...overmining by the Europans. Yes, the sole hyperpower in far solar orbit is exploiting the resources of honest, hard-working, frozen Enceladans. Don't buy Morton Salt.
That's just it--nobody is a natural born leader. You get it by making up your mind to do what you need to do and then doing it. No matter how much you feel you can't, you're only dealing with other people, not the second law of thermpodynamics, and you just make up your mind and DO IT. I'm not saying it's easy--just that it is possible for every man, woman, or child who wants it enough to actually DO IT.
Of course, it's easier to do if your parents set an example, instead of letting the XBox do their dirty work for them.
I'm more afraid of my own government today than I've ever been of terrorists.
You are like an infant, a child, a spoiled brat who hates the house his parents provide and wants to run away to somewhere, anywhere, the whole world must be better than this Hell you call a home. But you never leave. You stay. Why is that?
The reason you have no fear of terrorists is that you have never lived in an Islamist country. You have no idea what you are talking about. You never had a sister dragged off to a soccer stadium *by the government* to be executed while people cheered. Etc.
You're more afraid of the United States government than the terrorists? Then Go, in the name of God, GO! We'll see how long your capacity for ingratitude lasts when you realize how much you lost in leaving.
No matter what I decide, it'll make someone unhappy. Whatever I do, it will appear arbitrary and capricious. Appear, nothing, it will *be* arbitrary.
I used to have this problem not just with the Wii, but also with the computer, but I discovered a fantastic little tool called "timeoutd". It allows me to... get this: Specify per-user daily time limits.
Let me help you. My Mom used to settle any arguments between my sister and me by making it known that if she had to settle it, *Neither* of us would like the decision. "Well, I'll throw the damned thing away, if it's just going to cause you two to fight. Quit your bickering. Solve it nicely between yourselves, or I'll fix the problem for good."
Now what's wrong with that solution? It obviously offloads the apparently unbearable strain of making judgement calls for unbelievably trivial matters, and it teaches something valuable to the kids. Thanks, Mom.
Thank you for the insight about parenting. I'm trying to make a list so I have a question. Are you also a failure as a parent if you install porn blocking software, etc on the family computer or inspect the logs to see what sites your child has been visiting? I'd always thought either/both of those would be a good idea, but now that I'm learning using any tools besides peering over my child shoulder makes me a failure I'm not so sure. What is your expert opinion on this?
See, I already answered your question when I said:
A rule that a parent *says* is firm but "doesn't manage to enforce" is not a firm rule, and no amount of preventive control will support the real goal. Detective controls might--logging, say, but only if used to monitor the child, and correct (or reward) behavior. The real goal is in making the decision to play the game or not INTERNAL to the child.
So disregarding for a moment your sarcasm, which has apparently rushed off with your mouth and left your ability to remember what you have just read in the dust, my expert opinion is that by simply preventing anything (by way of blocking), you are taking yourself out of the loop. That is not in and of itself bad, but is likely to fail, and short-circuits the child-rearing process. Weigh the costs against the benefits. This is where we consider the difference between on the one hand gaming, which is considered (by me anyway) to be bad only in excess, and on the other hand online pornography, which I consider to be bad for children in any amount. YMMV.
But your example of logging (which HEY, I also mentioned!) is a detective control rather than a preventive one, and is understood as only a component of a system in which the parent remains engaged. The child DECIDES not to go to *that* site, because of the consequences (wieghed against the probability of being caught, and the motiviation to go to the site in the first place, of course). Logging systems are a perfect example of (one half of) the MONITOR and correct, MONITOR and correct process I mentioned in my first post. What matters then is whether or not the parent has the gumption to deliver the correction.
I don't think I've called anybody bad parents or guaranteed any failure or success modes. If you want to feel hurt, then go ahead. Re: your.sig, feeling victimized by simple facts also has a liberal bias.
Oh come on. These type of posts on Slashdot crack me up. The "be a super-parent FFS!" type of post. The problem with "parenting" is not that people rely on machines to enforce rules, the problem is the lack of firm rules. You just need to watch an episode of Super Nanny to know what time it is, that is, a lot of children don't have any fixed set of rules, they can do whatever they want and it makes them very unhappy. In the real world, most people are far from being perfect parents, and they have trouble getting their authority respected. Such solutions help with that, by firmly enforcing rules that parents don't manage to enforce this firmly on their own.
