Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 10th Sep 2012 09:54 UTC
Now here's an interesting little nugget Jeff Bezos didn't want you to know about when he introduced his new Kindle tablets: the Kindle Fire HD is ad-supported, and originally, you would not have been able to remove those advertisements from the device. Over the weekend, the company reversed this policy, allowing you to permanently remove the advertisements from your Fire HD for $15.
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RE[4]: Advertising sucks...
by UltraZelda64 on Tue 11th Sep 2012 07:29
in reply to "RE[3]: Advertising sucks..."
Member since:2006-12-05
I have to admit, as much as I despise advertising, I have seen at least a few ads in my life that I actually liked. I'm not saying they're not out there. They're just incredibly rare, as companies try to be memorable in the most incredibly annoying ways to get a sale. That seems more true than ever before these days. But even today, very few of them come to mind. They're a thing of the past, replaced by purely annoying garbage, repeated over and over and over again.
I couldn't remember a single Nintendo 64 commercial now, but being a gamer from a young age I'll never forget "Get N or Get Out." I also liked the Budweiser frogs, mainly for the humor, but of course those ones are now illegal. Oh noooo, can't advertise beer with talking frogs now, it might corrupt the children into drinking something that is not pure H₂O but includes small amounts of that dreaded chemical CH₃CH₂OH! [sigh] Of course, IMO, Bud sucks anyway and I'll take a good craft beer any day, but that's beside the point.
And never mind those chemicals that are much worse, which the government allows to be consumed legally--and those that are much safer that remain strictly illegal as if they're the devil's work and they'll turn a person into a maniac and cause them to go on a killing spree or something (gotta thank those loony Christians for that).
Edited 2012-09-11 07:47 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:38 UTC
"The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:30 UTC, submitted by JRepin
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 22:06 UTC
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:45 UTC
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."More News »
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Member since:
2010-03-08
That's true, but not all ads are so awfully designed that they represent a pure concentrated moment of annoyance.
Some examples off the top of my head
-John West salmon (on TV, can be found on Youtube)
-Ikea's "tidy up" series (ditto)
-Project Wonderful's webcomic ads (on pretty much every freely accessible webcomic out there)
I try to refrain myself from using ad blockers. If websites have such an awful advertising policy that they take hours to load (on my super-wondrous pirated EDGE connection) or are painful to read, it's better to notify the author about it or leave than to just ignore the annoyances that people who don't use Adblock go through. We won't change the fact that so far, nothing better than advertising has been found to pay for web hosting costs anyway.
Edited 2012-09-11 07:17 UTC