if Google profits or not, does not mean it costs me anything.
Yet it supports the point the guy you originally responded to was making.
As far as Adds go, they exist all over...
Not everywhere. That's why I suggested you look at how Wikipedia gives you results.
Having to look at an Add does not equal having to pay for something.
'Fraid it does. Whether you pay with cash or your pay with time, it's costing you. It affects what they send. It affects what you get. It affects how they conduct themselves. Google's search results, for example, would be an entirely different entity if they were not a for-profit company.
Anyway, I'm not saying it's bad. It is, however, important to the context in which this discussion was established.
Funny, I checked my wallet and bank account and no where do I see those adds taking money out. Hmm, maybe the advertisers pay for those adds so that I can use those services for free. I'll have to call them and verify this outlandish claim.
Ads are taking up your time, bandwidth, resources etc. Also, Google is profiting from your use of its products. To put it another way: Remove the ads and you have a faster/more streamlined experience. Compare a Google search to a Wikipedia search, for example.
It's kind of interesting, how the Slashdot crowd has really nothing meaningful to comment on this possible and according to some scientists "overdue" event.
Yeah, this is a bit like driving your car off of a mile high cliff and saying that the restraint system is the reason you died... yeah... you know... that or the impact and the ensuing fireball.
You drove your car off a cliff. Moments before your car hit the ground, I plugged you right between the eyes with a sniper rifle. Your car hits the ground and creates a dramatic fireball. How did you die?
Nar, you're right. I was missing one of the steps and misunderstood. I'm so used to not having to stop at the CA or WA borders it never occured to me they'd just do a check. (Although that'd be VERY obnoxious in Portland considering they're on the state line.)
Is not the restraint systems. No restraint system could have saved them. The fact that their vehicle was disintegrating from burning up might have something to do with it.
Ack!! Not everybody read the article first. Use the spoilers tag!!
Why can't Oregon simply read the odometer when they inspect the car?
For the simple reason that I'm not paying them taxes on my 2,000 mile trip to southern California and back. Besides that, many people in Portland trek on up to Washington for a variety of reasons.
The problem was that MS used anti-competitive measures to hurt Netscape's market share and promote I.E.
That rationale came after the BSOD-fueled MS hatred.
I generally see about a ratio of 4 anti-fanboi posts to 1 Apple fanboi post when Apple comes up in discussion.
It has definitely changed quite a bit this year. Go back a couple of years and any negative remark about Apple would earn you a lesson. From what I've observed, this goes in cycles. Early on Slashdot was very anti-Microsoft. Stories would be twisted (misleading headlines, for example...) to get the pitchforks a'wavin against MS. It was all fun for a while, but Windows 2000 came out and over time people started to adopt it. With the BSOD virtually extinct and the main stability issues addressed, the tired jokes were getting... old. Eventually these people earned mod-points and general opinions on Slashdot started to balance a bit. The main difference? Back then you could say that Windows didn't support color graphics and get modded as informative for it. After the backlash you had to be a lot more careful about what claims you made.
So what does this have to do with Apple? Right about the time the iPod came out, Apple was pretty highly regarded around here. I might have my timing wrong. Maybe it was OSX running on BSD. Eh, I dunno, I didn't pay that much attention to the Apple stories. Any criticism would land you in trouble. I remember a story where a dude stuffed a PC into an iMac case. I made a joke like "It'll be the first time a Mac ever saw GTA!" and.. blammo, troll. (As I recall, the moderation went back up after I explained it was a joke.) Apple was riding high up until the iPhone came out. I'm not sure what precisely happened here. I remember the iPhone was actually well receieved, but maybe it was a case of too many silly iPhone stories soured people. (I wouldn't rule out a bit of envy, too. I was guilty of this. I was stuck in a contract, couldn't get one, so I'd crack jokes at its expense.) I dunno, I think the real turning point was the people waiting in line at that store for no apparent reason close to the launch of the iPhone 3G. Turns out they had a reason for being there, but by the time that was discovered a good time had already been had at their expense. So more anti-iPhone stuff. Anti-iPhone leads to anti-Mac, and so on. (Not that the Air was an underrated machine...) Well that's died down and we're starting to see s'more balance.
