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MS Youth-Culture App Gets Gushy Advance Reviews
geo writes "Newsweek first reported this new Microsoft beta, threedegrees. The surprise is, Steven Levy, well-known fan of the Macintosh (and unfan of Microsoft) wrote something almost entirely positive. So did CNET news.com.com.com.com.com. Is it possible that something good is coming out of Redmond?"
that it justifies this: "To use threedegrees, prospective testers must be running Windows XP with Service Pack 1, the new peer-to-peer update and MSN Messenger 5 installed on their computer."
No thanks.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
"But when Willy Wonka met Charlie,"
Savage says, "he didn't say, 'You can be an intern and in a few years can
suggest one feature in a product'--he gave him the keys!"
No he said:
Just over there.
Charlie bucket.
Well, well, charlie bucket. I read all about you in the papers. I'm so happy for
you.
And who is this gentleman?
My grandfather, grandpa joe.
Delighted to meet you, sir.
Overjoyed, enraptured, entranced. Are we ready? Yes. Good.
It's
here
has been trying to develop products aimed at the "Net generation," or young people currently between the ages of about 13 and 24.
With software that can do long distance meetings, and share files and photos, it would be a great business tool for brainstorming sessions, project planning, etc. It would also be great for distance learning applications and study groups. More and more colleges are doing Internet based classes these days, especially in doctoral programs. Too bad They didn't have those in my day..
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
The most ambitious feature is called musicmix, an online equivalent of a pajama party where people take turns playing deejay. Each group member contributes favorite tunes into a shared playlist, displayed on a dashboard with a customized "skin," and everyone listens together. A click from any participant can choose a new song. Then everyone chats about the tunes.
Does this mean that everyone must already have the tunes licenced on their computer? The following quote suggests otherwise:
Interestingly, men and women use this feature differently: guys will see it as a contest--who's brought the coolest tunes?
Sounds a bit like P2P on a tiny scale to me. I wonder how this fits in with Microsoft's DRM schemes...
"Is it possible that something good is coming out of Redmond?"
Uh. I know that MS bashing is second nature here and all...
However I really enjoy using XP. I enjoy using my Intellimouse Explorer. I enjoy several Microsoft games.
I appreciate having people out there who watch every step MS makes. However I think it's taking it a bit far to imply that MS NEVER does anything right.
Remember, Nobody cares whether you hate Microsoft or not.
Nobody cares whether you were offended by the poster's tone with regards to Microsoft.
Please, talk about the subject of the fucking post for a change.
Just RTFA and I cringed when I saw the bit about the instant sharing of files and images to the entire group. Crap like this is going to play havoc with business networks.
Also it seems to me that MS is getting a little confused, aren't they meant to be sucking up to the RIAA? If so whats with the music sharing?
Take a look at Avril or at Blink 42. These are not people from a generation who wants to adhere to society. Consider the following quote from the article:
;)
>>>
After much negotiation, the labels OK'd musicmix, once Microsoft agreed to somewhat hobble its features. (Playlists have a maximum of 60 tunes, and the songs won't play unless the original owner is participating.)
This is not how it goes. While this stuff might be interesting for the 8-12 year olds, beyond that they will be savy enough to figure out how to do things on their own.
MS while the intention is good is also misdirected. They want to get AOL IM client back. Last I remember the teens do not seem to use AOL since, well, its, for old geezers.... You know those that cannot use a computer
If MS were to stop worrying about the legal implications and stopped looking over their shoulder then maybe this 3degrees will be popular....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
...that IRC is vastly superior to all these bloated instant messaging systems. Seriously.
Sounds reasonable to me, although I wonder if falls under public broadcasting/performance?
The RIAA seems to be redefining a lot of the things I took for granted in this respect
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
We're now up to 3 degrees of seperation? ;-)
-- Wibble
So you can let your friends listen to the same music and share images and all that, great. But just wait there one tiny little moment, what if they save this new copyrighted music to disk! EEK! It appears that the right hand is not talking to the left or the NetGen department is not talking to the paladium (Or whatever todays name is) department. Microsoft goes radical against piracy and violating copyright holders while microsoft encourages 13 to 24 year olds to share and enjoy there music and graphics. Even if they say you cant save because its a stream over broadband that they asume you have someone will find a way to go around. Love the two conflicting messages from microsoft. Long live Apple!