Oh, you come so close, but then lose the thread entirely.
You are right about what the problem is, but you are wrong about what the problem is not. EVERYBODY has trouble getting their authority respected. But if you are in a position of authority and you fail to get it respected, then you are failing at your job. Grow a pair (of whichever) and EARN YOUR RESPECT, FFS! (Sorry, that just slipped in, ffs).
A rule that a parent *says* is firm but "doesn't manage to enforce" is not a firm rule, and no amount of preventive control will support the real goal. Detective controls might--logging, say, but only if used to monitor the child, and correct (or reward) behavior. The real goal is in making the decision to play the game or not INTERNAL to the child. After time, no matter how much the child resents the situation, if he has been deciding not to play the game based on consequences, he develops the habit of doing the right thing--like it or not. But a tiler on the game completely side-steps this, and will probably by side-stepped itself, when the child learns how to defeat the timer. The parents will be none the wiser, and the child will have learned nothing except how to defeat a timer, and that Mom and Dad's rules are fluff.
Obviously, it's not Microsoft's job to rear our children, so I have nothing negative to say about the timer itself. It's just technology. I simply lament what I think we all agree is going to be the likely use for this thing. Parents will undermine their own authority.
Of course, you could always just smash the XBox. What you give for Christmas, you can take away if abused. Happy children are not the goal of child-rearing. Responsible adults are.
Not at all. Parents ought to be forever scheming and conniving to instill Discipline in the child. Parents should make sure that their children know first, what is expected, and second, the consequences. This is the fundamental theorem of child-rearing (Why, yes, I *did* just make that up, thank you!) If the child clearly knows these two things, the rest of parenting becomes possible. If not, then the streets are raising the child, or worse, TV and video games are, and the parents are just there to pay rent and cook until they can be replaced.
Parents should find ways to monitor their children's behavior, obviously without being there 24/7. My father once grounded me from TV for a week when I was eight years old. So I knew what he expected. But I was in agony. I watched some anyway, and when I saw the lights in the driveway, I quickly turned it off. See how smart I am? He came in, took off his coat and hat, asked me if I had watched any TV ("No, Dad."), and then he felt the back of the TV, which was nice and hot. After that, I clearly knew what the consequences were, and suffice it to say that the TV stayed off for three weeks. One week of original punishment, two additional weeks for breaking the terms of my original punishment, and a little something special for lying about it all. Sitting down was also somewhat in short supply for a few hours, but I had just developed another smidgen of responsibility. Thanks, Dad.
Do you know the difference between Discipline and Punishment? Discipline is completely internal, and keeps you from knowingly doing wrong. When Discipline fails, Punishment can be applied by somebody else (if you are fortunate), and this repairs Discipline. Nobody can be there 24/7, and even if you could, imagine what would happen to that basket-case child upon leaving home. Suddenly the Permanent Monitor isn't there anymore. Kid's head would explode. So I don't think that you actually believe I'm talking about 24/7 monitoring.
I don't understand why there is so much distaste for giving parents tools for *enforcing* the policies they have put in place. Which of the following would you disagree with: 1) Locking gun cabinets. After all, parents can just tell their kids not to play with guns!
First example, and already you're oversimplifying. I didn't say "just tell them not to do it". I said "monitor and correct, monitor and correct". It is an iterative process, and the "correction" part comes in after a failure of some sort. There will be failures--try not to let them be life-threatening ones. Build the rule-following and decision-making skills ("No way, man, my Dad would KILL me if I did that!") with relatively trivial experiences with time limits for video games. Hopefully, (and in the end that's as much as you can say) those skills will be in place when the real threats come. No parent is there 24/7, and that's the whole point of child-rearing: someday, the parents won't be there at all, and neither will Microsoft. There will only be prison and the grave waiting as corrective measures. They had better be prepared *before* that day to make decisions.
Now guns are hardly the same as XBox, right? So I don't think your comparison is apt.
2) Keeping household chemicals out of reach of children. After all, parents can just tell their kids not to touch them!
See above.
3) Running corporate computers without any kind of limited user environment.
Children. I am talking about children.
Every one can be admin! After all, if you tell your users not to download the special pointers and smiley sets off the Internet, they never would, right? They're trustworthy adults!
