliders and civilians want part of their body replaced with robotics if they could have the option of a new, real limb.
There is also no reason both areas of research can't operate simultaneously, nor anything that is restricting them from working coopoeratively.
Small shops may not be able to withstand waiting for someone to get fired. One or two projects that fall behind could easily spell doom for such a shop.
Plus, a computer lab doesn't show anything for the tax payers. I really doubt a city council would like to show the tax payers that the city spent $800,000 on a single computer lab, whereas a new athletic facility is big and flashy.
As to the original question, you may be able to use a local community college to get the classes you want. I know my high school offered that. If you have a cool teacher and aren't a douchebag student, you might be able to convince your school administrators that you can self-teach a class and still get credit for it.
Example: my senior year of high school, I took 5 AP courses and created a 6th and 7th class where I taught myself C. The teacher had no idea what I was doing. I was graded mostly on self-evaluation and brief papers I had to turn in weekly describing what I did. The other class was rebuilding and managing the school website with the school librarian, also largely self-graded.
You may have to create your own options if your school won't provide them.
I wasn't necessarily saying that the US needs to adopt a central election like India has, only that the differences among the states probably contributes to our continued election woes.
I'd much rather see the states collectively do something outside of the federal framework and take care of the problem themselves.
Good question. That'd be pretty sweet.