Slashdot is now publishing press releases from military-industrial-complex vendors without any real commentary in the main post?
Yeah, the military needs firewalls at all levels of networking, but is this news?
You're missing the big picture here, which is that it has a really cool name which looks great in a headline.
For that matter, it makes sense to just mark trivial pages as trivia rather than deleting them completely. That way "trivia" could be enabled with a simple click, but by default only notable articles would be returned/linked from other articles.
And imagine in 10 years time you find yourself having to convert a mess of an app from some by-then dead language to whatever the fad language of the day will be. You might just be grateful to be able to get a copy of a book on the subject many years after all the magazines relating to it have been consigned to recylcle bins. Not to mention the historical value of such books to scholars in the future.
Well then companies could resolve both these issues by:
1) Offering free replacement media for disks which will no longer play due to scratches/warping (these could be offered via standard retail outlets so there is no issue of "Send us your disk and wait 3 months for a response", which could then be another legitimate reason to make your own backup). Media is cheap and if you can show proof of purchase, what's the issue for not issuing a replacement, other than greed?
2) NOT imposing region locks - in this day and age where markets are global via the internet and the world is shrinking in terms of travel, region locks are an archaic method of locking users in. If I buy a bunch of games on a shopping trip to NY I should be able to expect them to play back in the UK, or if I go online to buy games I shouldn't have to risk getting a non-PAL version.
If these are the two major legitimate reasons for mod chips, then the games companies could remove both reasons with ease and leave little excuse for mod chips and remove the debate. The problem is, even if they are a minority, some people ARE using mod chips for entirely reasonable purposes, and rather than taking the sledgehammer approach to the issue, companies could work with those customers to solve their issues and people may then be more understanding when those same companies ask for help to reduce piracy.
It would also go some way towards removing the perception of corporate greed in these areas - after all, why should we be sympathetic to companies crying about greedy pirates when those same companies are hurting their paying customers for the same reason?
Google do have rules about this - there was a high priority case involving BMW Germany I believe, having their site blacklisted because they were showing different content to users than they were showing to Google (I think Google were getting redirected to some keyword stuff monstrosity).
However, as far as I know it's manually policed, so if you are getting a lot of results along these lines maybe there is a contact at Google to report these to. It might also be worth contacting the site themselves and explaining the possible consequences - it might be a waste of time, but if the site was designed by a black-hat SEO developer and is maintained by people who don't know they're breaking the rules, you could see some positive results.
It's not in the interests of the BBC to specifically target people who have no television. Indeed, it probably goes against their remit to do so (I remember the furore some time ago about the BBC providing online services outside the license-paying countries).
While it makes sense for commercial entities to take the lead in this area (since this is undoubtedly the way the world is moving and the early movers stand to make the most financial gains), the same does not apply to the BBC. As the Beeb is not ad-sponsored, it doesn't need to be so proactive in protecting its market position. It has a guaranteed revenue source to generate new programmes with less of a reliance on those programmes generating increased audiences, so it can afford somewhat to be a late-comer to this new distribution channel.
The correct font-size is a purely subjective issue. It's not an issue where you can cater to the lowest common denominator - the designer might like a snappy little 10pt font size, you might prefer 12pt, someone really visually impaired might need 16pt. Should we therefore enforce a minimum size of 16pt? What about people who are long-sighted and have difficulty reading large type?
The important thing is not the base font size used in websites, but that those sites allow for resizing text (both in terms of the styles - e.g. using pts or ems instead of pxs so resizing works in IE6 AND in terms of layout, so resizing doesn't break the snazzy design and render the site unusable by, for instance, forcing important content outside the viewable area).
The way I see it, ensuring sites comply with the existing accessibility standards/guidelines is the job of the developers/companies. Ensuring that the screen reader works with websites built to those standards is the job of the screen reader producer. If a site follows all the guidelines, it can't reasonably be sued because it doesn't work with some proprietary reader which ignores or cherry picks those guidelines; conversely, if a site is designed to work specifically with only one proprietary reader and ignores the guidelines in order to do so, the company is culpable.
And it's no surprise that the only major UK party that doesn't believe government can solve everything is the one major UK party that has the least chance of ever forming one. Call me cynical, but I find it hard to believe they'd still take such a stance for long if they suddenly came to power.