A couple of years ago I predicted that 2007 would be the year Google became Slashdot's villain. Well, that hasn't happened yet, but I'm starting to see signs of it. Then after the hate comes out, people will step up and even things out, then on to the next big bad guy.
I personally would like to see what effect removing Slashdot's moderation system would have on fanboyism.
why do I have to buy my house before I live in it?
Houses have inspections, guarantees, and so on. Video games have a no-returns policy.
Why do I have to buy my laptop before I get to take it home and play games on it
Defective laptop? Take it back. Defective game? Pick another game on store credit.
Why did I have to pay for my holiday before I got on the plane?
Mainly because, unlike a PC game, the odds of the plane landing somewhere completely unexpected are actually pretty low.
WTF is wrong with people that they think they have a RIGHT to enjoy other peoples work for free, and then consider if they feel generous enough, they might flip them a few cents later.
You game developers shoveled a bunch of crap on people and now they're cautious about it. Too many paid-for reviews, misleading marketing, necessary patches, ridiculous control schemes, and Daikatanas have made people stop to think. You made the right move by advertising that you're not pulling their crap. Your lack of understanding over people's values and expectations with PC games is disheartening.
Is that how YOU get paid?
Yes, actually. I get paid to meet requirements. If I show up to work and do nothing, I don't get paid. If I show up to work, but I do my job, then I get paid for it. That's me fulfilling a requirement. You're selling entertainment. That's the requirement you have to fulfill. It's not really any different except that your situation is more complex. Entertaining the public is harder than my job. That didn't suddenly change, though. You want to get paid, that's fine, I have software on the market, too. I get that. Tossing aside people's concerns, though, that I don't get. I really have trouble believing you weren't a PC gamer before selling your own games.
As a game developer that does not pull any of that shit, if you have the attitude that it means you should pirate ALL games from ALL developers, where is my incentive to try and meet pirates half way?
If what you want from pirates is their money, why wouldn't you listen to them?
If pirates treat all developers as evil corporate scum, why are they then surprised that developers adopt the same attitude in reverse?
Why do your non-pirate paying customers have to be punished for it?
If people are foolish to not pirate, them I'm foolish to keep making games for the PC
Why isn't it foolish to sell products that have defects for paying customers but not for the ones that haven't paid?
As I understand, 0-day piracy kills the sales and without any protection the game is pirated straight to hell.
Correction: They think 0-day piracy kills sales so they punish the legit customers. In actuality, this has never happened. Spore, for example, had pirated copies out before the game was available on shelves and still sold over 2 million copies. You'd think a game with that level of publicity and anger over its copy restriction scheme would have bombed. But, gee, apparently not everybody is living up to the stereotype.
As typical cat&mouse game, the copy protections have gotten heavier when the cracks have gotten better. As a side effect the buyers get the criminal treatment.
There is nothing right about that.
a.) The buyers have paid for it. They should get the best product, not the worst.
b.) The worse the restrictions get, the less comfrotable people will be buying a PC game before researching it. That removes it from being an impulse buy. Even if they managed to capture a few sales they wouldn't have before, they're teaching their future customers what caveat emptor means.
c.) They're feeding the need for pirated software to exist. All this because they think people will go way out of their way to get something for free. (Amusingly a figurehead for the RIAA claimed that they couldn't compete with 'free'. I wonder if that guy has an iTunes account today.)
d.) Strengthening the copy restrictions won't improve the damaged faith people have with PC Game companies. Again, they're feeding piracy.
This whole 'cat and mouse' game does not need to take place. Even if it did, even a little kid with a lemonade stand would know that you make less money when you piss off your customers.
So... stop trying to get money from people who just don't value your product if it isn't free, because it can't be done. You can piss them off though, and that can hurt your business.
Heh yeah. Gotta love their logic: "We'll fight piracy by strengthening the 'copy protection' and increasing the value of pirated copies!"
If we have proof that there were no ships there at the time, then ships were not the cause. If the only remaining explanation is sabotage, then it was sabotage.
That line of reasoning only works if you eliminate all but one possibility.