...see, previously, P2P was controlled by those meddling kids. But if MS can become the maker of the biggest, coolest, easiest to use P2P sharing system... and wait, aren't they also trying to become the makers of the biggest DRM system? Could there be some synergy between those two things??
It... it's too horrible to think about... yet...
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Crappy bands like Avril and Blink ARE teen society, right now those horrible pop-punkish bands are terribly 'in'
Banaaaana!
Judging from the setup, it looked more like an ad for threedegrees than a real article. The MSN logo, the MSNBC logo, and the gushing "try threedegree's features!" link insert left me wondering how much of Mr. Levy's article got trimmed by the editors.
Still, describing it as perfect for the Kelly Osbourne crowd is subtly damning praise. Associating a media-created star who acts rebellious for ratings with a Microsoft product...but more likely I'm reading too much into this, or crediting Mr. Levy too much.
[ With deepest apologies to Mark Knofler and Dire Straits ]
David Mohring - Original authorNote: dancing like a chimpanzee - see http://www.google.com/search?q=ballmer+monkeyboy+m peg
If you have not already listened to, or read Lessig's speech on free culture. I urge you to do so ASAP. The flash presentation brings home just how much we, as a society in general, have to lose. http://www.eff.org/IP/freeculture/
How long before the audio limitations are hacked? This is basically a file swapper with home based teleconferencing. If everyone's broadband, it's a movie and music swapper. If this catches on ASCAP will go after them for playlists.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Wasn't MS Bob also lauded in a similar way *before* it was released?
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
I guess this means another 10 projects on sourceforge, all in planning stage.
Sweet.
groupthink
The act or practice of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially when characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view.
If you moderate this as offtopic, you havn't read the article.
I've been thinking for a while about using Instant Messaging/ICQ or whatever at work. We have people working together in offices in several different countries, on various platforms. We normally use email/phone to communicate. Anyone use ICQ or Messenger? Good or bad experience? What's the best software to use?
"Her smarts eventually got her to the Redmond"
He intelligence allowed her to climb the career ladder.
"...online equivalent of a pajama party where people take turns playing deejay"
Has Kazaa like functionality.
"You invite friends to form a posse"
You invite dirty old men pretending to be little girls across the internet to come play with you're cat.
"..the most artistic winks..."
Winks? as in eyelid batting or are the young getting totally yorlandish and too incompsatoriallyfund.
"..grinding skateboard tunes erupting.."
Oh lord, make it stop!
Release it for the youth, make it work, then sell it as a general tool as suggested!
Enig? Det alt for hot det smor!
Anyone else find it highly ironic to find this posted right above an article about University Students being Slammed for Music Sharing?
I'm all in favour of Microsoft pushing the envelope here!
Core to threedegrees is the group instant messaging
Um, that's called a chat room, and it's been done. Way to build a product based on a new feature.
Other stuff sound kinda interesting, but hardly revolutionary.
Why the imposed limits, anyway? Only 10 user in a group? Only 60 songs?
How is this different from using a Gaim/Shoutcast combo?
Software Wars
While I think that three degrees seems in theory like a community building tool, what worries me is the limit to 10 participants in a "posse" will create in groups.
Unless you can join multiple "posses," and what I read doesn't seem to suggest it, your going to have groups of ten or less which get to decide who can join.
In MSNM there is not set limit to the number of people you can chat with, and you could make one on one connections. Before you could ignore a person, now you can exclude them. And if it's intended to be for 13 to 14 year olds, I think social cliques are inevitable. This fails to mention those who can't participate fully in the program, which seems to require broadband for what I personally view as the most interesting aspect, the ability to listen to shared music.
I'm not bashing on Redmond on this. I honestly think that the basic idea of the program is meritorious, but by limiting users to ten per group, and (and I could be wrong) users to one group, the collaborative aspects are blunted.
