Tip Number 12 - Steal a user id with high feedback -> List lots of items you don't have -> Run away -> Profit!
Tip Number 12a - A variant on the above. Buy 50 hot items (latest cell phones, etc) -> List all 50 for 25% of their retail price -> Get fantastic feedback -> Then list 10000 of the same item which you do not have -> Run away -> Serious profit!
Business Week had to pay the author who wrote this story, out of its ad revenues. What right does Slashdot have to those revenues?
What right does the author have to the payment? I ask since some of ther points are common sense, some are actually posted on the eBay site itself as selling advice.
There's nothing, nothing at all, in this article I haven't seen in many other places on the web.
Now, I'm not in any way a fan of Microsoft, but I will actually stick up for them to some degree on the aspect of software bundling...
When I buy an Apple I can use it for almost all simple tasks right out of the box without needing to install other software, e.g. I can edit video with iMovie and burn it to DVD with iDVD.
My expectation with Windows is that it would have the same utility. Furthermore that I should be able to connect it to the internet without having to worry about spyware and virus, etc.
Thus I am seeing bundling of anti-virus software and DVD burning software, or indeed any other software as a "good thing" in principle. I'm sure Norton and McAfee etc won't be happy - and afaik the antivirus software isn't being bundled free due to complaints from them or similar. Nero and Roxio users will benefit from more competition, both are bloated products with more than a few bugs.
I'm not seeing that as the right answer. Anti-virus software makers should not need to exist. If you get into business that is intrinsically opportunistic or parasitic, you need to be planning to milk the cash cow while you can and cut and run when the opportunity is dried up. The end is always nigh, it's just not clear whether that's next Tuesday or further away... There shouldn't be viruses. What if people stopped writing them - should antivrus software makers be allowed to continue writing them just to stay in business?
It's like slave traders complaining about the effect on their business after emancipation.
The big caveat I have on this is that MS bundling IE was at first a good thing. Netscape wasn't free or cheap, IE was. The trouble being that once the competition went the quality went with it due to the resultant monopoly.
But somewhere in between there is the right answer: Windows bundles should be as complete as possible - good for the user, since it can be used right out of the box like a mac - and other software exists outside of that to further enhance that experience, offering deeper levels of control or complexity and utility.
Having said all of this, and knowing that much of it lies in the realm of fantasy, rather than corporate reality, I do see no reason, none at all, to upgrade to Vista. Other than to slow down my quite satisfactory fast dual core set up with pointless graphics...
Perhaps if you enjoy 2 hours of homosexual jokes from C-list comedians.
Absolutely. It was one of the worst shows I've seen in a while. I too wondered what Fawcett was doing there - um, well what remained of her body was there, her mind, if she ever had one, was long gone. Could be that a production assistant screwed up and thought she and Heather Locklear were one and the same - an understandable error.
But, yes... the show was 75% of the time about the dire unfunny comedians doing the roasting and 22% about gay George Takei. The other 3% was Shatner bashing.
Betty White was good, but otherwise best avoided by any Shatner fans, or comedy fans generally for that matter...
The "hook" was Shatner projecting his infamous ego throughout the show, taking credit for all of it.
To be fair to Shatner, he said in a recent Wired interview that he wanted to call the show after Captain Kirk or Star Trek rather than himself, but Paramount wouldn't let him.
Also, there's a another wonderful Star Trek moment in BL. During the fishing trip Allan Shore mentions Klingons in relation to salmon parasites. Crane looks startled and repeats "Klingons" to camera. It's hilarious. I love that show. Shatner's best work so far. (and David E. Kelley's too)
It's not MS who've said that but four British MEPs, sadly unnamed, who show that they have the same grasp of technological issues as the average amoeba.
I think you could count the number of UK citizens who know the name of their MEP on one hand. Well, ok, it's in the 100s of 1000s but still a very small percentage of the UK population.
