Exactly - and more to the point, when it comes to advertising, who cares if you're showing one ad to two people or showing it to the same person twice? Unless your ad is so great that every single person who sees it is a guaranteed sale, then it doesn't really matter. I'm sure once an ad has played during the superbowl and been seen by billions of people worldwide, the advertisers don't claim they should be allowed to repeat it for less, or just pull it completely, since pretty much everyone's already seen it.
Aren't ads usually priced on individual page impressions rather than unique visitors anyway? I doubt that an ad company would query the value of showing an ad to someone more than once - if anything, used properly, this can be more valuable since it is a constant brand reinforcement and may be more effective than a one-off viewing.
The trick seems to be convincing the public that the dangers from outside are worse than the dangers from the police/government. Given such a situation, people will generally choose what they see as the lesser of two evils. Which is why control of the media is vital to running a successful police state.
I work on a large UK site with a very broad demographic and we've yet to notice such a swing in favour of FF. Figures for the past week's traffic (based on around 1.2m unique visits) are:
IE - 92.4% FF - 5.9%
This is a slight increase for FF on last year's (2006) figures for the same period:
IE - 94.7% FF - 3.9%
A 2% increase is hardly the mass conversion I was hoping to have seen by now. Looking at the same weekly period in 2005, there was a 1.6% increase from 2005 - 2006, so there does seem to be some increase in the momentum (albeit so small it could well be an anomaly).
We blew it guys, we had the promise of free, unrestricted knowledge - the ability for any man to share his knowledge with another. The freedom to aquire knowledge of any aspect of human achievment, from any culture at any time.
[...]
Wikipedia is the largest collection of ill-informed crap on the face of the planet, an admirable quest that has descended into a miasma of gibberish. It is now no more than a loose collection of opinion that may or may not be right.
I hate to break it to you, but that unrestricted knowledge of man you refer to pretty much IS largely a loose collection of opinion. Also, how do you build a repository of free, unrestricted knowledge while at the same time placing restrictions on the type of information that you gather? Sure, Wikipedia's not the ultimate answer - but certainly it's a step in the right direction, for all its flaws.
You only have to look at the myth of man made global warming to see this in action (and I know I will get flamed for that sentence, but that will only serve to prove I am right).
Nice, I see what you did there. So something like "Well I believe to be true, and if you flame me it only proves I'm right" would give us the blanket right to spout whatever nonsense we like and have it immune to criticism? You complain that Wikipedia is full of nothing more than useless opinion, then you put forward your own equally useless opinion and expect us to accept it as rock solid proof that what you say is true.
More to the point, if your favourite band "works for the RIAA" (or, more realistically, the RIAA works for your favourite band), then you need to find a new favourite band...
He's referring to the initiation of many lawsuits without gathering even the most basic evidence to support them, then simply pushing these claims as far as they'll go before ever actually having to have a court hearing, knowing that most people don't have the means to defend themselves. This scattergun approach could be considered extortion - although what they are extorting is public opinion rather than money (I'm not sure how successful mass litigation against people with little or no money actually is...). They're extorting fear of reprisal with heavy-handed tactics which make a mockery of the judicial system (since they show every evidence of not actually wanting to go to court, just to make examples and bankrupt a few people along the way).
My motto has always been: "If you can do the crime, you can do the time". Sure, children shouldn't be locked up with adults but the penalties should be the same when the crime is the same, and if the punishment is the death penalty so be it, even for the retarded.
Which is why I think we should all be grateful that you are far, far removed from the legislature. A key component of criminal liability is the intention to commit a crime - the mens read. In latin, "actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea", or "the act does not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty". This applies to the vast majority of laws, with the exception of those which carry strict, statutory liability.
To argue that a child or someone who is mentally retarded should be accorded the same mental status as a fully compos mentis adult is either incredibly naive to the point of defying belief, or else incredibly stupid. That is not to say that a child can't have the mens rea to commit a crime, but it would be extremely unlikely and, in any event, difficult to prove.
It's more than just the effect on these few employees, or even the ones who work with them who may be affected by their morale. Google has got where it is today in part by offering an excellent search service, but also in part by having kudos amongst people in the know. There's a kind of awe that surrounds the company and its attitude to its workforce. Too many stories like this and the shine starts to fade, people realise it's just another global mega company with an eye on the bottom line. It's hard to see anyone usurping Google for a while yet, but when goodwill is so cheaply bought, why take the risk? A lot of companies would kill to be as highly regarded as Google, they should milk that for as long as possible.
