I love to fly. I love goin in the airport. I always feel safe in the airport thanks the high calibre individuals we have working at x-ray security. How bout this crack squad of savvy motivated personnel? Feel pretty good with them at the helm? The way you want to set up your X-ray security is you want the short heavyset woman at the front with the skin-tight uniform. That's your first line of defence. You want those pants sprayed on, you want them so tight the flap in front of the zipper has pulled itself open and you can see the metal tangs hanging on for dear life.
Then you got that other genius down at the other end looking at the TV screen. This Einstein has chosen to stand in front of X-rays fourteen hours a day as his profession. (makes whirring sound)
He's lookin in the TV set, I always look in the TV set, I cannot make out one object, I dunno what this guy is doing. It's my own bags I cant understand one thing. What was that? He's going "What is that a hairdryer with a scope on it? That looks ok. Keep it movin." "Some sort of bowling ball candle? That's fine, just, we don't wanna hold up the line."
Incase anyone hasn't seen the Ballmer rant/seizure/motivational speech refered to in #9, someone has made a cool dance video sent to jungle type music out of it here Quicktime Required.
not let any, yet ANY student graduate without passing basic calculus, a basic physics, chemistry and computing class.
It may shock you to learn this but most people will never need to use calculus. Forcing people to waste time mastering something that bears no relevance to their life objectives will only result in more dropouts or simply an inefficient use of that person's time. If someone is seeking virtually any career outside of the sciences learning calculus will yield no practical benefit for them.
While I agree that there can be an overemphasis on athletic achievement in some situations (for example some college basketball coaches make more than the dean) I think that removing the entire athletic program would be bad for public health, (increased obesity and heart disease from a sedentary lifestyle ) and cause an increase in crime (idle hands).
Lets face facts, everyone is different, some people will choose to avail themselves of higher mathematical education, some will not. Similarly some people will choose to avail themselves of available athletic activities. Both have benefits to the individual. In fact I think you could make a stronger case for making gym mandatory until graduation rather than forcing everyone to take calculus. At least there is a clear benefit to every person to maintaining their physical health.
Of course I don't recommended that we do that, the whole point of high school is that this is where we begin to choose our own path in life. We need carpenters and writers and janitors and security guards and anthropologists just as we need nuclear physicists and microbiologists. If someone can find more satisfaction in being an interior decorator than a particle physicist then I say fuckin-a go for it. But to force that would be interior decorator to fret and waste time mastering something totally unrelated and unusable by that person is simply wrong and wasteful.
Browsing at +3 so generally avoids the chum, but it seems where the DMCA (aka Instrument of Unmitigated Evil) is concerned all reason seems to be thrown out the window.
Fallacy Sampler: Not true at all. "Doing nothing to prevent piracy" is not the same thing as "facilitating piracy".
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the meaning of the word facilitate, it means to make less difficult and while it is true that if
Bnetd was a project totally divorced from the realm of software piracy (i.e. it was a knitting club) then it would indeed be doing nothing. Rather Bnetd creates an environment where people without CD-Keys (pirates) can play networked games. THIS FACILITATES PIRACY. They do not need to offer warezed copies of Blizzard games to make piracy easier. Repeat this 100 times, then take a pill.
I'm going to stick to the moral high ground, and never play another Blizzard game again unless it's a pirated version.
I laude your ethical integrity! In an effort to follow your morally superior stance (and logic) I plan to only obtain my vehicles through carjacking (because I disagree with Detroit's production of gas guzzlers), my clothing through shoplifting (because of the sweatshops), my home electronics through home invasions (toxic chemicals used in their production) and I'm also planning to knock over the neighbourhood liquor store cause it's promoting alcoholism. Who knew having such high morals could be so much fun?
Blizzard doesn't make any money off its free Battle.net service, but it does enforce that people actually buy the game. I think the Anti-DMCA storm troopers are missing this point. Blizzard just wants to make money off the game it invested a lot of money in creating. If people can't play multiplayer without purchasing the real game this is going to be a big incentive for people not to use the pir8 version, and allows Blizzard to claim it's just compensation.
