are sales slowing, or moving away from Yahoo? I know they've had a fairly poor showing as of late, is this just an attempt to try and explain that away within a more general setting and keep the share price up, hoping that people will see them still as a good bet? Still, I suppose that buying new cars might be one of the first things to take a hit if the economy was slowing, but wouldn't this spur advertising?...
Anyone have google's ad revenue relating specific to these areas?
...I wish that they had got people to design a better UI for the main app though, it just looks so much like it was designed on the cheap in 1997 ( see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/17/Nt3_ 51-word97.png ). I know that people will say functionality should take precedence but I will not be able to convince anyone who is a casual user to switch when they will be presented with a mass of grey and cheap looking icons.
I hope that they have some money saved back to do that soon.
In the Swedish elections there were issues of massive importance going on. The right of centre party actually won on a promise to cut down on what has been the jewel in the crown of the worlds welfare states, a social democratic state (to use the terms of Esping-Anderson) and one with a high degree of decomodification. This was a big deal to a lot of people. If you look at pretty much any of the literature on the subject of welfare states then you'll see that most people saw the Swedish one as institutionalised and one which would be fatal for anyone to cut back on. A lot of people will have been rallying desperately to increase or at least not move their cradle to grave welfare state. This, as far as I can see (being external to Sweden) would be the big issue, and would take precedence over the right to have a torrent site or not.
As a side note I would say that it is quite shocking that they have voted out the social democratic party, especially when their conventional wisdom says that the two track tax burden (high personal tax but low corporate tax) was working and the welfare state was doing them the world of good.
If anyone is interested in why it might be logical to think this, or just learn more about the politics of welfare states, way you might want to look at an excellent book called "The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism" and/or Esping-Anderson's "The Three Worlds of Welfare capitalism". Both are excellent... OK, I know that I've spent too long learning about Welfare states.
It's important that they've learnt things from this and it's interesting to note that they did get quite a few votes. I know people will see less than the 1% limit for government help with adverts etc as a loss, but consider that this is a party which has been around for what... a year? It is so new, it is taking such a radical idea, and it got over 0.5% of the national vote?
That is fantastic!
Don't forget that this is people's vote in a general election. Any are a big deal and most people won't make a choice lightly. They might see votes as a waste because they might not even get anyone in parliament which puts people off voting for them as they want their vote "to count". Also a lot of people in the country will already have aligences to parties and even though they might really agree with the message they might be reluctant to turn against the party which represents what they want overall better. Its hard to have a successful "single issue" party, I'm not sure what their other policies are but they will be important and you need to tell people what these are to let them know that your not just a one trick horse.
Overall though, it's a good effort, don't get too down on them.
I think people can rightly blame Sony for this one, even if they did outsource, when Toshiba hired them to do a job no doubt they set expected standards (probably including not setting on fire/cutting out). It is still Sony's responsibility to make sure that what they are delivering meets the standards which are expected when they signed the contract.
After this I wouldn't trust Sony (or any other comapny who will sell out quality and high standards to make a little more money) to make anything for me and will be actively looking deeper into my purchases in the future to make sure they don't have Sony parts
I have to agree. I will cheat on some offline games, because I'm not that good at them and sometimes just can't be bothered to put in the effort to get good, but cheating online is just a sure fire way to piss off the honest people and make everyone not want to play. I've played online against people who both are loads better than me and camp and thats enough to piss me off (almost to the point of leaving but I feel I should at least be curtious) but if someone can just click to kill from anywhere or other such things then it'd be the most annoying boring games for everyone. I wonder if he even gets to finish most games because when people notice (and I'd think they would) they'd just leave...
I agree, it's pretty much always the user who creates these problems, I use GNOME but I have at most 4 icons on my desktop. I used to use KDE and think I had a similar number. I wonder what they could take away which will not reduce productivity, I mean I need the computer, home and wastebasket (and my external HD is just handy to have there)
They could stop people creating icons or files on the desktops but that will really annoy people because some just like it there.
Shame I couoldn't get to the article, maybe they explained it, although the summery was light on details...
I have to agree about not being able to win in this situation, I also agree that allowing bit torrent to run without restriction will most likely lead to lawsuits. I wonder if the uni could get round this by making the students sign a declaration that they are the sole persons responsible for what they do on the net. (I don't really get how it works though, if a student was downloading child porn the uni wouldn't be in trouble, would it?).
