I'd take a look at some of the projects at Metacarta labs (http://labs.metacarta.com/). I worked there for a couple years, and they do a lot with converting old maps into digital, interactive versions. If you get in touch with them, they have some super-enthusiastic people who can give you great advice.
My point is that if companies in general get fewer purchases per impression that's going to devalue an impression accordingly. If tomorrow the number of impressions doubled on all advertisements without a corresponding increase in purchases made, a single impression loses 50% of its value.
I have never deliberately clicked on a banner ad. I certainly have seen banner ads before, so it's impossible to say that they have had NO influence on me, but I can't remember ever seeing an ad for any of the companies that I actually buy things from (gibson, asus, newegg, amazon, etc). Even if I did, for anything other than commodity items with no practical difference between them (deodorant, cola), I would base my decision off of some research, not the contents of a banner ad. Honestly, if you make an ad that is really that good, I'll see it on youtube anyways (e.g. that Old Spice "now I'm on a horse" ad).
One could argue that I would generate impressions for the sites whose ads I view, but I would contribute no click-throughs, thus lowering the click-through rate. You then could reply by saying that I'm obligated to click some of the ads, to which I would respond 1) fuck you, no and 2) then that unless I actually purchase something, I'm just watering down the statistics again.
At the end of the day, advertising is about ROI, and inflating impressions or click-throughs doesn't make a damn bit of difference.
Plenty of companies (Amazon and Newegg) get plenty of my money over the internet, and if you can't figure out how to do that, then I'm comfortable with you going out of business.
Yeah, obviously participation in the Pepsi vs Coke circus that is our "two-party" system is the be-all and end-all qualification for engaging in the political process.
Why are people so afraid of scientific debate? Isn't that what science is all about?
No. Science is the dialectic between theories and evidence. Creationism is the effort to find or create "facts" that agree with scripture. Science and creationism are as incompatible as royal decrees and parliamentary debate.
Creationism does not in anyway detract from evolution.
The process of deciding upon a desired conclusion and just inventing and selectively choosing facts that validate that point of view is incompatible with science.
I think the focal point is that Christian enemies are arguing for,"Seperation of Church and State" while Christians argue that the Constitution says this nowhere in it.
There's no argument for "separation of church and state." That's just shorthand for the protections offered in the first amendment.
Yet, there this is interpreted that clergy may not talk about a political candidate from the puplit. To me, this is a law abdridging freedom of speech.
Of course political speech by religious leaders is protected. No educated person would assert otherwise.
You should think a bit more critically about the statements you make.
This was truly a difficult decision for me: should I spend mod points to flag your post as a troll, which it clearly is, or should I allow the grammar nazi in me to tell you that the word you wanted was "ambivalence," not ambiguity?
Well, if you're reading this, you know which side prevailed.
I totally agree! One minor point, though. You misspelled 'Zeus.' From looking at my keyboard, though, it's quite easy to see how those d's and g's got in there.
You chose a pretty poor example. In the english-speaking world, priests originally used latin versions of the bible. A version of the bible that could be read and understood by the common man was viewed as a threat by the religious institutions and *violently* repressed. I believe, and it's reasonable to argue, that the fall of the bible from a carefully-guarded source to something that the entire internet can pick apart contributed to the rise of atheism.
Currently, the *contents* of sermons and services are not available for that same scrutiny. If religious indoctrination and propaganda starts to move online, that is a huge win for skeptics.
This all comes down to a question of value. The Economist and WSJ can get away with charging for their content because there are enough professionals who actually stand to *make money as a result of the information they read in it.* News and opinions, on the other hand, don't have economic value. Sure, they're interesting, but there's no economic differentiation versus merely getting the facts from CNN or whatever.
When the NYT was available for free, I used to log on once a day and read 2 or 3 articles. When they launched Times Select, I stopped reading it and got most of my news from the BBC. When they made everything free again, I started reading again. Honestly, if I had to pay a subscription fee to every news site I read on a daily basis, I'd be spending hundreds of dollars on news a year. It's not worth it to me, and as such I'm not going to support that model.
It seems clear, though, that the status quo is unsustainable. If I had to guess, I'd say that the next couple of years are going to gut the middle of the road news sources. Some are going to go to a premium walled-garden model, but most that try it are going to fail. The rest of the sources will cut quality and quantity. User-run and -generated sites will be largely immune to this shakeup.