I don't think the DMCA is a particularly good law, neither I would argue is the second amendment, but when someone uses their CCW licensed Glock to blow a hole through someone trying to commit a rape I have to admit that while I disagree with the law as a whole its application does have the possibility for individual positive outcomes. Ditto DMCA. Bnetd may have been created with the best of intentions but the fact is pirates would use it or its source to rip off Blizzard. As for me I'm gonna buy War III when it comes out and ya'll righteous free software soldiers marching as to war can stick with pong and your misplaced morals.
Think how many people would be running Linux on their desktop if Diablo had come out for Linux six months before Windows!
...only the most freakishly obsessed Diablo fanatics would switch their whole operating system to avoid waiting a few months to play the game. Hardy anyone would throw out the capability of running, well almost all their other games, and all their familiar software (Word, Quicken, etc), and dump working in an environment that they have invested a great deal of time learing, instead of waiting a few months for one freakin game to be ported to Windows. Gimme a break.
It is also an economic fallacy to suggest that reducing legal costs for the seller is necessarily advantageous to the buyer.
My argument isn't that SFCs reduce legal costs only for the seller, they also reduce them directly for the consumer in that the consumer does not have to pay a lawyer, or spend time to negotiate the terms of each transaction.
If the reduced legal costs and resulting lower product costs are more than offset by higher risk to the buyers, it's a bad deal.
I agree 100 percent, but I think this rarely happens because if a producer offers a consumer some horrendous contractual terms they consumer is free not to buy. I think this whole Kylix/JBuilder brouhaha reflects the fact that sellers in fact cannot "bank on buyers not understanding this point."
Finally as to the non-substitutability of Visual C++ or other tools; Imagine Microsoft inserted new clauses in its EULA that stated that everything made with Visual C++ became property of Microsoft, and furthermore any profit or savings made by using anything made with Visual C++ had to be turned over immediately to the Microsoft Corporation. Would developers throw up their hands and say "Well that's it, I guess Microsoft just owns us because there's no other tool in the world that enables us to accomplish the same goals that Visual C++ does" or would they simply transition to another product that does place such onerous licensing restrictions on them? I think they would do the latter, and although this might be a very costly process, the consumer, being rational, will choose the whichever product that provides the lowest cost and highest benefit.
I'm not defending this particular licence but it's important to recognize that Standard Form Contracts (aka EULAs in the software industry) in general help reduce costs for both the producer and the consumer. If the terms of a transaction had to be negotiated on an individual basis every time we rented a car or bought a videogame many of these products would simply be priced out of the market. But the inclusion of standard "boilerplate" disclaimers reduces transaction costs (i.e. lawyers and time) for both parties.
Some people would claim that the producer has more power than the consumer in this situation, but if consumers find that conditions a particular producer's SFC too onerous then they are free to switch to a competitor's product which has more favourable terms (i.e. dump Kylix/JBuilder for something else which is exactly what I'm sure many people were planning to do).
Whether people actually pay any attention to SFC's is another matter entirely. Steven E. Rhoades writes in The Economist's View of the World that in the mid 1980's one bank inserted a sentence in the midst of its disclosure statement offering ten dollars to anyone who sent in a postcard with the words "Regulation E" on it. Out of 115,000 recipients of the statement not one responded.
AUC has an accelerated second degree in either CS or IT which only takes 12 months to complete, you must however already have a Bachelor's degree in some other discipline.
Contact Sony at abiosupport@info.sel.sony.com and info-aibo@sony.co.jp or if you are in the US or Canada call them at 1-888-917-7669, or in the UK call 0870 511 1999. You may also want to fill out the form here
The only way companies are going to stop doing stupid things like this is if they begin to understand that many people become less inclined to buy their products when they do so.
Newbie:
Does anyone have any opinions about Bose speakers?
Five Responses:
There are better speakers for the money including brands X, Y, and Z.
Bose Defender:
But Bose speakers offer superior design. They're the most popular speaker in the world, and for good reason.
Ten Responses:
Popularity does not equal quality.
(Many long detailed rebuttals to the Bose defender. Tone tends to be slightly hostile since they've done this several times before. Some are very hostile --- "Bose sucks!!!")
Bose Defender: No. You're all wrong.
