Google makes all of its money off of advertisements. Companies love adsense because it allows them to target groups of people they think are likely to buy their products.
So you think Google should just rest on their laurels and stick to adsense? Or should they improve adsense? Social networks are a gold mine of demographic data. But maybe google should just ignore all that.
And their beta products? Well if you're running a huge multibillion dollar corporation wouldn't it be nice to have a cross platform standard email client for your employees to use? If you have a lot of programmers, doesn't an improved newsgroups search help them? Gmail and Groups were developed for Google employees. They just let the rest of us use it too. And they probably make a little money off of them too.
And the maps feature will some day make gobs of money. If I'm looking at a certain part of a city, they can reasonably assume that either I'm there or that I will be there sometime. They can get local businesses advertising on the web, when ordinarily they wouldn't bother since they only serve a limited area. But the maps won't be perfect overnight, there's a huge amount of data that needs to be entered into the database (street names, snesible driving directions, attractions, etc). So its a long term project, but definitely worthwhile since it will greatly increase the number of advertisers.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Advertisers will pay much more per ad if they know that only people in their target demographic are watching. A banner or even a text ad at the top or bottom of the screen is worth much more than a 30 second spot that the majority of the audience isn't interested in.
Five years ago the top distros were Redhat, Suse, Mandrake, and Debian. All of these offer the same level of support they did 5 years ago. Mandrake (now Mandriva) was the only one to have significant financial trouble, but it seems that has passed now. Arguing that distros aimed solely at the hobbyists represent linux is completely dishonest. Are you an astroturfer?
I don't think going to warp speed is as simple as you make it sound. They have to plot a course and "enagage" similar to how Han has to make the calculations to make the jump to lightspeed. And although it is possible to use warp drive in tactical combat, it is very risky to use warp drive while comabatting a stationary opponent. There is the "Picard manouever" but that's only going to get you in close to make one or two shots before the turbo lasers tear you up.
Now the enterprise computers are probably more powerful than those on the X-wing fighters so they may be able to make better calculations to guide their torpedoes in so they have a pretty good chance at destroying the death star. But its not a forgone conclusion.
Star Trek:The Motion Picture was the best Sci Fi movie of the bunch, but not the best Star Trek movie. Star Trek != Sci Fi. Star Trek is a mix of Sci Fi, a little fantasy and some comedy. ST:TMP was scifi, but it just wasn't really all that fun and therefore not very good as a Star Trek movie. There has to be a balance between the SciFi elements, the dramatic elements and the comedic elements. Star Trek:The Motion Picture lacked this balance so isn't as well liked as Star Trek 2, 4, 6 and 8.
You're right, I was thinking a strawman was a diversionary tactic, when instead its as you say. Thnaks for clearing that up. It's not everyday you learn something on slashdot.
It's also meant to be a deterrent. If you simply fine business people, then they can easily make up a formula: A is the fine in dollars and B is the probability of getting caught. X is the finincial gain of breaking the law. If A/B > X then they break the law.
If you are relying on fines as a deterrent then breaking the law simply becomes another business decision. You'll stop businesses from behaving badly in some circumstances, but they will still break the law if there is significant profit involved. Increasing the fine will increase the detterence, but you can't increase the fine so much as to put companies out of business, since then you'd be punishing employees who may not have had anything to do with the bad behaviour. You can fine the executives personally instead of the company, but then executives will demand even higher salaries, which they will get.
To properly deter executives from breaking the law you have to put them in prison. Yes this is costly whereas a fine would bring in money. But a fine isn't really any different from a tax. So you might as well make businesses pay more taxes AND throw executives guilty of criminal activity into prison. The government will end up with the same amount of money and businesses will have to abide by the law.
Not really. The subject was Crossfire being political hackery. Tucker Carlson didn't defend crossfire he just attacked Jon Stewart. In debating this is known as an ad hominem. From wikipedia:
A (fallacious) ad hominem argument has the basic form:
1. A makes claim X.
2. There is something objectionable about A.
3. Therefore claim X is false.
1. Jon Stewart claims Crossfire is political hackery.
2. Tucker Carlson says Jon Stewart sniffed Kerry's throne.
3. Therefore Crossfire is not political hackery.
Does that make any sense?
Why should Jon Stewart have to prove he is completely objective to be able to argue that crossfire is political hackery? If he falls into that trap he spends the entire show on the defensive and then they have no time to argue about the validity of crossfire. He may be able to successfully defend himself, but then he doesn't even get to touch the "crossfire is bad for america" debate.
Tucker Carlson's argument could also be considered a strawman. Which is the tactic where you basically say "hey look over there!" and hope everyone forgets the points brought up by your opponent. Stewart wisely conceded Carlson's strawman and ad hominem arguements to keep the debate on subject. It was hardly cowardly. In fact it was Carlson being cowardly by trying to change the subject. Jon Stewart was basically saying "you can say whatever you want about me but it still doesn't change the fact that crossfire is a tool of the politicians".