Other than that the guy could have a full (and anonymous) discussion about what they would use it for, if it's downloading music are there not legal alternatives which they can use which the uni could pay for (or, add on to the cost of the rooms/'net) and then they would be fine not changing the systems
I've never understood the problem people have with CCTV cameras, I live in Coventry and I can tell you I wouldn't walk through the road under-passes without there being CCTV there. There is one without it (Greyfriers) which I refuse to use. I know I will be recorded on it, but what does it get of me? a small image from which anyone who didn't know me couldn't identify me. I would rather lose that (very small) part of my privacy in order to try to preserve my life longer.
I doubt anyone would relish suing myspace, this isn't a small organisation which will cave with fear of legal threats, my space has a multi-billion dollar backing through News International, not to mention all the bad publicity that culd be drummed up in a heart beat if myspace loses. I can only speak from what I've read (in private eye) about the Sun and the Times (England), it does seem that no murdoch paper can even print bad news about myspace, they also mention it several times a week.
If murdoch will go that far to introduce obvious adds as if it was news I'll bet you a pound to a pinch of shit that they'd run every bad story about Universal they can find... Don't assume a power structure from Universal down to myspace.
People on wikipedia will erase the original and place their views - I would expect an expert to respect another experts view and add his own view after the original
Well the games are significantly cheaper in the US than in the UK, the console in Japan is only £113 whilst in the UK it is £179, so people could start shipping massive amounts of them and hurt the shops like game and gamestation - which Nintendo need to get behind the Wii 100%, because that's where most people buy games from - if the big game shops get hurt they might decide it's not really worth them selling the wii or wii games and the console could fail.
It wouldn't have to work like that, but it could. The region lock-down doesn't have to cost them a lot either, it could be really easy to get round if you opened up the system (I don't know how they've done it) all it needs to be is enough to stop the majority of people who couldn't be bothered to look inside from doing it.
So from their point of view, it's cheap, it makes more money, and it protects them. It's not great for consumers, but I doubt it'll put off 99.5% of thier target market
I think that this is a shame, although my DS is region free and I've never bought a game from either America or Japan, so it's not going to be too big of a problem to be. I doubt many people will be upset about this. Still, it's a shame.
I find the bomb one very strange indeed, not just because there are some areas of weakness (lets say that it does indeed work 85% of the time and that the screen and touchpad doesn't pose a serious threat) - if you get hit at close range by a mortor or RPG you die. Whether or not your music is ok would probably be of a secondary concern. If you didn't die then you would be so badly injured then losing an iPod would be of little concern.
The only way this could be useful is if you leave your Ipod at your base, which then has the sh*t blown out of it and you manage to take the base back... but I wonder how often that happens
How can they say anything is 99.95% right, have they never heard of the Cartesian method of doubt, I would say that second meditation doubt would weigh in at more than 0.05% on its own... I mean, how can you be sure that you're not decived every time you think of the universe or physics into thinking that this is the way it is, when it isn't. More over, how do you know the universe exists?
Over and above the possibilities of the universal physics being disrupted by deamons you have to consider that it might actually be wrong, which we'll take their word for at 0.05%... so all in all I'd say about 1-5% doubt - but you can never know
I wondered how I felt about this, and I've decided this is a very good thing. I dislike MS as much as the next Linux user* but I also dislike patents. So what I hope will happen, and what I assume will happen, is that MS will be sued, but will win and these stupid patents will be invalidated. The patent trolls lose their patents and MS loses a lot of money on lawyers. yay!
*It is said "BSD is for those who love UNIX, Linux is for those who hate M$"... which I like so much I'll bring up now
aren't patents supposed to be for things that are "non-obvious"?
you must be new here... Still, jokes asside, it is stupid; obvious, overly broad and has existed pretty much since the internet began. Basically this is passing knowledge around (as it has for thousands of years), but crucially on the internet!
When will people learn that saying "doing X, on the internet" doesn't make it new or non-obvious?
Ah, you remind me of a very good point which I forgot to mention, If you have a TV on stand-by it can use almost as much power as if it is on (at least they used to - and probably still do). I was amazed at just how much power things can use in stand-by. It really is worth switching things off properly, as you say, at the plug if neccesary.
The small hastle of losing the clock on a TV and having to walk over to do it is nothing when thinking about the energy you'll save
well we can only really talk anecdotally but I find that they last a lot longer than regular bulbs, the standard lightbulbs are supposed to last for around 3,000 hours, and the energy efficient ones are supposed to last for 10,000 hours...