Fifteen Responses:
What?! (Many more long posts explaining again why they are right)
Bose Defender:
(not in response to anything in particular)
But Bose is a large corporation with excellent customer service. Other smaller companies may fail, leaving you without service.
Twenty Responses:
Good service for a poor quality product? So what? (Many more detailed responses about the problems they perceive with Bose, plus more "Bose sucks!!!" posts)
Bose Defender:
Bose is a very popular speaker. More people buy Bose speakers than any other speaker, and Bose has very high customer satisfaction rates.
Twenty-five Responses:
Agggh!! We just explained that quality does not equal popularity. Can't you read? Are you an IDIOT?
Bose Defender:
No. I'm not the idiot, you're all idiots. This newsgroup is populated by a small clique of crazy "audiophile" types who spend hundreds of dollars for cable that doesn't even make a difference.
Newbie: (forgot about the newbie didn't you!) (in a weak voice) I want my mommy.
It also showed that "you may do X provided you do Y" does not imply "you may not do X if you do not do Y".
To make it even simpler, suppose X is "have a cookie" and Y is "wash the dishes." Therefore "you may (X) have a cookie provided you do (Y) do the dishes" obviously also implies that "you may not (X) have a cookie if you do not (Y) do the dishes."
Jane's Information Group has an article examining which groups would have the resources and inclination to carry out the attacks today here
Race and religion is not the enemy, fundamentalism is the enemy. Only when one believes in something so strongly that there is no longer room for reason are acts like these possible. The Inquisition, the Holocaust, and the recent actions of the taliban come to mind.
On another note, it seems to me that if the cockpits of the airplanes that had been hijacked had been sealed off, there would be many many fewer dead. The US has Tomahawks, the terrorists have 747s. Some people from the airlines, or airport security should go to jail, if multiple planes can be hijacked at the same time something is very wrong . Things will have to change, "just" blowing up a airliner is a far better thing than ramming the plane into a building full of 25,000 people.
Also, I now have a much less harsh attitude towards "privacy invading" measures such as face recognition software. In fact I want my privacy invaded a whole lot more especially when I'm getting on a plane.
Maybe the one good thing about this is that if Bin Laden is to blame, the US will certainly cease its support of the taliban, and will almost certainly take punitive measures. Of course whether such measures will hurt the taliban, or just the innocent people of Afghanistan remains to be seen. If of course it was bin laden.
Finally, yes, give blood, as so many others have today.
Today it has been announced that five major drug companies have decided to cease their research into new AIDS combating drugs. The companies have stated that they can no longer recoup the billions of dollars of research and testing that goes into developing the drugs, as many countries have begun manufacturing AIDS drugs without paying royalties to drug companies. Many of these royalty free drugs have found their way into foreign markets, such as the US and Europe, and have depressed global sales for the drug companies that have developed them. Spokespersons from Merck, Roche, and GlaxoSmithKline have stated that they will combine their previous AIDS research teams into a new super-research taskforce with the aim of developing a drug that will help prevent heartburn.
Sure Meta Moderation helps prevent abuses in moderation, but now we need a mechanism to prevent abuses in Meta Moderation: Meta Meta Moderation!
Of course then that only opens up new potential abuses in Meta Meta Moderation, which will require Meta Meta Meta Moderation, and so on. What we need is some kind of neutral unbiased arbiter, unfortunately the supreme court no longer meets the criteria for such, so I vote for the development of some kind of super-intelligent ape.
-----
Lisa: Dad, don't you see you're abusing your power like all vigilantes? I mean, if you're the police, who will police the police?
The CEO's from all of the Fortune 500 companies recently learned that the hundreds of billions of dollars they have spent on advertising have actually had no effect on sales whatsoever. "All of our sales data showed a direct correlation between an effective advertising campaign and the amount of sales and market share we gained, but I guess that was just luck, thank goodness I read the comments of slashdot posters" remarked Ford CEO Jacques Nasser at a recent press conference before firing his vast market research staff.
CEO Michael S. Dell was overheard saying "You know it was funny, we had these codes in our print ads that people would type in online so we could see exactly how many sales we were generating [from our print ads], and it was pretty substantial, but I guess that was all some kind of elaborate hoax, perpetrated by the shysters in the advertising industry, thank you slashdot posters for showing me the light!"