Any way you look at it Tucker Carlson wasn't really arguing, he was just being a dick. And Jon Stewart called him on it. The other guy on the show was actually trying to really defend it and Jon Stewart was trying to have a real debate with him but Tucker Carlson kept interupting that with his dickery. The man obviously has no debating skills and is only skilled in pointless shouting matches.
As logical debating is concerned, Jon Stewart pwnd Tucker Carlson.
Relax dude. Some of us have a thing called a sense of humour. MS has some unethical business practices and sometimes we have serious discussions on that and sometimes we poke fun. Sometimes I might say "MS has destroyed all competition in the browser market which has retarded the advancement of the web by at least five years". Other times I might just say "MS is the borg". Why you gotta go making a serious reply to an obvious joke? You must be a lot of fun at parties.
I think everyone realises that MS is the borg. Just that a lot of people have realised that resistance is futile, so they just go ahead and buy that shiny new Xbox.
Yeah heretics would have been a great plot for a porno. Think about it, witches that control people using sex. some rival witches come up with a plan to stop them by training a man to fuck so good that he can control the witches. Great plot for a porno, but I prefer my pornography in video form, not in book form.
Tycho did bring up a great point about user created content. It was user created content that caused all the controversy over GTA and Oblivion. If the ESRB played through those games it wouldn't have changed their ratings at all.
This is a major issue since we are seeing more and more online games. How can a publisher control what the users do in the game? The whole ESRB playing the games is a red herring.
People are more confident in a system that is run and audited by local people. Hell you can even volunteer yourself to make sure your vote is counted properly if you want.
I'm in Canada where we do run elections in this way. I trust the little old ladies in my community a lot more than some computer made by a faceless corporation.
Well the August 6 memo said that the plots involved hijacking airplanes and something to do with buildings in New York. I would have had FBI agents checking out federal buildings in New York, keeping an eye out for suspicious characters (which wouldn't have done anything). I would have upped security in airports and aboard airplanes on the eastern seaboard (which may have done something). They memo said that bin Laden had people already operating within the US. I would have had the FBI check out the extremist muslim groups on the usual suspects list (which probably wouldn't have turned up anything, but who knows?).
At the very least she could have informed the FBI something was up. She could have done SOMETHING. Even if she didn't prevent 9/11, some kind of reaction to the Aug 6 memo would have been nice. IS simply forwarding it the FBI with a posting saying "look into it" too much to ask?
Why is it that surprising that the Bush administration has such excellent spin control yet be completely incompetent in other matters? How many corporations do we see that have excellent marketing and legal departments but have really crappy products. Do you think those are conspiracies too?
It's just the corporate mentality. Marketing trumps quality. And given how close the corporate sector and the government sector is now, is it any surprise that this mentality seeps into government?
I think Jimmy Carter was right when he made his Malaise speech in 1979. And things have just gotten worse. No one really cares about doing a good job. They only want to have the appearance of doing a good job. If you can make your boss think that you're doing a good job he'll give you a raise. If you pay big money for an ad camapaign, people will buy your product. And if you can run a slick political campaign you will get elected. You don't care about really working hard. Companies don't care about making quality products. And politicians don't care about anything other than getting re-elected.
Take Katrina. "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie." And he was doing a heck of a job. His job was to make it look like the Bush administration cared about the situation and was doing everything they could. Only problem was there were dead bodies floating around in New Orleans, and that sort of thing is hard to spin. Not that they didn't try. Problem was that for a brief instant the media realised that it was their job to ask hard questions and dig for a story and not just talk about celebrities and missing white girls for easy ratings. For a brief moment the reporters forgot about the ratings and realised they had an important job to do and they worked hard to do it well. Poor Brownie didn't know what hit him. He did what he was supposed to do but the media didn't do what they were supposed to do. They didn't go for the easy ratings, they actually reported the things people needed to know instead of the things they wanted to know.
And then a month later the media went back to not caring again. Malaise.
Sound to me something like, "we don't _really_ have any proof, but I have a hunch."
You're absolutely right. We shouldn't act on terrorism until there's solid proof that its a threat. Proof like a smoking crater in the middle of New York City.
Yeah we would have been much better off if the UN didn't get in the way of the US and USSR nuking each other. I mean come on, a nuclear holocaust is much more preferable to yet another long winded UN resolution.
Yup I'm in the same place.Actually I'm a little further behind you even with an Athlon XP 2800 and a crappy old radeon 9000. But if I want to upgrade I have to get a new mobo, new cpu, new video cards and possibly new RAM. That is a major outlay of cash right there. I would love to upgrade my video card right now, but its pretty silly to spend $100 now for a decent one only to have to replace it when I get a board with PCI-e.