Not to argue with your point about camera advocates having ulterior motives (a good number of them probably do), but if you search the BBC (or any news site) about almost any topic you will find nothing favourable. That's the way the media works, bad news sells far better than good.
Of course, this only applies while the labels have a stranglehold on so many of the marketing distributions channels (cable music channels, magazines, radio stations, etc). If they didn't have this huge monopoly, anyone could have an equal chance of getting their stuff played and heard - hell they could even pay marketing companies to do the work for them and still make a lot more profit than they get back from the labels.
With the event of the internet, it's easier than ever for good artists to build a fan base capable of making it worth their while to stay indie, but it would be better for everyone if there was a level playing field when it comes to the other channels.
The two things aren't mutually exclusive. People are saying "we're going to do this regardless of what artists say" - so of course they will agree with the artists who say do it and disagree with the ones who say don't do it - there is no double standard there.
It's no different to politics, you might respect the opinions of one politician but not of another, even if they're in the same party, and regardless of whether you support or oppose that party as a whole.
It would be like that - IF I was the only distributor of that baker's bread in my country, and I was selling it at massively inflated prices and reaping huge profits while at the same time passing little, if any, of that profit back to the baker and if the baker had tried being reasonable and asking me to lower my prices as people would be more than happy to buy the bread if it was cheaper. IF all of those things applied, then your analogy would be awesome.
And he could equally argue that, when you sign a contract with a musician (particularly an anti-establishment, edgy musician) you can expect them to say controversial things, therefore it's an implied term of the contract that he won't be punished for doing what musicians do. He could also just as well argue that he generates MORE interest and therefore MORE sales by making such comments.
Moreover, the fact that an artist tells you to commit a crime is no defence should you actually commit the crime, so he could reasonably argue that he didn't actually expect anyone to act on his suggestion. Whether the court would side with Reznor or his label (I suspect they'd fall somewhere midway between the two poles) is anyone's guess, but it's far from a clear-cut case of his being in the wrong.
Unfortunately promotion is a reality of publishing. An author who refuses to promote his works will find that he suffers financially as a result. If Jordan hadn't promoted his works he might never have been in a position to publish as much as he did.
If anything, promoting stuff via the interweb rather than the old fashioned route of endless book store tours might give an author more time to focus on writing by reaching a larger audience with a lesser effort...
Yeah, in fact didn't someone once say: "If you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin to the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips" (Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven).
Maybe the "don't joke, it's disrespectful" crowd should take a look at Jordan's *own* opinion on the subject and respect *that*.
Yes, it certainly seems in book 11 like the start of a big race to the finish. I was actually left thinking it would be a squeeze to fit everything into the last book that we are expecting to happen - I just wish some of the pacier action from book 11 (and most likely book 12) had been spread around in books 9 and 10. If book 12 gets a release at all, I'd love to read the entire series through from the start again, but thinking about 9/10 I'm wondering if I'd have the stamina/patience to do so...
Except that the sponsors in this case are sponsoring the free (organic) links. Without their sponsorship, there'd be no organic links and no Google. I guess from that point of view it isn't technically correct to call them sponsored links, because what they actually mean is "These are links to our sponsors", but other than that, having their ad appear before the list of organic links they're helping to pay for is no different to having an ad for Ford at the beginning of a TV show.
We should also remember that, before Google came along, it was common for paid-for advertising to be completely mixed in with organic links, and for paid links to be given much more prominence based on this fact. The result was that you'd often have to go three or four pages deep before you found organic links.
With the Google approach there is a clear separation for those who want/understand it and for those who don't, well, at least they get a mix of organic and paid links on every page without having to wade through pages of paid links first.
That's assuming that the MPAA care about sifting that data - it's equally likely they just want to make the process of collecting the data so prohibitivley expensive that TorrentSpy can't continue, or to spread fear in their users that the noose is tightening. If they can achieve either of those aims they won't even need to use the data.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot is now publishing press releases from military-industrial-complex vendors without any real commentary in the main post? Yeah, the military needs firewalls at all levels of networking, but is this news?
