Read about how england tried to destroy the french after the colonial wars were over
So you traced your family tree back to some English/French battlefield, and you angrily lick your woulds?
Give me a break. What a bunch of racist, isolationist bullshit. The core argument of many extreme separationists sounds like something coming straight out of the mouth of Slobodan Milosovic. It is really eerie, and it's a good thing there are so many intelligent, rational, travelled, worldly individuals to balance things out in Quebec (it tends to be that the more urban a center is, the less likely it is to clutch onto illusions that separation will magically defend against a world of English).
Here I am, sitting in a suburb of the evil Toronto, an X generation Canadian (as far back as I know). Yet way back my ancestry is Scottish/Irish, with a little Native Canadian Cree Indian for good measure. None of that defines a single iota of my existence. I'm not speaking Celtic or giving the finger to the monarchy or making land claims.
God I hate when the Canadian separation topic comes up on here, but alas.
Quebec is it's own special little place in the world, they speak neither 'french' nor are they Canadian.
Many of the members of our armed forces hail from Quebec, and our federal politics, as you mentioned, has a hearty contingent of Quebecors (many who have nothing to do with the separation party. Those who do come from the separation party really were elected on the platform of putting Quebec first -- they're there because Quebecors want their interests pushed, not because they want them to push separation).
Quebecors most certainly are Canadian, and hold more of a claim to the nationality of Canadians than much of Canada (the beginnings of this country are Upper and Lower Canada. Don't let an Albertan get up in arms by that description, given that Alberta was settled and developed largely by Ontarians), and it disturbs me to see you say that they aren't Canadian.
They carry a Canadian passport. They die for this country. They are as Canadian as you can get.
Of course there are the douche-bags that everyone would like to see kicked into the ocean, such as the other wanker that claimed that English Canada wants to see French Canadian culture wiped out. What a load of horse shit, and it can only come from that vitriolic, insular moron that has never ventured outside of his tiny rural Quebec village. Remarkably the cultural center of Quebec, Montreal, is very pro-federal.
Um, no, a cyclist or motorist has right of way over a car trying to turn in front of him. I don't see where passing comes into this.
It's plainly evident where it comes into it - the only way the car would turn into the cyclist is if the cyclist was overtaking the car, or "passing on the right" as it is commonly known. If a car wants to turn right and is in the rightmost car lane, and if it is one iota ahead of the cyclist, it has the right of way - turning or not.
Actually at least where I live, a bicyclist who isn't turning and is in the lane of traffic in the right median/gutter has the right of way at an intersection versus a car immediately to their left who wants to turn.
Out of curiousity - where do you live? In Canada, and most of North America for that matter, it is illegal to pass on the right (I was actually fined for this once), and passing on the right most certainly doesn't have legal priority over turning cars. You do say "immediately to the left", however that sounds like a pretty ambiguous claim that cyclists use to justify breaking the law.
I suspect the coding effort in IE is about 3% of that invested in XP and Vista. Where does he get the $billions cost from? A web browser is a biggish program, but many lone hackers have written one in under one person/year.
Not only was the IE team small to begin with, but it was essentially disbanded for half-a-decade (with a couple of maintenance programmers left to do security patches). On top of that, the development in IE has been leveraged in numerous other Microsoft products, from Microsoft Money to Outlook. If the small IE team didn't do their work, those other teams would have had to do it themselves.
In any case, perhaps Dvorak is speaking more of the legal and reputational costs of Internet Explorer. That single patent issue cost $500 million, the DOJ action surely costed hundreds of millions, their reputation and goodwill took significant damage, and so on.
Real estate agents are not taking home $20,000 on the sale of one house. They get a small fraction of the commission.
I was being facetious, however sure an agent could make that much -- sell a multimillion dollar home. It was just an arbitrary number.
Most real estate agents are lucky to make that in a whole year if they only work normal office hours.
Do you live in the sticks or something? I live in a fairly affluent suburb of Toronto, where the very active market sees houses going for $350,000 to $650,000 regularly. Most agents are doing very, very well, here. The idea of them doing it for less than $20K is laughable.
