Yes, its also perhaps a good time to mention that many of the Non US based Video sharing sites have better video quality, a nicer design and best of all, much much better porn.
It occurs to me that since most CS grads are already having to compete with outsourced workers in far off places, that adding an extra burden on employability is perhaps, premature?
Politically incorrect or business case unjustifiable though it may be, when the choice came down to a guy with a first class degree in a faded megadeath t-shirt smelling vaguely of pizza, or a hot girl with a 3rd class degree, which would you rather choose to hire?
And I'm noticing that there's been 103 posts so far and no-one has mentioned ponies. Is everyone new here? Or am I the only guy left?
I really hate companies that spend so much effort on trying to make me do stuff they know I don't want to do.
I agree, I'm inclined to think that 99% of the people working in advertising are talentless hacks, who are under the misguided impression that they are clever and manipulative, just because they can fool other marketing folks in corporations.
Seriously. You've got at least 1,000 times the budget of any indie filmmaker and a guaranteed 30 secs of airtime on prime time TV. And what is it they do with that? Irritate the hell out of people 999 times out of 1000.
Dumbfounds me. The crass senseless waste of it all.
If you work in advertising or marketing (as likely no-one on/. does), take look at the Aflac or Geico ads as one small example of what can be achieved. I, for one, love the Aflac duck and look forward to seeing how inventive their new ads will be. (the Superduck one is just great).
If people are irritated or turned off by your company's ads, it's quite simply because your marketing people require firing. Advertising should (and can) be welcome and fun, it's the fault of advertisers that it's not.
So what will happen (and probaly already has) is that the people who do not know any better will form the basis of what "surfers" do.
As the previous poster says, it's pretty much only Joe Sixpack and The Sheeple that are going to get tracked. Hands up any slashdotter that's not using adblock and flashblock etc on their home system. (Those with hands raised please leave your geek id cards on the table on your way out.)
Predicting what Sheeple will do is easy. They eat (to excess - then diet), have sex, breed, like cars or fashion, watch sports as if they were the Circus Maximus, believe News Corps propaganda is "news", feed on the RIAA's outpourings like SOMA, drink, veg out in front of American Idol, and are far more interested in Britney and Parisite than politics or anything that actually matters. You don't really need any new technology to predict the interests of these kinds of "surfers" - it's pretty much basic animal instincts all the way. When McDonalds produces Soylent Green, they'll eat it and like it, even in the unlikely event that they know what it is.
Sheeple - it's life Jim, but not as we/.ers know it.
(As an aside, if no-one's yet formed a band called "Joe Sixpack and the Sheeple", can I suggest that someone does.)
Not necessarily. You're thinking microeconomics. Go macro. Yes, some individuals will download huge amounts of material, but others will only download a little.
Likely, there will be a huge rush of downloading at the beginning of a subscription which will tail off after a few months. There's only so many bands that the average user likes, and the wonderful world of the RIAA produces fairly bland material these days. So once you've got all your fave tunes, you'll only be picking up the odd song or album in any given month.
In all likelihood it will balance out - I'm sure that's how they will have modeled it. That said, there will likely be restrictions to some degree. After all, without that there'd be nothing to stop a school class getting together, designating one person the account holder and sharing the music between them.
There's disagreeable things in this article - Amazon's ludicrous patent, the whole concept of Web 2.0, and The Register in general. So, it's nice to come away with something that's patently ('scuse the pun) obviously true. Wiki citations are most surely toilet paper, and not just from a legal POV.
Agreed, Governments need to stay out of any and all creative activities (creative accounting too, but that's wishful thinking....
But there are other possibilities. There's no reason movies can't be done as performances - Rocky Horror Show being one example. Movies can still make plenty of money as free downloads from sites with ads (text based please). And special edition collectors DVDs will still sell for movies at the thin end of the distribution tail.
(Note that under the proposed Norwegian system only the original producer has the right to make money from the product.)
what Norway's immigration policy is. I am retiring and living on a catamaran in about 10 years and I was thinking about leaving the USA anyway if it does not stop becoming so politically and religiously insane over here.