Adulthood is not attained by counting years. Adulthood is produced by child-rearing. Obviously, the law is silent on whether a particular 20-year old is a more responsible person than a given 22-year old, but the law says 21 to drink. That's an objective standard, and not what we're talking about. What I want to know about an employee will not come from looking at a birth date. And if I make him a SysAd (in my imaginary company, which is doing wuite well, thank you), it will be because I am satisfied (or have decided to accept a risk) with the employee's level of responsibility.
And the process of an IT admin busting an employee and then doing something about it is good for the employee, the IT admin, and good for the company!
Maybe, Yes, and Yes.
Seriously, *what* is wrong with making a parent's decisions enforceable by the software and hardware?
As I said, nothing is wrong with it. It's technology. What's wrong is where we all know this is going--latch-key kids whose parents do not have the skills to get them off the damned XBox in the first place. Besides which, the kids are going to install Linux on it and roll the clock back anyway. And the parents will be satisfied in their ignorance, to the detriment of the child. If, on the other hand, parents focused on knowing what their children are doing and on the children knowing what their parents expect, and the consequences, it wouldn't matter what software or hardware the next XBox comes out with. Or PS3. Or bleach bottle or crack pipe. Thankfully, the software for crack pipes is limited.
For a minute there, I thought I was going to have *raise my own children*.
Parents should monitor and correct, monitor and correct their children's behavior. Nobody said it was easy. Parents should be aware of what their children are doing online and with games or what-have-you, just the same as when children are expected to let their parents know who they're with, what they're doing, where they are, when they'll be back, why they're going, and how they'll get there.
The process ofa parent busting a kid in a lie and then doing something about it is good for the kid, good for the parent, and good for the relationship. More to the point, it's damned good for the *adult* that the kid will someday become. Isn't that the whole point?
Time limited technology is not in and of itself bad. It's neutral--it's technology. But try to deny that the only people for whom this poses an attractive solution are the exact people who need more direct family involvement, not less. This is what conservatives are talking about when we say that all these little influences, each one seemingly innocuous, are corroding the family.
The math is not wrong, but the headline is. "Making" money, at least without a printing press, means profit. If you spend $100 but you gross $150, then you have "made" $50.
Since we admit that we don't have reliable cost data, we must also admit that we are not talking about profit.
I disagree. The man worked 10 hours of overtime every week, so the 25% additional time worked actually cost the company 37.5% (I think) more money. And this is what the baseline for productivity is: neither hours nor weeks, nor any other measure of time, but MONEY. A business wants to maximize productivity (and therefore dollars of revenue) per dollar of cost.
The woman produces 100% (as the standard) per dollar. The man produces only 110% of her production, but costs 137.5% of her cost. He is producing at 72.7% of the woman's production per dollar.
The man's toast--give the woman a raise. And if the man isn't fired (for slowing down on his overtime, assuming that his 40-hr rate matched hers), then the business would break even by limiting him and 2-3 just like him to 40 hours and hiring one additional man, ignoring per-employee overhead. Still, the per-employee overhead can be mitigated by limiting a larger number of these buffoons (to spread the cost of the new employee over a greater base). It could be mitigated even further by hiring an additional woman like the one who only works 40 hours, instead of an additional man like the 50-hour slacker.
I'm going to laugh myself unconscious when the United States Military solves the problem of clean, renewable energy for the world. Take that, hippies! Muahahahahaaaaa!
forty or fifty different languages consisting only of clicks?
Many of these languages are spoken only by one or two tiny tribes many in papua new guinea alone.
Sure it's sad but c'est la vie. Nonsense. We're raising a generation fluent only in a language of clicks and double-clicks.
Excuse me? "back"? Yes, I take the intent, but this is a pretty wrought example of trying to imply one thing while saying another. China cannot beat the U.S. "back" to somewhere it has yet to go. But the other way to phrase it, "Will China beat the U.S. to the moon?", sounds, well, out of date. Not so alarming.
While I don't think that anybody will be confused, I would simply appreciate either a bit less hype or a bit more substance.
I certainly haven't read the story yet, and not the article (I confess), but the premise sounds a bit like "Flight Plan", wherein the only movie which Hollywood has seen fit to make about airline terrorism since 9/11 features who as the bad guy? Disgruntled American flight attendants. This is ludicrous.
