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Comment Re:16 -18 year olds have never had a reason to use (Score 1) 457

Totally agree. Most of the under-20ish people I know use Facebook primaraly for games. The 20-40ish crowd may have accounts, but find themselves too busy nowadays to really use it.

I find that the thing that really seems to have killed Facebook is the "share" feature - especially on photos and videos. Now all Facebook is is people sharing comics, 6-month-old newsstories, virus hoaxes, etc. I wish there was a way to block all "shared" content - but more than that, I wish Facebook would just remove the feature. At least, if a person wants to share a website, they need to copy and paste the URL - do away with the ability to share someone else's posts and pictures.

Maybe then, Facebook may actually get back to being useful.

I have actually been thinking of jumping the Facebook ship myself, mainly because of everything I have mentioned. The only reason I haven't yet is because there really is no good alternative. At least, not in the English-speaking world. I just want to know what my friends are up to, if they are in a relationship, and see pictures and videos of their kids (and maybe vacation photos). I don't care if you joined a new team in such-and-such game, I don't need 20 of my friends to share Uncle George's picture of the day, and I don't want to see inspirational posts unless I am on an imspirational page.

Truthfully, I find Instagram to be much closer to what I am looking for in a social-networking site.

Facebook is turning off older users, and younger users don't have a need for it, and everyone in between just doesn't have time to sort through all the crap that is on Facebook now. As soon as a viable alternative comes up, people will jump ship. It happened to MySpace, which was thought to be unsinkable. It will happen to Facebook.

Comment Why have mobile versions? (Score 1) 382

A tablet is capable of rendering a desktop version of a page reasnoably. As for a phone, not many people are going to be surfing the web on a phone. Those that are are usually looking to do one or two things (ie a google search, buy movie tickets, pay a bill, get directions, etc). Most sites where users want to do a specific feature on a phone already have mobile version or a phone app available.

Most people are not going to be reading a church website, a city or state website, trying to run Galaxy Zoo, or likewise on their cell phones, so why go through all the trouble to rewrite a site?

Now, there are a handful of people I know whom a cell phone is their only data-connection at home. Many of those will either go to a friend's house, library or work or the couple of times that they need a desktop for something (such as filling for unemployment or job searching or doing their taxes). It could be argued that maybe the unemployment office and welfare pages might benefit from mobile versions of their sites, but as those are government agencies, I don't expect to see that any time soon.

Truthfully, the reason that most places don't have a mobile site is that they don't need it. It is as simple as that.

Comment Huge difference in jobs (Score 1) 214

will replace Jeffrey Zients, who stepped in to lead the team fixing the health insurance website when it crashed and burned on its Oct. 1 launch. Zients is set to take over next month as senior White House economic adviser

So, you either have an economist who was working in an IT position, which may explain why the website is having such problems, or you have an IT guy who is going to step into an economist position, which means that the economy is going to tank. Or you have a manager who doesn't understand either but acts like they do. Who thought this was a good idea?

Comment Re:Low Q? (Score 1) 366

Would be nice if someone created a website where people could submit newsstories and they get reviewed by multiple people before going live to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening.

Oh wait, that's slashdot circa 1999.

We are seeing more and more of these bogus newsstories on slashdot. I think Slashdot needs to fire a few editors and do away with the Firehose.

Comment Whaaa! (Score 1) 277

Lets get real here for a moment. It’s 1.5mbps DSL. It isn’t going to be fast. There’s nothing you can do but work around it and not try to make it something it isn’t.

Oh, whaaa! You may not be able to stream 1080p SuperHD from Netflix or HDX from Vudu, but this is fine for just about everyone. Most of my friends who are on DSL are on 768k, and I got a few friends on cable and UVerse at 1meg and 1.5 meg. They watch YouTube and Netflix, they download torrents, they play games.

Truthfully, if you are still close enough to an exchange to get DSL, you are probably in an area where you can get wireless internet (microwave). I have friends who live way out on ranches and stuff who have microwave internet and 40Mbps speeds with unlimited transfers. And if you are really out there, there is always HughesNet and CenturyLink.

Yeah, I may have 20meg at home, but I don't think I would be complaining about having to deal with "slow" 1.5, as you have options pretty much anywhere in North America to get faster via satelite, and I could make allowances (such as downloading versus streaming) to compensate if I want to do HD. I had 1.5Mbps for years up until about 7 or 8 years ago, and it was fine.

