>Isn't that kind of backwards?
Not when you take in to account the phrase 'provided certain web traffic targets are met'. You can bet the deal makes sense inasmuch as Google will make more money from click-thrus on the search results than it costs toprovide them and the deal will be structured accordingly.
It's quite scary how some things work in big-business land and things happen that make little sense to Joe Public. As an e.g., a certain UK bank pays a certain UK supermarket over GBP100k to take their change/coins off them in exchange for bank notes. The bank wins because the notes are worth more to them than the coin, the supermarket wins because it needs coins and gets some free money in to the bargain. Everyone's happy, it just looks nuts.
Maybe I'm odd (well...) but I just don't get this belief that convergence is the way forward. If I want to play MP3s I use an MP3 player, if I want a movie, I use a DVD (or laserdisc) player. I don't want a phone that's a PDA, I don't want a PC in my living room no matter how pretty it looks, they're still not as easy to use as a DVD/HD recorder.
And before anyone says anything about having pockets full of seperate phones, PDAs, MP3 players etc. Sorry guys, I don't carry that stuff around with me. When I'm out for a walk, I'm out walking. I'm not taking calls. If I'm out socialising, I'm talking to the people I'm with and don't want calls every five mins. The whole idea of being contactable 24/7 is horrible to me.
>Of course you realize that most news organizations just run stories and
>photos from AP or Reuters
For sure although if you look at the raw Reuters feeds, they are generally pretty vanilla and just report events or facts (as much as anything is a fact as facts are often coloured by perpective).
There was a good series of ads on UK TV a couple of years ago that cut between an old lady obviously flashing her cash and handbag etc and a black buy dressed in 'street dude' gear running flat out. It cut back and forth and the impression was he was a mugger homing in for the hit. You then saw him slam in to her, sending her sprawling. The camera pulled out to show some masonery or somesuch above her falling off a building and he was trying to save her life.
I am reminded of that joke where the punchline is 'you're not here for the hunting are you?'. They do seem to go out of the way to screw themselves, that's for sure.
Here's the trick. Don't trust any single news source, read a few that report the same thing, Some will say one thing, others, something slightly or even radically different. The truth is probably somewhere inbetween. You only have to compare and contrast what's going on over in Lebanon right now to see this in action. If you compare Fox or the BBCs coverage of the same event, you'd think they were two different stories.
Don't worry about it too much. When is the last time the UK govt have successfully delivered a large IT project either to time, budget or spec? The database that sits behind the ID card plans will be an utter disaster and probably never go live. That said, with our idiot govt, I can imagine them going live complete with bugs and starting to arrest people left right and centre for not matching what the database says. "Hey, you, Mr Smith, says here you should be a 4 foot 8inch woman, not a 6ft man. You must be a terrorist! Quick, ship him off to the US for processing"
>Just curious...how many places do it d/m/y vs. m/d/y. I'd never seen
>the d/m/y thing till a couple of years ago....
Me too except in my case I'd never heard of m/d/y until a few years ago.
>The UK isn't in a bad way regarding kids today they're exactly the same now as when
>I was a kid 20 yrs ago.
I've just moved back to a village I grew up in. Twenty years ago it was very nice. Now most adults avoid the streets after 7pm. The kids (13-18 at a guess) pretty much run riot, racing cars up and down, smashing stuff, spraying grafitti, getting drunk, swearing at the top of their voices, having fights. The police station shut down years ago and they know they're pretty much untouchable.
Given the flack the UK government is getting about the ID card and back end database of DNA, prints, retina scans etc they are trying to introduce, one does wonder if this incident is the thin end of a data gathering excercise.
If the people are marching in the streets complaining about giving away their biometrics for no reason, why not try a different tactic and haul in the kids on any old excuse and get the data nice and early.
>Not flamebait, not an attack on the UK, but serious questions.
Yup. Thanks Tony Bliar for that. He has overseen the passing of more insane, ill thought out and draconian laws than I care to think about.
Meanwhile, they have decided this week that schools no longer need to teach right and wrong so expect to see swarms of kids locked up this time next year for playing football without due care and attention, posession of offensive toys and loitering with intention to use a public lavatory.