How about a story about Google getting in bed with the Communist Chinese government in order to help them limit information to the people of China? Oh, wait, *that actually happened*. Remember what happened if you searched for "Tiananmen Square" from Google.cn? Hope so, because Google turned off our ability to check that, with a quickness. How about a story in which Google could monitor and report terrorist communications but chooses not to? Oh, wait... Well, there's more money to be made in trashing America to its ungrateful and spoiled citizens-by-default. And it's the only one which actually qualifies as fiction.
Flamebait Disclaimer--
So I guess that we will just claim (in fiction, of course, I have my rights) that the agency (however bungling and infuriating) charged with keeping you little pop-culture sasquatch-hugging "I Believe" teen-agers (of whatever age) safe in a real shooting war--is somehow the evil to be fought, and that Google would align itself with the U.S. government at any rate.
Karma to burn. At least I won't actually be beheaded for expressing my views in this country.
Download a P2P client and learn how to use it *today*. Help Apple! Share all of your files; learn how to become a seed. Lend the RIAA a hand--do their R&D for a new distribution model.
There is a term in Low German for the feeling I have right now--SchadenGoFuchyourselves.
Well - there's nothing wrong with them trying to sell people stuff. Just because we won't buy it doesn't make it wrong. It just makes it a failed attempt. I'm also starting to wonder why the heck the editors are allowing through these "news" pieces where even the summary is calling people clueless? I mean - "news for nerds" - let US decide what is clueless. News isn't supposed to be so damn slanted, I mean slashed.
Newsflash, Newshound. Slashdot LINKS to news. Nobody claims that the summaries are journalism. The summaries are, well, summaries written by, well, US. A reader wrote this summary, and decided that the decision was clueless. Other readers apparently agreed, and boosted it through the firehose. So we DID decide that the RIAA seems clueless.
And in business, a "failed attempt" is in fact "wrong". People get fired for that, when their best just isn't good enough. Even if they are trying very very very hard. That was wrong. Buh. Bye.
Unbelievable. The whole problem with album sales any more is that the RIAA no longer has the ability to force consumers to buy eleven tracks of shit along with the only one they wanted to hear in the first place. Singles will sell online because the consumer selects EXACTLY what to buy, AND the price is apparently low enough.
The online single sale smodel is mildly successful because it offers good performance in the following areas:
Price
Selection
Convenience
1) Double the price per track. There went Price.
2) Force consumers to buy four tracks at once, and they can't pick which ones. There went Selection.
3) Make consumers come to the store, if there's one around, if the traffic and weather don't keep you away, when it's open. There went Convenience.
4) ???
5) PROFIT!
This misbegotten marketing malfunction has gotten it more wrong than I thought possible. Nobody--nobody--wants to spend $6-$7 per track just because it comes with some other crap that you don't want, too.
I don't want a re-mix of Freebird, I don't want a ringtone, I don't want smilies or v1agr4 or a longer p3n1s or whatever other spam-inspired marketing crap these utter fools come up with. This stupidity is going to be on Snopes.com as evidence that the RIAA actually tried to pull off such a monumental boondoggle. Otherwise people won't believe it. This is epic. Songs will be written about this.
And when they are, NOBODY WILL BUY THEM ON A RINGLE.
Unbelievable. The whole problem with album sales any more is that the RIAA no longer has the ability to force consumers to buy eleven tracks of shit along with the only one they wanted to hear in the first place. Singles will sell online because the consumer selects EXACTLY what to buy, AND the price is apparently low enough.
The online single sale smodel is mildly successful because it offers good performance in the following areas:
Price
Selection
Convenience
1) Double the price per track. There went Price.
2) Force consumers to buy four tracks at once, and they can't pick which ones. There went Selection.
3) Make consumers come to the store, if there's one around, if the traffic and weather don't keep you away, when it's open. There went Convenience.
4) ???
5) PROFIT!
This misbegotten marketing malfunction has gotten it more wrong than I thought possible. Nobody--nobody--wants to spend $6-$7 per track just because it comes with some other crap that you don't want, too.