Geesh, I hardly wanted so much focus on real estate agents. Instead lets say I'm talking about the proud owner of the hardware shop, who knows every product that he carries inside and out.
They go into real estate because it's easy money
People like to say this, yet it's circular reasoning -- it's easy money, therefore lots of people go into it, therefore there's lots of competition, therefore the less motivated/capable get turfed out. Real estate, because it's "easy money", is hard money, and it's an enormously competitive field.
It doesn't take much intelligence, motivation, or capability to hawk houses.
I would imagine that it takes enormous motivation to hawk houses - I wouldn't have the motivation to lead hundreds of probably-not-going-to-buy people through properties, for instance, or to endlessly track down leads. Regarding capability or intelligence, again that comes back to the accessibility of the market, which leads to competition and the "best" surviving.
Yeah, selling houses is easy. So is brain surgery. Everything is easy when you're on the outside looking in, imagining how easy it really is.
I heard one guy trying to sell a warranty on a router, saying that's he's had 3 break down in the last year and a half, and that the warranty would be a really good idea. When in reality I don't think I've ever heard of a router failing. I really wanted to tell them that he was lying, but in the end didn't. I'm not one to confront people.
I'm normally quite non-confrontational, but I just found it too funny when one salesperson was trying to push an extended warranty on a TV I just told them I wanted. Basically they were using the same line, basically representing the product as garbage that breaks down all the time, thus making the extended warranty a necessary thing. I replied that maybe I wasn't interested if the products they were selling was such junk. It was remarkable seeing the story change, and it demonstrated that it was, of course, just blatant lying to try to sell an extended warranty.
I don't think Best Buy salespeople work on commission... Am I wrong?
Here in Canada, Best Buy bought the native electronics retailer, The Future Shop. In their ads they "compete" with each other, with Best Buy pushing "non-commissioned sales people". The Future Shop remains under a commission structure.
Of course where there aren't commissions, there are virtaully always quotas and competitions for sales. The downside of commissions, but without the annoyance of having to pay the salespeople extra.
Speaking as techsupport in the realestate industry I can say with confidence you are SO wrong. The 80/20 rule applies there as it does anywhere else, and the lure of easy money brings alot of unqualified people.
You certainly have more experience in that industry, but I brought up that example only because I've had nothing but great luck with real estate agents -- people who knew everything about their city, could properly interpret my needs and correlate them with available homes, who could offer suggestions on the homes, and who confidently and knowledgeably dealt with the legal and regulatory issues. My experience doesn't portend to it being universal, however I contrast it to other industries where the "salespeople" know less than I do about the products in question, and whose goal seems to swoop in once I make a decision to get their name on the bill.
Electronic products are generally more complex than others, so that compounds the problem.
Right on the money.
In many of the other low paying sales jobs, the help is there basically to carry the goods, and to look in the back (and often to make sure you aren't stealing anything, which is humorous given that the overwhelming majority of "inventory shrinkage" is due to employees), and their help is usually limited to subjective opinions (e.g. "Oh yeah! That color is great!").
In electronics there is so much to know, and the market changes so quickly, that the hired help really needs to know what they're talking about to be of any use. Sadly the overwhelming majority don't know what they're talking about, which is unsurprizing given how unrewarding the position is for them.
Um- this sounds like buying most things, from washing machines to cars. Salespeople that aren't knowledgable? No way! You need to research things yourself....
Salespeople in many industries are very knowledgable, and are actually capable of listening to your needs and making informed, educated choices to guide you to the right purchase. The primary problem with electronics, however, is that many of the shops they visited pay their employees close to minimum wage, possibly with a marginal commission enticement. Given that, who do you think will fill those roles? I don't intend to demean workers at those shops, but it's inevitable: You're not finding the brightest stars of the tech world toiling away, with terrible hours, for $8 an hour at the local Best Buy.
Compare this to real estate where an agent might make $20,000+ on the sale of a single home. While there are exceptions, the financial draw does entice more intelligent, more motivated, more capable individuals. The same can be said for many other sales industries where representatives can actually make enough to earn a decent living, and to credibly call it a real career.
