Comment Re:Netflix should charge fees back to customers (Score 1) 466
Either way AT&T/Verizon/TWC and maybe Comcast will win and beat Google in the crony capitalism environment we have Silicon Valley type CEO's will win
There. FTFY.
Either way AT&T/Verizon/TWC and maybe Comcast will win and beat Google in the crony capitalism environment we have Silicon Valley type CEO's will win
There. FTFY.
As this clearly shows. Sad, but true.
Well, those few needed tweaks never stop piling up. On top of that, UX research and (more importantly) user expectations continue to evolve.
To keep up with that, websites either need to constantly change in small increments, or to do it in big chunks. We'd been doing the former for a while, but the decision was made to start fresh. I totally understand how jarring it is to see such a huge amount of change all at once, but we also have to look at what the website will look like a few years down the road.
The classic design in 2014? Not too bad. The classic design in 2018? Probably not going to cut it.
An old boss of mine used to say (and he said it at least six times a day -- it was very annoying) that "when the pain to change is less than the pain to stay the same, people change."
Let's review. The pain caused by a redesigned site with less functionality and more broken functionality is much greater than the pain to use the existing site. So don't wonder why you're seeing so much pushback.
I strongly recommend that the dev team re-label Slasdot Beta as Slashdot Alpha rev 0.3 or something similar. Don't call it beta until the important features are complete. In case you're wondering what those features might be, they are smooth and complete support for comments and moderation. Usability is key and based on the testing that's been going on, clearly that's an issue with the new design.
Please take the hint. I like
As an aside, many of your users could do a much better job in less time than the folks you've got working on this. That should scare you. Something about altslashdot.org, I think.
Hey, how about posting an article with some statistical analysis of the feedback you've been getting? If it shows up on the front page, maybe you might get the right idea. Because AFAICT, management isn't getting it.
Don Pardo is in Jeopardy !!
No. Johnny Gilbert is in Jeopardy. Don Pardo is in "The Illinois Enema Bandit."
And you're welcome.
I guess a lot of Americans hate smart people, don't they? I'd have thought it would have been far more entertaining to watch someone do something different, interesting and successful, but what do I know. I'm sure the Idiocracy version will be along any time now.
As a smart (and very modest) person, the anti-intellectual bent of the average American is pretty obvious. They're not bad people, they've just been poorly educated and feel threatened. It's rather sad, really.
He's getting booed because he's taking all the fun out of the game for the viewers
What Mr. Chu did did not take the fun out of the viewers who can keep up. On the contrary, those who could keep up with Mr. Chu's strategic moves find the whole thing very stimulating and refreshing.
It is those Joe Sixpacks who are so perplexed by the unconventional moves deployed by Mr. Chu who are doing all the booing.
Thank you. The guy is fairly smart and seems to have a broad base of trivia knowledge. Were I to be a contestant, I'd use a similar strategy.
It's Sony/Jeopardy's goal to make money entertaining the masses. Mr. Chu's goal is to win games. Seems reasonable to me.
Those "pre-approved offer" are just a marketing scheme. They don't do any credit checks before sending them out.
The credit check occurs when you reply to the offer. Then, they may refuse you or say; "After review, we can provide you with a limit of $5,000 or $10,000.
This is correct. The way the CC companies operate these is to get average credit scores for specific areas (zip codes, generally) or for people in specific groups. Fairly sophisticated statistical analyses (based on demographic profiles) are used to determine what offers are appropriate.
Just to clarify, the crime Vickerman was prosecuted for is Conspiracy to Defraud, purely for running SurfTheChannel, a streaming links site. This is quite a different law from Fraud, it's vaguer and much more prone to abuse - it seems to be FACT's go-to law whenever they realise a suspect they've spent time and money investigating isn't breaking any actual laws. Without it, Vickerman would probably never have been prosecuted for anything, although civil action would have been likely, IMO. If some defendant somewhere ever gets an appeal up to the ECJ, I think it quite possible they'll shoot the law down in flames, just for being so badly written. More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_to_defraud http://torrentfreak.com/surfthechannel-owner-sentenced-to-four-years-in-jail-120814/
An excellent point. Thank you for correcting me. Civil action is appropriate in these situations. Unfortunately, content owners have co-opted our system to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of us -- hence the criminalization of copyright infringement
No, the crime is copyright infringement. THAT is what infringement is, not someone downloading an episode of Downton Abbey because they missed it the other day.
I don't recognize copyright infringement as a crime. At best it is a tort, IMHO. Yes, I am aware that various governments have criminalized "copyright infringement." That doesn't mean I have to agree, or incorporate it into my worldview.
Changes in the business models made every one of their excuses invalid and as much as companies bent over backwards to get these people to be honest customers the trend just continued.
Chris Dodd, Is that you?
He's my MP, but I'm afraid I can't report on his file-sharing habits.
And to lend some context to his words, from TFA:
“The discrepancy I mentioned is a source of great frustration. For example, the private prosecution by the Federation Against Copyright Theft of Anton Vickerman, who was making £50,000 a month from running a website [SurfTheChannel] that facilitated mass-scale copyright infringement, saw him convicted of conspiracy to defraud and sentenced to four years in prison,” Leech explained.
“This level of sentence would not have been possible if he had been prosecuted under copyright law, but FACT was able to prove conspiracy in his actions. Without proof of conspiracy, a serious criminal could have been left subject to a disproportionately low maximum penalty.”
In a way, I do agree with his point; those making that sort of money from infringement do need to be punished properly. However, it'll be all too easy to abuse this sort of measure, and end up with the disproportion going the other way.
The crime here was fraud. The guy sold something he did not have the rights to sell. Kind of like someone selling your house without your knowledge. IANAL, but as I understand it, we have laws (as was seen in this case) that address these issues. Sending someone to prison for ten years (or at all) for downloading the latest episode of some crap TV show or movie for their personal use is ridiculous. That is and should be a civil matter, IMHO.
jumping from POSIX shell to bash, i.e. implicitly assuming i was a linux zealot, gibbering about how much easier language A is than language B, arguing with portability where POSIX is all about portability, and portable scripts run on any POSIX compliant system, further demonstrates how little you know. Perhaps take a bit of your own advice and learn the shell command language, the quality of your straw-men would probably double. Also, your assumptions are plain wrong. Yes, i'm a coder, but yes, then again, i'm a sys- and network admin of a mid-sized network (~200 hosts, not counting the VLANs for guest, wifi, isolation, etc) We do nearly everything in posix shell, even the damn server configuration automation. - the prime reason being that the scripts will not bother whether they run on our BSD servers or the linux boxen. But why don't you tell me some more about how vastly superior some-language-you-know-better-than-sh-is
Oh Technology god, I am but a toad at the feet of your incredibly knowledge and power! Please don't vaporize me with your incredible wisdom and power. Everything you say is absolute truth and I am just a retarded splotch who should have been aborted.
You are right about everything and I am wrong. Always and ever wrong. Compared to you, I don't deserve to live. Please come and take my possessions, my wife, my children so I can relieve this world of a brainless, worthless loser.
You win. Happy now? Jackass.
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra
