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Comment Wrong Objective (Score 4, Interesting) 192

The problem here is that if you are Average Joe and try asking out Supermodels Ann, Barbara and Cheryl, you're unlikely to get a reply. Well, not a printable one, anyway. So coming up with yet another supermodel for you to sob over isn't a lot of help.

This assumes that the goal of the dating site is to find you a mate. It isn't. The goal is to get you to pay as much as possible in subscription fees, or view as many ads as possible so they can make money. If you find a mate, you quite subscribing and quit visiting the site, so that's no good. What keeps you on the site is the illusion that you've got at chance at that supermodel. The optimal situation for the dating site is to give you hope without success.

Go to a site like Match.com. Want to look around to see if there is anyone you would want to date? No problem, just create an account -- it's free! Of course, when other people see your account they will have no idea that you haven't paid the subscription fee and won't be able to read any of the emails they send to you unless you pay. So Match.com has new profiles popping up to give their subscribers hope, but the emails those subscribers are wasting their time sending aren't even seen. Perfectly OK to waste your time as long as it keeps you paying.

Comment Normalization? (Score 2) 152

Canada, with by far the most sole-country proposals, seems like it is up to something.

Doesn't the raw number of sole-country proposals seem like the wrong metric? It seems more sensible to divide the number of sole-country proposals by the total number of proposals for that country to see what fraction of its proposals have no support from other countries. From the next to last graph, it seems that Canada has both a lot of sole-country proposals and a lot of joint proposals. If the fraction of Canada's proposals that are sole proposals is not particularly high, the large number of Canadian sole-country proposals would just reflect them making a lot of proposals in general -- you might conclude that they are just putting more effort into getting the treaty right (in their opinion) than other countries. I only skimmed the article -- did I miss something?

Anyway, interesting analysis. Unfortunate that the Washington Post didn't make the graphs available in a format that is large enough to read the labels.

P.S. I'm not Canadian.

Comment Re: Free usually = not very good (Score 1) 116

GoToMeeting is a sales tool and thus is not applicable here.

Well, GoToMeeting is a desktop sharing service, and that's what the original post asked for, but that's beside the point. The point is that Citrix is a spammer, so people that dislike spammers might not want to do business with them in any capacity (GoToMeeting or GoToAssist).

I PAY for GoToAssist Express therefore I do not receive any spam from Citrix.

I'm not sure "therefore" is appropriate in the sentence above, but even if it is, what is your point? Everyone should pay for a Citrix service for every email address they have so they can have the luxury of not being spammed by Citrix?

Comment Re:Free usually = not very good (Score 1) 116

Which is why I chose to purchase Citrix GoToAsssist Express

My company has been using Citrix GoToMeeting for a few years now, and while it has worked well I've been rather annoyed lately with the spam I've received advertising GoToMeeting. The spam was sent to an email address that was never used for any transactions with Citrix. I've forwarded the spams to privacy@citrixonline.com and asked for an explanation several times. I hoped that they would tell me the spams were sent by some rogue affiliate advertiser who would be terminated, but I received no explanation. So, since I dislike spammers I will be looking for an alternative when our current contract expires.

Comment Re:Not sure. But I am opting out of the new slashd (Score 1) 193

which never end up killing the site like dissatisfied users claim

Ahem, Digg.com. Admittedly, the v4 update was more than just a new layout, but the rate of collapse was amazing. It was a social news site (sound familiar?) where the number of comments on the articles dropped by an order of magnitude in days.

Comment Choose your vendor wisely... (Score 5, Funny) 152

Google car: Will be named the "Beta." It will work great for the first three years, then Google will shut it down. If you have any problems, you will find that there is no customer support number.

Microsoft car: Will be named "Ding." You'll be cruising down the highway when the control panel suddenly says "Rebooting to install updates in 9...8...7..." Owners of the first few versions will have close encounters with telephone poles. Nobody will sell you car insurance.

Apple car: Will be named "iDrive." The car will cost $300k and will look modern and sexy. Build quality will be excellent. No matter what destination you enter, you'll end up in Camden because it uses Apple maps.

Oracle car: Will be named "Oracle Car." The car will cost $400k and you'll need an expensive consultant to make it work.

Comment Re:Not submitted to proprietary journals? (Score 2) 194

It does not appear that it was submitted to any closed, for-profit journals (like Science).

But they did submit a bogus paper to Science. It was titled "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?" The paper lacked a control group, but Science published it anyway in spite of its obvious failure to measure up to scientific standards.

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