That's exactly right - I've worked as tech support in a call centre where pretty much every second of your working day had to be accounted for. You had to "wrap up" and be available for the next call within 5 seconds (this includes writing up all the notes from the call in case the customer called back - which explains why people often have to explain their problem 10 times to different people), if you spent too long on toilet breaks or were more than 30 seconds late logging back on after lunch or when your shift started, all these things would be noted. There was a team responsible for monitoring everyone in the call centre to ensure they were all logged in and available to receive calls at all times - if anyone was not available this team would call up their team leader to go check it out.
The morale was terrible - everyone wanted out, even the team leaders and middle management. Every Thursday the local paper would carry the jobs section and at least 2 out of 3 people would have a copy at their desk. Staff retention was poor, and retention of the very skilled was even less, which led to awful service for the customers, but the company seemed to be in the business of answering large volumes of calls, not actually resolving issues.
Something as simple as a little flexibility in the workplace and being paid for breaks which the company doesn't have to pay you for can make a hell of a lot of difference. Productivity goes up, effectiveness increases, people remain with the company so the knowledge base and skill sharing increases. It doesn't take a lot to make your workforce largely happy, but similarly it doesn't take a lot to piss them all off - if companies focused a little more on this fact and a little less on the bottom line margins they'd probably find their profits would *shock* increase!
Actually it's very easy to see a way around this. Have the artists make an album without filler. If every song on the album was as good as the two or three singles that get released, people would buy them all. If 9 songs are crap and 3 are good, they will buy the 3. This isn't something that requires a technological or legal solution.
Disregarding the fact that the GP is an old cut 'n' paste troll that's crop up several times on/. before, your suggestion makes no sense. A retailer has no more right to copy copyrighted material than a pirate, and simply sticking DRM on the tracks doesn't magically make the copy above board. If it did, pirates would just invent their own (easily cracked) DRM and be impervious to punishment.
A retailer would have to have a specific agreement with the recording industry for them to not pursue him over this - and while a big chain might be able to negotiate this (I'm not convinced they could, but they might) a little mom 'n' pop retailer wouldn't stand a chance.
Although I'm not sure I agree with the idea that Google wants to attract lawsuits, it does actually happen that a company will occasionally court a court action (sorry, bad pun not intended) simply to establish a precedent which works in their favour - if such a precedent can be established it renders a company previously treading on legal thin ice suddenly much more investable, or makes a legally grey area suddenly less of a risk for massive investment. Sometimes it's better to get the lawsuits out of the way early to know whether it's worth carrying on.
It's not that useless since it's possible (maybe even trivial, though I haven't tried it) to remove the fix and revert to the original firmware. For anyone looking for a nice box which will sit in their living room and act as a general-use, wireles and most importantly multi-format media centre with USB connections (for MP3 players, external hard drives, etc) available as standard, this is now a nice option.
Of course, you lose the ability to go on xbox live, but I think that was also a limitation with the original xbox (for a while anyway, not sure if they ever worked out how to get around this). It didn't stop lots of people doing the mod anyway. And now there's a box which can do HD and looks a lot better than the original clunky xbox, I'm sure there will be plenty of people who take this route.
Personally I enjoy playing on XBL, but I'd be tempted myself otherwise.
Yeah, I know. I saw a Dell ad some time ago, this guy wanted to use the machine for 'work' and 'webbrowsing', the phone representative recommended he use a Core duo 2 with 1GB of RAM that comes with Windows XP...
Haha, I love those ads. Some guy saying he just wants to be able to send email and browse the web being blatantly oversold an uber gaming rig while the friendly voice-over explains how, at Dell, you get the PC you want. And then they upsell him a 21" monitor or something, because, y'know, sometimes those emails just need a super big high-res LCD screen.
Apple is actually one of the worst examples of a DRM system that is 'properly written' and has 'minimal impact'. Why? Because it adds an extra layer of annoyance for the customer who wants to use their music on different, non-AAC formats while at the same time achieving none of the goals of DRM (since it's trivial, if annoying, to burn a CD and convert to a different format). So not only does it fail as DRM, it annoys users for no good reason whatsoever. It's like a CD retailer telling customers they can rip the CDs and do whatever they want with them, but they have to jump through a big hoop first to prevent piracy.
I hate that I can't back this up but there was a quote by someone from the British RIAA (BPI?) on BBC Radio One just before Christmas who said the industry acknowledges that DRM is not about controlling piracy. At the time I was really shocked, I mean we all know this already but for them to admit it...
I really wish I'd grabbed the clip from their listen again service because it seems either nobody picked up on this or my google skills are too weak. Anyway, obviously this is in know way proof of anything since it's only my word, but was I really the only person to hear this in the UK (it was on the newsbeat section on the Scott Mills show, between 17:45 and 18:00)?