I would hope before calling the police you had the courtesy of asking you neighbor to be more quite/considerate of your needs, etc.
Do you think his neighbour was unaware that their actions were impeding on the lives of others? Asswipes do what they do largely because they know that most people are cowering in their corners, afraid of being titled a "busybody" (a term that usually means prying/intrusive people. What we're talking about are people dealing with intrusive people) or a snitch, and that most people are afraid of conflict.
IMO if someone goes around turning people in for stupid things they are total scum of the earth
"Stupid things" are relative, and selfish, self-centered people of course believe that everything they do is harmless. A shopping plaza near here endlessly has major traffic problems -- not because it can't handle the volume, but because lazy, selfish, douche-bags park their cars right on the store fronts to save themselves a walk. The parking enforcement should be equipped with hammers to smash their windshields and to give them a $2000 fine, because it's that sort of selfish, self-centered, costs-everyone-else actions that lead to people hating one another. Follow the god damn rules.
I think the only time one should report people
Give me a break. Do you live in Soviet Russia or something? Are you talking about reporting people to the Nazis or something?
I live in a city with some pretty basic laws and regulations -- unless you're a complete and utter twat, there is absolutely no problem following them. These rules are to ensure that people live not only for themselves, but with their neighbours in mind as well. It would be a better world if every asswipe that thinks the rules only apply to others were immediately and harshly dealt with.
Those CRT pixels are far smaller than any LCD pixel at the moment, and not one single LCD can come close to the quality of a CRT as far as image sharpness is concerned.
LCDs have perfect display sharpness - each pixel is a unique, atomic element. LCDs as a technology are most certainly superior to CRTs from a image definition perspective, and as the GP mentioned, overdriving your monitor at a resolution higher than the screen (or underdriving, for that matter) basically means it's interpolating.
thanks to Microsoft's ClearType technology
Turn off ClearType, perhaps? You know it is configurable, right? ClearType intentionally smooths edges to simulate a higher resolution, but of course it's sacrificing sharpness a bit. That has absolutely nothing to do with LCD versus CRT.
I may be wrong here, but I the thing that makes this asyncronous is the XMLHttpRequest object, which needs to have the returning data be well-formed XML.
You are right that the object used is XMLHttpRequest. It does not, however, require grabbed data to be in XML format, and it's actually a quirk of development that HTTP get functionality even exists within its namespace.
The reality is that the majority of so-called AJAX implementations don't use XML in any way, apart from the irrelevant naming of the object that does the GET.
But don't most types of cases like these get thrown out? I was of the understanding that if a patent holder knows that their patent is being infringed on, they only have a limited amount of time to sue the infringer. Waiting for a long time wouldn't fly in court, would it?
That's a common misconception, and it comes about because, I believe, it's somewhat true for copyright/trademark issues. e.g. You can't ignore trademark infringement for a number of years, and then suddenly decide to clamp down -- your precedent guides future action (which is why big corporations send threatening letters to seemingly innocent little guys). With patents you can sit and wait until someone has made billions, and then spring out and claim a portion of all past sales. The onus is supposedly on the product maker to ensure that there are no patents that they are violating.
So comcast isn't overlaying all those comcast adds and local adds on my national cable?
No, they aren't. Your local NBC/ABC/CBS affiliate is, or the source network is when they provide specific feeds for specific areas. Comcast pays NBC/CBS/ABC/etc. just like everyone else to get their ads on their.
Sure. But Microsoft Patents are defensive patents.
Defensive patents one day. Offensive patents the next. Microsoft doesn't bother enforcing their patent portfolio simply because they are making billions on software, so it isn't worth the effort (or badwill they would gain). If, however, revenue started heading downwards, they could very well start diving through the patents, looking for companies to extort. Didn't Ballmer recently make some noise about Linux, codingly threatening it on the patent front?
Many of the ridiculous patents used to blackmail megacorporations started life as a "defensive" patent of a small inventor or firm. Eventually they close up shop or give up on their primary business, it's acquired through bankruptcy litigation or acquisitions, and someone else turns it around to make some money.
Whats the chance that they'll make more money on the advertising and just give the game away?