Finally Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda founder of Slashdot.org, a website generates $50 per 1000 pageviews in banner advertising revenue, much of that advertising directs many of its viewers to thinkgeek.com (co-owned by their parent company OSDN) where they buy lots of geek trinkets, has decided to stop making many thousands of dollars in revenue because as he says "banner ads don't work, and besides if people want to put up editorial web pages they should do it for fun, and not worry about feeding themselves or making money."
This "experiment" is an excellent example of what happens when someone with no background in empirical research methods conducts an "experiment". Let me outline some of the errors that totally undermine the validity of this study
Too few factors
The first and most egregious error is that there are only two independent variables (the two different ads) that operationalize the entire field of micro-advertising. Assuming that one can generalize about the entire field of micro-advertising, or even just Google Adwords from one or two ads is totally absurd. If I gave an experimental drug to two people for 10 days and then concluded that the drug "didn't seem to work that well" I would be laughed out of academia. Similarly the statement "The Google AdWords setup doesn't seem to work that well" is just totally unfounded. The only thing you can conclude from having that one independent variable is that that one ad didn't work very well.
No Control Group
This study presents nothing to compare its findings against. Maybe AdWords doesn't work well, but compared to what? Print Adverting? Classified ads in the Boston Herald? Traditional banner ads on Yahoo? Without data to compare this study's findings against these numbers are meaningless.
No statistical analysis
First the author does not define at what level micro advertising would be labelled "successful." Would it be successful if it had a %25 click through rate? If it doubled banner ads? If it approximated print ads? How do you compensate for sampling error? What is the alpha level for determining significance? Where are the F scores? Pearson Correlations? Analysis of variance? What is the probability of committing a type I error? I'm sorry friend but "doesn't seem to work that well" is not a meaningful conclusion and there is zero meaningful data to support this conclusion. Your study is not generalizable to ANYTHING, and if it was subjected to any type of peer review it would be rated right up there with the "Is your boyfriend cheating on you" poll in Cosmo.
I could go on and on, too small sample size, to few levels of the dependant variable, but you get the point. My advice to this author: Buy a textbook on research methods and read it, then you might be able to contribute something more than just pseudoscience.
This post comes 3 days after this article was originally posted so I know that there's almost 0 chance of being moderated up but I think this news is important for posterity's sake. This announcement from Koolance was reported at HardOcp.com
"It has come to our attention that Koolance PC cases shipped between April 20th and May 8th, 2001 may have potential problems with liquid leakage. This is not due to the quality of our crimping methods or materials, but an increase in pressure within the tubing itself."
The article goes on to say "In reference to the Koolance product recall of sorts: Well it started as a dream...My 1.3 T-bird running 1.4 nice and cool at 98 F. Come home at lunch....a nice swimming pool has developed in my case. Everything fried. Well, so far Koolance is standing next to their product and doing the responsible thing,replace everything...but experience tells me not to hold my breath..we'll see if Koolance is the type of company does stand behind their product and does the responsible thing if a defect occurs."
Slashdot Mirror
Um.. ok some new version of a ascii dungeon game just got released, this deserves attention why?
I love to fly. I love goin in the airport. I always feel safe in the airport thanks the high calibre individuals we have working at x-ray security.
How bout this crack squad of savvy motivated personnel? Feel pretty good with them at the helm?
The way you want to set up your X-ray security is you want the short heavyset woman at the front with the skin-tight uniform. That's your first line of defence. You want those pants sprayed on, you want them so tight the flap in front of the zipper has pulled itself open and you can see the metal tangs hanging on for dear life.
Then you got that other genius down at the other end looking at the TV screen. This Einstein has chosen to stand in front of X-rays fourteen hours a day as his profession. (makes whirring sound) He's lookin in the TV set, I always look in the TV set, I cannot make out one object, I dunno what this guy is doing. It's my own bags I cant understand one thing. What was that? He's going "What is that a hairdryer with a scope on it? That looks ok. Keep it movin." "Some sort of bowling ball candle? That's fine, just, we don't wanna hold up the line."