Gryftir
http://www.santacruzbynight.com/index.shtml Santa Cruz By Night Vampire Larp
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
It looks to me as if this is the perfect product for all those socially inept teens out there. What a nifty way to keep them locked up their rooms while they have virtual parties, virtual dates, et cetera on their computers. All the while they are not showering, going to class, or having any sort of real human interaction beyond a computer screen with avatars based on highly exaggerated or false physical attributes. This brings back memories of the movie Lawnmower Man where the guy is drawn into the "cyber" world and has lost all touch with the real world. I'm not bashing Microsoft here in any way; I just think the idea will be a short-lived one as, hopefully, the current generation realizes that there is life beyond threedegrees, Quake III, and Slashdot.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
This allows you to:
talk to a group of people! (wow, MSN, IRC, jabber etc has been doing this for years)
Send photos to each other! (WOW!, I use a 'web site', simpler and cross platform)
Listen to group music! (This is a new, ish, feature but to be honist you could all just press play at the same time (note that you can't actually share music with this thing)).
The only 'feature' this has is a nasty MS eyecandy.
It's 'market speak'ware, it also locks people to MS I suppose, stopping the Apple Mac youth drain?
Group members can create play lists of 60 songs, or about the equivalent of six CDs. The songs are played from the participant's hard drive, rather than being illegally swapped. Songs can be in Windows Media Audio, MP3 or WAV formats
Now we all know that "played from the participant's hard drive" is irrelevant - obviously the music is 'swapped' or you wouldn't be able to hear it. This means that the files are streamed and that Media Player doesn't let you save them as you play them. Technically, this is no different from the 'illegal sharing' that the RIAA has its knickers in a twist about. It'll be interesting to see if they condone or condemn this, and whether MS have cut a deal beforehand.
but it's still ristricted.
1) you need to have licenses (maybe via media player DRM modules?)
2) you can't play more than 60 songs on the playlist
3) others can't play your songs if you are offline.
pretty stringent - but better than what RIAA have been dealing out.
What better to explain the word "clout?"
btw, Ars Technica has a small writeup on this too - so check there for more geeky-perspective.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
that was the crappiest post ever.
I'm gonna print that out and add it to my scrapbook of lameness.
Is it just me...
Or is this just IRC with a pretty GUI, integrated shoutcast and a channel limit of 10?
Need to get away?
Adirondack Vacations
NO FILE SWAPPING IS ALLOWED by this program. It's merely p2p audio streaming (with the IM and other stuff). My music, from my computer, is played through the speakers of everyone who is active in the group at the moment. If I leave the group, so does my music. I AM NOT HOWEVER TRANSFERRING MY AUDIO FILES TO YOUR COMPUTER FOR PLAYBACK. In fact, there will be all kinds of junk in the datastream - music, pictures, and chat.
"Is it possible that something good is coming out of Redmond?"
Is it possible that a Slashdot editor could take submissions with at least some degree of subjectivity? Whether threedegrees is good or not, this sort of opinion in the post itself surely taints the comments.
Free iPods - now in the UK!
Really for a minute i thought i was going to be reading about something that was actually interesting. But no, its just another hyped up nothing. Im sure you could modify jabber to do the same useless things as this. When they talked about "not developing technology first" they wernt kidding.. theres really not much technology involved in allowing someone to send an image by draging it onto an icon, using an existing protocol/library. The music feature is the only slightly interesting thing but it restricts what you can do so its useless to me. Usually me and my friends use the technologically inferior method of typing the name of the song and getting the other person to download it. Or, ampache.org created a simple (100KB) way of sharing playlists, and its platform independent.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Wait, you mean Microsoft reinvented... IRC?!
...are belong to us!
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Will there be a gang colours plug-in available?
- cliquey little channels? check.
- play music in the background? check.
- emoticons? check.
- swap files? check.
- chat and be online all the time? check.
Makes me wonder if perhaps MS is glad to have seen the recent attacks on DalNET - now they can say 'sign up for threedegrees, we never get attacked because we are too cool' or some such marketspeak.By the way, all of the items in the checklist have both positive and negative implications.