Most high circulation magazines, and even newspapers, actually make very little money by their subscription fees, and instead rely largely upon advertisers as their business model.
Why do they charge a subscription fee, then? They charge because it gives advertisers faith that the paying customer base actually wants, and probably utilizes, the magazine, and probably assigns it some value. Thus the advertisers pay more to be in a pay product, even if the circulation would be much higher if they gave it away for free.
...about the same chance that cable companies would have made cable free once they accepted advertising on almost all of their channels. Why replace one revenue stream with another if you can keep both?
The cable company neither creates the content, or embeds the advertisements. Both of those are by the source originator. Companies like ABC, NBC, CBS, and so on that exist 100% by advertiser support. They existed actually before cable companies.
Cable companies thus had to find a different revenue stream. If they were allowed to overlay their own ads, I'm sure you would see free cable.
Or idiot VC's who give millions to people with essentially ZERO business plan.
How in the world is this nonsense "insightful"? This is the sort of selfish worldview that makes Slashdot look like it's inhabited by a bunch of teenagers. Just take/do what you want, and when called on it declare that the victim "has no business plan". Rinse and repeat.
LiveJournal's business plan is no less credible than Google, CBS, the Olympics, or the NFL. They exist largely on the backs of advertisers, and they do what they can to protect that revenue source. It doesn't matter if you have some simplistic world view where only chickens and wheat can be exchanged, however back here in the real world it really isn't that complex.
I've paid my ISP for my access. It isn't your bandwidth
Are you kidding? So if the stolen cigarettes are in your pocket, that's fair because it's your coat?
I loathe ads, they get blocked.
How about trying this - the next time you're browsing the web, when the little Adblock status bar icon indicates that ads have been blocked, leave the site. Feel free to make your opinion known with your feet. Don't imagine that you have some moral right to take what you want in whatever way you want.
Slashdot Mirror
Read about how england tried to destroy the french after the colonial wars were over
So you traced your family tree back to some English/French battlefield, and you angrily lick your woulds?
Give me a break. What a bunch of racist, isolationist bullshit. The core argument of many extreme separationists sounds like something coming straight out of the mouth of Slobodan Milosovic. It is really eerie, and it's a good thing there are so many intelligent, rational, travelled, worldly individuals to balance things out in Quebec (it tends to be that the more urban a center is, the less likely it is to clutch onto illusions that separation will magically defend against a world of English).
Here I am, sitting in a suburb of the evil Toronto, an X generation Canadian (as far back as I know). Yet way back my ancestry is Scottish/Irish, with a little Native Canadian Cree Indian for good measure. None of that defines a single iota of my existence. I'm not speaking Celtic or giving the finger to the monarchy or making land claims.
God I hate when the Canadian separation topic comes up on here, but alas.
Quebec is it's own special little place in the world, they speak neither 'french' nor are they Canadian.
Many of the members of our armed forces hail from Quebec, and our federal politics, as you mentioned, has a hearty contingent of Quebecors (many who have nothing to do with the separation party. Those who do come from the separation party really were elected on the platform of putting Quebec first -- they're there because Quebecors want their interests pushed, not because they want them to push separation).
Quebecors most certainly are Canadian, and hold more of a claim to the nationality of Canadians than much of Canada (the beginnings of this country are Upper and Lower Canada. Don't let an Albertan get up in arms by that description, given that Alberta was settled and developed largely by Ontarians), and it disturbs me to see you say that they aren't Canadian.
They carry a Canadian passport. They die for this country. They are as Canadian as you can get.
Of course there are the douche-bags that everyone would like to see kicked into the ocean, such as the other wanker that claimed that English Canada wants to see French Canadian culture wiped out. What a load of horse shit, and it can only come from that vitriolic, insular moron that has never ventured outside of his tiny rural Quebec village. Remarkably the cultural center of Quebec, Montreal, is very pro-federal.
I also wonder how error prone they'll be as there were some reliability problems with CD/DVD combo drives.
?
Is there a DVD player in the world that can't read CD, now or ever? What reliability problem has there ever been with that?
