Sunk costs. There's no point spending more money fighting if you've already lost.
For many other areas, Microsoft can effectively buy market share by throwing money at it. But this is an explicit standards war: you either win or lose, you can't hang on to ten percent and hope to claw your way back. The ISO standardisation process can be corrupted, as we've seen, but I think even Microsoft can't halt or reverse the standardisation process.
This is probably why this is going on (WARNING: speculation!):
The SG govt. is extremely business-friendly, to the point of screwing over its own citizens if there's a risk of scaring off investors. As such, they've become singularly enthusiastic about "Intellectual Property" in general - witness them pulling out four riot trucks to suppress a protest by seven people against an anime distributor.
Some smartass has realised this, and decided to play off the govt's policy against itself - the government would hesitate to suppress patent trolls, for fear of scaring off foreign investors. In the meanwhile it rips off thousands of dollars from scared Singaporean small businesses.
Do you drink coffee? Good god, caffeine! Or eat chilli? Or potatoes? Not exactly things your evolutionary predecessors would have snacked on.
You eat strange new chemicals every day, this one just has the word "drug" slapped on it.
Provigil has been on the market for ten years. Ritalin even longer. You can get provigil easily already.
Notably, so far there has been no indication that people get tolerant to provigil. It appears to be be less toxic than caffeine. I think we're looking at the next college drug...
I'm inclined to agree - companies don't want to advertise to people who don't want to buy their stuff, it's a waste of effort and makes people hate them.
If data mining progresses enough, pretty soon advertisements will only appear to those people receptive to such advertisements. So people will find advertising in general a good thing... good enough to be worth trading away your privacy? Probably not for most Slashdotters, but probably so for the average mall rat.
Of course we can inspect cargo. It's just more expensive to do so.
Which is greater, the cost of dealing with invasive species or the cost of preventing their entry? Even a minor accident can nullify everything spent on prevention, so inspections must be designed to very very strict tolerances - invulnerable to bribery, bureaucratic laziness, tourists sneaking pets across, etc.
Are you really sure you want to spend more on the latter?
The first question was whether they thought content should be controlled at all. This had a majority yes.
The second question was if content was controlled, who should carry out the control - the ISP? Parents? the government? And 85% picked the government. Note that the options were not mutually exclusive - 50% picked parents, for example.
At no point were they asked whether they approved of government control in general.
Actually, the survey questions are a lot more detailed.
On 'what type of content should be controlled', a lot of people (>80%) favored controlling pornography, violence, and junk mails. In short, pretty much like every other country.
Uh, no. Ever since Roosevelt the President is expected to lead legislation. New Deal? Great Society? you know.
You may as well regard Congress as having the power to introduce additional legislation. The President introduces the big stuff nowadays.
There are two primary ways to expose a subject to a TASER electronic control device ("ECD") device... The second method is a direct contact method
known as a âoeDrive-Stun.â The Drive Stun method is where the front of the ECD device makes
direct contact with the subjectâ(TM)s clothing or skin.
It doesn't - but since there are a fixed amount of hours which have to be spent doing something, we can make the argument that some of those sitcom-hours might be translated to some other effort.
Persistently trolling with malicious links: or, how to waste Slashdot's moderation system.
One such link uses several -1, Troll and +1, Informative. How many useful comments got missed because of that?
Slashdot Mirror
Because everyone spends all their time flying 35000 feet above the Atlantic ;)
Quick, beam me up. I want to live in your floating habitats too.
Sunk costs. There's no point spending more money fighting if you've already lost.
For many other areas, Microsoft can effectively buy market share by throwing money at it. But this is an explicit standards war: you either win or lose, you can't hang on to ten percent and hope to claw your way back. The ISO standardisation process can be corrupted, as we've seen, but I think even Microsoft can't halt or reverse the standardisation process.
For the unaware: Majestic Studios.
... Is there a swarm of bots replying to articles based on keywords or something? Dude, why the heck are you complaining?
There's a beta version of TMP that works with FF3RC2. Check the forum thread.
An experiment that reduces doubt. Does that work for you?
This is probably why this is going on (WARNING: speculation!):
The SG govt. is extremely business-friendly, to the point of screwing over its own citizens if there's a risk of scaring off investors. As such, they've become singularly enthusiastic about "Intellectual Property" in general - witness them pulling out four riot trucks to suppress a protest by seven people against an anime distributor.
Some smartass has realised this, and decided to play off the govt's policy against itself - the government would hesitate to suppress patent trolls, for fear of scaring off foreign investors. In the meanwhile it rips off thousands of dollars from scared Singaporean small businesses.
A pretty effective scam, I'd say.
Do you drink coffee? Good god, caffeine! Or eat chilli? Or potatoes? Not exactly things your evolutionary predecessors would have snacked on. You eat strange new chemicals every day, this one just has the word "drug" slapped on it.
Provigil has been on the market for ten years. Ritalin even longer. You can get provigil easily already.
Notably, so far there has been no indication that people get tolerant to provigil. It appears to be be less toxic than caffeine. I think we're looking at the next college drug...
I'm inclined to agree - companies don't want to advertise to people who don't want to buy their stuff, it's a waste of effort and makes people hate them.
If data mining progresses enough, pretty soon advertisements will only appear to those people receptive to such advertisements. So people will find advertising in general a good thing... good enough to be worth trading away your privacy? Probably not for most Slashdotters, but probably so for the average mall rat.
They don't work in the UK, or so we are told. Why should they work in the PRC?
It seems slow, so have a mirror: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com.nyud.net/columns/2008_google_summer_code_21_projects_im_excited_about
You'd have more success as a martyr if they actually executed you. Waiting lines and unemployment are hardly heroic, though.
Of course we can inspect cargo. It's just more expensive to do so. Which is greater, the cost of dealing with invasive species or the cost of preventing their entry? Even a minor accident can nullify everything spent on prevention, so inspections must be designed to very very strict tolerances - invulnerable to bribery, bureaucratic laziness, tourists sneaking pets across, etc. Are you really sure you want to spend more on the latter?
No, no.
The first question was whether they thought content should be controlled at all. This had a majority yes.
The second question was if content was controlled, who should carry out the control - the ISP? Parents? the government? And 85% picked the government. Note that the options were not mutually exclusive - 50% picked parents, for example.
At no point were they asked whether they approved of government control in general.
Actually, the survey questions are a lot more detailed.
On 'what type of content should be controlled', a lot of people (>80%) favored controlling pornography, violence, and junk mails. In short, pretty much like every other country.
Remember now, think of the children!
Uh, no. Ever since Roosevelt the President is expected to lead legislation. New Deal? Great Society? you know. You may as well regard Congress as having the power to introduce additional legislation. The President introduces the big stuff nowadays.
Clearly, 2009 will be the year of the Linux desktop!
It doesn't - but since there are a fixed amount of hours which have to be spent doing something, we can make the argument that some of those sitcom-hours might be translated to some other effort.
Poor Anziger. You even had to copy+paste his name in ;)
Don't you think they'd have blocked /. too?
(anybody know?)
Make sure you tell all the other investors of your boycott target too.
People already use these things called vibrators. So... yes?
Persistently trolling with malicious links: or, how to waste Slashdot's moderation system. One such link uses several -1, Troll and +1, Informative. How many useful comments got missed because of that?