What I find most interesting, though, is the possibility of news following the music industry - a dearth of well-written, researched news would surely spawn illicit article exchanges, with users filling in the gaps. The attempts of the RIAA to prevent digital exchange of music actually ended up creating the most sophisticated, democratic and censor-proof music (information) distribution networks in history. An artist can create a song in their living room using a couple hundred dollars worth of equipment, and this huge, anonymous, scalable volunteer network will ensure that it is cataloged and then mirrored and distributed across the globe. The idea of the Pirate work ethic getting applied to the news is fascinating, to me, and I find it hard to believe that the downfall of the network of self-congratulating vapid stooges that is the news industry could have anything but good effects for the country.
You might want to float the idea of having armbands. They're unobtrusive, sharp, and have been shown in the past to foster a sense of shared identity.
Might want to give a little thought to putting a logo of some sort on it too...maybe one of those Indian good luck symbols...you know, something simple that looks good in black and white.
I've only really been in this situation once (non-technical manager, big deadline, his ass on the line), and I think the guy in question couldn't have handled it better.
First, he asked us for a list of things he could do to help. Then, he got us free takeout from our choice of local restaurants, a couple liters of soda, and a six-pack for when the job was done. Finally, he told us to get in touch with him if we needed anything, and he went around the corner and hung out in another office until we were done.
He had a beer with us at 1 AM and told us not to come in the next day until noon.
I think it's pretty clear that you took the OP's comment a bit more seriously than either he or (I think) most people did, but damn, I gotta say...that was a pretty impressive burn.
I think you're overstating your point. Unless you are saving your data in a truly useless format, having a practiced procedure for getting that data back into production only lets you get the data back up faster. We have one backup system in particular at my office - although we have never built a production machine from it, we do (manually and automatically) test the data to ensure that everything from production made it in. Will restoring that data be slow and sketchy? Sure. Is it fair to say that nobody will care if we have the data backed up? No.
That being said, though, if a system is capable of losing this much data without an act of god, then a lot of people need to be fired. With incremental backups, tests, and enough redundancy, it is nearly impossible to actually lose more than a couple days worth of data.
I agree with you about MS, though. People really need to get it through their heads that Microsoft is one company among many. They make great hardware (typing this on a Microsoft Natural keyboard), and excel is still best in class; on the other hand, they make a couple products I wouldn't be caught dead using.
On the bright side, I guess this should put the adage "Nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft" to bed, eh?:)
Slashdot Mirror
That's funny, you'd expect a lot of them would be using that really popular windows mobile phone, you know, the....err....wait, don't tell me...hmmm
I'd take a look at some of the projects at Metacarta labs (http://labs.metacarta.com/). I worked there for a couple years, and they do a lot with converting old maps into digital, interactive versions. If you get in touch with them, they have some super-enthusiastic people who can give you great advice.
My point is that if companies in general get fewer purchases per impression that's going to devalue an impression accordingly. If tomorrow the number of impressions doubled on all advertisements without a corresponding increase in purchases made, a single impression loses 50% of its value.
I have never deliberately clicked on a banner ad. I certainly have seen banner ads before, so it's impossible to say that they have had NO influence on me, but I can't remember ever seeing an ad for any of the companies that I actually buy things from (gibson, asus, newegg, amazon, etc). Even if I did, for anything other than commodity items with no practical difference between them (deodorant, cola), I would base my decision off of some research, not the contents of a banner ad. Honestly, if you make an ad that is really that good, I'll see it on youtube anyways (e.g. that Old Spice "now I'm on a horse" ad).
One could argue that I would generate impressions for the sites whose ads I view, but I would contribute no click-throughs, thus lowering the click-through rate. You then could reply by saying that I'm obligated to click some of the ads, to which I would respond 1) fuck you, no and 2) then that unless I actually purchase something, I'm just watering down the statistics again.
At the end of the day, advertising is about ROI, and inflating impressions or click-throughs doesn't make a damn bit of difference.
Plenty of companies (Amazon and Newegg) get plenty of my money over the internet, and if you can't figure out how to do that, then I'm comfortable with you going out of business.
Just set up some torrents on the Pirate Bay and let the entire internet do your backup for you!
Some guy owns an Android and tried tethering. He says he likes it.
Yeah, obviously participation in the Pepsi vs Coke circus that is our "two-party" system is the be-all and end-all qualification for engaging in the political process.
The element's discoverer was, quite understandably, crushed by his lack of recognition.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1621
If you figure women out, you could get laid pretty much constantly...or so the theory goes.
No. Science is the dialectic between theories and evidence. Creationism is the effort to find or create "facts" that agree with scripture. Science and creationism are as incompatible as royal decrees and parliamentary debate.
The process of deciding upon a desired conclusion and just inventing and selectively choosing facts that validate that point of view is incompatible with science.
There's no argument for "separation of church and state." That's just shorthand for the protections offered in the first amendment.
Of course political speech by religious leaders is protected. No educated person would assert otherwise.
You should think a bit more critically about the statements you make.