The voter turn out is extremely low for EU elections. Generally the political parties field candidates in training - or just some muppet they can't fob off somewhere else. Any "good" (and I use the term loosely of course) politician is being saved for domestic politics.
Not many in the UK care about the EU parliament. Here's one example where it would have been a good idea to have cared a little more. Someone needs to find out who these four cretins are and either expose them as the puppets of corporate propaganda, or expose them as 4 people who make Senator Ted Stevens look like Tim Berners-Lee.
To any company that feels that they would be at a competitive disadvantage, here's some simple questions... What was your disaster recovery plan for when your vendor can't deliver? You have other disaster recovery plans right? Why not this one? The writing about Vista has been on the wall for YEARS now.
meaning old news is worthless, good luck getting any money for it when libraries already provide microfiche copies of newspapers going back 200+ years
What you mean I'd have to get dressed? And go outside? But why?
The more sources of history the better; at your finger tips - perfect! In today's United States of Amnesia, old news could be useful. For example, one could read all about how a Government did a witchhunt for groups of individuals it deemed to be unAmnesian and persecuted them.
Or wait... is that new news...?
History in the making is helpful in not forgetting some of the atrocities of the past. It seems that many Americans have forgotten McCarthy, many Germans are again not interested in the rise of the nazis in their midst, and many more examples all over the world...
Old Fox News however... is just as worthless yesterday as today as tomorrow.
Don't worry, we have plenty of puns in other languages. For example, if this was a Portuguese periodic table, the picture on the Copper element, which has the symbol "Cu" could be a nice ass (cu in Portuguese).
It's funny, I read many many things per day, but like most people not everything sticks in my mind forever. Now you'd think it would be profundities or vital information that does. It's not. I guarantee if you ask me what Portuguese for nice ass is in a year or 10 years time I can tell you without hesitation. Thank you to the poster of the parent, you have changed my life.
This information could be useful sometime. Oh God, I hope...
1) The whole cities redesigned thing - I think the deal with this is that you do actually have to redesign the cities first for Segway to take off. I doubt anyone is going to do that anytime soon. For example:
Sedgway in most European cities (and I'm sure applies globally) - we have some streets that are 1000 years old with narrow paths, uneven surfaces and great big holes.
Segway on footpaths where people walk - no, dangerous for the elderly, infirm and kids. Also physically difficult to achieve without redesigning something - kerbs etc. (just ask a wheelchairbound person how easy it is traversing most streets.)
Segway on cyclepaths - as an avid cyclist I must say please no, they are too slow and too wide. They'd be even more of a pain than inline skaters.
Segway on roads - is good on the whole and very much the way to go, but not very safe sharing lanes with cars, buses or (worst of all) taxis.
As far as I understand, some of the above, and the legislation thereof and surrounding, are the reasons why Segway still isn't permitted in some EU countries (but I may be wrong on that one).
2) The name has to go. "Segway" - not exactly dynamic, fun, exciting is it? Sounds like a name for a golf club or an Insurance Brokers.
There are stories in the news about molesters and the internet, but is the internet merely a different avenue for crime? Or does it open floodgates for increased crime?
The great thing about Internet crime is that you don't have to even set foot outside the house. In the bad old days of analogue crime you had to go rummaging through hotel dustbins and the like in order to steal somone's identity. Or, you had to go along to a fleamarket with your knock-off dodgy goods and risk the long arm of the law nabbing you. With eBay you don't even need to have the goods to make a sale! It was also really only easy to rob someone locally, with the Internet the whole world is available with a little bit of translation.
People are still just people. Digital crime is only globalized, faster, cleaner, safer... and maybe better for the environment.
I don't think that there are more criminals as a result of the internet, though possibly they are more successful. For example, if while at a flea market you see a guy selling a plasma tv who is wearing a baseball cap, home made tattoos, a tracksuit, lots of gold jewellery and has a pitbull called "Tyson" you wouldn't think for one second that he was legitimate. However, lots of people do bid on his carefully crafted eBay auction because it's smoke and mirrors disguising his true nature.