Without Majel Barrett, there can never be another Star Trek movie or show. It is forbidden.
The Star Trek exhibit at the Queen Mary had a shuttle ride thing, sorta like a watered-down Star Tours. If I recall, it used the voice from the Cardassian computers in DS9. It ground my teeth from a continuity point of view, but the chick doing that voice doesn't do a bad job in a more general sense.
We're not talking about iTunes here, we're talking about the iPod. iTunes' innovation does not make the iPod innovative or special in the least.
Since they go hand in hand, yes they do. It's not the specs it has, it's the problem it solves. Without understanding that distinction, the appeal of any of Apple's products will always escape you. (Same is true for Open Source, actually.)
Fun fact: Not only does the Macbook Pro run Windows, Apple went way out of their way to make sure it'd work. BootCamp aside, the OSX disc has all the drivers for all the hardware (except the iSight, unless I missed something....) ready to go. Not only do the drivers work, but all the buttons that do things like eject the disc and play with the volume are configured and they even draw the same icon on the screen that the do in OSX. (I'm not saying 'pretty' is a benefit here, but rather that they actually put the effort to make that work when they could have just said "meh, Windows already has a crummy way to show that.")
I'd avoid registerring an account if I were you. At least until you start knowing what you're talking about when you post.
Slashdot Mirror
if Google profits or not, does not mean it costs me anything.
Yet it supports the point the guy you originally responded to was making.
As far as Adds go, they exist all over...
Not everywhere. That's why I suggested you look at how Wikipedia gives you results.
Having to look at an Add does not equal having to pay for something.
'Fraid it does. Whether you pay with cash or your pay with time, it's costing you. It affects what they send. It affects what you get. It affects how they conduct themselves. Google's search results, for example, would be an entirely different entity if they were not a for-profit company.
Anyway, I'm not saying it's bad. It is, however, important to the context in which this discussion was established.
Funny, I checked my wallet and bank account and no where do I see those adds taking money out. Hmm, maybe the advertisers pay for those adds so that I can use those services for free. I'll have to call them and verify this outlandish claim.
Ads are taking up your time, bandwidth, resources etc. Also, Google is profiting from your use of its products. To put it another way: Remove the ads and you have a faster/more streamlined experience. Compare a Google search to a Wikipedia search, for example.
Google and its products are not free.
I remember the good old days, back when the trolls were original, interesting and wrote with decent prose.
Heh. Was that back when replies required you to pay a postage fee?
Hmm.. I use a fair amount of Google products and I cannot recall paying for one of them.
You cannot recall all the ads thrown up on the screen? You've been paying Google from the start.
Slashdot crowd (Score:3, Interesting)
It's kind of interesting, how the Slashdot crowd has really nothing meaningful to comment on this possible and according to some scientists "overdue" event.
I love sarcastic moderation.
What do you mean only? That's the price of a movie ticket, in a theater.
I haven't run across many movies I've enjoyed more than four episodes of the Office.
So that's what UID numbers are up to as of today...
Did you expect a 3 digit UID from somebody like him?
Yeah, this is a bit like driving your car off of a mile high cliff and saying that the restraint system is the reason you died... yeah... you know... that or the impact and the ensuing fireball.
You drove your car off a cliff. Moments before your car hit the ground, I plugged you right between the eyes with a sniper rifle. Your car hits the ground and creates a dramatic fireball. How did you die?
Nar, you're right. I was missing one of the steps and misunderstood. I'm so used to not having to stop at the CA or WA borders it never occured to me they'd just do a check. (Although that'd be VERY obnoxious in Portland considering they're on the state line.)
Is not the restraint systems. No restraint system could have saved them. The fact that their vehicle was disintegrating from burning up might have something to do with it.
Ack!! Not everybody read the article first. Use the spoilers tag!!
Why can't Oregon simply read the odometer when they inspect the car?
For the simple reason that I'm not paying them taxes on my 2,000 mile trip to southern California and back. Besides that, many people in Portland trek on up to Washington for a variety of reasons.
I own a DS and where do you set it to suspend to ram? every time I turn mine off it comes back to the main screen.
Instead of turning it off, close the shell. Note: This does NOT work on GBA games.