I suppose this comes down to if you can trust the manufactures and what they say. I agree about you with the warming up period, but it is only for a minute or so, and worth it in the long run (if you do indeed get the full 10,000 hours)
I agree with some other comments about conserving energy as a good way for going and stopping your bills from going up... as for a way of measuring you can see that kill-a-watt device some people have shown, it seems like a good idea. One issue is that it doesn't really tell you how much power things like lights and your oven use though (because they don't have standard plugs - at least not here).
The only way I can think of doing that, although it would be a hastle, would be to switch off all items in your house and verify that with your little light not blinking, then switch your oven on and time how long it takes you to use a Watt/hour. Then switch that off and see about the lights you would normally have one. This would give you some ideas on how much these things use. As a way of reducing the amount of power that they use you could get energy efficient bulbs (they cost more innitially but less in the long term) and if you need to replace your oven you can look for the most energy efficient one you can find (and if gas or electric is cheaper in your area angle your purchase towards that).
There are also good savings to be made by changing your fridge/freezer and your washing machine to something more efficient (If you live in England we already have a rating service for these, buy only A rated things and you'll save - if not then you'll have to do some investigating on your own)
I wonder if he could say "my files are encrypted and I've forgotten how to unencrypt them (forgotten the password) you could try and do it, but this would break the DMCA, and I would be forced to act to make sure you are punished for breaking this law.
On a personal note about the interview, I think a lot of the views which are mixed in fact/fiction may come from the fact that we all have very different laws due to different countries, this can lead to confusion, but fortunately, in the UK the BPI have agreed not to sue people for using allofmp3 until they have at least finished the lawsuit against allofmp3 themselves and set out its legality in stone (or some kind of legal equivalent of it)
Partly I agree with you about how difficult it is to maintain a windows PC, you have to keep making sure your anti-virus is up to date, run it every week at least, possibly more, each time it takes an hour or so, keep running anti-spyware etc... I also have some sympathy with the GP though, because people don't see things like that as "difficult" but when I asked them just to type;
su -
yum update
y
They look at you like your no better than Howard Scott Warshaw. tut.
Just incase anyone who's reading the old stuff doesn't use English as their first language you might be interested to note that when you see words which look like the contain an "f" without the middle bar it is actually an "s"... I guess it's just evolved a bit, but it can be confusing to figure out
Slashdot Mirror
are sales slowing, or moving away from Yahoo? I know they've had a fairly poor showing as of late, is this just an attempt to try and explain that away within a more general setting and keep the share price up, hoping that people will see them still as a good bet? Still, I suppose that buying new cars might be one of the first things to take a hit if the economy was slowing, but wouldn't this spur advertising?...
Anyone have google's ad revenue relating specific to these areas?
...I wish that they had got people to design a better UI for the main app though, it just looks so much like it was designed on the cheap in 1997 ( see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/17/Nt3_ 51-word97.png ). I know that people will say functionality should take precedence but I will not be able to convince anyone who is a casual user to switch when they will be presented with a mass of grey and cheap looking icons.
I hope that they have some money saved back to do that soon.
replying to myself... I might be insane :S
In the Swedish elections there were issues of massive importance going on. The right of centre party actually won on a promise to cut down on what has been the jewel in the crown of the worlds welfare states, a social democratic state (to use the terms of Esping-Anderson) and one with a high degree of decomodification. This was a big deal to a lot of people. If you look at pretty much any of the literature on the subject of welfare states then you'll see that most people saw the Swedish one as institutionalised and one which would be fatal for anyone to cut back on. A lot of people will have been rallying desperately to increase or at least not move their cradle to grave welfare state. This, as far as I can see (being external to Sweden) would be the big issue, and would take precedence over the right to have a torrent site or not.
As a side note I would say that it is quite shocking that they have voted out the social democratic party, especially when their conventional wisdom says that the two track tax burden (high personal tax but low corporate tax) was working and the welfare state was doing them the world of good.
If anyone is interested in why it might be logical to think this, or just learn more about the politics of welfare states, way you might want to look at an excellent book called "The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism" and/or Esping-Anderson's "The Three Worlds of Welfare capitalism". Both are excellent... OK, I know that I've spent too long learning about Welfare states.
It's important that they've learnt things from this and it's interesting to note that they did get quite a few votes. I know people will see less than the 1% limit for government help with adverts etc as a loss, but consider that this is a party which has been around for what... a year? It is so new, it is taking such a radical idea, and it got over 0.5% of the national vote?
That is fantastic!