Can I also add, that another of their entrepreneurial errors was to merge with Bertelsmann to create their music division Sony BMG.
That's the bright folks that brought you their first copy protection scandal. And Bertelsmann were the first company to use DRM on CDs.
(as an aside it's worth noting that Bertelsmann were involved with the Nazis and used Jewish slaves during WWII - they also lied about this all the way up to 2002),
When people talk about MS being evil, it's important to realize that there are far more evil companies out there. Here, with Sony BMG you have pure evil. At least 100 years of unspeakable crimes in one of their divisions - all neatly packaged up as family friendly entertainment.
Good grief, when will people here STOP quoting wikipedia as an authority. That definition of Square is utterly worthless.
Though admittedly, I'd have modded you "funny", cos I think that's what you intended. Insightful, seems like someone didn't get the joke. It was a joke right?
and I guess this means that the average/.er is now getting more and more requests to fix teh Intertubey thing, when it gets stuck. At least if any of us ever actually got out and saw daylight and, you know, met any girls...
Taco, looks like it's time to bring back the pink css theme.
That works both ways. If you cut off a (probably large) section of your customer base, you open the flood gates for competition in the longer term. Oh, as well as seriously damaging your brand.
I don't see why ISP's would agree to do this. It's right up there with... Load gun -> aim at foot -> Fire!
I think Apple has no need to aim lower. 10.4 is already better than Vista. There's no pressure on them to rush anything.
Apple makes more money on hardware sales than it does with software. Thus, it makes sense that the iPhone is a priority (if that is actually the case). Apple got a big hardware sales boost with switching to Intel. However many Mac users, such as myself, haven't upgraded to Intel machines because of the delay with Adobe CS3.
Leopard is icing on the cake, and I'm sure it's going to be great, but CS3 is going to sell many more new Macs than Leopard.
Somehow I find it reassuring that NASA employs someone called "Dolly Perkins". It has that warm cosy 1950's feeling of Golden Age Space Exploration. Now, if only we could get the astronauts named "Buck", "Rock", or "Trent".
Citations will help verify a source, but that's of little use if a article is biased. Some Wikipedia articles most certainly are biased.
I'm not in favor of blocking Wikipedia, but I do think that everyone - in every school, in every country - should be taught that Wikipedia information must never be trusted. Use it as the starting point for information gathering but never anything more.
Of course it would really help if Wikipedia themselves did the honest and decent thing and put a disclaimer at the top of every page. However, I fear vanity will prevent them from doing so, until they're forced to legally.
I've lived in a few European countries since the launch of the.eu domain. As with other posters here, I've not seen one single website or link to anything.eu
Which is not a surprise since no-one speaks Europeaish. If you have a pan European organisation then you need to have sites language specific, and in most countries people are trained to type in.de or.fr or.it before they'd try anything else.
If you have a.eu site then you have to have either, 1. some sort of portal which is just a list of links to language specific content, which simply means your visitors have to click twice to get to the content they want, or 2. a redirect based on IP - which is seriously annoying - especially if you are not a speaker of the majority language in the country you are currently visiting, this can make it hard, or in fact impossible (hands up everyone who doesn't speak Hungarian), to navigate a page (Google, I'm looking at you, hang your heads in shame).
So I see the only value in having a.eu site as the following - 1. domain squatters, and 2. the few people who have a business name that ends in "eu" - neu, or bleu, or similar.
...but for a second there, I saw the headline and thought it was this O'Reilly!
Personally I'm holding out for The Colbert College. I want to learn more about Truthiness and Wikiality. Just think - a whole College with no books, and no essays. YAY!
I know the US has some problems with free speech, but what the hell is wrong with Europe lately? For instance, Germany will soon be attempting to reintroduce legislation into the EU banning swastikas and Holocaust denial (Source: BBC). You can't have selective free speech!
Actually it's much worse than you might think. Germany, France, Austria, Slovakia and others already do have laws restricting Nazi related expression (although with Germany's ever growing new Nazi problems this is actually understandable).Google, eBay and other sites are already censored in those countries for that reason.