The problem was that MS used anti-competitive measures to hurt Netscape's market share and promote I.E.
That rationale came after the BSOD-fueled MS hatred.
I generally see about a ratio of 4 anti-fanboi posts to 1 Apple fanboi post when Apple comes up in discussion.
It has definitely changed quite a bit this year. Go back a couple of years and any negative remark about Apple would earn you a lesson. From what I've observed, this goes in cycles. Early on Slashdot was very anti-Microsoft. Stories would be twisted (misleading headlines, for example...) to get the pitchforks a'wavin against MS. It was all fun for a while, but Windows 2000 came out and over time people started to adopt it. With the BSOD virtually extinct and the main stability issues addressed, the tired jokes were getting... old. Eventually these people earned mod-points and general opinions on Slashdot started to balance a bit. The main difference? Back then you could say that Windows didn't support color graphics and get modded as informative for it. After the backlash you had to be a lot more careful about what claims you made.
So what does this have to do with Apple? Right about the time the iPod came out, Apple was pretty highly regarded around here. I might have my timing wrong. Maybe it was OSX running on BSD. Eh, I dunno, I didn't pay that much attention to the Apple stories. Any criticism would land you in trouble. I remember a story where a dude stuffed a PC into an iMac case. I made a joke like "It'll be the first time a Mac ever saw GTA!" and.. blammo, troll. (As I recall, the moderation went back up after I explained it was a joke.) Apple was riding high up until the iPhone came out. I'm not sure what precisely happened here. I remember the iPhone was actually well receieved, but maybe it was a case of too many silly iPhone stories soured people. (I wouldn't rule out a bit of envy, too. I was guilty of this. I was stuck in a contract, couldn't get one, so I'd crack jokes at its expense.) I dunno, I think the real turning point was the people waiting in line at that store for no apparent reason close to the launch of the iPhone 3G. Turns out they had a reason for being there, but by the time that was discovered a good time had already been had at their expense. So more anti-iPhone stuff. Anti-iPhone leads to anti-Mac, and so on. (Not that the Air was an underrated machine...) Well that's died down and we're starting to see s'more balance.
A couple of years ago I predicted that 2007 would be the year Google became Slashdot's villain. Well, that hasn't happened yet, but I'm starting to see signs of it. Then after the hate comes out, people will step up and even things out, then on to the next big bad guy.
I personally would like to see what effect removing Slashdot's moderation system would have on fanboyism.
Just sayin'
I think you mean "I am just saying that you are using that phrase incorrectly."
p.s. This is why we got beat up in high-school, why we don't have girlfriends, and why we're never invited to social functions.
why do I have to buy my house before I live in it?
Houses have inspections, guarantees, and so on. Video games have a no-returns policy.
Why do I have to buy my laptop before I get to take it home and play games on it
Defective laptop? Take it back. Defective game? Pick another game on store credit.
Why did I have to pay for my holiday before I got on the plane?
Mainly because, unlike a PC game, the odds of the plane landing somewhere completely unexpected are actually pretty low.
WTF is wrong with people that they think they have a RIGHT to enjoy other peoples work for free, and then consider if they feel generous enough, they might flip them a few cents later.
You game developers shoveled a bunch of crap on people and now they're cautious about it. Too many paid-for reviews, misleading marketing, necessary patches, ridiculous control schemes, and Daikatanas have made people stop to think. You made the right move by advertising that you're not pulling their crap. Your lack of understanding over people's values and expectations with PC games is disheartening.
Is that how YOU get paid?
Yes, actually. I get paid to meet requirements. If I show up to work and do nothing, I don't get paid. If I show up to work, but I do my job, then I get paid for it. That's me fulfilling a requirement. You're selling entertainment. That's the requirement you have to fulfill. It's not really any different except that your situation is more complex. Entertaining the public is harder than my job. That didn't suddenly change, though. You want to get paid, that's fine, I have software on the market, too. I get that. Tossing aside people's concerns, though, that I don't get. I really have trouble believing you weren't a PC gamer before selling your own games.
As a game developer that does not pull any of that shit, if you have the attitude that it means you should pirate ALL games from ALL developers, where is my incentive to try and meet pirates half way?