Um, no, a cyclist or motorist has right of way over a car trying to turn in front of him. I don't see where passing comes into this.
It's plainly evident where it comes into it - the only way the car would turn into the cyclist is if the cyclist was overtaking the car, or "passing on the right" as it is commonly known. If a car wants to turn right and is in the rightmost car lane, and if it is one iota ahead of the cyclist, it has the right of way - turning or not.
Actually at least where I live, a bicyclist who isn't turning and is in the lane of traffic in the right median/gutter has the right of way at an intersection versus a car immediately to their left who wants to turn.
Out of curiousity - where do you live? In Canada, and most of North America for that matter, it is illegal to pass on the right (I was actually fined for this once), and passing on the right most certainly doesn't have legal priority over turning cars. You do say "immediately to the left", however that sounds like a pretty ambiguous claim that cyclists use to justify breaking the law.
I suspect the coding effort in IE is about 3% of that invested in XP and Vista. Where does he get the $billions cost from? A web browser is a biggish program, but many lone hackers have written one in under one person/year.
Not only was the IE team small to begin with, but it was essentially disbanded for half-a-decade (with a couple of maintenance programmers left to do security patches). On top of that, the development in IE has been leveraged in numerous other Microsoft products, from Microsoft Money to Outlook. If the small IE team didn't do their work, those other teams would have had to do it themselves.
In any case, perhaps Dvorak is speaking more of the legal and reputational costs of Internet Explorer. That single patent issue cost $500 million, the DOJ action surely costed hundreds of millions, their reputation and goodwill took significant damage, and so on.
Real estate agents are not taking home $20,000 on the sale of one house. They get a small fraction of the commission.
I was being facetious, however sure an agent could make that much -- sell a multimillion dollar home. It was just an arbitrary number.
Most real estate agents are lucky to make that in a whole year if they only work normal office hours.
Do you live in the sticks or something? I live in a fairly affluent suburb of Toronto, where the very active market sees houses going for $350,000 to $650,000 regularly. Most agents are doing very, very well, here. The idea of them doing it for less than $20K is laughable.
Geesh, I hardly wanted so much focus on real estate agents. Instead lets say I'm talking about the proud owner of the hardware shop, who knows every product that he carries inside and out.
They go into real estate because it's easy money
People like to say this, yet it's circular reasoning -- it's easy money, therefore lots of people go into it, therefore there's lots of competition, therefore the less motivated/capable get turfed out. Real estate, because it's "easy money", is hard money, and it's an enormously competitive field.
It doesn't take much intelligence, motivation, or capability to hawk houses.
I would imagine that it takes enormous motivation to hawk houses - I wouldn't have the motivation to lead hundreds of probably-not-going-to-buy people through properties, for instance, or to endlessly track down leads. Regarding capability or intelligence, again that comes back to the accessibility of the market, which leads to competition and the "best" surviving.
Yeah, selling houses is easy. So is brain surgery. Everything is easy when you're on the outside looking in, imagining how easy it really is.
I heard one guy trying to sell a warranty on a router, saying that's he's had 3 break down in the last year and a half, and that the warranty would be a really good idea. When in reality I don't think I've ever heard of a router failing. I really wanted to tell them that he was lying, but in the end didn't. I'm not one to confront people.
I'm normally quite non-confrontational, but I just found it too funny when one salesperson was trying to push an extended warranty on a TV I just told them I wanted. Basically they were using the same line, basically representing the product as garbage that breaks down all the time, thus making the extended warranty a necessary thing. I replied that maybe I wasn't interested if the products they were selling was such junk. It was remarkable seeing the story change, and it demonstrated that it was, of course, just blatant lying to try to sell an extended warranty.
I don't think Best Buy salespeople work on commission... Am I wrong?
Here in Canada, Best Buy bought the native electronics retailer, The Future Shop. In their ads they "compete" with each other, with Best Buy pushing "non-commissioned sales people". The Future Shop remains under a commission structure.
Of course where there aren't commissions, there are virtaully always quotas and competitions for sales. The downside of commissions, but without the annoyance of having to pay the salespeople extra.
