Posts by JohnFen

Re: Vote with your feet, folks.

I need to keep my .org domains (or get rid of all of my domains), though, if for no other reason than to prevent them from being used by unscrupulous others in an attempt to trick people into thinking they're on one of mine.

Re: ... hit with a bill that will probably be significantly larger

"But with a billion dollar dangling in front of their eyes, can you really blame them for turning soft?"

Yes, without hesitation.

Re: Again...

It doesn't, except in the "they're a good guy for not punching me even harder" sense.

I agree. I was optimistic about ISOC when it first launched, but it's clear that ISOC is working toward the exact opposite of what they claimed they were working for.

Re: Self serving SOB

"If you bought or sold a house in your life, did you place a newspaper article about the price negotiation?"

Nope, because the general public is not a stakeholder in that sort of deal. However, the .org registry is different -- there are a ton of stakeholders, and they should have been informed.

Re: Idiots

"Isn't this what you all wanted?"

You keep saying that, but you aren't saying who you mean by "you all".

Re: Depressing, ...

"Would it REALLY hurt them that much to, say, take a hit for one year to engage in the transition between TLDs?"

I've worked with and for a number of nonprofits over the decades, and for most of them, yes, this would be a huge financial problem.

Re: Most people don't care one way or another.

"The fact is that the US Govt created a competitive free market in top-level domain registrations in 1998 and we've lived with it ever since."

It did? Where is this competitive free market, then?

Re: Because an open and transparent auction wouldn't have maximised the value at all!

"a financial transaction based on information not known to the public beforehand. Isn't that illegal in the U.S.?"

It's not illegal unless the company is publicly traded.

Re: No mention of...

In my city, Uber was using Greyball in order to evade inspectors and regulators, which is a crime.

I'm in the US, but in my city, there are multiple such alternatives -- they're called taxis. Uber offers literally nothing they don't, except for the artificially low prices.

Re: looks horrible

Is that a fat joke? The US is now only the 10th fattest nation on Earth!

The fatter nations are, from least to most: Mexico, Qatar, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Belize, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.

Also, the rotundity of Americans depends on where in the US they're from as well... some parts have a very high percentage of overweight people, others have a very low one.

Re: looks horrible

Movie America is very, very different from actual America.

Re: looks horrible

"you probably nave have been to Europe then"

I have, and Europe has a great amount of diversity, packed into a smaller space even. But I was talking about the US, not Europe.

I often hear people who are not terribly familiar with the US say things like "Americans are like X" and "All Americans do/own Y". Those statements are never true, and can only be coming from those who underestimate the variety of cultures the US has. Saying this in no way implies that other parts of the world aren't equally or more diverse.

Re: looks horrible

Yes, I think that people who haven't been to the US, have only been in the big US cities, or even Americans who have never spent much time outside of the region they grew up in, often don't understand how huge and diverse the US really is. Different parts of the country can be radically different from each other culturally, politically, linguistically, and in terms of what sort of vehicles you see on the roads.

Re: What an ugly duckling

"I get that the F-117 was high tech and stealth and all that"

Although it was angular only because the computing power of the day was insufficient to calculate the curved shapes needed to accomplish the same reduction in radar cross section. There's enough computing power now, which is why newer designs of stealth planes don't look like that.

...which means that the F-117 itself is a bit retro.

"going crazy about how 'futuristic' this car is."

I am utterly baffled that anyone thinks the design is "futuristic". It looks positively retro to me.

Re: looks horrible

"But in America, basically everyone does."

In some parts, sure, but not everywhere. In my part of the country, people tend to abide by the rule that it's better to know someone who has a pickup than to be the one who has a pickup.

Re: Famous truths...

Absolutely. I in no way meant to imply that I'm immune to marketing tactics, only that I don't seem to have the FOMO thing. Different people are receptive to different tactics. This is just one that I don't seem to be very receptive to, but there are others that are effective on me. This is why there isn't just a single tactic that is used all the time.

In fact, I am perfectly aware that people who think that they're immune to marketing tactics are not just wrong -- they're probably as susceptible as everyone else -- but they are more vulnerable than average to a specific subset of tactics.

Witness the long tradition of marketing that overtly pans marketing, for example.

I strongly recommend that people learn marketing -- not necessarily because you need to know how to market stuff, but because it's really eye-opening how easy it is to manipulate people (and occasionally useful to know how to do it yourself). But one of the thing I learned in marketing classes is that knowing the tricks in no way makes you resistant to them. In fact, it's well known that marketers tend to be more susceptible to marketing than others.

If you're trying to fix a board by tossing it in an oven (which I don't recommend at all), you don't actually want to get it hot enough to melt the solder, for a number of reasons. You're just trying to get it hot enough to soften the solder, and that temperature is a fair bit lower than the melting point. Low enough that most domestic ovens can reach it.

Re: "These are incredibly talented professionals"

I agree.

I'm hoping that most WeWork employees had already begun job hunting back when the IPO failed and true state of the company became widely known.

Re: Another one bites the dust

"It does seem odd that all these new, "disruptive" companies seem to think they need to go worldwide as fast as possible, burning through VC like there's no tomorrow before even trying to turn a profit."

It's not unprecedented, though. This behavior is pretty much what caused the dotcom bubble burst about 20 years ago.

Re: Oh no

It wouldn't be hard to require a password to be present in the email. If the password is wrong or absent, then the print job doesn't go.

Re: Not that big of a loss

"Always try and be one of the last on to."

I never use the phone for this because I hate it so much when other people do. But I always try to be the last one boarding anyway. In terms of wait times, it doesn't matter if you're at the front or end of the line -- the plane isn't leaving until boarding is completed anyway -- and it's so much nicer to spend that time sitting in the airport lobby rather than on the plane.

Re: Not that big of a loss

"Who the feck prints anything anymore?"

I have to print things once or twice a month. It's not worth the bother of having my own printer for this, though, so I just use a copy shop to do it.

Back when I did need a printer, I just ran my own print server, which I could access via my VPN from the internet. Google's print service never offered me anything that I didn't already have. But I confess that I'm abnormal.

Re: Icann

That's why I said "resistant to" and not "immune from".

Re: Greed is gooood

Indeed.

One of the ideas behind western capitalism is the recognition of this fact, and to mitigate it by performing a bit of jiu-jitsu so that the greedy option is also the least damaging, most beneficial to the public actions.

I think the track record on this is spotty at best.

Re: Icann

It's very useful to have some single authority that allocates names and addresses. Otherwise it can get prohibitively difficult to avoid two people trying to use the same ones.

That said, the current situation with ICANN is utterly ridiculous and is failing us. Some alternative would be nice -- preferably one that is more resistant to corruption than what we have now.