7) Came from the same people who were responsible for Freeserve.
Which actually make the previous six easy to understand / believe / expect. Those of us who remember Freeserve, do not do so fondly. It wasn't Free and it only Served Ads.
My question is, why start with Germany? Jokes about Grammar Nazis aside, this country has real scary violent Nazis.
I live in Berlin, I am not German. This afternoon I was walking past the Monument to the murdered Jews of Europe to find 5 Neo-Nazis being arrested for performing a Hitler salute and urinating on the stones. In the past two months that's the third incident I've personally seen in broad daylight and in tourist or fashionable areas. There are just under 2 million card carrying and voting Neo-Nazis in Germany as of the last election. It's not all in the past. The problem is here and now, and is growing. It is simply not being reported or being dealt with as much as it should and could be.
I am not saying that any of the German editors are currently Nazis - likely much of the vandalism they see is Nazi related. There is however, absolutely nothing to stop that situation changing; Wikipedia becoming WikiBebelplatz.
It's just, you know, why didn't you start with Holland or Sweden? Germany isn't perhaps the best place to start investigating use of extra authoritarianism?
Freeserve is a name I have not heard since the.com boom and hoped I would not hear again.
I second that. Interesting things names. "Freeserve" was neither exactly "free" nor did it exactly "serve". In fact there was a lot of adware and spyware back in the days when such stuff wasn't called that. In the same vain, "Browzar" is only a front end to IE, and isn't exactly a browser.
Once bitten twice shy, if freeserve "brains" are behind it I won't be downloading it.
Well the BBC - or rather me, a columnist who writes on the BBC website - took what information was available from the German site, an interview with Jimmy Wales on news.com and general reading and wrote a column speculating about the implications of a more controlled Wikipedia for the site.
You scare. You scare me very very deeply. You seriously mean to say that a globaly trusted source of news (and as an expat Brit, my personal primary source of news) is essentially, or occasionally, cobbled together out of some second and third hand reports? You didn't think to, oh, you know, maybe email or call someone first hand? Kudos for being brave enough to write here but, again, you scare me. Deeply. Do you feel you did good work with this article?
I am media savvy enough to know that this is an (internally) accepted method of news gathering in many media outlets - News Corp for example, since Outfoxed shows just this very practice. However, my expectation is that the BBC, as a directly funded organ of the British Nation, would be more careful and have more journalistic integrity. I guess this begins in part to explain why those of us who remember the integrity and quality of the BBC in the 70s view it now as being "dumbed down".
Perhaps there should be some kind of moderation system applied to the BBC too, seeing that perhaps we can't entirely trust their quality. At least you didn't use Wikipedia as a source, though just a guess, if you are typical of BBC standards then I bet you one of your colleagues has done just that at some point. In this case you do have verifiable sources - just goes to show what use they were for you...
...but vandalism is pretty well covered by the system already...
This statement is pure conjecture. If true, it is also only likely true for full-frontal blatant in your face acts of vandalism. Small specialized planned acts of deliberate manipulation may not be so easy to detect if skillfully done. One would need to be an expert in the subject to notice such - are experts available for every field? And again , as many have already pointed out - who watches the watchers? When the experts are the manipulators, we're all screwed.
Slashdot Mirror
Tip Number 12 - Steal a user id with high feedback -> List lots of items you don't have -> Run away -> Profit!
Tip Number 12a - A variant on the above. Buy 50 hot items (latest cell phones, etc) -> List all 50 for 25% of their retail price -> Get fantastic feedback -> Then list 10000 of the same item which you do not have -> Run away -> Serious profit!
There's no ???.
There's nothing, nothing at all, in this article I haven't seen in many other places on the web.
Now, I'm not in any way a fan of Microsoft, but I will actually stick up for them to some degree on the aspect of software bundling...