Speaking as techsupport in the realestate industry I can say with confidence you are SO wrong. The 80/20 rule applies there as it does anywhere else, and the lure of easy money brings alot of unqualified people.
You certainly have more experience in that industry, but I brought up that example only because I've had nothing but great luck with real estate agents -- people who knew everything about their city, could properly interpret my needs and correlate them with available homes, who could offer suggestions on the homes, and who confidently and knowledgeably dealt with the legal and regulatory issues. My experience doesn't portend to it being universal, however I contrast it to other industries where the "salespeople" know less than I do about the products in question, and whose goal seems to swoop in once I make a decision to get their name on the bill.
Electronic products are generally more complex than others, so that compounds the problem.
Right on the money.
In many of the other low paying sales jobs, the help is there basically to carry the goods, and to look in the back (and often to make sure you aren't stealing anything, which is humorous given that the overwhelming majority of "inventory shrinkage" is due to employees), and their help is usually limited to subjective opinions (e.g. "Oh yeah! That color is great!").
In electronics there is so much to know, and the market changes so quickly, that the hired help really needs to know what they're talking about to be of any use. Sadly the overwhelming majority don't know what they're talking about, which is unsurprizing given how unrewarding the position is for them.
Um- this sounds like buying most things, from washing machines to cars. Salespeople that aren't knowledgable? No way! You need to research things yourself....
Salespeople in many industries are very knowledgable, and are actually capable of listening to your needs and making informed, educated choices to guide you to the right purchase. The primary problem with electronics, however, is that many of the shops they visited pay their employees close to minimum wage, possibly with a marginal commission enticement. Given that, who do you think will fill those roles? I don't intend to demean workers at those shops, but it's inevitable: You're not finding the brightest stars of the tech world toiling away, with terrible hours, for $8 an hour at the local Best Buy.
Compare this to real estate where an agent might make $20,000+ on the sale of a single home. While there are exceptions, the financial draw does entice more intelligent, more motivated, more capable individuals. The same can be said for many other sales industries where representatives can actually make enough to earn a decent living, and to credibly call it a real career.
I would hope before calling the police you had the courtesy of asking you neighbor to be more quite/considerate of your needs, etc.
Do you think his neighbour was unaware that their actions were impeding on the lives of others? Asswipes do what they do largely because they know that most people are cowering in their corners, afraid of being titled a "busybody" (a term that usually means prying/intrusive people. What we're talking about are people dealing with intrusive people) or a snitch, and that most people are afraid of conflict.
IMO if someone goes around turning people in for stupid things they are total scum of the earth
"Stupid things" are relative, and selfish, self-centered people of course believe that everything they do is harmless. A shopping plaza near here endlessly has major traffic problems -- not because it can't handle the volume, but because lazy, selfish, douche-bags park their cars right on the store fronts to save themselves a walk. The parking enforcement should be equipped with hammers to smash their windshields and to give them a $2000 fine, because it's that sort of selfish, self-centered, costs-everyone-else actions that lead to people hating one another. Follow the god damn rules.
I think the only time one should report people
Give me a break. Do you live in Soviet Russia or something? Are you talking about reporting people to the Nazis or something?
I live in a city with some pretty basic laws and regulations -- unless you're a complete and utter twat, there is absolutely no problem following them. These rules are to ensure that people live not only for themselves, but with their neighbours in mind as well. It would be a better world if every asswipe that thinks the rules only apply to others were immediately and harshly dealt with.
Those CRT pixels are far smaller than any LCD pixel at the moment, and not one single LCD can come close to the quality of a CRT as far as image sharpness is concerned.
LCDs have perfect display sharpness - each pixel is a unique, atomic element. LCDs as a technology are most certainly superior to CRTs from a image definition perspective, and as the GP mentioned, overdriving your monitor at a resolution higher than the screen (or underdriving, for that matter) basically means it's interpolating.
thanks to Microsoft's ClearType technology
Turn off ClearType, perhaps? You know it is configurable, right? ClearType intentionally smooths edges to simulate a higher resolution, but of course it's sacrificing sharpness a bit. That has absolutely nothing to do with LCD versus CRT.