I used to work at an international bank that had a room full of serious math heads who used various heavy duty software packages and insane Excel sheets to perform complex analysis and prediciton on share prices. This, along with the last 5 years' prices for the various stocks were fed in to the bank's modelling systems running on a Cray to predict their exposure on the markets in real-time to ensure they didn't close the day with balance ratios that broke the banking regulations. They earned insane money but IMHO they deserved it. I sat in on a presentation they did that was supposed to be a high level overview but frankly I was lost after the 'Good morning ladies and gentleman' bit.
My first HD was for my Atari ST and cost USD900 for 48Mb and loaded progs at a stunning 300k/sec. Now *that* was power without the price.
A year after I bought it there was still about 30Mb left and that was after putting every app, every scrap of data and all my pictures on it.
I had a backup program called Turtle that backed it up to floppy disk. How back to front is that?
Well yes...
I live in the UK and a decommissioned nuclear bunker near me has been opened as a museum. As you drive through the countryside towards it you come across a big sign that reads 'Secret Nuclear Bunker - Turn left'. Always makes me chuckle.
Jeez. Let it never be said American's have no sense of humour. Even the mods are having a hard time with it - the mod bonuses have been going up and down like a yoyo since I posted it and now it's back to zero having had everything from +2 to -1 applied.
>The Saturn V was the most reliable heavy-lift vehicle ever built with the
>largest payload capacity. Too bad they scrapped it.
And then they lost the plans so they can't even build new ones.
>the fact there is acceptance that there are nations beyond the frontiers of the USA
What are those funny blobs off the coast on that map?
Those will be other countries, Mr President.
Slashdot Mirror
>Isn't that kind of backwards?
Not when you take in to account the phrase 'provided certain web traffic targets are met'. You can bet the deal makes sense inasmuch as Google will make more money from click-thrus on the search results than it costs toprovide them and the deal will be structured accordingly.
It's quite scary how some things work in big-business land and things happen that make little sense to Joe Public. As an e.g., a certain UK bank pays a certain UK supermarket over GBP100k to take their change/coins off them in exchange for bank notes. The bank wins because the notes are worth more to them than the coin, the supermarket wins because it needs coins and gets some free money in to the bargain. Everyone's happy, it just looks nuts.
Maybe I'm odd (well...) but I just don't get this belief that convergence is the way forward. If I want to play MP3s I use an MP3 player, if I want a movie, I use a DVD (or laserdisc) player. I don't want a phone that's a PDA, I don't want a PC in my living room no matter how pretty it looks, they're still not as easy to use as a DVD/HD recorder.
And before anyone says anything about having pockets full of seperate phones, PDAs, MP3 players etc. Sorry guys, I don't carry that stuff around with me. When I'm out for a walk, I'm out walking. I'm not taking calls. If I'm out socialising, I'm talking to the people I'm with and don't want calls every five mins. The whole idea of being contactable 24/7 is horrible to me.
>Of course you realize that most news organizations just run stories and
>photos from AP or Reuters For sure although if you look at the raw Reuters feeds, they are generally pretty vanilla and just report events or facts (as much as anything is a fact as facts are often coloured by perpective).
There was a good series of ads on UK TV a couple of years ago that cut between an old lady obviously flashing her cash and handbag etc and a black buy dressed in 'street dude' gear running flat out. It cut back and forth and the impression was he was a mugger homing in for the hit. You then saw him slam in to her, sending her sprawling. The camera pulled out to show some masonery or somesuch above her falling off a building and he was trying to save her life.
I am reminded of that joke where the punchline is 'you're not here for the hunting are you?'. They do seem to go out of the way to screw themselves, that's for sure.
Here's the trick. Don't trust any single news source, read a few that report the same thing, Some will say one thing, others, something slightly or even radically different. The truth is probably somewhere inbetween. You only have to compare and contrast what's going on over in Lebanon right now to see this in action. If you compare Fox or the BBCs coverage of the same event, you'd think they were two different stories.