Don't forget that this is people's vote in a general election. Any are a big deal and most people won't make a choice lightly. They might see votes as a waste because they might not even get anyone in parliament which puts people off voting for them as they want their vote "to count". Also a lot of people in the country will already have aligences to parties and even though they might really agree with the message they might be reluctant to turn against the party which represents what they want overall better. Its hard to have a successful "single issue" party, I'm not sure what their other policies are but they will be important and you need to tell people what these are to let them know that your not just a one trick horse.
Overall though, it's a good effort, don't get too down on them.
I think people can rightly blame Sony for this one, even if they did outsource, when Toshiba hired them to do a job no doubt they set expected standards (probably including not setting on fire/cutting out). It is still Sony's responsibility to make sure that what they are delivering meets the standards which are expected when they signed the contract.
After this I wouldn't trust Sony (or any other comapny who will sell out quality and high standards to make a little more money) to make anything for me and will be actively looking deeper into my purchases in the future to make sure they don't have Sony parts
"I can go online and say "Joe's a butthead" just fine"
You could, but it would hurt my feelings... ; )
I have to agree. I will cheat on some offline games, because I'm not that good at them and sometimes just can't be bothered to put in the effort to get good, but cheating online is just a sure fire way to piss off the honest people and make everyone not want to play. I've played online against people who both are loads better than me and camp and thats enough to piss me off (almost to the point of leaving but I feel I should at least be curtious) but if someone can just click to kill from anywhere or other such things then it'd be the most annoying boring games for everyone. I wonder if he even gets to finish most games because when people notice (and I'd think they would) they'd just leave...
I agree, it's pretty much always the user who creates these problems, I use GNOME but I have at most 4 icons on my desktop. I used to use KDE and think I had a similar number. I wonder what they could take away which will not reduce productivity, I mean I need the computer, home and wastebasket (and my external HD is just handy to have there)
They could stop people creating icons or files on the desktops but that will really annoy people because some just like it there.
Shame I couoldn't get to the article, maybe they explained it, although the summery was light on details...
I have to agree about not being able to win in this situation, I also agree that allowing bit torrent to run without restriction will most likely lead to lawsuits. I wonder if the uni could get round this by making the students sign a declaration that they are the sole persons responsible for what they do on the net. (I don't really get how it works though, if a student was downloading child porn the uni wouldn't be in trouble, would it?).
Other than that the guy could have a full (and anonymous) discussion about what they would use it for, if it's downloading music are there not legal alternatives which they can use which the uni could pay for (or, add on to the cost of the rooms/'net) and then they would be fine not changing the systems
I've never understood the problem people have with CCTV cameras, I live in Coventry and I can tell you I wouldn't walk through the road under-passes without there being CCTV there. There is one without it (Greyfriers) which I refuse to use. I know I will be recorded on it, but what does it get of me? a small image from which anyone who didn't know me couldn't identify me. I would rather lose that (very small) part of my privacy in order to try to preserve my life longer.
I doubt anyone would relish suing myspace, this isn't a small organisation which will cave with fear of legal threats, my space has a multi-billion dollar backing through News International, not to mention all the bad publicity that culd be drummed up in a heart beat if myspace loses. I can only speak from what I've read (in private eye) about the Sun and the Times (England), it does seem that no murdoch paper can even print bad news about myspace, they also mention it several times a week.
If murdoch will go that far to introduce obvious adds as if it was news I'll bet you a pound to a pinch of shit that they'd run every bad story about Universal they can find... Don't assume a power structure from Universal down to myspace.
For me it has to be http://www.talklikeapirate.com/ just for the comedy of the picture and the idea of "wench swap". classic.
People on wikipedia will erase the original and place their views - I would expect an expert to respect another experts view and add his own view after the original
Well the games are significantly cheaper in the US than in the UK, the console in Japan is only £113 whilst in the UK it is £179, so people could start shipping massive amounts of them and hurt the shops like game and gamestation - which Nintendo need to get behind the Wii 100%, because that's where most people buy games from - if the big game shops get hurt they might decide it's not really worth them selling the wii or wii games and the console could fail.
It wouldn't have to work like that, but it could. The region lock-down doesn't have to cost them a lot either, it could be really easy to get round if you opened up the system (I don't know how they've done it) all it needs to be is enough to stop the majority of people who couldn't be bothered to look inside from doing it.
So from their point of view, it's cheap, it makes more money, and it protects them. It's not great for consumers, but I doubt it'll put off 99.5% of thier target market
I think that this is a shame, although my DS is region free and I've never bought a game from either America or Japan, so it's not going to be too big of a problem to be. I doubt many people will be upset about this. Still, it's a shame.