You're missing the big picture here, which is that it has a really cool name which looks great in a headline.
And the directors of the Direct Information Group division are gold digglers.
For that matter, it makes sense to just mark trivial pages as trivia rather than deleting them completely. That way "trivia" could be enabled with a simple click, but by default only notable articles would be returned/linked from other articles.
And imagine in 10 years time you find yourself having to convert a mess of an app from some by-then dead language to whatever the fad language of the day will be. You might just be grateful to be able to get a copy of a book on the subject many years after all the magazines relating to it have been consigned to recylcle bins. Not to mention the historical value of such books to scholars in the future.
Well then companies could resolve both these issues by:
1) Offering free replacement media for disks which will no longer play due to scratches/warping (these could be offered via standard retail outlets so there is no issue of "Send us your disk and wait 3 months for a response", which could then be another legitimate reason to make your own backup). Media is cheap and if you can show proof of purchase, what's the issue for not issuing a replacement, other than greed?
2) NOT imposing region locks - in this day and age where markets are global via the internet and the world is shrinking in terms of travel, region locks are an archaic method of locking users in. If I buy a bunch of games on a shopping trip to NY I should be able to expect them to play back in the UK, or if I go online to buy games I shouldn't have to risk getting a non-PAL version.
If these are the two major legitimate reasons for mod chips, then the games companies could remove both reasons with ease and leave little excuse for mod chips and remove the debate. The problem is, even if they are a minority, some people ARE using mod chips for entirely reasonable purposes, and rather than taking the sledgehammer approach to the issue, companies could work with those customers to solve their issues and people may then be more understanding when those same companies ask for help to reduce piracy.
It would also go some way towards removing the perception of corporate greed in these areas - after all, why should we be sympathetic to companies crying about greedy pirates when those same companies are hurting their paying customers for the same reason?
Google do have rules about this - there was a high priority case involving BMW Germany I believe, having their site blacklisted because they were showing different content to users than they were showing to Google (I think Google were getting redirected to some keyword stuff monstrosity).
However, as far as I know it's manually policed, so if you are getting a lot of results along these lines maybe there is a contact at Google to report these to. It might also be worth contacting the site themselves and explaining the possible consequences - it might be a waste of time, but if the site was designed by a black-hat SEO developer and is maintained by people who don't know they're breaking the rules, you could see some positive results.
It's not in the interests of the BBC to specifically target people who have no television. Indeed, it probably goes against their remit to do so (I remember the furore some time ago about the BBC providing online services outside the license-paying countries).
While it makes sense for commercial entities to take the lead in this area (since this is undoubtedly the way the world is moving and the early movers stand to make the most financial gains), the same does not apply to the BBC. As the Beeb is not ad-sponsored, it doesn't need to be so proactive in protecting its market position. It has a guaranteed revenue source to generate new programmes with less of a reliance on those programmes generating increased audiences, so it can afford somewhat to be a late-comer to this new distribution channel.
The correct font-size is a purely subjective issue. It's not an issue where you can cater to the lowest common denominator - the designer might like a snappy little 10pt font size, you might prefer 12pt, someone really visually impaired might need 16pt. Should we therefore enforce a minimum size of 16pt? What about people who are long-sighted and have difficulty reading large type?
The important thing is not the base font size used in websites, but that those sites allow for resizing text (both in terms of the styles - e.g. using pts or ems instead of pxs so resizing works in IE6 AND in terms of layout, so resizing doesn't break the snazzy design and render the site unusable by, for instance, forcing important content outside the viewable area).
The way I see it, ensuring sites comply with the existing accessibility standards/guidelines is the job of the developers/companies. Ensuring that the screen reader works with websites built to those standards is the job of the screen reader producer. If a site follows all the guidelines, it can't reasonably be sued because it doesn't work with some proprietary reader which ignores or cherry picks those guidelines; conversely, if a site is designed to work specifically with only one proprietary reader and ignores the guidelines in order to do so, the company is culpable.
In the vast majority of cases I should imagine lack of flash support is an advantage of assistive technology, rather than a disadvantage...
Dude, I think he meant for her...
And it's no surprise that the only major UK party that doesn't believe government can solve everything is the one major UK party that has the least chance of ever forming one. Call me cynical, but I find it hard to believe they'd still take such a stance for long if they suddenly came to power.