The UK has no constitutional right to free speech, and has censored it on a few occasions. Most notably with relation to Northern Ireland in the late 80's and early 90s, where anyone related to the IRA when interviewed on TV had to have their words spoken by an actor.
And yes, under the current UK Government things have got much much much worse. It's not just the cameras. Now they are even considering testing those suspected of social security fraud with lie detectors.
There is very little free speech in Europe, so Turkey will fit right in...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, its also perhaps a good time to mention that many of the Non US based Video sharing sites have better video quality, a nicer design and best of all, much much better porn.
Viva Europa!
It occurs to me that since most CS grads are already having to compete with outsourced workers in far off places, that adding an extra burden on employability is perhaps, premature?
Politically incorrect or business case unjustifiable though it may be, when the choice came down to a guy with a first class degree in a faded megadeath t-shirt smelling vaguely of pizza, or a hot girl with a 3rd class degree, which would you rather choose to hire?
And I'm noticing that there's been 103 posts so far and no-one has mentioned ponies. Is everyone new here? Or am I the only guy left?
The first question for me is why is the US lagging behind on this? Only 2% more Firefox usage than Africa.
Anyone any ideas why this is?
If it helps, no, you're not alone.
I rate the flashblock extension as one of the miracles of 21st Century technology. It alone has profoundly increased my quality of life.
Flash sucks for about 90% of its current online uses. The other 10% - product demos for example - are fine, but I'd welcome any alternative.
Seriously. You've got at least 1,000 times the budget of any indie filmmaker and a guaranteed 30 secs of airtime on prime time TV. And what is it they do with that? Irritate the hell out of people 999 times out of 1000.
Dumbfounds me. The crass senseless waste of it all.
If you work in advertising or marketing (as likely no-one on
If people are irritated or turned off by your company's ads, it's quite simply because your marketing people require firing. Advertising should (and can) be welcome and fun, it's the fault of advertisers that it's not.
Predicting what Sheeple will do is easy. They eat (to excess - then diet), have sex, breed, like cars or fashion, watch sports as if they were the Circus Maximus, believe News Corps propaganda is "news", feed on the RIAA's outpourings like SOMA, drink, veg out in front of American Idol, and are far more interested in Britney and Parisite than politics or anything that actually matters. You don't really need any new technology to predict the interests of these kinds of "surfers" - it's pretty much basic animal instincts all the way. When McDonalds produces Soylent Green, they'll eat it and like it, even in the unlikely event that they know what it is.
Sheeple - it's life Jim, but not as we
(As an aside, if no-one's yet formed a band called "Joe Sixpack and the Sheeple", can I suggest that someone does.)
Not necessarily. You're thinking microeconomics. Go macro. Yes, some individuals will download huge amounts of material, but others will only download a little.
Likely, there will be a huge rush of downloading at the beginning of a subscription which will tail off after a few months. There's only so many bands that the average user likes, and the wonderful world of the RIAA produces fairly bland material these days. So once you've got all your fave tunes, you'll only be picking up the odd song or album in any given month.
In all likelihood it will balance out - I'm sure that's how they will have modeled it. That said, there will likely be restrictions to some degree. After all, without that there'd be nothing to stop a school class getting together, designating one person the account holder and sharing the music between them.
It is indeed.
There's disagreeable things in this article - Amazon's ludicrous patent, the whole concept of Web 2.0, and The Register in general. So, it's nice to come away with something that's patently ('scuse the pun) obviously true. Wiki citations are most surely toilet paper, and not just from a legal POV.
Agreed, Governments need to stay out of any and all creative activities (creative accounting too, but that's wishful thinking....
But there are other possibilities. There's no reason movies can't be done as performances - Rocky Horror Show being one example. Movies can still make plenty of money as free downloads from sites with ads (text based please). And special edition collectors DVDs will still sell for movies at the thin end of the distribution tail.
(Note that under the proposed Norwegian system only the original producer has the right to make money from the product.)
Can I also add, that another of their entrepreneurial errors was to merge with Bertelsmann to create their music division Sony BMG.
That's the bright folks that brought you their first copy protection scandal. And Bertelsmann were the first company to use DRM on CDs.