It may shock you to learn this but most people will never need to use calculus. Forcing people to waste time mastering something that bears no relevance to their life objectives will only result in more dropouts or simply an inefficient use of that person's time. If someone is seeking virtually any career outside of the sciences learning calculus will yield no practical benefit for them.
While I agree that there can be an overemphasis on athletic achievement in some situations (for example some college basketball coaches make more than the dean) I think that removing the entire athletic program would be bad for public health, (increased obesity and heart disease from a sedentary lifestyle ) and cause an increase in crime (idle hands).
Lets face facts, everyone is different, some people will choose to avail themselves of higher mathematical education, some will not. Similarly some people will choose to avail themselves of available athletic activities. Both have benefits to the individual. In fact I think you could make a stronger case for making gym mandatory until graduation rather than forcing everyone to take calculus. At least there is a clear benefit to every person to maintaining their physical health.
Of course I don't recommended that we do that, the whole point of high school is that this is where we begin to choose our own path in life. We need carpenters and writers and janitors and security guards and anthropologists just as we need nuclear physicists and microbiologists. If someone can find more satisfaction in being an interior decorator than a particle physicist then I say fuckin-a go for it. But to force that would be interior decorator to fret and waste time mastering something totally unrelated and unusable by that person is simply wrong and wasteful.
Fallacy Sampler:
Not true at all. "Doing nothing to prevent piracy" is not the same thing as "facilitating piracy".
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the meaning of the word facilitate, it means to make less difficult and while it is true that if Bnetd was a project totally divorced from the realm of software piracy (i.e. it was a knitting club) then it would indeed be doing nothing. Rather Bnetd creates an environment where people without CD-Keys (pirates) can play networked games. THIS FACILITATES PIRACY. They do not need to offer warezed copies of Blizzard games to make piracy easier. Repeat this 100 times, then take a pill.
I'm going to stick to the moral high ground, and never play another Blizzard game again unless it's a pirated version.
I laude your ethical integrity! In an effort to follow your morally superior stance (and logic) I plan to only obtain my vehicles through carjacking (because I disagree with Detroit's production of gas guzzlers), my clothing through shoplifting (because of the sweatshops), my home electronics through home invasions (toxic chemicals used in their production) and I'm also planning to knock over the neighbourhood liquor store cause it's promoting alcoholism. Who knew having such high morals could be so much fun?
Blizzard doesn't make any money off its free Battle.net service, but it does enforce that people actually buy the game.
I think the Anti-DMCA storm troopers are missing this point. Blizzard just wants to make money off the game it invested a lot of money in creating. If people can't play multiplayer without purchasing the real game this is going to be a big incentive for people not to use the pir8 version, and allows Blizzard to claim it's just compensation.
I don't think the DMCA is a particularly good law, neither I would argue is the second amendment, but when someone uses their CCW licensed Glock to blow a hole through someone trying to commit a rape I have to admit that while I disagree with the law as a whole its application does have the possibility for individual positive outcomes. Ditto DMCA. Bnetd may have been created with the best of intentions but the fact is pirates would use it or its source to rip off Blizzard. As for me I'm gonna buy War III when it comes out and ya'll righteous free software soldiers marching as to war can stick with pong and your misplaced morals.
My argument isn't that SFCs reduce legal costs only for the seller, they also reduce them directly for the consumer in that the consumer does not have to pay a lawyer, or spend time to negotiate the terms of each transaction.
If the reduced legal costs and resulting lower product costs are more than offset by higher risk to the buyers, it's a bad deal.
I agree 100 percent, but I think this rarely happens because if a producer offers a consumer some horrendous contractual terms they consumer is free not to buy. I think this whole Kylix/JBuilder brouhaha reflects the fact that sellers in fact cannot "bank on buyers not understanding this point."
Finally as to the non-substitutability of Visual C++ or other tools; Imagine Microsoft inserted new clauses in its EULA that stated that everything made with Visual C++ became property of Microsoft, and furthermore any profit or savings made by using anything made with Visual C++ had to be turned over immediately to the Microsoft Corporation. Would developers throw up their hands and say "Well that's it, I guess Microsoft just owns us because there's no other tool in the world that enables us to accomplish the same goals that Visual C++ does" or would they simply transition to another product that does place such onerous licensing restrictions on them? I think they would do the latter, and although this might be a very costly process, the consumer, being rational, will choose the whichever product that provides the lowest cost and highest benefit.