I do go to the cinema once in a while, but it's not the best experience. As the other poster said, sneaking in food is possible but hardly practical (you can't really make your own hot dog and sneak it in, the ice cream melts, etc), and you risk being expelled if caught. Personally I don't like to be made to feel like a criminal just because I don't want to buy their exorbitantly priced food.
Then there are queues, uncomfortable seats (with a premium for slightly less uncomfortable seats), the inconvenience of not being able to pause and the annoyance of people talking through the movie or the distraction of people playing with their phones during the movie (it would be nice if the cinema could employ someone to sit in on the movie and remove these people, but they're all too busy looking for food smugglers).
Finally there's the cost. I can almost buy the DVD for the price I pay for me and my better half to go watch a movie. Even though the experience is not nearly so comfortable as watching from home and even though I then have to sit through maybe 40 minutes of paid advertising - hell, they should be showing me the movie for free and making their money from the food and advertising.
So, even though I do sometimes go to the cinema it's far from an ideal experience and I can understand why people would resent paying for this when they could have the movie without any waiting time in their own home.
Why is it that books, even video games can get their act together. But the motion picture industry can't...
I assume it's because video games aren't usually promoted by the stars, while movies are. The star is quite often the major driving factor in a lot of people's choices to go see the movie (or not). If Generic Actor X is shmoozing the US market, he can't be doing the same in the UK at the same time. It's still pretty dumb, though. Usually by the time we get the movie we're sick of the hype.
I think these are all already freely available (maybe I'm wrong but I thought that was the case), so you don't have to drop anything per employee to trial them and see how they affect productivity. You don't even have to pay to use them full stop, unless you need the extra storage and phone support.
Dismissed a trend-setting project with just that one line. Of course, it does not matter that SETI@Home showed the power of volunteer computing for the first time, led to new advances in distributed computing, motivated Grid computing and PlanetLab among others and spun off BOINC, an open source project that serves as a base for similar @Home projects.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly - and more to the point, when it comes to advertising, who cares if you're showing one ad to two people or showing it to the same person twice? Unless your ad is so great that every single person who sees it is a guaranteed sale, then it doesn't really matter. I'm sure once an ad has played during the superbowl and been seen by billions of people worldwide, the advertisers don't claim they should be allowed to repeat it for less, or just pull it completely, since pretty much everyone's already seen it.
Aren't ads usually priced on individual page impressions rather than unique visitors anyway? I doubt that an ad company would query the value of showing an ad to someone more than once - if anything, used properly, this can be more valuable since it is a constant brand reinforcement and may be more effective than a one-off viewing.
The trick seems to be convincing the public that the dangers from outside are worse than the dangers from the police/government. Given such a situation, people will generally choose what they see as the lesser of two evils. Which is why control of the media is vital to running a successful police state.
I work on a large UK site with a very broad demographic and we've yet to notice such a swing in favour of FF. Figures for the past week's traffic (based on around 1.2m unique visits) are:
IE - 92.4%
FF - 5.9%
This is a slight increase for FF on last year's (2006) figures for the same period:
IE - 94.7%
FF - 3.9%
A 2% increase is hardly the mass conversion I was hoping to have seen by now. Looking at the same weekly period in 2005, there was a 1.6% increase from 2005 - 2006, so there does seem to be some increase in the momentum (albeit so small it could well be an anomaly).
We blew it guys, we had the promise of free, unrestricted knowledge - the ability for any man to share his knowledge with another. The freedom to aquire knowledge of any aspect of human achievment, from any culture at any time.
[...]
Wikipedia is the largest collection of ill-informed crap on the face of the planet, an admirable quest that has descended into a miasma of gibberish. It is now no more than a loose collection of opinion that may or may not be right.
I hate to break it to you, but that unrestricted knowledge of man you refer to pretty much IS largely a loose collection of opinion. Also, how do you build a repository of free, unrestricted knowledge while at the same time placing restrictions on the type of information that you gather? Sure, Wikipedia's not the ultimate answer - but certainly it's a step in the right direction, for all its flaws.
You only have to look at the myth of man made global warming to see this in action (and I know I will get flamed for that sentence, but that will only serve to prove I am right).
Nice, I see what you did there. So something like "Well I believe to be true, and if you flame me it only proves I'm right" would give us the blanket right to spout whatever nonsense we like and have it immune to criticism? You complain that Wikipedia is full of nothing more than useless opinion, then you put forward your own equally useless opinion and expect us to accept it as rock solid proof that what you say is true.