Notes: Background Music on IRC? Yep - on the more social/chatty channels, I've seen all kinds of CTCP or in channel requests that look like "please play this music, and if you don't have it, fetch it from me via DCC" - I'm assuming that some clients have automated support for this, and they word the request such that you can still do it manually if you really want (clue for commercial software vendors that think you need a new protocol for every new feature - it's called interoperability and backwards compatibility)
Emoticons? But winks are animated! Um... yeah, so? Perhaps somebody doesn't quite understand yet - slang originates from exclusivity of communication, not 'ooo, shiney!'. Because you can make up ASCII emoticons on the fly, just as you can with slang, I actually think that the ASCII version is a better tool for the communication purpose. Maybe I'm giving the youth of today too much credit, but I don't really think they are willing to accept the limitation to language fluidity. So some will use winks, and some will use ASCII emoticons within the contect. Of course, I'm not sure how much the 'new great thing' factor will play into this.
Come on, you perfectly know that you will have to run Palladium to run three degrees, and you will not be able to save this new copyrighted music!
Remember his whitewash of Palladium?
Ok, so it's a service where you can not trade music and use some kind of instant emoticon on each other.
/>
Oh, yeah - the 'Net savvy kids are gonna eat this all up. You know how they just loo-oove empty marketing. <wink
One, where's the market? I mean rilly?
Two, this is supposed to make cash for MS how?
news.com.com he say:
Well the first thing is, does this market even exist? You see such people using AIM, ICQ etc all the time. This software is junk. Do the 'Net-Gen' (sic) care? No. They have other things to do than learn any more than the most trivial UI. As for heavy teenage net users, what about this, from the other article: What's with the arbitrary limitation? My kid sister's 'posse' (blech) is easily twice that big. Sounds like a mess. What are you supposed to call your group? 'J. Sixpack's buddies'? It doesn't work - that's like having gang leaders in the playground. That's not how kids do instant messaging. Is it? Drag-n-drop ('push') filesharing is a nice idea, but the kids already know about Kazaa, especially the heavy users. For anyone with enough bandwidth to stream nice audio to 10 buddies, they're way better off getting redistributable files from real P2P and letting friends/randoms pull them back off at their leisure.Right, point two... well hello, profit model? Looks like this is just another MSNIM-a-like project to be rolled into the OS. I don't see this as making any legit cash for Microsoft - it's not something the kids will pay for (and it's not corporate P2P). Can we say 'bundling'?
3 degrees might be great, especially if it has better than the usual godawful Microsoft UI. I suppose I shouldn't knock it till I've tried it (or a Linux clone...). And surely MS have got some market research to go on. But while making money out of kids is tricky (e.g. no-one likes adware), MS's strategy is obviously just to bundle, embrace and extend. And that rankles.
Groove: redux, reduced, repurposed, repackaged, remarketed and MSed. There you have it Boys and Girls.
Is it possible that something good is coming out of Redmond?
From the article:
There's your answer, Timothy.With the onslaught of technology we have gotten lazier and lazier. Children in my generation were lazier then our parents and them before that.
:P)
Taking the inititive by MS,
1. They stand to make sure all the kiddies continue to be late for school
2. ensure kids are Messaging instead of homeworking
3. Develop l33t net sp33k (ok not so bad but rememeber the recent stories about net speek making it's way into legitamate assignments)
4. Develop a gaggle of health related issues down the road from the repetetive strains and lack of physical exercise.
5. Continue to become socially inept through lack of human interaction.
6. Forget the rules of conduct when dealing with real people.
7. Insert hundreds of other uh-oh's.
Bottom line is I am slowing realizing that just like TV or Video Games, everything has to be takin in MODERATION (not moderate those who have points
Too much of a anything is a bad thing, and I for one limit my interaction with the PC to the 8 hours I work on it, and the 1-2 hours at home I use it for finances and games.
Whoah, I spend a shitload of time on the PC, god I can't imagine what our youth are going to be facing.