Some people would claim that the producer has more power than the consumer in this situation, but if consumers find that conditions a particular producer's SFC too onerous then they are free to switch to a competitor's product which has more favourable terms (i.e. dump Kylix/JBuilder for something else which is exactly what I'm sure many people were planning to do).
Whether people actually pay any attention to SFC's is another matter entirely. Steven E. Rhoades writes in The Economist's View of the World that in the mid 1980's one bank inserted a sentence in the midst of its disclosure statement offering ten dollars to anyone who sent in a postcard with the words "Regulation E" on it. Out of 115,000 recipients of the statement not one responded.
Apparently unscrupulous individuals have already put this technology to use.
AUC has an accelerated second degree in either CS or IT which only takes 12 months to complete, you must however already have a Bachelor's degree in some other discipline.
Copyright 2001 Salon.com
The only way companies are going to stop doing stupid things like this is if they begin to understand that many people become less inclined to buy their products when they do so.
This is why my grandmother is never going to run linux.
Newbie: Does anyone have any opinions about Bose speakers?
Five Responses: There are better speakers for the money including brands X, Y, and Z.
Bose Defender: But Bose speakers offer superior design. They're the most popular speaker in the world, and for good reason.
Ten Responses: Popularity does not equal quality. (Many long detailed rebuttals to the Bose defender. Tone tends to be slightly hostile since they've done this several times before. Some are very hostile --- "Bose sucks!!!")
Bose Defender: No. You're all wrong.
Fifteen Responses: What?! (Many more long posts explaining again why they are right)
Bose Defender: (not in response to anything in particular) But Bose is a large corporation with excellent customer service. Other smaller companies may fail, leaving you without service.
Twenty Responses: Good service for a poor quality product? So what? (Many more detailed responses about the problems they perceive with Bose, plus more "Bose sucks!!!" posts)
Bose Defender: Bose is a very popular speaker. More people buy Bose speakers than any other speaker, and Bose has very high customer satisfaction rates.
Twenty-five Responses: Agggh!! We just explained that quality does not equal popularity. Can't you read? Are you an IDIOT?
Bose Defender: No. I'm not the idiot, you're all idiots. This newsgroup is populated by a small clique of crazy "audiophile" types who spend hundreds of dollars for cable that doesn't even make a difference.
Newbie: (forgot about the newbie didn't you!) (in a weak voice) I want my mommy.
To make it even simpler, suppose X is "have a cookie" and Y is "wash the dishes." Therefore "you may (X) have a cookie provided you do (Y) do the dishes" obviously also implies that "you may not (X) have a cookie if you do not (Y) do the dishes."
Race and religion is not the enemy, fundamentalism is the enemy. Only when one believes in something so strongly that there is no longer room for reason are acts like these possible. The Inquisition, the Holocaust, and the recent actions of the taliban come to mind.
On another note, it seems to me that if the cockpits of the airplanes that had been hijacked had been sealed off, there would be many many fewer dead. The US has Tomahawks, the terrorists have 747s. Some people from the airlines, or airport security should go to jail, if multiple planes can be hijacked at the same time something is very wrong . Things will have to change, "just" blowing up a airliner is a far better thing than ramming the plane into a building full of 25,000 people.
Also, I now have a much less harsh attitude towards "privacy invading" measures such as face recognition software. In fact I want my privacy invaded a whole lot more especially when I'm getting on a plane.
Maybe the one good thing about this is that if Bin Laden is to blame, the US will certainly cease its support of the taliban, and will almost certainly take punitive measures. Of course whether such measures will hurt the taliban, or just the innocent people of Afghanistan remains to be seen. If of course it was bin laden.
Finally, yes, give blood, as so many others have today.
