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Comment: No Irony Here... (Score 1) 527

by automag (#33846006) Attached to: Facebook Billionaire Gives Money To Legalize Marijuana

An irony here is that about a month ago, Facebook refused to take FireDogLake's 'Just Say Now' pro-cannabis law reform ads."

OP needs to find himself a dictionary, or hit up Wikipedia. There is nothing even remotely ironic about this. A guy supports a position and his employer does not support that position. Where's the irony in that?

Comment: Bah, Douchebags! (Score 1, Offtopic) 287

by automag (#31968334) Attached to: Facebook Retroactively Makes More User Data Public
Queue the litany of moronic douchebag Slashdot users whose only contribution to the thread will be a variant of "I don't use Facebook, and people who do are dumb." That may be true, but you're still a douchebag that didn't add anything to the conversation except to boost your own flagging self-esteem with a not-so-subtle "I told you so, and look how smart I am... I'm SO much better than people who use Facebook" statement. Do you feel better about yourself now? Thanks for adding nothing to the dialogue.

Comment: Doesn't Meet the Criteria for Squatting... (Score 1) 121

by automag (#29695619) Attached to: Squatters Abusing iPhone App Store



Since according to the TFA there can beno profit motive to the act of registering multiple app names it s not really squatting. It may be annoying. It may need to be fixed. But it's not squatting.

Comment: In other news, water is wet. (Score 1) 247

by automag (#29589773) Attached to: In Trial, Kindles Disappointing University Users
Kindle DX isn't making the grade with students? Well hell, I said that it wouldn't fly back in May: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1227901&cid=27890519&art_pos=8 To the Kindle team: there are three things you need to change if you want to be successful with students... Color display, a touch screen, and an appropriate UI to let students interact, highlight, and take notes with their textbooks in a more natural fashion.

Comment: Re:Really? (Score 4, Insightful) 205

by automag (#29164157) Attached to: Facebook App Exposes Abject Insecurity

You're assuming that all these people only have 'friends' they actually know and trust.

If you put it up for others to see it, others will see it. It's that simple.

No, actually whether a user has friends they 'know and trust' is completely moot. On Facebook someone can have their information handed over to a 3rd party developer by anyone in their network, whether they're someone trusted or not. "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

Comment: Re:Really? (Score 5, Informative) 205

by automag (#29164003) Attached to: Facebook App Exposes Abject Insecurity
The problem isn't so much that public information is public, it's that Facebook represents itself as secure and private to its users and then leaves the barn door open for developers, betraying that trust. Should Facebook users be more cautious? Absolutely. But most Facebook users are sheep-le who won't give a second thought to this kind of thing. If someone wants to leave their own information open and public that's one thing, but when they leave their entire network of 'Facebook friends' information public by proxy (even if their friend has done everything 'right' in terms of securing their information) that's where the real problem lies.

Comment: Star Trek is already in the black... (Score 1) 820

by automag (#27911255) Attached to: Is a $72.5m Opening Weekend Enough For Star Trek?

Hmmm... OK, let's maybe have an on-topic post about this, eh? :-)

"Den of Geek sounds a note of caution" Riiiight. Like some random SciFi site with a name like 'Den of Geek' carries any sort of real authority or credibility on the inner workings of the business of Hollywood. The truth is that in all likelihood Star Trek is already in the black and the flick hasn't even been released in 2 of the biggest overseas markets yet: China (5.15) and japan (5.29)... This doesn't even take into consideration downline profits like pay cable, basic cable, broadcast rights, DVD sales, etc.

As someone who makes his living 'in the business' one of the things I've learned over the years is that marketing departments regularly inflate budgets on mainstream films and deflate them on indie films. In my career I've been privy to the actual budgets (including marketing spend) for more than a dozen mainstream movies and in every case the real budget was between 30% and 50% lower than what the marketing department was claiming the budget to be. The more 'effects driven' the movie, the more inflated the budget typically is.

The reason for this actually makes some sense... When part of the sell is the spectacle, inflating the budget is one of the cheapest ways the marketing department can hint to moviegoers that the special effects are going to be "so kick-ass your mind will literally be blown out the back of your skull all over the movie-goer behind you" without actually saying it. Since every entertainment venue from ET to IMDb picks this stuff up and runs with it, it lends a "breathless" sort of credibility to the whole affair... And it doesn't cost an extra dime of the marketing budget to do.

Worry not, everybody involved in this (and every other movie you're likely to see this year) will make their money back plus a healthy profit. The "risks" involved in making movies are- to a large degree- all Hollywood smoke and mirrors, as usual...

Comment: Rumors of VM's Death... (Score 1) 393

by automag (#27895541) Attached to: Time For Voice-Mail To Throw In the Towel

...have been greatly exaggerated by this D-Bag Slate guy. As with many sub-par authors, he's chosen to assume that his personal situation and preferences must mirror societies situation and preferences as a whole. Sure, pal. I've got one word for you: pagers.

People have been decrying the death of pagers for nearly 15 years now, but you know what? I personally know ~20 professionals in the medical field who swear by theirs, and use them daily. A quick unscientific poll of 4 of those friends turned up estimates of between 30 and 50 additional people that they personally know who use pagers regularly.

Just like 'landline' telephones, pagers, Amiga computers, and... yes... Radio Shack answering machines, voice mail is not going to be going away anytime soon. Why? Because in some contexts, and/or for some people, voice mail works as well as they will ever need it to, so there is no need to upgrade to something else.

Personally, I predict we won't be seeing VM going completely away for a long time. Did I mention that I think the author of the original article is a giant D-bag. I did? Well now I've done it twice.