(as an aside it's worth noting that Bertelsmann were involved with the Nazis and used Jewish slaves during WWII - they also lied about this all the way up to 2002),
When people talk about MS being evil, it's important to realize that there are far more evil companies out there. Here, with Sony BMG you have pure evil. At least 100 years of unspeakable crimes in one of their divisions - all neatly packaged up as family friendly entertainment.
Good grief, when will people here STOP quoting wikipedia as an authority. That definition of Square is utterly worthless.
Though admittedly, I'd have modded you "funny", cos I think that's what you intended. Insightful, seems like someone didn't get the joke. It was a joke right?
sorry... can't... resist...
In Soviet Russia, girls net you.
In Korea only old girls use the Internet.
Just imagine a beowolf cluster of those... (yes, do, it's a nice thought)
No, they don't run Linux - not yet anyway. Myspace is still a ways away from Linux.
and I guess this means that the average /.er is now getting more and more requests to fix teh Intertubey thing, when it gets stuck. At least if any of us ever actually got out and saw daylight and, you know, met any girls...
Taco, looks like it's time to bring back the pink css theme.
That works both ways. If you cut off a (probably large) section of your customer base, you open the flood gates for competition in the longer term. Oh, as well as seriously damaging your brand.
I don't see why ISP's would agree to do this. It's right up there with... Load gun -> aim at foot -> Fire!
I think Apple has no need to aim lower. 10.4 is already better than Vista. There's no pressure on them to rush anything.
Apple makes more money on hardware sales than it does with software. Thus, it makes sense that the iPhone is a priority (if that is actually the case). Apple got a big hardware sales boost with switching to Intel. However many Mac users, such as myself, haven't upgraded to Intel machines because of the delay with Adobe CS3.
Leopard is icing on the cake, and I'm sure it's going to be great, but CS3 is going to sell many more new Macs than Leopard.
Admittedly offtopic, but...
Somehow I find it reassuring that NASA employs someone called "Dolly Perkins". It has that warm cosy 1950's feeling of Golden Age Space Exploration. Now, if only we could get the astronauts named "Buck", "Rock", or "Trent".
Yep, the UK Inland Revenue and eBay have been co-operating for a number of years. This is also the case with the equivalents in Germany.
I guess the only question I'd have is: why has it taken so long for the IRS to get involved?
No, it's not that simple.
Citations will help verify a source, but that's of little use if a article is biased. Some Wikipedia articles most certainly are biased.
I'm not in favor of blocking Wikipedia, but I do think that everyone - in every school, in every country - should be taught that Wikipedia information must never be trusted. Use it as the starting point for information gathering but never anything more.
Of course it would really help if Wikipedia themselves did the honest and decent thing and put a disclaimer at the top of every page. However, I fear vanity will prevent them from doing so, until they're forced to legally.
You forgot...
8. ???
9. Profit!
I've lived in a few European countries since the launch of the .eu domain. As with other posters here, I've not seen one single website or link to anything .eu
.de or .fr or .it before they'd try anything else.
.eu site then you have to have either, 1. some sort of portal which is just a list of links to language specific content, which simply means your visitors have to click twice to get to the content they want, or 2. a redirect based on IP - which is seriously annoying - especially if you are not a speaker of the majority language in the country you are currently visiting, this can make it hard, or in fact impossible (hands up everyone who doesn't speak Hungarian), to navigate a page (Google, I'm looking at you, hang your heads in shame).
.eu site as the following - 1. domain squatters, and 2. the few people who have a business name that ends in "eu" - neu, or bleu, or similar.
Which is not a surprise since no-one speaks Europeaish. If you have a pan European organisation then you need to have sites language specific, and in most countries people are trained to type in
If you have a
So I see the only value in having a
The UK has no constitutional right to free speech, and has censored it on a few occasions. Most notably with relation to Northern Ireland in the late 80's and early 90s, where anyone related to the IRA when interviewed on TV had to have their words spoken by an actor.
And yes, under the current UK Government things have got much much much worse. It's not just the cameras. Now they are even considering testing those suspected of social security fraud with lie detectors.
There is very little free speech in Europe, so Turkey will fit right in...