I don't want a re-mix of Freebird, I don't want a ringtone, I don't want smilies or v1agr4 or a longer p3n1s or whatever other spam-inspired marketing crap these utter fools come up with. This stupidity is going to be on Snopes.com as evidence that the RIAA actually tried to pull off such a monumental boondoggle. Otherwise people won't believe it. This is epic. Songs will be written about this.
And when they are, NOBODY WILL BUY THEM ON A RINGLE.
Slashdot Mirror
...overmining by the Europans. Yes, the sole hyperpower in far solar orbit is exploiting the resources of honest, hard-working, frozen Enceladans. Don't buy Morton Salt.
Long hair. Check.
Disdain for football. Check.
Eats rabbit food. Check.
Can't spell disdain. Check.
Friend, you are a hippy after all. Thank a long-haired, meat-eating, football-playing, peace-loving veteran for your freedom.
Of course, it's easier to do if your parents set an example, instead of letting the XBox do their dirty work for them.
You are like an infant, a child, a spoiled brat who hates the house his parents provide and wants to run away to somewhere, anywhere, the whole world must be better than this Hell you call a home. But you never leave. You stay. Why is that?
The reason you have no fear of terrorists is that you have never lived in an Islamist country. You have no idea what you are talking about. You never had a sister dragged off to a soccer stadium *by the government* to be executed while people cheered. Etc.
You're more afraid of the United States government than the terrorists? Then Go, in the name of God, GO! We'll see how long your capacity for ingratitude lasts when you realize how much you lost in leaving.
Now what's wrong with that solution? It obviously offloads the apparently unbearable strain of making judgement calls for unbelievably trivial matters, and it teaches something valuable to the kids. Thanks, Mom.
Let's see timeoutd do that.
But your example of logging (which HEY, I also mentioned!) is a detective control rather than a preventive one, and is understood as only a component of a system in which the parent remains engaged. The child DECIDES not to go to *that* site, because of the consequences (wieghed against the probability of being caught, and the motiviation to go to the site in the first place, of course). Logging systems are a perfect example of (one half of) the MONITOR and correct, MONITOR and correct process I mentioned in my first post. What matters then is whether or not the parent has the gumption to deliver the correction.
I don't think I've called anybody bad parents or guaranteed any failure or success modes. If you want to feel hurt, then go ahead. Re: your .sig, feeling victimized by simple facts also has a liberal bias.
You are right about what the problem is, but you are wrong about what the problem is not. EVERYBODY has trouble getting their authority respected. But if you are in a position of authority and you fail to get it respected, then you are failing at your job. Grow a pair (of whichever) and EARN YOUR RESPECT, FFS! (Sorry, that just slipped in, ffs).
A rule that a parent *says* is firm but "doesn't manage to enforce" is not a firm rule, and no amount of preventive control will support the real goal. Detective controls might--logging, say, but only if used to monitor the child, and correct (or reward) behavior. The real goal is in making the decision to play the game or not INTERNAL to the child. After time, no matter how much the child resents the situation, if he has been deciding not to play the game based on consequences, he develops the habit of doing the right thing--like it or not. But a tiler on the game completely side-steps this, and will probably by side-stepped itself, when the child learns how to defeat the timer. The parents will be none the wiser, and the child will have learned nothing except how to defeat a timer, and that Mom and Dad's rules are fluff. Obviously, it's not Microsoft's job to rear our children, so I have nothing negative to say about the timer itself. It's just technology. I simply lament what I think we all agree is going to be the likely use for this thing. Parents will undermine their own authority. Of course, you could always just smash the XBox. What you give for Christmas, you can take away if abused. Happy children are not the goal of child-rearing. Responsible adults are.
Parents should find ways to monitor their children's behavior, obviously without being there 24/7. My father once grounded me from TV for a week when I was eight years old. So I knew what he expected. But I was in agony. I watched some anyway, and when I saw the lights in the driveway, I quickly turned it off. See how smart I am? He came in, took off his coat and hat, asked me if I had watched any TV ("No, Dad."), and then he felt the back of the TV, which was nice and hot. After that, I clearly knew what the consequences were, and suffice it to say that the TV stayed off for three weeks. One week of original punishment, two additional weeks for breaking the terms of my original punishment, and a little something special for lying about it all. Sitting down was also somewhat in short supply for a few hours, but I had just developed another smidgen of responsibility. Thanks, Dad.