2001 called -- they want their stupid try-for-first-post Slashdot joke back.
I may be wrong here, but I the thing that makes this asyncronous is the XMLHttpRequest object, which needs to have the returning data be well-formed XML.
You are right that the object used is XMLHttpRequest. It does not, however, require grabbed data to be in XML format, and it's actually a quirk of development that HTTP get functionality even exists within its namespace.
The reality is that the majority of so-called AJAX implementations don't use XML in any way, apart from the irrelevant naming of the object that does the GET.
But don't most types of cases like these get thrown out? I was of the understanding that if a patent holder knows that their patent is being infringed on, they only have a limited amount of time to sue the infringer. Waiting for a long time wouldn't fly in court, would it?
That's a common misconception, and it comes about because, I believe, it's somewhat true for copyright/trademark issues. e.g. You can't ignore trademark infringement for a number of years, and then suddenly decide to clamp down -- your precedent guides future action (which is why big corporations send threatening letters to seemingly innocent little guys). With patents you can sit and wait until someone has made billions, and then spring out and claim a portion of all past sales. The onus is supposedly on the product maker to ensure that there are no patents that they are violating.
So comcast isn't overlaying all those comcast adds and local adds on my national cable?
No, they aren't. Your local NBC/ABC/CBS affiliate is, or the source network is when they provide specific feeds for specific areas. Comcast pays NBC/CBS/ABC/etc. just like everyone else to get their ads on their.
Sure. But Microsoft Patents are defensive patents.
Defensive patents one day. Offensive patents the next. Microsoft doesn't bother enforcing their patent portfolio simply because they are making billions on software, so it isn't worth the effort (or badwill they would gain). If, however, revenue started heading downwards, they could very well start diving through the patents, looking for companies to extort. Didn't Ballmer recently make some noise about Linux, codingly threatening it on the patent front?
Many of the ridiculous patents used to blackmail megacorporations started life as a "defensive" patent of a small inventor or firm. Eventually they close up shop or give up on their primary business, it's acquired through bankruptcy litigation or acquisitions, and someone else turns it around to make some money.
Whats the chance that they'll make more money on the advertising and just give the game away?
Most high circulation magazines, and even newspapers, actually make very little money by their subscription fees, and instead rely largely upon advertisers as their business model.
Why do they charge a subscription fee, then? They charge because it gives advertisers faith that the paying customer base actually wants, and probably utilizes, the magazine, and probably assigns it some value. Thus the advertisers pay more to be in a pay product, even if the circulation would be much higher if they gave it away for free.
...about the same chance that cable companies would have made cable free once they accepted advertising on almost all of their channels. Why replace one revenue stream with another if you can keep both?
The cable company neither creates the content, or embeds the advertisements. Both of those are by the source originator. Companies like ABC, NBC, CBS, and so on that exist 100% by advertiser support. They existed actually before cable companies.
Cable companies thus had to find a different revenue stream. If they were allowed to overlay their own ads, I'm sure you would see free cable.
Is it possible to design an easy to use, accessible, and reliable application that has no security holes?
Yes.
Or idiot VC's who give millions to people with essentially ZERO business plan.
How in the world is this nonsense "insightful"? This is the sort of selfish worldview that makes Slashdot look like it's inhabited by a bunch of teenagers. Just take/do what you want, and when called on it declare that the victim "has no business plan". Rinse and repeat.
LiveJournal's business plan is no less credible than Google, CBS, the Olympics, or the NFL. They exist largely on the backs of advertisers, and they do what they can to protect that revenue source. It doesn't matter if you have some simplistic world view where only chickens and wheat can be exchanged, however back here in the real world it really isn't that complex.
I've paid my ISP for my access. It isn't your bandwidth
Are you kidding? So if the stolen cigarettes are in your pocket, that's fair because it's your coat?
I loathe ads, they get blocked.
How about trying this - the next time you're browsing the web, when the little Adblock status bar icon indicates that ads have been blocked, leave the site. Feel free to make your opinion known with your feet. Don't imagine that you have some moral right to take what you want in whatever way you want.