When I buy an Apple I can use it for almost all simple tasks right out of the box without needing to install other software, e.g. I can edit video with iMovie and burn it to DVD with iDVD.
My expectation with Windows is that it would have the same utility. Furthermore that I should be able to connect it to the internet without having to worry about spyware and virus, etc.
Thus I am seeing bundling of anti-virus software and DVD burning software, or indeed any other software as a "good thing" in principle. I'm sure Norton and McAfee etc won't be happy - and afaik the antivirus software isn't being bundled free due to complaints from them or similar. Nero and Roxio users will benefit from more competition, both are bloated products with more than a few bugs.
I'm not seeing that as the right answer. Anti-virus software makers should not need to exist. If you get into business that is intrinsically opportunistic or parasitic, you need to be planning to milk the cash cow while you can and cut and run when the opportunity is dried up. The end is always nigh, it's just not clear whether that's next Tuesday or further away... There shouldn't be viruses. What if people stopped writing them - should antivrus software makers be allowed to continue writing them just to stay in business?
It's like slave traders complaining about the effect on their business after emancipation.
The big caveat I have on this is that MS bundling IE was at first a good thing. Netscape wasn't free or cheap, IE was. The trouble being that once the competition went the quality went with it due to the resultant monopoly.
But somewhere in between there is the right answer: Windows bundles should be as complete as possible - good for the user, since it can be used right out of the box like a mac - and other software exists outside of that to further enhance that experience, offering deeper levels of control or complexity and utility.
Having said all of this, and knowing that much of it lies in the realm of fantasy, rather than corporate reality, I do see no reason, none at all, to upgrade to Vista. Other than to slow down my quite satisfactory fast dual core set up with pointless graphics...
But, yes... the show was 75% of the time about the dire unfunny comedians doing the roasting and 22% about gay George Takei. The other 3% was Shatner bashing.
Betty White was good, but otherwise best avoided by any Shatner fans, or comedy fans generally for that matter...
It's here
Also, there's a another wonderful Star Trek moment in BL. During the fishing trip Allan Shore mentions Klingons in relation to salmon parasites. Crane looks startled and repeats "Klingons" to camera. It's hilarious. I love that show. Shatner's best work so far. (and David E. Kelley's too)
The voter turn out is extremely low for EU elections. Generally the political parties field candidates in training - or just some muppet they can't fob off somewhere else. Any "good" (and I use the term loosely of course) politician is being saved for domestic politics.
Not many in the UK care about the EU parliament. Here's one example where it would have been a good idea to have cared a little more. Someone needs to find out who these four cretins are and either expose them as the puppets of corporate propaganda, or expose them as 4 people who make Senator Ted Stevens look like Tim Berners-Lee.
To any company that feels that they would be at a competitive disadvantage, here's some simple questions... What was your disaster recovery plan for when your vendor can't deliver? You have other disaster recovery plans right? Why not this one? The writing about Vista has been on the wall for YEARS now.
and bringing an Apple for the teacher gets you expelled...
You don't get a wiki elephant joke? Could you be new here?
The more sources of history the better; at your finger tips - perfect! In today's United States of Amnesia, old news could be useful. For example, one could read all about how a Government did a witchhunt for groups of individuals it deemed to be unAmnesian and persecuted them.
Or wait... is that new news...?
History in the making is helpful in not forgetting some of the atrocities of the past. It seems that many Americans have forgotten McCarthy, many Germans are again not interested in the rise of the nazis in their midst, and many more examples all over the world...
Old Fox News however... is just as worthless yesterday as today as tomorrow.
This information could be useful sometime. Oh God, I hope...
Chemistry class in Portugal must be a riot?
Loxodonta Africana: A Natural History.
The Barry Manilow Concert... that's a one way trip for him? Please say yes...
They could call their promotion company Gigsssss Innnnn Spaaaaaaaace....