So that's again MS for providing a clear vision into why so many "in the know" know you're evil, EVEN WHEN YOU GET GOOD REVIEWS.
/ end of rant
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
I really don't get this whole "instant message" craze, but I guess it really is popular with generation Y -- I work with some 22-year old people fresh out of university and they all chat with friends (both those at the company and elsewhere) using instant messages. Ignoring the debate about whether they should be doing this at work (they do get their work done, so it can't be that bad for productivity) I find it amazing that they would enjoy the interruptions. I personally vastly prefer e-mail to phone conversations because I can deal with e-mail when it's a good time for me. IM seems to me to be a return to the annoying days of the telephone.
Micro$oft has produced many any-productivity tools in the past. Their so called 'help' systems, such as the animated paperclip is just one of many.
At first glance, it seems like they're doing everything wrong. The idea seems stupid.
But on the other hand, so much of what's popular out there is also stupid. So who knows, maybe it'll pan out. One of the most annoying things is the requirement of XP. WTF?
If the people at MS actually managed to do sound research on this, then there's no reason for it to fail. I don't think most people have the same kind of negative reaction to being obviously manipulated that we do... But who knows?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Regardless of who she works for, I applaud her drive and use of technology. Three Degrees seems like fun, er, cool, software. Her research into the project was intriguiging.
If this were through some startup, more people would think it was cool, but she'd be plagued with a lack of resource and substantiation. Now, she has the flipside of all that with Redmond behind her.
I hope it succeeds though my deepest desire would be for it to be platform independant.
People wonder why the state of commercial software is so sad -- I think that this article sums it up.
The fact that one of the largest, if not the largest, commercial software companies needs to be told that "the needs and attitudes of the customers should determine what software Microsoft should produce" denotes a total lack of clue on the whole issue of software production.
Software exists to automate or otherwise make better THE THINGS THAT PEOPLE DO. Thus, these things should be what drive the software. Hence the thrust toward usability, contextual design, the user stories of XP, etc.
"Is it possible that something good is coming out of Redmond?"
No.
Sadly, I'm guessing the answer is either "Nope" or "Sure...in a couple years."
Does Microsoft want to take over AIM's domininance so much that they'll go head-to-head with iChat???
I'm in agreement with z_gringo, but in a sorta oblique way.
The description of the software indicates that threedegrees is a P2P app with a desktop interface. Groups are represented by icons that live on your desktop. Dragging files onto an icon causes members of that group receive copies of those files. This is slick.
Imagine having several groups--Thursday night bowling tourney, monthly staff colloquim, ad hoc governance committee, family, extended family, in-laws, etc.--all of whom could receive some set or subset of different files you choose. You send the files and then chat about what you've received. This is a low-fi version of virtual reality conferencing.
Popular chat clients do have a feature like this, but one of the most popular--AOL Insant Messenger--requires you to invite people 1 by 1. Seems to me threedegress admirably leverages P2P communications technology by means of a GUI.
I am anti-Microsoft as they come: their history makes me so. But threedegrees seems to be a significant application of a GUI to P2P technology. I also think the idea of musicmix is *very* interesting, given that it seems to preserve fair use without infringing on copyright (original owner must be online in order for threedegreed files to be heard).
I'll withhold final judgement until I can test a threedegree client on my Mac. Until then, threedegrees sounds pretty cool, so I'm game. (ugly EULAs and software hiccups notwithstanding)
blog
I mean, WTF? RedHat 8.0 is supposed to provide an easy-to-install, easy-to-use Linux installation to enable a smooth transition from Windows to Linux. Why the hell does it not come with the Windows filesystem then?
l . One minute of googling would have saved you all this trouble.
Red Hat does not include NTFS support because the legal status of the code is not completely clear.
I've been using Linux since 1996. I know how to compile kernels. Hell, I've been sending development kernel bug reports to the developers. Yet, I was appalled to learn that RedHat 8.0 comes with gcc 3.x which means that you can run into serious problems if you want to compile your own kernel.
You've been using too old stuff for too long. GCC 3 is hardly bleeding edge anymore, heck, does any distro except Debian include older gcc:s anymore? Furthermore, I've never had a trouble compiling a kernel using GCC 3.x.
