Right. Snail mail is probably still better, but I've gotten relatively thoughtful (read: not canned) responses to my emails before, at least from my House Rep. Senators are probably getting more mail, so you may be more likely to be lost in the shuffle.
Jeopardy questions are not straightforward. What's impressive here isn't finding the answer, it's figuring out the question. Natural language processing is very difficult, and Jeopardy provides a particularly difficult version of it, too, with all the puns and such.
I don't disagree in many cases, especially when it comes to influencing elected officials. However, I will say that polls predicting votes and the like can be nicely checked against real results. Most (all?) pollsters and poll analyzers take the error into account when making future predictions and attempt to correct through proper weighting, etc.
Polling is never perfect, and even if you could feasibly poll everybody you'd still see differences as people change their minds or whatever, but some pollsters consistently get pretty close despite these and other issues. That said, as more and more people drop their land lines, I imagine these corrections are going to get more difficult to make and poll results will start to fluctuate more. But hey, maybe not. I'm pretty consistently surprised how close they get even today.
Can someone please explain to me why these rates are set by the government? Why can't the rates be negotiated between the businesses in question, like pretty much every other industry?
Attaching metadata could be called a form of watermarking I suppose, but when I think of watermarking I think of altering the actual data portion very slightly in an identifiable way, but without a noticeable change to the audio.
You know, it just occurred to me that without the internet, I don't even know how I'd find music anymore. I don't even have tv, so no ads or shows there. I've hardly listened to the radio in forever (and don't generally like it when I do), so nothing there. I do all my music discovery (and purchasing, for that matter) online. I probably buy 5-10 albums a month, but without the resources online I don't think I'd ever actually buy music simply because I couldn't find stuff I liked.
She could sell specific timeslots. Instead of selling it as $1000/hr, she could sell it as $1000 for 1-2pm on Wednesday (for example). Then she gets to control how many timeslots exist. She could also do this and auction them off as someone mentioned above. Start it at $100 and let people bid up to a few hours before the slot and whoever has the highest bid gets it.
"I mean, even the article stated that it seemed like Google enjoyed having people think that something wasn't true; how is that NOT dishonest?"
I don't understand what your point is here. The article says that Google seemed to enjoy it, but then surprisingly set the record straight. To use your words: how is that NOT honest?
Really, Google isn't perfect (it's not possible to please all the people all the time, etc.), but they're a large step up from just about everyone. They provide many services whose only cost is non-intrusive ads, they support open source (Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, etc.), they generally stand on the "right" side of major tech issues (according to general consensus, anyway), etc.
Also, the link you posted about making Google illegal really has nothing to do with Google specifically. It's about search engine liability, of which Google happens to be one. I don't think arguments being made about search engines in general can really be used as any kind of specific attack on Google.
Re: Re: Re: Re: from the business model as a "right" department...
Just to add to this, movies and music are not at all the same. Generally, once you see a movie you're done with it, at least for awhile. On the other hand, music is listened to over and over again. In other words, while HBO showing a movie actually might dissuade people from buying it elsewhere (since they've already seen it), hearing a song on the radio is much more likely to encourage a purchase since it can be listened to repeatedly.
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Polling is never perfect, and even if you could feasibly poll everybody you'd still see differences as people change their minds or whatever, but some pollsters consistently get pretty close despite these and other issues. That said, as more and more people drop their land lines, I imagine these corrections are going to get more difficult to make and poll results will start to fluctuate more. But hey, maybe not. I'm pretty consistently surprised how close they get even today.
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Free Market
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Finding Music
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I don't understand what your point is here. The article says that Google seemed to enjoy it, but then surprisingly set the record straight. To use your words: how is that NOT honest?
Really, Google isn't perfect (it's not possible to please all the people all the time, etc.), but they're a large step up from just about everyone. They provide many services whose only cost is non-intrusive ads, they support open source (Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, etc.), they generally stand on the "right" side of major tech issues (according to general consensus, anyway), etc.
Also, the link you posted about making Google illegal really has nothing to do with Google specifically. It's about search engine liability, of which Google happens to be one. I don't think arguments being made about search engines in general can really be used as any kind of specific attack on Google.
On the post: RIAA Has A Blog? And They Use It To Read My Mind!
Re: Re: Re: Re: from the business model as a "right" department...
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