Not to argue with your point about camera advocates having ulterior motives (a good number of them probably do), but if you search the BBC (or any news site) about almost any topic you will find nothing favourable. That's the way the media works, bad news sells far better than good.
Of course, this only applies while the labels have a stranglehold on so many of the marketing distributions channels (cable music channels, magazines, radio stations, etc). If they didn't have this huge monopoly, anyone could have an equal chance of getting their stuff played and heard - hell they could even pay marketing companies to do the work for them and still make a lot more profit than they get back from the labels.
With the event of the internet, it's easier than ever for good artists to build a fan base capable of making it worth their while to stay indie, but it would be better for everyone if there was a level playing field when it comes to the other channels.
The two things aren't mutually exclusive. People are saying "we're going to do this regardless of what artists say" - so of course they will agree with the artists who say do it and disagree with the ones who say don't do it - there is no double standard there.
It's no different to politics, you might respect the opinions of one politician but not of another, even if they're in the same party, and regardless of whether you support or oppose that party as a whole.
It would be like that - IF I was the only distributor of that baker's bread in my country, and I was selling it at massively inflated prices and reaping huge profits while at the same time passing little, if any, of that profit back to the baker and if the baker had tried being reasonable and asking me to lower my prices as people would be more than happy to buy the bread if it was cheaper. IF all of those things applied, then your analogy would be awesome.
Well if everyone does what he's suggesting, it won't matter a damn what the label charges - they won't see one penny of it.
And he could equally argue that, when you sign a contract with a musician (particularly an anti-establishment, edgy musician) you can expect them to say controversial things, therefore it's an implied term of the contract that he won't be punished for doing what musicians do. He could also just as well argue that he generates MORE interest and therefore MORE sales by making such comments.
Moreover, the fact that an artist tells you to commit a crime is no defence should you actually commit the crime, so he could reasonably argue that he didn't actually expect anyone to act on his suggestion. Whether the court would side with Reznor or his label (I suspect they'd fall somewhere midway between the two poles) is anyone's guess, but it's far from a clear-cut case of his being in the wrong.
Unfortunately promotion is a reality of publishing. An author who refuses to promote his works will find that he suffers financially as a result. If Jordan hadn't promoted his works he might never have been in a position to publish as much as he did.
If anything, promoting stuff via the interweb rather than the old fashioned route of endless book store tours might give an author more time to focus on writing by reaching a larger audience with a lesser effort...
Yeah, in fact didn't someone once say: "If you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin to the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips" (Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven).
Maybe the "don't joke, it's disrespectful" crowd should take a look at Jordan's *own* opinion on the subject and respect *that*.
Of course, if you're looking to the internet for that comfort, one could argue you are already fighting a losing battle...
Yes, it certainly seems in book 11 like the start of a big race to the finish. I was actually left thinking it would be a squeeze to fit everything into the last book that we are expecting to happen - I just wish some of the pacier action from book 11 (and most likely book 12) had been spread around in books 9 and 10. If book 12 gets a release at all, I'd love to read the entire series through from the start again, but thinking about 9/10 I'm wondering if I'd have the stamina/patience to do so...
Except that the sponsors in this case are sponsoring the free (organic) links. Without their sponsorship, there'd be no organic links and no Google. I guess from that point of view it isn't technically correct to call them sponsored links, because what they actually mean is "These are links to our sponsors", but other than that, having their ad appear before the list of organic links they're helping to pay for is no different to having an ad for Ford at the beginning of a TV show.
We should also remember that, before Google came along, it was common for paid-for advertising to be completely mixed in with organic links, and for paid links to be given much more prominence based on this fact. The result was that you'd often have to go three or four pages deep before you found organic links.
With the Google approach there is a clear separation for those who want/understand it and for those who don't, well, at least they get a mix of organic and paid links on every page without having to wade through pages of paid links first.
That's assuming that the MPAA care about sifting that data - it's equally likely they just want to make the process of collecting the data so prohibitivley expensive that TorrentSpy can't continue, or to spread fear in their users that the noose is tightening. If they can achieve either of those aims they won't even need to use the data.