Please reassure me that the Bigelow Aerospace Space Hotel does in fact come with blackjack and hookers...
1) The whole cities redesigned thing - I think the deal with this is that you do actually have to redesign the cities first for Segway to take off. I doubt anyone is going to do that anytime soon. For example:
Sedgway in most European cities (and I'm sure applies globally) - we have some streets that are 1000 years old with narrow paths, uneven surfaces and great big holes.
Segway on footpaths where people walk - no, dangerous for the elderly, infirm and kids. Also physically difficult to achieve without redesigning something - kerbs etc. (just ask a wheelchairbound person how easy it is traversing most streets.)
Segway on cyclepaths - as an avid cyclist I must say please no, they are too slow and too wide. They'd be even more of a pain than inline skaters.
Segway on roads - is good on the whole and very much the way to go, but not very safe sharing lanes with cars, buses or (worst of all) taxis.
As far as I understand, some of the above, and the legislation thereof and surrounding, are the reasons why Segway still isn't permitted in some EU countries (but I may be wrong on that one).
2) The name has to go. "Segway" - not exactly dynamic, fun, exciting is it? Sounds like a name for a golf club or an Insurance Brokers.
Now I do admire the scientific success here. Good job well done. But.. SMART...Sea Of Excellence...??? And it crashed???
Hmmm, did these guys hire Fox News spin doctors to do the naming?
People are still just people. Digital crime is only globalized, faster, cleaner, safer... and maybe better for the environment.
I don't think that there are more criminals as a result of the internet, though possibly they are more successful. For example, if while at a flea market you see a guy selling a plasma tv who is wearing a baseball cap, home made tattoos, a tracksuit, lots of gold jewellery and has a pitbull called "Tyson" you wouldn't think for one second that he was legitimate. However, lots of people do bid on his carefully crafted eBay auction because it's smoke and mirrors disguising his true nature.
People are surprisingly trusting in this World.
Can I also add:
7) Came from the same people who were responsible for Freeserve.
Which actually make the previous six easy to understand / believe / expect. Those of us who remember Freeserve, do not do so fondly. It wasn't Free and it only Served Ads.
... people over 70 are in no way lithe enough to surf through a series of tubes.
It's for their own good.
My question is, why start with Germany? Jokes about Grammar Nazis aside, this country has real scary violent Nazis.
I live in Berlin, I am not German. This afternoon I was walking past the Monument to the murdered Jews of Europe to find 5 Neo-Nazis being arrested for performing a Hitler salute and urinating on the stones. In the past two months that's the third incident I've personally seen in broad daylight and in tourist or fashionable areas. There are just under 2 million card carrying and voting Neo-Nazis in Germany as of the last election. It's not all in the past. The problem is here and now, and is growing. It is simply not being reported or being dealt with as much as it should and could be.
I am not saying that any of the German editors are currently Nazis - likely much of the vandalism they see is Nazi related. There is however, absolutely nothing to stop that situation changing; Wikipedia becoming WikiBebelplatz.
It's just, you know, why didn't you start with Holland or Sweden? Germany isn't perhaps the best place to start investigating use of extra authoritarianism?
--------
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Once bitten twice shy, if freeserve "brains" are behind it I won't be downloading it.
I am media savvy enough to know that this is an (internally) accepted method of news gathering in many media outlets - News Corp for example, since Outfoxed shows just this very practice. However, my expectation is that the BBC, as a directly funded organ of the British Nation, would be more careful and have more journalistic integrity. I guess this begins in part to explain why those of us who remember the integrity and quality of the BBC in the 70s view it now as being "dumbed down".
Perhaps there should be some kind of moderation system applied to the BBC too, seeing that perhaps we can't entirely trust their quality. At least you didn't use Wikipedia as a source, though just a guess, if you are typical of BBC standards then I bet you one of your colleagues has done just that at some point. In this case you do have verifiable sources - just goes to show what use they were for you...
You forgot to add a little spanking too.