When Vista comes out the unwashed masses will rush out and buy a bunch of new hardware which will hopefully drive down the prices and maybe I'll consider upgrading then. For now all my upgrades are for things like power supplies and case fans.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, the Japanese are racist so that makes it ok for the Israelis to be racist too?
Google makes all of its money off of advertisements. Companies love adsense because it allows them to target groups of people they think are likely to buy their products.
So you think Google should just rest on their laurels and stick to adsense? Or should they improve adsense? Social networks are a gold mine of demographic data. But maybe google should just ignore all that.
And their beta products? Well if you're running a huge multibillion dollar corporation wouldn't it be nice to have a cross platform standard email client for your employees to use? If you have a lot of programmers, doesn't an improved newsgroups search help them? Gmail and Groups were developed for Google employees. They just let the rest of us use it too. And they probably make a little money off of them too.
And the maps feature will some day make gobs of money. If I'm looking at a certain part of a city, they can reasonably assume that either I'm there or that I will be there sometime. They can get local businesses advertising on the web, when ordinarily they wouldn't bother since they only serve a limited area. But the maps won't be perfect overnight, there's a huge amount of data that needs to be entered into the database (street names, snesible driving directions, attractions, etc). So its a long term project, but definitely worthwhile since it will greatly increase the number of advertisers.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Advertisers will pay much more per ad if they know that only people in their target demographic are watching. A banner or even a text ad at the top or bottom of the screen is worth much more than a 30 second spot that the majority of the audience isn't interested in.
Five years ago the top distros were Redhat, Suse, Mandrake, and Debian. All of these offer the same level of support they did 5 years ago. Mandrake (now Mandriva) was the only one to have significant financial trouble, but it seems that has passed now. Arguing that distros aimed solely at the hobbyists represent linux is completely dishonest. Are you an astroturfer?
One word rebuttal: Sony.
Ummm.... have you considered it may actually be flash that's causing the the problem?
Now the enterprise computers are probably more powerful than those on the X-wing fighters so they may be able to make better calculations to guide their torpedoes in so they have a pretty good chance at destroying the death star. But its not a forgone conclusion.
Star Trek:The Motion Picture was the best Sci Fi movie of the bunch, but not the best Star Trek movie. Star Trek != Sci Fi. Star Trek is a mix of Sci Fi, a little fantasy and some comedy. ST:TMP was scifi, but it just wasn't really all that fun and therefore not very good as a Star Trek movie. There has to be a balance between the SciFi elements, the dramatic elements and the comedic elements. Star Trek:The Motion Picture lacked this balance so isn't as well liked as Star Trek 2, 4, 6 and 8.
You're right, I was thinking a strawman was a diversionary tactic, when instead its as you say. Thnaks for clearing that up. It's not everyday you learn something on slashdot.
So Office 2007 won't run on XP?
It's also meant to be a deterrent. If you simply fine business people, then they can easily make up a formula: A is the fine in dollars and B is the probability of getting caught. X is the finincial gain of breaking the law. If A/B > X then they break the law.
If you are relying on fines as a deterrent then breaking the law simply becomes another business decision. You'll stop businesses from behaving badly in some circumstances, but they will still break the law if there is significant profit involved. Increasing the fine will increase the detterence, but you can't increase the fine so much as to put companies out of business, since then you'd be punishing employees who may not have had anything to do with the bad behaviour. You can fine the executives personally instead of the company, but then executives will demand even higher salaries, which they will get.
To properly deter executives from breaking the law you have to put them in prison. Yes this is costly whereas a fine would bring in money. But a fine isn't really any different from a tax. So you might as well make businesses pay more taxes AND throw executives guilty of criminal activity into prison. The government will end up with the same amount of money and businesses will have to abide by the law.
The Daily show is news served in the guise of entertainment, CNN is entertainment served in the guise of news.
1. Jon Stewart claims Crossfire is political hackery.
2. Tucker Carlson says Jon Stewart sniffed Kerry's throne.
3. Therefore Crossfire is not political hackery.
Does that make any sense?
Why should Jon Stewart have to prove he is completely objective to be able to argue that crossfire is political hackery? If he falls into that trap he spends the entire show on the defensive and then they have no time to argue about the validity of crossfire. He may be able to successfully defend himself, but then he doesn't even get to touch the "crossfire is bad for america" debate.
Tucker Carlson's argument could also be considered a strawman. Which is the tactic where you basically say "hey look over there!" and hope everyone forgets the points brought up by your opponent. Stewart wisely conceded Carlson's strawman and ad hominem arguements to keep the debate on subject. It was hardly cowardly. In fact it was Carlson being cowardly by trying to change the subject. Jon Stewart was basically saying "you can say whatever you want about me but it still doesn't change the fact that crossfire is a tool of the politicians".