More to the point, if your favourite band "works for the RIAA" (or, more realistically, the RIAA works for your favourite band), then you need to find a new favourite band...
He's referring to the initiation of many lawsuits without gathering even the most basic evidence to support them, then simply pushing these claims as far as they'll go before ever actually having to have a court hearing, knowing that most people don't have the means to defend themselves. This scattergun approach could be considered extortion - although what they are extorting is public opinion rather than money (I'm not sure how successful mass litigation against people with little or no money actually is...). They're extorting fear of reprisal with heavy-handed tactics which make a mockery of the judicial system (since they show every evidence of not actually wanting to go to court, just to make examples and bankrupt a few people along the way).
My motto has always been: "If you can do the crime, you can do the time". Sure, children shouldn't be locked up with adults but the penalties should be the same when the crime is the same, and if the punishment is the death penalty so be it, even for the retarded.
Which is why I think we should all be grateful that you are far, far removed from the legislature. A key component of criminal liability is the intention to commit a crime - the mens read. In latin, "actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea", or "the act does not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty". This applies to the vast majority of laws, with the exception of those which carry strict, statutory liability.
To argue that a child or someone who is mentally retarded should be accorded the same mental status as a fully compos mentis adult is either incredibly naive to the point of defying belief, or else incredibly stupid. That is not to say that a child can't have the mens rea to commit a crime, but it would be extremely unlikely and, in any event, difficult to prove.
It's more than just the effect on these few employees, or even the ones who work with them who may be affected by their morale. Google has got where it is today in part by offering an excellent search service, but also in part by having kudos amongst people in the know. There's a kind of awe that surrounds the company and its attitude to its workforce. Too many stories like this and the shine starts to fade, people realise it's just another global mega company with an eye on the bottom line. It's hard to see anyone usurping Google for a while yet, but when goodwill is so cheaply bought, why take the risk? A lot of companies would kill to be as highly regarded as Google, they should milk that for as long as possible.
That's exactly right - I've worked as tech support in a call centre where pretty much every second of your working day had to be accounted for. You had to "wrap up" and be available for the next call within 5 seconds (this includes writing up all the notes from the call in case the customer called back - which explains why people often have to explain their problem 10 times to different people), if you spent too long on toilet breaks or were more than 30 seconds late logging back on after lunch or when your shift started, all these things would be noted. There was a team responsible for monitoring everyone in the call centre to ensure they were all logged in and available to receive calls at all times - if anyone was not available this team would call up their team leader to go check it out.
The morale was terrible - everyone wanted out, even the team leaders and middle management. Every Thursday the local paper would carry the jobs section and at least 2 out of 3 people would have a copy at their desk. Staff retention was poor, and retention of the very skilled was even less, which led to awful service for the customers, but the company seemed to be in the business of answering large volumes of calls, not actually resolving issues.
Something as simple as a little flexibility in the workplace and being paid for breaks which the company doesn't have to pay you for can make a hell of a lot of difference. Productivity goes up, effectiveness increases, people remain with the company so the knowledge base and skill sharing increases. It doesn't take a lot to make your workforce largely happy, but similarly it doesn't take a lot to piss them all off - if companies focused a little more on this fact and a little less on the bottom line margins they'd probably find their profits would *shock* increase!
Actually it's very easy to see a way around this. Have the artists make an album without filler. If every song on the album was as good as the two or three singles that get released, people would buy them all. If 9 songs are crap and 3 are good, they will buy the 3. This isn't something that requires a technological or legal solution.
Disregarding the fact that the GP is an old cut 'n' paste troll that's crop up several times on /. before, your suggestion makes no sense. A retailer has no more right to copy copyrighted material than a pirate, and simply sticking DRM on the tracks doesn't magically make the copy above board. If it did, pirates would just invent their own (easily cracked) DRM and be impervious to punishment.
A retailer would have to have a specific agreement with the recording industry for them to not pursue him over this - and while a big chain might be able to negotiate this (I'm not convinced they could, but they might) a little mom 'n' pop retailer wouldn't stand a chance.
Not only that, it's meant to be every Christian's duty to spread the word of God, or was there a footnote "*subject to regional copyright laws".
can't believe someone posted this AGAIN.
He's trying to establish a new meme, you insensitive clod!
Although I'm not sure I agree with the idea that Google wants to attract lawsuits, it does actually happen that a company will occasionally court a court action (sorry, bad pun not intended) simply to establish a precedent which works in their favour - if such a precedent can be established it renders a company previously treading on legal thin ice suddenly much more investable, or makes a legally grey area suddenly less of a risk for massive investment. Sometimes it's better to get the lawsuits out of the way early to know whether it's worth carrying on.
