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The Almighty Buck

Ars Technica Inveighs Against Ad Blocking 1051

Posted by kdawson
from the paying-the-piper dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica recently conducted a 12-hour experiment in which story content was hidden from users of popular ad blocking tools. Explaining the experiment, Ken Fisher appealed to Ars's readership: 'My argument is simple: blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love. I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical, or makes someone the son of the devil. It can result in people losing their jobs, it can result in less content on any given site, and it definitely can affect the quality of content. It can also put sites into a real advertising death spin. As ad revenues go down, many sites are lured into running advertising of a truly questionable nature. We've all seen it happen. I am very proud of the fact that we routinely talk to you guys in our feedback forum about the quality of our ads. I have proven over 12 years that we will fight on the behalf of readers whenever we can. Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads. But any of you reading this site for any significant period of time know that these are few and far between. We turn down offers every month for advertising like that out of respect for you guys. We simply ask that you return the favor and not block ads.'"

Comment: Re:Spatial made sense (Score 1) 311

by tehBoris (#30553528) Attached to: Gnome Switches Nautilus Back To Browser Mode

Not OP but, for one, it mostly removes the need for a split view and tabs. You just place the few windows you'll use on the screen and drag and drop whatever files you want to move or copy. But I can see how a true split view could be nicer sometimes.

As it remembers the last position of your windows (screen and scrollbar), it makes navigating your most frequently used folders real easy, as you can just memorize their positions without noticing.

Regarding the window management points, there are menu actions (with associated hotkeys) to close entire hierarchies of folders or all the windows. To go 'up' you can use the parent folders list in the bottom corner of the window, or press either backspace or Alt-up. That is still less convenient than the back button, though, but the parent folder's window should still be at the top of the window stack after the child's.

As for long jumps, the spatial mode still has the tree view, at least here on Ubuntu (but I doubt they just patched something so big themselves). Also, there is Ctrl-l to get an address bar with auto-completion. Though I'd wish it showed you a list with the possible completions...

But I guess this is all a matter of workflow. I got used to it and now it is all in my fingers.

Programming

Web-based IDEs Edge Closer To the Mainstream 244

Posted by timothy
from the hope-your-connection-is-reliable dept.
snitch writes "Last week Mozilla released Bespin, their web-based framework for code editing, and only a few days later Boris Bokowski and Simon Kaegi implemented an Eclipse-based Bespin server using headless Eclipse plug-ins. With the presentation of the web-based Eclipse workbench at EclipseCon and the release of products like Heroku, a web-based IDE and hosting environment for RoR apps, it seems that web-based IDEs might soon become mainstream."

Comment: Re:The problem with Stallman's approach (Score 1) 367

by tehBoris (#26323955) Attached to: Stallman On the State of Free Software 25 Years On

Infuriate all sorts of fanboys, providing... how do they call them? Ah, yes! Drama and lulz on teh internetz, and thus more visits to the sites that host discussions on the subject, and thus more ad-revenue, bolstering the economy.

You see? The GPL provides a great public service.

Comment: Re:How's about for Economics / Business / Marketin (Score 1) 517

by tehBoris (#26218629) Attached to: Your Favorite Tech / Eng. / CS Books?

That's the problem with marketing. A mass of soulless ghouls chasing little bits of paper and completely incapable of imagining a universe where every tangible object and intangible concept isn't stamped with a little yellow price tag.

Hold on right there mister!

We are not just talking about bean-counting here, we are talking about the workings of society. The fact that you mistake the study of enterprise and economy for advertising and accounting only speaks of you.

The very fact that you produce stuff independently that serves other people's needs makes you an entrepreneur by definition, even if you don't seek to maximize profits, or profits at all.

Perhaps you should look a bit more into it before flamin' away in teh intertubes, for right now you are in the unenviable position of being corrected by a lame CS undergrad.

Government

City In Georgia Planning Virtual World For Civic Interaction 39

Posted by Soulskill
from the like-a-game-only-without-the-fun dept.
GamePolitics reports that Decatur, Georgia is looking into the development of a virtual environment to "encourage community networking, improve civic engagement, and promote economic development in the city." They've put out a request for ideas (PDF) on how to adapt a blending of MMOs and social networking to suit a city's civic needs. "The virtual environment should mimic, though not necessarily mirror, the layout and visual aspects of the City within the defined geographic area." They also want it to be avatar-based, friendly to businesses, and have a "fun and intuitive interface."
It's funny.  Laugh.

If Programming Languages Were Religions 844

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the worship-his-noodliness dept.
bshell writes "With Christmas around the corner I know we are all thinking about religion, or at least maybe wondering why this one religion dominates the rest for these few weeks. A fellow named Rodrigo Braz Monteiro (amz) posted this list comparing each programming language to a religion. Guaranteed to make you chuckle and generate a good long thread here on slashdot. Great way to pass the time as work winds down this week and we relate to our own programming faiths during this very special time of year. Merry PHPmas." Fortunately Pastafarianism is referenced.

Many people are secretly interested in life.

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