Salon
Cnet
The Economist
Washington Post
National Post (Includes trial timeline)
NY Times
Globe and Mail
and heh.. MSNBC
Today it has been announced that five major drug companies have decided to cease their research into new AIDS combating drugs. The companies have stated that they can no longer recoup the billions of dollars of research and testing that goes into developing the drugs, as many countries have begun manufacturing AIDS drugs without paying royalties to drug companies. Many of these royalty free drugs have found their way into foreign markets, such as the US and Europe, and have depressed global sales for the drug companies that have developed them. Spokespersons from Merck, Roche, and GlaxoSmithKline have stated that they will combine their previous AIDS research teams into a new super-research taskforce with the aim of developing a drug that will help prevent heartburn.
Of course then that only opens up new potential abuses in Meta Meta Moderation, which will require Meta Meta Meta Moderation, and so on. What we need is some kind of neutral unbiased arbiter, unfortunately the supreme court no longer meets the criteria for such, so I vote for the development of some kind of super-intelligent ape.
-----
Lisa: Dad, don't you see you're abusing your power like all vigilantes? I mean, if you're the police, who will police the police?
Homer: I dunno. Coast Guard?
Geeze I don't know about most people but I'd hate to see how long Windows takes to load on a 1.4 Mhz processor.
Columbus may have been a guinea pig, but a guy trying to replicate his voyage 20 years later in a homemade kayak is just an idiot.
CEO Michael S. Dell was overheard saying "You know it was funny, we had these codes in our print ads that people would type in online so we could see exactly how many sales we were generating [from our print ads], and it was pretty substantial, but I guess that was all some kind of elaborate hoax, perpetrated by the shysters in the advertising industry, thank you slashdot posters for showing me the light!"
Finally Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda founder of Slashdot.org, a website generates $50 per 1000 pageviews in banner advertising revenue, much of that advertising directs many of its viewers to thinkgeek.com (co-owned by their parent company OSDN) where they buy lots of geek trinkets, has decided to stop making many thousands of dollars in revenue because as he says "banner ads don't work, and besides if people want to put up editorial web pages they should do it for fun, and not worry about feeding themselves or making money."
Too few factors
The first and most egregious error is that there are only two independent variables (the two different ads) that operationalize the entire field of micro-advertising. Assuming that one can generalize about the entire field of micro-advertising, or even just Google Adwords from one or two ads is totally absurd. If I gave an experimental drug to two people for 10 days and then concluded that the drug "didn't seem to work that well" I would be laughed out of academia. Similarly the statement "The Google AdWords setup doesn't seem to work that well" is just totally unfounded. The only thing you can conclude from having that one independent variable is that that one ad didn't work very well.
No Control Group
This study presents nothing to compare its findings against. Maybe AdWords doesn't work well, but compared to what? Print Adverting? Classified ads in the Boston Herald? Traditional banner ads on Yahoo? Without data to compare this study's findings against these numbers are meaningless.
No statistical analysis
First the author does not define at what level micro advertising would be labelled "successful." Would it be successful if it had a %25 click through rate? If it doubled banner ads? If it approximated print ads? How do you compensate for sampling error? What is the alpha level for determining significance? Where are the F scores? Pearson Correlations? Analysis of variance? What is the probability of committing a type I error? I'm sorry friend but "doesn't seem to work that well" is not a meaningful conclusion and there is zero meaningful data to support this conclusion. Your study is not generalizable to ANYTHING, and if it was subjected to any type of peer review it would be rated right up there with the "Is your boyfriend cheating on you" poll in Cosmo.
I could go on and on, too small sample size, to few levels of the dependant variable, but you get the point. My advice to this author: Buy a textbook on research methods and read it, then you might be able to contribute something more than just pseudoscience.
"It has come to our attention that Koolance PC cases shipped between April 20th and May 8th, 2001 may have potential problems with liquid leakage. This is not due to the quality of our crimping methods or materials, but an increase in pressure within the tubing itself."
The article goes on to say "In reference to the Koolance product recall of sorts: Well it started as a dream...My 1.3 T-bird running 1.4 nice and cool at 98 F. Come home at lunch....a nice swimming pool has developed in my case. Everything fried. Well, so far Koolance is standing next to their product and doing the responsible thing,replace everything...but experience tells me not to hold my breath..we'll see if Koolance is the type of company does stand behind their product and does the responsible thing if a defect occurs."