Do you know the difference between Discipline and Punishment? Discipline is completely internal, and keeps you from knowingly doing wrong. When Discipline fails, Punishment can be applied by somebody else (if you are fortunate), and this repairs Discipline. Nobody can be there 24/7, and even if you could, imagine what would happen to that basket-case child upon leaving home. Suddenly the Permanent Monitor isn't there anymore. Kid's head would explode. So I don't think that you actually believe I'm talking about 24/7 monitoring.
First example, and already you're oversimplifying. I didn't say "just tell them not to do it". I said "monitor and correct, monitor and correct". It is an iterative process, and the "correction" part comes in after a failure of some sort. There will be failures--try not to let them be life-threatening ones. Build the rule-following and decision-making skills ("No way, man, my Dad would KILL me if I did that!") with relatively trivial experiences with time limits for video games. Hopefully, (and in the end that's as much as you can say) those skills will be in place when the real threats come. No parent is there 24/7, and that's the whole point of child-rearing: someday, the parents won't be there at all, and neither will Microsoft. There will only be prison and the grave waiting as corrective measures. They had better be prepared *before* that day to make decisions.
Now guns are hardly the same as XBox, right? So I don't think your comparison is apt.
See above.
Children. I am talking about children.
Adulthood is not attained by counting years. Adulthood is produced by child-rearing. Obviously, the law is silent on whether a particular 20-year old is a more responsible person than a given 22-year old, but the law says 21 to drink. That's an objective standard, and not what we're talking about. What I want to know about an employee will not come from looking at a birth date. And if I make him a SysAd (in my imaginary company, which is doing wuite well, thank you), it will be because I am satisfied (or have decided to accept a risk) with the employee's level of responsibility.
Maybe, Yes, and Yes.As I said, nothing is wrong with it. It's technology. What's wrong is where we all know this is going--latch-key kids whose parents do not have the skills to get them off the damned XBox in the first place. Besides which, the kids are going to install Linux on it and roll the clock back anyway. And the parents will be satisfied in their ignorance, to the detriment of the child. If, on the other hand, parents focused on knowing what their children are doing and on the children knowing what their parents expect, and the consequences, it wouldn't matter what software or hardware the next XBox comes out with. Or PS3. Or bleach bottle or crack pipe. Thankfully, the software for crack pipes is limited.
Parents should monitor and correct, monitor and correct their children's behavior. Nobody said it was easy. Parents should be aware of what their children are doing online and with games or what-have-you, just the same as when children are expected to let their parents know who they're with, what they're doing, where they are, when they'll be back, why they're going, and how they'll get there.
The process ofa parent busting a kid in a lie and then doing something about it is good for the kid, good for the parent, and good for the relationship. More to the point, it's damned good for the *adult* that the kid will someday become. Isn't that the whole point?
Time limited technology is not in and of itself bad. It's neutral--it's technology. But try to deny that the only people for whom this poses an attractive solution are the exact people who need more direct family involvement, not less. This is what conservatives are talking about when we say that all these little influences, each one seemingly innocuous, are corroding the family.
Since we admit that we don't have reliable cost data, we must also admit that we are not talking about profit.
Ah. In that case, I agree. The woman is toast. I don't know any salaried folks who work only 40 hours.
Sa-Yo-O-Na-Ra.
The woman produces 100% (as the standard) per dollar. The man produces only 110% of her production, but costs 137.5% of her cost. He is producing at 72.7% of the woman's production per dollar.
The man's toast--give the woman a raise. And if the man isn't fired (for slowing down on his overtime, assuming that his 40-hr rate matched hers), then the business would break even by limiting him and 2-3 just like him to 40 hours and hiring one additional man, ignoring per-employee overhead. Still, the per-employee overhead can be mitigated by limiting a larger number of these buffoons (to spread the cost of the new employee over a greater base). It could be mitigated even further by hiring an additional woman like the one who only works 40 hours, instead of an additional man like the 50-hour slacker.
I'm going to laugh myself unconscious when the United States Military solves the problem of clean, renewable energy for the world. Take that, hippies! Muahahahahaaaaa!
No doubt they used the Eye in the Sky.
There's no way to tell when the next reversal will come along. We're certainly not 'due' for one.
