bumblebird

It seems more worried/scared than anything to me. If I was openDNS I would be worried also.

eg most people.

>> "there is no such thing as a computer that's too fast."

Right, but my point was that these days it's more likely to be the HDD, or network that's the bottleneck most of the time.

My Macbook pro is absolutely never CPU bound. It could have half the CPU power and I wouldn't really particularly care. Half the CPU power but SSD would be a massive performance gain.

I'd say they were largely unuseful and inaccurate :/

That problem should be solved in the 'reader'. If a url looks long, get your email client to show a small version of it. Get it to show the full URL when you hover over it. Whatever. Just do it in the client.

Even on twitter it's a stupid artificial restriction. It would be pretty trivial to show minified links for SMS alerts (Which is a tiny amount of twitter anyway now), and show full URLs for everyone else. Then clients could show the urls how they like.

The fascination with url shorteners is really worrying and useless. Can we get past this fad?

  * compiling unit tests
  * PC games
  * transcode video
  * photoshopping

These are exceptions IMHO. I don't think the average user does any of the above.

Of course some will still want beefy CPU power, but I think it'll end up as a niche.

Definitely gamers, but aren't they a pretty small minority these days? (PC gamers).

Maybe it's useful for science, but it seems like the moment has past when most consumers were blocked by CPU power.

My next upgrade will be to a SSD. Making my CPU go a bit faster is pretty useless when it's usually waiting on disk/network anyway.

I'm betting on a move the other way - toward low power 'internet thin clients' like a netbook with chrome on it. That'll do most people.

>> Q. Was Mint profitable at the time of sale?

>> A. We do not comment on revenues.

Odd, surely a simple yes/no isn't giving too much away.

>> "Do-it-yourself dreidel"

It seems quite odd to include this one IMHO. I had to look it up to know what it was. Is it more widely known in USA?

We're splitting hairs now and down to the meaning of "lotteries are stupid" :)

I see your distinction though, I was meaning the latter when I said "lotteries are stupid".

I don't think that's a good analysis. Anti gambling laws does indeed push the hardcore gamblers into underground gaming halls. But the important thing it does is stop lots of people getting hooked in the first place. Same with drugs etc.

Having said all this, it's clearly extremely lucrative to setup games like this.

They share a lot. They are addictive, and the further in you get sucked, the harder it is to stop. Because of this, the further in you get, the easier it is to be exploited and taken advantage of.

I don't think it's about being puritan, it's about protecting the most vulnerable members of society from themselves.

For example, say you get 95% of the way through a game, then the game asks for $100 to get past an absolutely impossible stage, they'd probably get a fantastic amount of people spending the $100 reluctantly. Which IMHO isn't a nice way to do things.

The issue isn't as clear cut as that.

They are offering you an 'easier game' for money. When you're competing against other people, that's an un-level playing field.

I'm pretty sure people who run lotteries think they are stupid. They are a tax on the poor, but they're extremely effective at raising money.

Interesting. Thanks :)

The fact someone sells a service doesn't mean it's right, proper, etc.

Gambling is heavily regulated for a reason. I would say that games like these should be regulated just as much.

Imagine going to the arcades, playing street fighter II, and it saying "We know you can't get on the score board because you suck, but if you pay $20 we'll put you at the top of the score board anyway". Would that be completely fine and above board?

Because it's moving the goalposts once you're committed.

It's not the same as freemium at all.

A game, where you're competing against other people, that operates on a non level playing field, is unfair. Allowing people to pay money to progress faster in the game is taking advantage of peoples idiocy.

Imagine going to the arcades, playing street fighter II, and it saying "We know you can't get on the score board because you suck, but if you pay $20 we'll put you at the top of the score board anyway". Would that be completely fine and above board?

In fact stupid things are often the most lucrative.

It's a gray area, but IMHO that's not what's happening here.

It's more of a bait/switch than an honest upfront cost for entertainment.

I don't really see why. We can pretty much all agree that the lottery is also 'stupid', but it works, and it's quite clearly understood why it works.

These sort of games work because they get people addicted, and then blackmail them into paying money to make the games easier for them.

Because that's an upfront honest price to pay the game.

This is blackmail later on. (You want to do better at this game? Sure, we can fix that for you, just pay us some money).

This sort of thing is worse than gambling. I'd say there's a strong case for regulating things like this. It's just preying on the addicted/weak/stupid surely.

It's almost a bait and switch:

1. Get user addicted to game 2. After some time, tell user they can progress quicker through the game if they pay money (Blackmail).

Definitely. And their weight should be counted towards their baggage allowance.

FWIW Even if true, I'd rather have a large number of consumers spending money, than 2 customers paying millions.

What does the affiliate bit mean? Affiliates generating income for tweetminer by selling it? Or tweetminer acting as an affiliate showing people adverts and generating income?

The regional networks were pretty useless. Putting the whole of the UK in the "London" group? :/

Generally we don't let our cards out of our sight. Indeed most of the time I handle my own card and it's only rarely that a shop assistant will handle it. (So writing down info isn't a big concern).

The portable POS devices allow the customer to tip as well BTW.

"They" don't run cards much any more. It's a case of consumers putting their own cards into chip+pin devices and keying in their PIN.

Sure @ disputes, we have similar, but it's an extra hassle and not fun.

"This means that adding support for EMV to existing payment applications can be a daunting task!

Furthermore, the demands of providing an EMV solution do not even stop once all the necessary processing has been implemented, thanks to the extensive type approval process enforced by the governing body, EMVCo. Before any EMV-capable solution can be deployed, there are thousands of tests that need to be passed to validate that the implementation conforms to the EMV industry standard, and as the EMV specifications are regularly updated this becomes a major task in itself! This is why many businesses requiring an EMV "Chip & PIN" solution choose to license a purpose-built EMV software kernel rather than developing their own."

http://www.emvx.co.uk/emv_guide.aspx

idk, maybe they could license it from someone, but I wouldn't say it's a trivial thing to add.

This is really weird for me. In the UK we've been trained to not just allow people to swipe our cards into just any hacked together device.

If the device doesn't look 100% 'official' I wouldn't touch it with my card.