This was truly a difficult decision for me: should I spend mod points to flag your post as a troll, which it clearly is, or should I allow the grammar nazi in me to tell you that the word you wanted was "ambivalence," not ambiguity?
Well, if you're reading this, you know which side prevailed.
I totally agree! One minor point, though. You misspelled 'Zeus.' From looking at my keyboard, though, it's quite easy to see how those d's and g's got in there.
You chose a pretty poor example. In the english-speaking world, priests originally used latin versions of the bible. A version of the bible that could be read and understood by the common man was viewed as a threat by the religious institutions and *violently* repressed. I believe, and it's reasonable to argue, that the fall of the bible from a carefully-guarded source to something that the entire internet can pick apart contributed to the rise of atheism.
Currently, the *contents* of sermons and services are not available for that same scrutiny. If religious indoctrination and propaganda starts to move online, that is a huge win for skeptics.
This all comes down to a question of value. The Economist and WSJ can get away with charging for their content because there are enough professionals who actually stand to *make money as a result of the information they read in it.* News and opinions, on the other hand, don't have economic value. Sure, they're interesting, but there's no economic differentiation versus merely getting the facts from CNN or whatever.
When the NYT was available for free, I used to log on once a day and read 2 or 3 articles. When they launched Times Select, I stopped reading it and got most of my news from the BBC. When they made everything free again, I started reading again. Honestly, if I had to pay a subscription fee to every news site I read on a daily basis, I'd be spending hundreds of dollars on news a year. It's not worth it to me, and as such I'm not going to support that model.
It seems clear, though, that the status quo is unsustainable. If I had to guess, I'd say that the next couple of years are going to gut the middle of the road news sources. Some are going to go to a premium walled-garden model, but most that try it are going to fail. The rest of the sources will cut quality and quantity. User-run and -generated sites will be largely immune to this shakeup.
What I find most interesting, though, is the possibility of news following the music industry - a dearth of well-written, researched news would surely spawn illicit article exchanges, with users filling in the gaps. The attempts of the RIAA to prevent digital exchange of music actually ended up creating the most sophisticated, democratic and censor-proof music (information) distribution networks in history. An artist can create a song in their living room using a couple hundred dollars worth of equipment, and this huge, anonymous, scalable volunteer network will ensure that it is cataloged and then mirrored and distributed across the globe. The idea of the Pirate work ethic getting applied to the news is fascinating, to me, and I find it hard to believe that the downfall of the network of self-congratulating vapid stooges that is the news industry could have anything but good effects for the country.
You might want to float the idea of having armbands. They're unobtrusive, sharp, and have been shown in the past to foster a sense of shared identity.
Might want to give a little thought to putting a logo of some sort on it too...maybe one of those Indian good luck symbols...you know, something simple that looks good in black and white.
That's an argument against foxholes, not atheists.
I've only really been in this situation once (non-technical manager, big deadline, his ass on the line), and I think the guy in question couldn't have handled it better.
First, he asked us for a list of things he could do to help. Then, he got us free takeout from our choice of local restaurants, a couple liters of soda, and a six-pack for when the job was done. Finally, he told us to get in touch with him if we needed anything, and he went around the corner and hung out in another office until we were done.
He had a beer with us at 1 AM and told us not to come in the next day until noon.
Good guy.
"Confederation of Dunces"
I think it's pretty clear that you took the OP's comment a bit more seriously than either he or (I think) most people did, but damn, I gotta say...that was a pretty impressive burn.
Well done.
Unary...is that one less than binary?
I think you're overstating your point. Unless you are saving your data in a truly useless format, having a practiced procedure for getting that data back into production only lets you get the data back up faster. We have one backup system in particular at my office - although we have never built a production machine from it, we do (manually and automatically) test the data to ensure that everything from production made it in. Will restoring that data be slow and sketchy? Sure. Is it fair to say that nobody will care if we have the data backed up? No.
That being said, though, if a system is capable of losing this much data without an act of god, then a lot of people need to be fired. With incremental backups, tests, and enough redundancy, it is nearly impossible to actually lose more than a couple days worth of data.
I agree with you about MS, though. People really need to get it through their heads that Microsoft is one company among many. They make great hardware (typing this on a Microsoft Natural keyboard), and excel is still best in class; on the other hand, they make a couple products I wouldn't be caught dead using.
On the bright side, I guess this should put the adage "Nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft" to bed, eh? :)
Wow, this is a terrible blow for Microsoft. This might make people think that they produce unreliable products!
Best damn post in the whole thread.
In Greek, yes (). The Greek word has made its way into English, but 'apology' is completely valid as well. Check out definition 2: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/apology
Please turn your grammar nazi card in on your way out. Thank you.