Maybe throw in some reference to Ballmer squirting his music load at random females... I dunno, I'm punned out, too.
It's not that useless since it's possible (maybe even trivial, though I haven't tried it) to remove the fix and revert to the original firmware. For anyone looking for a nice box which will sit in their living room and act as a general-use, wireles and most importantly multi-format media centre with USB connections (for MP3 players, external hard drives, etc) available as standard, this is now a nice option.
Of course, you lose the ability to go on xbox live, but I think that was also a limitation with the original xbox (for a while anyway, not sure if they ever worked out how to get around this). It didn't stop lots of people doing the mod anyway. And now there's a box which can do HD and looks a lot better than the original clunky xbox, I'm sure there will be plenty of people who take this route.
Personally I enjoy playing on XBL, but I'd be tempted myself otherwise.
Yeah, I know. I saw a Dell ad some time ago, this guy wanted to use the machine for 'work' and 'webbrowsing', the phone representative recommended he use a Core duo 2 with 1GB of RAM that comes with Windows XP...
Haha, I love those ads. Some guy saying he just wants to be able to send email and browse the web being blatantly oversold an uber gaming rig while the friendly voice-over explains how, at Dell, you get the PC you want. And then they upsell him a 21" monitor or something, because, y'know, sometimes those emails just need a super big high-res LCD screen.
Apple is actually one of the worst examples of a DRM system that is 'properly written' and has 'minimal impact'. Why? Because it adds an extra layer of annoyance for the customer who wants to use their music on different, non-AAC formats while at the same time achieving none of the goals of DRM (since it's trivial, if annoying, to burn a CD and convert to a different format). So not only does it fail as DRM, it annoys users for no good reason whatsoever. It's like a CD retailer telling customers they can rip the CDs and do whatever they want with them, but they have to jump through a big hoop first to prevent piracy.
I hate that I can't back this up but there was a quote by someone from the British RIAA (BPI?) on BBC Radio One just before Christmas who said the industry acknowledges that DRM is not about controlling piracy. At the time I was really shocked, I mean we all know this already but for them to admit it...
I really wish I'd grabbed the clip from their listen again service because it seems either nobody picked up on this or my google skills are too weak. Anyway, obviously this is in know way proof of anything since it's only my word, but was I really the only person to hear this in the UK (it was on the newsbeat section on the Scott Mills show, between 17:45 and 18:00)?
So the real question is, can we use this to find the prizes in promotional products?
I do go to the cinema once in a while, but it's not the best experience. As the other poster said, sneaking in food is possible but hardly practical (you can't really make your own hot dog and sneak it in, the ice cream melts, etc), and you risk being expelled if caught. Personally I don't like to be made to feel like a criminal just because I don't want to buy their exorbitantly priced food.
Then there are queues, uncomfortable seats (with a premium for slightly less uncomfortable seats), the inconvenience of not being able to pause and the annoyance of people talking through the movie or the distraction of people playing with their phones during the movie (it would be nice if the cinema could employ someone to sit in on the movie and remove these people, but they're all too busy looking for food smugglers).
Finally there's the cost. I can almost buy the DVD for the price I pay for me and my better half to go watch a movie. Even though the experience is not nearly so comfortable as watching from home and even though I then have to sit through maybe 40 minutes of paid advertising - hell, they should be showing me the movie for free and making their money from the food and advertising.
So, even though I do sometimes go to the cinema it's far from an ideal experience and I can understand why people would resent paying for this when they could have the movie without any waiting time in their own home.
Why is it that books, even video games can get their act together. But the motion picture industry can't...
I assume it's because video games aren't usually promoted by the stars, while movies are. The star is quite often the major driving factor in a lot of people's choices to go see the movie (or not). If Generic Actor X is shmoozing the US market, he can't be doing the same in the UK at the same time. It's still pretty dumb, though. Usually by the time we get the movie we're sick of the hype.
I think these are all already freely available (maybe I'm wrong but I thought that was the case), so you don't have to drop anything per employee to trial them and see how they affect productivity. You don't even have to pay to use them full stop, unless you need the extra storage and phone support.
Dismissed a trend-setting project with just that one line. Of course, it does not matter that SETI@Home showed the power of volunteer computing for the first time, led to new advances in distributed computing, motivated Grid computing and PlanetLab among others and spun off BOINC, an open source project that serves as a base for similar @Home projects.
"Okay, but what has it done for [us] lately?"