I find the bomb one very strange indeed, not just because there are some areas of weakness (lets say that it does indeed work 85% of the time and that the screen and touchpad doesn't pose a serious threat) - if you get hit at close range by a mortor or RPG you die. Whether or not your music is ok would probably be of a secondary concern. If you didn't die then you would be so badly injured then losing an iPod would be of little concern.
The only way this could be useful is if you leave your Ipod at your base, which then has the sh*t blown out of it and you manage to take the base back... but I wonder how often that happens
How can they say anything is 99.95% right, have they never heard of the Cartesian method of doubt, I would say that second meditation doubt would weigh in at more than 0.05% on its own... I mean, how can you be sure that you're not decived every time you think of the universe or physics into thinking that this is the way it is, when it isn't. More over, how do you know the universe exists?
Over and above the possibilities of the universal physics being disrupted by deamons you have to consider that it might actually be wrong, which we'll take their word for at 0.05%... so all in all I'd say about 1-5% doubt - but you can never know
I wondered how I felt about this, and I've decided this is a very good thing. I dislike MS as much as the next Linux user* but I also dislike patents. So what I hope will happen, and what I assume will happen, is that MS will be sued, but will win and these stupid patents will be invalidated. The patent trolls lose their patents and MS loses a lot of money on lawyers. yay!
*It is said "BSD is for those who love UNIX, Linux is for those who hate M$"... which I like so much I'll bring up now
aren't patents supposed to be for things that are "non-obvious"?
you must be new here... Still, jokes asside, it is stupid; obvious, overly broad and has existed pretty much since the internet began. Basically this is passing knowledge around (as it has for thousands of years), but crucially on the internet!
When will people learn that saying "doing X, on the internet" doesn't make it new or non-obvious?
Ah, you remind me of a very good point which I forgot to mention, If you have a TV on stand-by it can use almost as much power as if it is on (at least they used to - and probably still do). I was amazed at just how much power things can use in stand-by. It really is worth switching things off properly, as you say, at the plug if neccesary.
The small hastle of losing the clock on a TV and having to walk over to do it is nothing when thinking about the energy you'll save
well we can only really talk anecdotally but I find that they last a lot longer than regular bulbs, the standard lightbulbs are supposed to last for around 3,000 hours, and the energy efficient ones are supposed to last for 10,000 hours...
I suppose this comes down to if you can trust the manufactures and what they say. I agree about you with the warming up period, but it is only for a minute or so, and worth it in the long run (if you do indeed get the full 10,000 hours)
I agree with some other comments about conserving energy as a good way for going and stopping your bills from going up... as for a way of measuring you can see that kill-a-watt device some people have shown, it seems like a good idea. One issue is that it doesn't really tell you how much power things like lights and your oven use though (because they don't have standard plugs - at least not here).
The only way I can think of doing that, although it would be a hastle, would be to switch off all items in your house and verify that with your little light not blinking, then switch your oven on and time how long it takes you to use a Watt/hour. Then switch that off and see about the lights you would normally have one. This would give you some ideas on how much these things use. As a way of reducing the amount of power that they use you could get energy efficient bulbs (they cost more innitially but less in the long term) and if you need to replace your oven you can look for the most energy efficient one you can find (and if gas or electric is cheaper in your area angle your purchase towards that).
There are also good savings to be made by changing your fridge/freezer and your washing machine to something more efficient (If you live in England we already have a rating service for these, buy only A rated things and you'll save - if not then you'll have to do some investigating on your own)
I wonder if he could say "my files are encrypted and I've forgotten how to unencrypt them (forgotten the password) you could try and do it, but this would break the DMCA, and I would be forced to act to make sure you are punished for breaking this law.
On a personal note about the interview, I think a lot of the views which are mixed in fact/fiction may come from the fact that we all have very different laws due to different countries, this can lead to confusion, but fortunately, in the UK the BPI have agreed not to sue people for using allofmp3 until they have at least finished the lawsuit against allofmp3 themselves and set out its legality in stone (or some kind of legal equivalent of it)
Partly I agree with you about how difficult it is to maintain a windows PC, you have to keep making sure your anti-virus is up to date, run it every week at least, possibly more, each time it takes an hour or so, keep running anti-spyware etc... I also have some sympathy with the GP though, because people don't see things like that as "difficult" but when I asked them just to type;
su -
yum update
y
They look at you like your no better than Howard Scott Warshaw. tut.
Just incase anyone who's reading the old stuff doesn't use English as their first language you might be interested to note that when you see words which look like the contain an "f" without the middle bar it is actually an "s"... I guess it's just evolved a bit, but it can be confusing to figure out