Any way you look at it Tucker Carlson wasn't really arguing, he was just being a dick. And Jon Stewart called him on it. The other guy on the show was actually trying to really defend it and Jon Stewart was trying to have a real debate with him but Tucker Carlson kept interupting that with his dickery. The man obviously has no debating skills and is only skilled in pointless shouting matches.
As logical debating is concerned, Jon Stewart pwnd Tucker Carlson.
Relax dude. Some of us have a thing called a sense of humour. MS has some unethical business practices and sometimes we have serious discussions on that and sometimes we poke fun. Sometimes I might say "MS has destroyed all competition in the browser market which has retarded the advancement of the web by at least five years". Other times I might just say "MS is the borg". Why you gotta go making a serious reply to an obvious joke? You must be a lot of fun at parties.
I think everyone realises that MS is the borg. Just that a lot of people have realised that resistance is futile, so they just go ahead and buy that shiny new Xbox.
Yeah heretics would have been a great plot for a porno. Think about it, witches that control people using sex. some rival witches come up with a plan to stop them by training a man to fuck so good that he can control the witches. Great plot for a porno, but I prefer my pornography in video form, not in book form.
This is a major issue since we are seeing more and more online games. How can a publisher control what the users do in the game? The whole ESRB playing the games is a red herring.
The only thing that will spoil the ending of chapterhouse is actually reading it. God-Emperor is the last of the Dune series.
I agree, although I do like the option of voting AGAINST all candidates. Oh well I'll just have to continue settling for spoiling my ballot
You missed one.
People are more confident in a system that is run and audited by local people. Hell you can even volunteer yourself to make sure your vote is counted properly if you want.
I'm in Canada where we do run elections in this way. I trust the little old ladies in my community a lot more than some computer made by a faceless corporation.
Well the August 6 memo said that the plots involved hijacking airplanes and something to do with buildings in New York. I would have had FBI agents checking out federal buildings in New York, keeping an eye out for suspicious characters (which wouldn't have done anything). I would have upped security in airports and aboard airplanes on the eastern seaboard (which may have done something). They memo said that bin Laden had people already operating within the US. I would have had the FBI check out the extremist muslim groups on the usual suspects list (which probably wouldn't have turned up anything, but who knows?).
At the very least she could have informed the FBI something was up. She could have done SOMETHING. Even if she didn't prevent 9/11, some kind of reaction to the Aug 6 memo would have been nice. IS simply forwarding it the FBI with a posting saying "look into it" too much to ask?
Why is it that surprising that the Bush administration has such excellent spin control yet be completely incompetent in other matters? How many corporations do we see that have excellent marketing and legal departments but have really crappy products. Do you think those are conspiracies too?
It's just the corporate mentality. Marketing trumps quality. And given how close the corporate sector and the government sector is now, is it any surprise that this mentality seeps into government?
I think Jimmy Carter was right when he made his Malaise speech in 1979. And things have just gotten worse. No one really cares about doing a good job. They only want to have the appearance of doing a good job. If you can make your boss think that you're doing a good job he'll give you a raise. If you pay big money for an ad camapaign, people will buy your product. And if you can run a slick political campaign you will get elected. You don't care about really working hard. Companies don't care about making quality products. And politicians don't care about anything other than getting re-elected.
Take Katrina. "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie." And he was doing a heck of a job. His job was to make it look like the Bush administration cared about the situation and was doing everything they could. Only problem was there were dead bodies floating around in New Orleans, and that sort of thing is hard to spin. Not that they didn't try. Problem was that for a brief instant the media realised that it was their job to ask hard questions and dig for a story and not just talk about celebrities and missing white girls for easy ratings. For a brief moment the reporters forgot about the ratings and realised they had an important job to do and they worked hard to do it well. Poor Brownie didn't know what hit him. He did what he was supposed to do but the media didn't do what they were supposed to do. They didn't go for the easy ratings, they actually reported the things people needed to know instead of the things they wanted to know.
And then a month later the media went back to not caring again. Malaise.
You're absolutely right. We shouldn't act on terrorism until there's solid proof that its a threat. Proof like a smoking crater in the middle of New York City.
Yeah we would have been much better off if the UN didn't get in the way of the US and USSR nuking each other. I mean come on, a nuclear holocaust is much more preferable to yet another long winded UN resolution.
Yup I'm in the same place.Actually I'm a little further behind you even with an Athlon XP 2800 and a crappy old radeon 9000. But if I want to upgrade I have to get a new mobo, new cpu, new video cards and possibly new RAM. That is a major outlay of cash right there. I would love to upgrade my video card right now, but its pretty silly to spend $100 now for a decent one only to have to replace it when I get a board with PCI-e.
When Vista comes out the unwashed masses will rush out and buy a bunch of new hardware which will hopefully drive down the prices and maybe I'll consider upgrading then. For now all my upgrades are for things like power supplies and case fans.