((if a reversal happens when I post this, that would simply be irony. It wouldn't mean I'm wrong!)) Ferritic, anyway.
... to allow Debian warships back in their ports.
Excuse me? "back"? Yes, I take the intent, but this is a pretty wrought example of trying to imply one thing while saying another. China cannot beat the U.S. "back" to somewhere it has yet to go. But the other way to phrase it, "Will China beat the U.S. to the moon?", sounds, well, out of date. Not so alarming.
While I don't think that anybody will be confused, I would simply appreciate either a bit less hype or a bit more substance.
Thank you.
How about a story about Google getting in bed with the Communist Chinese government in order to help them limit information to the people of China? Oh, wait, *that actually happened*. Remember what happened if you searched for "Tiananmen Square" from Google.cn? Hope so, because Google turned off our ability to check that, with a quickness. How about a story in which Google could monitor and report terrorist communications but chooses not to? Oh, wait... Well, there's more money to be made in trashing America to its ungrateful and spoiled citizens-by-default. And it's the only one which actually qualifies as fiction.
Flamebait Disclaimer--
So I guess that we will just claim (in fiction, of course, I have my rights) that the agency (however bungling and infuriating) charged with keeping you little pop-culture sasquatch-hugging "I Believe" teen-agers (of whatever age) safe in a real shooting war--is somehow the evil to be fought, and that Google would align itself with the U.S. government at any rate.
Karma to burn. At least I won't actually be beheaded for expressing my views in this country.
There is a term in Low German for the feeling I have right now--SchadenGoFuchyourselves.
Newsflash, Newshound. Slashdot LINKS to news. Nobody claims that the summaries are journalism. The summaries are, well, summaries written by, well, US. A reader wrote this summary, and decided that the decision was clueless. Other readers apparently agreed, and boosted it through the firehose. So we DID decide that the RIAA seems clueless.
And in business, a "failed attempt" is in fact "wrong". People get fired for that, when their best just isn't good enough. Even if they are trying very very very hard. That was wrong. Buh. Bye.
The online single sale smodel is mildly successful because it offers good performance in the following areas:
Price
Selection
Convenience
1) Double the price per track. There went Price.
2) Force consumers to buy four tracks at once, and they can't pick which ones. There went Selection.
3) Make consumers come to the store, if there's one around, if the traffic and weather don't keep you away, when it's open. There went Convenience.
4) ???
5) PROFIT!
This misbegotten marketing malfunction has gotten it more wrong than I thought possible. Nobody--nobody--wants to spend $6-$7 per track just because it comes with some other crap that you don't want, too.
I don't want a re-mix of Freebird, I don't want a ringtone, I don't want smilies or v1agr4 or a longer p3n1s or whatever other spam-inspired marketing crap these utter fools come up with. This stupidity is going to be on Snopes.com as evidence that the RIAA actually tried to pull off such a monumental boondoggle. Otherwise people won't believe it. This is epic. Songs will be written about this.
And when they are, NOBODY WILL BUY THEM ON A RINGLE.
Unbelievable. The whole problem with album sales any more is that the RIAA no longer has the ability to force consumers to buy eleven tracks of shit along with the only one they wanted to hear in the first place. Singles will sell online because the consumer selects EXACTLY what to buy, AND the price is apparently low enough. The online single sale smodel is mildly successful because it offers good performance in the following areas: Price Selection Convenience 1) Double the price per track. There went Price. 2) Force consumers to buy four tracks at once, and they can't pick which ones. There went Selection. 3) Make consumers come to the store, if there's one around, if the traffic and weather don't keep you away, when it's open. There went Convenience. 4) ??? 5) PROFIT! This misbegotten marketing malfunction has gotten it more wrong than I thought possible. Nobody--nobody--wants to spend $6-$7 per track just because it comes with some other crap that you don't want, too. I don't want a re-mix of Freebird, I don't want a ringtone, I don't want smilies or v1agr4 or a longer p3n1s or whatever other spam-inspired marketing crap these utter fools come up with. This stupidity is going to be on Snopes.com as evidence that the RIAA actually tried to pull off such a monumental boondoggle. Otherwise people won't believe it. This is epic. Songs will be written about this. And when they are, NOBODY WILL BUY THEM ON A RINGLE.