And what the heck are you doing recompiling your kernel, it's the 21st century! You don't have to recompile the kernel for almost anything these days, certainly not for filesystems or cd writing. Use the packaging system in your distribution: http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/redhat.htm
To my utter astonishment, W2K would not boot anymore. The initial W2K text screen would appear and even the boot splash screen would show up. But then a "STOP message" appeared on a blue background.
Are you using Lilo or something equally ancient to update your MBR? A "make install" instead of manually messing with the kernel images and Grub would probably have saved your ass, not mention it's a lot faster.
The config files Red Hat uses for the kernels are available in the SRPM's. You should use the SRPM's in any case since they're patched way beyond the vanilla kernel tree. Going from a Red Hat supplied kernel to stock images is a real downgrade.
Wouldn't it have been cheaper, in terms of time and money, to have just bought the DVDs instead of ripping people off?
I'm an Oberlin graduate (class of last year). I spent a fair amount of time in the computer lab my senior year, and I got to know some of the regulars. Feelings for Microsoft were not warm-and-fuzzy, although I did know some people who wanted to intern there for the benefit of their resumes. This tactic of using Obies in an anthropological experiment really gets me, though. Were they told afterwards what the real aim of the project was? Or were they just financially compensated human test subjects? I would think any NDA they would have signed would have had to be written pretty craftily to a) avoid setting off any red flags, and b) give Microsoft exclusive rights to any software arising from behavioral observations.
Sono koro, bokura wa, sore ga sekai no shinjitsu da to shinjite ita.
A radiation background of 3 degrees remained after the big bang.... will threedegrees be all that remains of M$ after it implodes?
Where can I buy it?
Well, first I started reading the article... and... and... and when I saw that "NetGen" catch-phrase I kinda got an urge to skim instead of read... an' then I felt this bitter sensation deep in my throat kinda like I figure they mean on those "Acid Reflux Disease" commercials... and so I skimmed faster to get past Tammy's neeto business meetings an' see if they would actually tell me what this three degrees thing is... and... and... um... I'm scared. Won't this software turn me homosexual?
Trying to mandate that people switch over to DRM'd music formats is like trying to mandate that they cut off their feet before they go for a walk. I personally think that the lack of MP3 support will kill that particlar app.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
We already have something similar to this in Sweden, called Lunarstorm. It's got picture uploads, friendfinders, guestbooks, discussion forums, interaction via SMS and mobile phones, voting, voice messages - you name it. It's a very feature-complete site and it's got an incredibly high market penetration among the youth of Sweden and I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I say that at least 70% of Swedish teens have a Lunarstorm account. It's a "community" on the outside, but Lunarstorm is used almost solely for meeting chicks (or guys, depending on gender/preference :)). Recently they've recently adopted a pay model where you can pay a small sum each month to get access to the 'plus' features. They're doing pretty well.
:)
So what am I getting at? Well, Sweden's a pretty small country, but the sheer momentum of teenagers registered on Lunarstorm creates a singularity that draws everyone in. I wouldn't be surprised if their market penetration among teens reaches 90% in a year or two, if they're not already there. If all your friends have Lunar accounts, you're going to get one, too. If Microsoft can gather the critical mass of teenagers, and deploy something like this in the ol' US of A, it could be massive. They'd get an instant reputation boost among younger people, a chance to market stuff to the teens (Lunarstorm has many insidious ways of doing this), a way of sneaking new software on people (Microsoft DRM mp3's are even in the article!) and, if they've got the balls, a new source of income provided they adopt some sort of pay model. Could be a smart move! Or, it could flop, of course. I'm no genie
I'll dare state this, however: it's all about the critical mass. If Microsoft are clever, they'll subtly make it about the boy-girl interaction. Powerful stuff, that!
case that they were clue-challenged in understanding an entire generation
Have a look at that picture, it just screams "We are cool, hip, "individiuals" (the Marketing Idea -- not the adjective). Please read "No Logo by Naomi Klein
"We wanted things that paralleled our customers' priorities, which was hanging out with your friends and having fun."
