Google has a legal obligation to behave in a manner dictated to it by the voting shareholders. While this is usually a directive to make money, it could be other things. It just so happens that Page and Brin have 66.2 percent of the voting power. So they can actually do whatever they want to do. THEY are the final word on China or not, so you can point the finger directly at them.
Isn't boasting about being "too much of a libertarian" like boasting about being "too much of a bedwetter?"
always ask for a refund
on
DRM and Democracy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have never bought anything that contained DRM, but if I did accidentally buy something, I would simply demand a refund.
Anything with DRM should have a message on it similar to the "WARNING: SMOKING KILLS" warning. I don't want a small label I have to search for - it should be big, clear, and standardised. The exact same logo/warning message should appear on every product. Something like "Warning: This product uses Digital Rights/Restrictions Management" would do the job.
Anyway, if anyone accidentally buys a product with DRM, they should be entitled to a refund. It is for all intents and purposes a defect, if you thought the product you were buying was a movie/music that you could use however you like.
They've been screwing over their customers for 15 years. With stuff like the spying serial number, tpa, etc, they've had an attitude of buy what we tell you or get lost. Not to mention price manipulation. They hold back each new iteration until prices slack off on the current product. AMD beat them to the 1 GHz punch because intel was holding back their own 1GHz chip to squeeze more profit. After AMD beat them, they released theirs 2 days later.
Now that it's coming back to bite them on the ass, I think it's wonderful.
The real irony is that Craigslist tends to be, like Ebay (which was responsible for 3/4 of ALL internet fraud complaints), something you have to approach EXTREMELY carefully.
People on Craigslist tend to be really flaky- we're talking the stoned kind of flaky, or the "I'm going to try and cheat you because I think I'm clever" kind of flaky; I'm not sure which is worse. Then there are all the wierdos posting in the various personals section- if you want a great laugh (no matter your gender), read those sections; makes you think of someone walking into McDonalds with $2 and expecting a rare Filet Mignon with sauteed mushrooms. Or the ever popular "I'm hot. Send a picture. Sexiest one wins." I laughed for about 5 minutes so hard I couldn't breathe, and resolved never to look in w4m again because it was dangerous to my health, even if it was a fantastic laugh.
Top problem though, is that people are complete IDIOTS when it comes to listing their items. "Printer. Best offer." Inkjet? Laser? Dot matrix? Made this decade? God forbid they tell us what company made it. I also love it when useless, worthless stuff is offered up- like cheapo computer speakers. People, I'm all for the recycling bit, but take that shit to the RECYCLING CENTER, don't waste anyone's time putting it up for sale for $5. Round trip subway fare costs at least half that...
The hysterical bit is that Craiglist supposedly has an "advisory committee" that handles how the site is presented to users. When I complained that even basic instructions were never shown to users as part of the posting procedure and it was clear there was a problem, Craig just replied, "thanks, the committee will think about it".
Then there are the people who post the "free" iPod/plasma/whatever emails (which are usually flagged by the community)...the problem is that there's nothing to keep them from posting over and over, because (to my knowledge) there is no automatic blacklist after X number of posts flagged...so spamming is pretty easy.
Then there are the ripoffs. Go read your city's/sys/ for a few minutes, and see how many times you say "WHAT?!"...like people asking $500 for a Pentium 3 system. Go read/ele/ and see how many times you see "Theater Research" speakers being offered for $500; the more honest (or naive) ones admit to buying it from some guys in a white van...the others just think "oh well, I'll get some other sucker to buy 'em".
Classic example of the try-to-sucker-you-by-omission-and-feined-ignorance approach was a Phaser printer being offered for sale for a few hundred $ with no mention of WHY nobody uses wax printers anymore. In short- you MUST cover your ass like crazy. If it's too good to be true, it most certainly is someone trying to sucker you.
Typical, but when you consider it against Craig's motivations (community building and other crunchy-granola-ness), Craigslist has ultimately been a pretty spectacular failure. I used to report at least 5-6 posts a day to the abuse department for various reasons (all were accepted, and the abuse group IS very nice; they ALWAYS write you back! To the CL abuse staff, you have my sympathies and admiration), and I just got tired of it...it was like throwing a sandbag into a levee break and watching it disappear.
I also have a policy now, which I inform sellers of upfront. If the item is different from how it was represented in the post or follow-up emails, both of which I will have with me, I walk out the door- this is after several sellers presented something that was nothing like what they described (like a PC missing half its ram, being sold by a software programmer who played dumb. Riight).
Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?
on
Time-Tested Gaming
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The game is amazingly deep. There's just so much you can do in it. There are tons of easter-eggs buried in there and lots of references to other works of fiction
I'm sure others who have more knowledge in Nethack will provide more info. I myself am not an expert on the subject.