80ms ping rate isn't bad either. It's not great, but up until about 3-4 years ago, that is what I was getting on most things. So it takes a few extra seconds for facebook to load up. Whaa!

Worse, the article is really poorly written. It sounds mostly like a rant from someone who thinks he is entitled to fiber or something.

Comment Re:On and off for more than a year.... (Score 1) 413

Longer than that - I was dealing with this issue 8 years ago working desktop support (I'm in networking now). While I never put together svchost was related to Windows Update, I was always having svchost kill my XP machines, and I knew the more updates that were installed, the longer it took to run Windows Update.

Doesn't really matter now, though. XP is EOL in a few months. If you still want to run XP, just turn Windows Updates off - its not like you will miss anything.

Comment alpine or Alpine? (Score 1) 107

tight cluster of Alpine venues in the nearby Krasnaya Polyana Mountains

I am sure this is a typo, but I thought it funny. According to dictionary.com, if the word Alpine has a capitol A, it means either 1)of, pertaining to, on, or part of the Alps or 2) of or pertaining to downhill skiing or a competitive downhill skiing event.

Down further in the page:
1. of or relating to the Alps or their inhabitants
2. geology
          a. of or relating to an episode of mountain building in the Tertiary period during which the Alps were formed

As the article is not referring to The Alps, but rather to the Krasnaya Polyana Mountains, they should be using the word "alpine" with a lowercase A.

Yes, I am being a grammar Nazi, but found it funny.

Comment Re:No Shit (Score 1) 281

You got that from the article? The article is written by ComputerWorld, suggests that only a couple of people get it, and litterally says the rest of the entertainment industry doesn't.

And quite frankly, I am not sure why ComputerWorld even bothered to write an article about this - pretty much anyone who reads a computing magazine will already know that DRM is bad, and doesn't even speak to their target readers - software pirates (as opposed to movie or music pirates). Shoot, I cannot tell you how many times I have purchased a game, and ended up having to go download a crack because I had issues getting the game to work. The No-CD cracks are really nice - so I don't have to go digging out my discs to play a game I have installed.

In short, the article told us nothing we didn't already know, offered no insight at all, didn't even really speak to its target audience, and is really not news-worthy. But the story-publishing guidelines on Slashdot seems to have really gone downhill lately.

Comment Of course they shouldn't repay (Score 3, Insightful) 356

GM had met the terms required of it from the bailout - some of which was paying back in cash, and some of which was paying in stock. The government decided to sell the stock at a loss. That's not GM's fault.

Here is my question - what happened to GM stock when that many shares suddenly flooded the market? Wouldn't that make stock prices go DOWN? Ironically, though, the stock price went up considerably as investors are happy the government no longer holds a part of GM.

In any case, whether GM benefited from this or not, the point is that 1)GM fulfilled its obligation and 2) the government sold stock at a loss. Maybe this lesson will force the government to make better financial decisions. Okay, probably not, but one could hope

Comment Re:Can someone explain (Score 2) 418

"customers should never lose access to their Amazon Instant Video purchases."

This was actually one of Amazon's big selling points a couple of years ago - if you purchase a digital video through Amazon, you are not suppose to loose access to it. HOWEVER, this statement is not what Amazon's Terms of Use says:

e. Availability of Purchased Digital Content . Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available to you for download or streaming from the Service, as applicable, but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions and for other reasons, and Amazon will not be liable to you if Purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming. You may download and store your own copy of Purchased Digital Content on a Compatible Device authorized for such download so that you can view that Purchased Digital Content if it becomes unavailable for further download or streaming from the Service.

Vudu seems to have clearer Terms of Service, which seem to favor the viewer - from Vudu's Terms of Service:

Exhibition periods for Content will vary depending on the method of purchase or rental and the Content being purchased or rented. When you purchase or rent Content, it is your responsibility to review any additional terms of use provided to you. Such additional terms of use may set forth restrictions upon your window of time to initiate viewing of content and, once initiated, the duration of time you have to complete viewing such Content. If no additional terms concerning timing and duration of viewing the Content are applicable to your order, then the following general terms may apply:
SNIP
If you purchase Content, you may view it for as long as you (i) are capable of accessing the VUDU Service, and (ii) maintain an active VUDU Account.

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