If what you want from pirates is their money, why wouldn't you listen to them?
If pirates treat all developers as evil corporate scum, why are they then surprised that developers adopt the same attitude in reverse?
Why do your non-pirate paying customers have to be punished for it?
If people are foolish to not pirate, them I'm foolish to keep making games for the PC
Why isn't it foolish to sell products that have defects for paying customers but not for the ones that haven't paid?
As I understand, 0-day piracy kills the sales and without any protection the game is pirated straight to hell.
Correction: They think 0-day piracy kills sales so they punish the legit customers. In actuality, this has never happened. Spore, for example, had pirated copies out before the game was available on shelves and still sold over 2 million copies. You'd think a game with that level of publicity and anger over its copy restriction scheme would have bombed. But, gee, apparently not everybody is living up to the stereotype.
As typical cat&mouse game, the copy protections have gotten heavier when the cracks have gotten better. As a side effect the buyers get the criminal treatment.
There is nothing right about that.
a.) The buyers have paid for it. They should get the best product, not the worst.
b.) The worse the restrictions get, the less comfrotable people will be buying a PC game before researching it. That removes it from being an impulse buy. Even if they managed to capture a few sales they wouldn't have before, they're teaching their future customers what caveat emptor means.
c.) They're feeding the need for pirated software to exist. All this because they think people will go way out of their way to get something for free. (Amusingly a figurehead for the RIAA claimed that they couldn't compete with 'free'. I wonder if that guy has an iTunes account today.)
d.) Strengthening the copy restrictions won't improve the damaged faith people have with PC Game companies. Again, they're feeding piracy.
This whole 'cat and mouse' game does not need to take place. Even if it did, even a little kid with a lemonade stand would know that you make less money when you piss off your customers.
So... stop trying to get money from people who just don't value your product if it isn't free, because it can't be done. You can piss them off though, and that can hurt your business.
Heh yeah. Gotta love their logic: "We'll fight piracy by strengthening the 'copy protection' and increasing the value of pirated copies!"
If we have proof that there were no ships there at the time, then ships were not the cause. If the only remaining explanation is sabotage, then it was sabotage.
That line of reasoning only works if you eliminate all but one possibility.
Also, Sherlock Holmes was a work of fiction. :P
Anyone up for a good car analogy?
It's like Michael Knight explaining respect for peoples' passing to KITT.
Why is it so sad? People die every day, most of which I've never heard of. Do you feel sad for every one of them?
No, he's showing respect for people that have touched his life.
Why do I feel like you're Data and I'm Riker? Dammit.
Without Majel Barrett, there can never be another Star Trek movie or show. It is forbidden.
The Star Trek exhibit at the Queen Mary had a shuttle ride thing, sorta like a watered-down Star Tours. If I recall, it used the voice from the Cardassian computers in DS9. It ground my teeth from a continuity point of view, but the chick doing that voice doesn't do a bad job in a more general sense.
holy crap! I am setting up a graphite memory chip manufacturing plant at home tonight. I just need to stop by staples and pick up some supplies !
Make sure to go to the right Staples. The article says you need 10 thick Adams to get a flash.
We're not talking about iTunes here, we're talking about the iPod. iTunes' innovation does not make the iPod innovative or special in the least.
Since they go hand in hand, yes they do. It's not the specs it has, it's the problem it solves. Without understanding that distinction, the appeal of any of Apple's products will always escape you. (Same is true for Open Source, actually.)
... as long as it's not Windows.
Fun fact: Not only does the Macbook Pro run Windows, Apple went way out of their way to make sure it'd work. BootCamp aside, the OSX disc has all the drivers for all the hardware (except the iSight, unless I missed something....) ready to go. Not only do the drivers work, but all the buttons that do things like eject the disc and play with the volume are configured and they even draw the same icon on the screen that the do in OSX. (I'm not saying 'pretty' is a benefit here, but rather that they actually put the effort to make that work when they could have just said "meh, Windows already has a crummy way to show that.")
I'd avoid registerring an account if I were you. At least until you start knowing what you're talking about when you post.