With AMD taking the performance lead now and Intel gearing up for getting the top performer position again, I think we are going to see nicer battles now, much nicer than the GHz ones with AMD now much better in its market position and its new fabs.
People have been waiting for Intel to destroy AMD with a better product ever since AMD came out with their Opterons, then their 'Venice' cores and then finally their 'X2' line of dual-core processors, all of which were much superior to the Intel chips. Intel already destroyed AMD a few years back when they released their Pentium 4 to compete with the original Athlon and everyone has expected the same thing again. That's probably why Dell has sat on the sidelines selling their aging, wimpy Celeron Ds and P4 systems at cheap prices.
Intel is a much bigger company, they have a lot more money, a lot of smart people, the nastiest, sleaziest marketers in the business, many more fabs, and great lawyers to fend off the AMD legal strikes too. The Intel 'Prescott' was supposed to do the job on AMD but it never came close. Now, though, the 'Conroe' looks like it is FINALLY the answer to AMDs stuff. Based on the benchmarks using Intel-supplied hardware and software, it looks like the 'Conroe' line of processors totally destroys the AMD FX-60 which is the fastest AMD processor sold today. Of course, you can't buy the 'Conroe' until September, 2006 but it will be worth the wait, based on the benchmarks anyway.
The only thing AMD has to offer is a little bit faster clock speed (aka FX62) and their upcoming AM2 socket systems which don't seem to do much of anything new other than allow DDR2 memory and a bigger cache. Looks like AMD is headed back to the bargain bin.
Hurting customers in more ways than one
on
Death By DMCA
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The DMCA hurts consumers in more than one way.
First, it hurts the end user or consumer by imposing government restrictions on how we use things that we "own". Or more to the point, we no longer own things that we buy.
It also hurts us that we don't see competition. This means higher prices, collusion, price gouging, and all the other nasties that come along with pseudo-monopolies.
We are further harmed by the lack of new jobs and opportunities. Real growth for our country is not in the 1000+ employee multinational corporations, but in the small companies employing 25 or less employees. The DMCA seriously harms innovation and prohibits companies that are more truly American companies from growing, making money, paying taxes, and employing more workers.
And we get the short end of the stick when these companies no longer need to innovate from the unnatural monopoly caused by the DMCA protects them from newer, more competent competitors. Not only do we not see the innovative, improved, products from fresher companies, we also see outdated technology from the companies that have lost the need to improve in a free market system.
This is a term in psychology where basically, bad things that happen to me are attributed to external causes, and good things that happen to me are attributed to internal causes.
For example, if I do well on a test, it was because I studied hard. If I didn't, then it's because the teacher failed me or didn't like me for some other reason, or because I was tired.
Being a parent myself, one of the last things I would want to do is admit I'm a bad parent. If my son screwed up, it would be very difficult for me to admit that it was my bad parenting that caused it.
But I like to think I'm pretty open-minded, and that I would admit it eventually.
But someone like Jack Thompson is just another ambulance chaser. He just aggrivates the situation the parent is going through by telling them that their kid killing some people isn't their fault, it's the video games' fault. Everyone is prone to Fundamental Attribution Error, and Jack Thompson is just helping that process along. When you're in a state or mourning, it's easy to not see the truth clearly.
One way China is ahead of the game is their artists / music industry have given up on CD sales revenue. The artist makes money, or tries to, by selling concert tickets and with marketing tie-ins. In India bootlegs are available the day they are released. It won't come as much of a suprise to \.ers that, as the US moves toward this model, it is corporate profits and support staff who seem to be taking the heat / losing the livelyhood.
As a career sideman, I feel no pain for the old industry passing (especially the lawyers), but the job of recording engineer is going the way of the hatmaker. Actually that analogy breaks down: The job of recording artist and recording engineer are being merged and will not pay very well. There used to be more work for painters, too.
OT: There's a bigger issue here about labor and specialization - the best singer I've ever knew (hits in the 60s) was taking an occasional plumbing job in the 80s and wasn't bitter: The way he put it was: $30 an hour. This while commanding $2-$4k for 20 - 40 oldies shows a year. I didn't quit playing during the 90s net boom and still work a lot now. I also stay buzzword compliant - this year: AJAX(ugh) and psych-folk(cool).
You cannot legislate away theft. If you want to curb it, you have to remove the economic incentive to steal. For music/video, you do that by making it easier/cheaper to buy the content from a legitimate distributor than to copy it. The "man" thinks they can also do this by limiting the quality of the output from illegitimate sources (using onerous copy protection systems that probably won't work anyway). They need to believe this if they have any hope of maintaining their rather excessive markups on their product. I am of the opinion that they'll kick and scream some more and eventually mostly give up and use pricing to fight piracy. But we'll see....