Don't worry about it too much. When is the last time the UK govt have successfully delivered a large IT project either to time, budget or spec? The database that sits behind the ID card plans will be an utter disaster and probably never go live. That said, with our idiot govt, I can imagine them going live complete with bugs and starting to arrest people left right and centre for not matching what the database says. "Hey, you, Mr Smith, says here you should be a 4 foot 8inch woman, not a 6ft man. You must be a terrorist! Quick, ship him off to the US for processing"
>If you use a real date system, then this is 8/2/06
We do, you're the oddballs. Poxy 'mercans, always convinced their way is the only way.
>Just curious...how many places do it d/m/y vs. m/d/y. I'd never seen
>the d/m/y thing till a couple of years ago....
Me too except in my case I'd never heard of m/d/y until a few years ago.
Oh for a fistfull of mod points.
>The UK isn't in a bad way regarding kids today they're exactly the same now as when
>I was a kid 20 yrs ago.
I've just moved back to a village I grew up in. Twenty years ago it was very nice. Now most adults avoid the streets after 7pm. The kids (13-18 at a guess) pretty much run riot, racing cars up and down, smashing stuff, spraying grafitti, getting drunk, swearing at the top of their voices, having fights. The police station shut down years ago and they know they're pretty much untouchable.
>Clearly, they raped the poor tree and should be put on the sex offenders list.
If one of them peed up it, they could be. Really.
Given the flack the UK government is getting about the ID card and back end database of DNA, prints, retina scans etc they are trying to introduce, one does wonder if this incident is the thin end of a data gathering excercise.
If the people are marching in the streets complaining about giving away their biometrics for no reason, why not try a different tactic and haul in the kids on any old excuse and get the data nice and early.
>Not flamebait, not an attack on the UK, but serious questions.
Yup. Thanks Tony Bliar for that. He has overseen the passing of more insane, ill thought out and draconian laws than I care to think about.
Meanwhile, they have decided this week that schools no longer need to teach right and wrong so expect to see swarms of kids locked up this time next year for playing football without due care and attention, posession of offensive toys and loitering with intention to use a public lavatory.
>The government looked into punching studs into the road
Joan Collins will have something to say about that.
>Spock Plugged up the Toilet Again.
Ah, that's why Spock's toilet door has 'VIP' on it - Vulcan Is Pooing.
I used to work at an international bank that had a room full of serious math heads who used various heavy duty software packages and insane Excel sheets to perform complex analysis and prediciton on share prices. This, along with the last 5 years' prices for the various stocks were fed in to the bank's modelling systems running on a Cray to predict their exposure on the markets in real-time to ensure they didn't close the day with balance ratios that broke the banking regulations. They earned insane money but IMHO they deserved it. I sat in on a presentation they did that was supposed to be a high level overview but frankly I was lost after the 'Good morning ladies and gentleman' bit.
>Perhaps if it was rigged so that "Mickey Mouse" wins, someone would see the light.
It was, he did. You might know him as George though.
My first HD was for my Atari ST and cost USD900 for 48Mb and loaded progs at a stunning 300k/sec. Now *that* was power without the price.
A year after I bought it there was still about 30Mb left and that was after putting every app, every scrap of data and all my pictures on it.
I had a backup program called Turtle that backed it up to floppy disk. How back to front is that?
Well yes...
I live in the UK and a decommissioned nuclear bunker near me has been opened as a museum. As you drive through the countryside towards it you come across a big sign that reads 'Secret Nuclear Bunker - Turn left'. Always makes me chuckle.
Now everyone and their dog knows exactly where it is, they've built a new one somewhere that's actually secret.
Yay - Good news. Thanks for that Mr Anonymous Coward.
Jeez. Let it never be said American's have no sense of humour. Even the mods are having a hard time with it - the mod bonuses have been going up and down like a yoyo since I posted it and now it's back to zero having had everything from +2 to -1 applied.
I heve a nevt0n amd th3 h&ndvritin9 rec0gwiti0n i5 reallg g00b. It rock5!
>The Saturn V was the most reliable heavy-lift vehicle ever built with the
>largest payload capacity. Too bad they scrapped it.
And then they lost the plans so they can't even build new ones.
>the fact there is acceptance that there are nations beyond the frontiers of the USA
What are those funny blobs off the coast on that map? Those will be other countries, Mr President.