I don't want science genetically engineering my food, I don't want them making meals that can be served 7 years later. I don't want the cancer or other diseases that come with it.
The world has done very well without scientists mucking up our food sources. How many thousands of years have people lived off what the earth grows?
I now see in my grocery store "organic milk", it is priced twice as expensive as the gallon of regular milk. The same thing is in produce, they have organic vegitables. What is this? 20 years ago everything was organic, now only the rich can get normal food. The rest of us must eat crap that has been genetically modified.
Slashdot Mirror
:)
Good luck affording those nice things when you work at Best Buy for 20 hours a week. :D
I wholeheartedly agree.
:)
"Will, discipline, and work ethics[sic]" are for the working and middle classes.
Sincerely,
-someone way smarter than you :)
Cocksmacking bigot apologist.
Dey took are jaaaaaaahbs!!!
People are powerless when they are convinced they are powerless.
Google has a legal obligation to behave in a manner dictated to it by the voting shareholders. While this is usually a directive to make money, it could be other things. It just so happens that Page and Brin have 66.2 percent of the voting power. So they can actually do whatever they want to do. THEY are the final word on China or not, so you can point the finger directly at them.
:)
Do you hear me, you repulsive faggots? NO DIGG.
I'm rather surprised that you managed to turn a computer on.
:)
I guess you should have did better in school, huh?
Isn't boasting about being "too much of a libertarian" like boasting about being "too much of a bedwetter?"
Anything with DRM should have a message on it similar to the "WARNING: SMOKING KILLS" warning. I don't want a small label I have to search for - it should be big, clear, and standardised. The exact same logo/warning message should appear on every product. Something like "Warning: This product uses Digital Rights/Restrictions Management" would do the job.
Anyway, if anyone accidentally buys a product with DRM, they should be entitled to a refund. It is for all intents and purposes a defect, if you thought the product you were buying was a movie/music that you could use however you like.
Aww, you didn't get your mod points.
Now that it's coming back to bite them on the ass, I think it's wonderful.
People on Craigslist tend to be really flaky- we're talking the stoned kind of flaky, or the "I'm going to try and cheat you because I think I'm clever" kind of flaky; I'm not sure which is worse. Then there are all the wierdos posting in the various personals section- if you want a great laugh (no matter your gender), read those sections; makes you think of someone walking into McDonalds with $2 and expecting a rare Filet Mignon with sauteed mushrooms. Or the ever popular "I'm hot. Send a picture. Sexiest one wins." I laughed for about 5 minutes so hard I couldn't breathe, and resolved never to look in w4m again because it was dangerous to my health, even if it was a fantastic laugh.
Top problem though, is that people are complete IDIOTS when it comes to listing their items. "Printer. Best offer." Inkjet? Laser? Dot matrix? Made this decade? God forbid they tell us what company made it. I also love it when useless, worthless stuff is offered up- like cheapo computer speakers. People, I'm all for the recycling bit, but take that shit to the RECYCLING CENTER, don't waste anyone's time putting it up for sale for $5. Round trip subway fare costs at least half that...
The hysterical bit is that Craiglist supposedly has an "advisory committee" that handles how the site is presented to users. When I complained that even basic instructions were never shown to users as part of the posting procedure and it was clear there was a problem, Craig just replied, "thanks, the committee will think about it".
Then there are the people who post the "free" iPod/plasma/whatever emails (which are usually flagged by the community)...the problem is that there's nothing to keep them from posting over and over, because (to my knowledge) there is no automatic blacklist after X number of posts flagged...so spamming is pretty easy.
Then there are the ripoffs. Go read your city's /sys/ for a few minutes, and see how many times you say "WHAT?!"...like people asking $500 for a Pentium 3 system. Go read /ele/ and see how many times you see "Theater Research" speakers being offered for $500; the more honest (or naive) ones admit to buying it from some guys in a white van...the others just think "oh well, I'll get some other sucker to buy 'em".
Classic example of the try-to-sucker-you-by-omission-and-feined-ignorance approach was a Phaser printer being offered for sale for a few hundred $ with no mention of WHY nobody uses wax printers anymore. In short- you MUST cover your ass like crazy. If it's too good to be true, it most certainly is someone trying to sucker you.
Typical, but when you consider it against Craig's motivations (community building and other crunchy-granola-ness), Craigslist has ultimately been a pretty spectacular failure. I used to report at least 5-6 posts a day to the abuse department for various reasons (all were accepted, and the abuse group IS very nice; they ALWAYS write you back! To the CL abuse staff, you have my sympathies and admiration), and I just got tired of it...it was like throwing a sandbag into a levee break and watching it disappear.
I also have a policy now, which I inform sellers of upfront. If the item is different from how it was represented in the post or follow-up emails, both of which I will have with me, I walk out the door- this is after several sellers presented something that was nothing like what they described (like a PC missing half its ram, being sold by a software programmer who played dumb. Riight).
I'm sure others who have more knowledge in Nethack will provide more info. I myself am not an expert on the subject.
With AMD taking the performance lead now and Intel gearing up for getting the top performer position again, I think we are going to see nicer battles now, much nicer than the GHz ones with AMD now much better in its market position and its new fabs.
Intel is a much bigger company, they have a lot more money, a lot of smart people, the nastiest, sleaziest marketers in the business, many more fabs, and great lawyers to fend off the AMD legal strikes too. The Intel 'Prescott' was supposed to do the job on AMD but it never came close. Now, though, the 'Conroe' looks like it is FINALLY the answer to AMDs stuff. Based on the benchmarks using Intel-supplied hardware and software, it looks like the 'Conroe' line of processors totally destroys the AMD FX-60 which is the fastest AMD processor sold today. Of course, you can't buy the 'Conroe' until September, 2006 but it will be worth the wait, based on the benchmarks anyway.
The only thing AMD has to offer is a little bit faster clock speed (aka FX62) and their upcoming AM2 socket systems which don't seem to do much of anything new other than allow DDR2 memory and a bigger cache. Looks like AMD is headed back to the bargain bin.
First, it hurts the end user or consumer by imposing government restrictions on how we use things that we "own". Or more to the point, we no longer own things that we buy.
It also hurts us that we don't see competition. This means higher prices, collusion, price gouging, and all the other nasties that come along with pseudo-monopolies.
We are further harmed by the lack of new jobs and opportunities. Real growth for our country is not in the 1000+ employee multinational corporations, but in the small companies employing 25 or less employees. The DMCA seriously harms innovation and prohibits companies that are more truly American companies from growing, making money, paying taxes, and employing more workers.
And we get the short end of the stick when these companies no longer need to innovate from the unnatural monopoly caused by the DMCA protects them from newer, more competent competitors. Not only do we not see the innovative, improved, products from fresher companies, we also see outdated technology from the companies that have lost the need to improve in a free market system.
This is a term in psychology where basically, bad things that happen to me are attributed to external causes, and good things that happen to me are attributed to internal causes.
For example, if I do well on a test, it was because I studied hard. If I didn't, then it's because the teacher failed me or didn't like me for some other reason, or because I was tired.
Being a parent myself, one of the last things I would want to do is admit I'm a bad parent. If my son screwed up, it would be very difficult for me to admit that it was my bad parenting that caused it.
But I like to think I'm pretty open-minded, and that I would admit it eventually.
But someone like Jack Thompson is just another ambulance chaser. He just aggrivates the situation the parent is going through by telling them that their kid killing some people isn't their fault, it's the video games' fault. Everyone is prone to Fundamental Attribution Error, and Jack Thompson is just helping that process along. When you're in a state or mourning, it's easy to not see the truth clearly.
HAND
As a career sideman, I feel no pain for the old industry passing (especially the lawyers), but the job of recording engineer is going the way of the hatmaker. Actually that analogy breaks down: The job of recording artist and recording engineer are being merged and will not pay very well. There used to be more work for painters, too.
OT: There's a bigger issue here about labor and specialization - the best singer I've ever knew (hits in the 60s) was taking an occasional plumbing job in the 80s and wasn't bitter: The way he put it was: $30 an hour. This while commanding $2-$4k for 20 - 40 oldies shows a year. I didn't quit playing during the 90s net boom and still work a lot now. I also stay buzzword compliant - this year: AJAX(ugh) and psych-folk(cool).
With whom?
You cannot legislate away theft. If you want to curb it, you have to remove the economic incentive to steal. For music/video, you do that by making it easier/cheaper to buy the content from a legitimate distributor than to copy it. The "man" thinks they can also do this by limiting the quality of the output from illegitimate sources (using onerous copy protection systems that probably won't work anyway). They need to believe this if they have any hope of maintaining their rather excessive markups on their product. I am of the opinion that they'll kick and scream some more and eventually mostly give up and use pricing to fight piracy. But we'll see....
The world has done very well without scientists mucking up our food sources. How many thousands of years have people lived off what the earth grows?
I now see in my grocery store "organic milk", it is priced twice as expensive as the gallon of regular milk. The same thing is in produce, they have organic vegitables. What is this? 20 years ago everything was organic, now only the rich can get normal food. The rest of us must eat crap that has been genetically modified.