This idea makes me sick. If someone's "priorities" are as above, they should please (PLEASE) read: Neil Postmans' 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' -- here is the foreword
Aside from potential legal issues, the NTFS module is not terribly safe to use. Read-only mode is probably OK though, I agree, RedHat could have included the read-only module.
You don't have to start with a "blank" kernel. The RedHat configs to use for a kernel recompile are all in a subdirectory called configs. Load the appropriate config file (smp, bigmem or whatever) from file (one of the option on xconfig). I have had not problem with this on RH8.
I have never had RH trash a windows (fat32 or NTFS) partition, even RH8. You sure you did not enable write on the NTFS kernel module? Aside from the "EXPERIMENTAL" word, I believe there is a big disclaimer that says that it might trash your NTFS drivers (might be on the help screen). Either way, I don't see why this is a RedHat issue, as far as I know they are not the authors of this particular module.
I can see it now... a million gullible teens buying and installing Windows XP so they can test a beta. What an ingenius marketing plan.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
A group can have no more than ten members
Songs will be played from the participants' hard drive, rather than illegally swapped.
So, you're going to be streaming MP3s to ten people at once? The bandwidth requirements for that are going to narrow their market considerably. That would kill my 768k/128k ADSL, it would almost certainly kill a cable modems' outgoing bandwidth, and you could forget about dialup entirely.
So do they expect these "trendy teens" to also be fantastically rich and have their own personal T3 lines?
Ubi dubium, ibi libertas.
Steven Levy, well-known fan of the Macintosh (and unfan of Microsoft) [..]
Steven Levy not a fan of Microsoft? Since when??? All the articles of his that I ever read in Newsweek have been overwhelmingly supportive of Microsoft, almost to the point of gushing.
What a hack.
-jh
So let me get this straight. You compiled your OWN kernel with NTFS support which is ALPHA at best (Reading is OK, writting is explicitly stated as being broken) and you are blaming RedHat?!?!? Hellooooo in there....
I want to compress for the same reason I compress my CDs: I want to have them on my hard drive so that I don't have to go about changing discs.
...W2K would not boot anymore...
Which is exactly why...
the default RedHat installation does NOT come with an NTFS filesystem module
NTFS support in the 2.4.x kernels is dodgy at best. The drivers have been re-written from scratch and have been rolled into the 2.5.x tree, but write support is still experimental. If you need reliable NTFS support in Linux, contact the U.S Supreme Court and ask them about making Microsoft release full and unencumbured documentation for NTFS.
Secondly, I didn't even mount the frigging NTFS partition. LILO hosed up my hard drive, not NTFS.
Yeah, sure -- if I had a network connection.
Are you using Lilo or something equally ancient to update your MBR? A "make install" instead of manually messing with the kernel images and Grub would probably have saved your ass, not mention it's a lot faster.
I use grub and because of certain disasterous results in the past I've never trusted "make install".
The config files Red Hat uses for the kernels are available in the SRPM's.
Thanks. That's good to know. I've got a serious dislike of packaged and modified kernels, but since I don't have a network connection I have to use the CDs.
Uhhuh? And pray tell me how just compiling in the NTFS (not mounting the partition, reading from it not to mention writing on it) could have hosed my system?
While I think that three degrees seems in theory like a community building tool, what worries me is the limit to 10 participants in a "posse" will create in groups. /. is a clique too - though sometimes socially inept, but that's another thing. And the thing about broadband is, well, it's widely available in the developed countries, but geez... if you want to chat & listen to music but you don't have broadband just run xmms/winamp in the background and you're off (or go live on a Uni Campus... Err. No. Forget that.)
So you're afraid that the homies and hispanics will form online gangs and do some serious shit? Come on! The worst you'll see is a DDoS/TCP drive-by shooting up some silly webserver.
About the cliques: just remember
I honestly think that the basic idea of the program is meritorious, but by limiting users to ten per group, and (and I could be wrong) users to one group, the collaborative aspects are blunted.
YES it is meritorious (?) BUT limiting it to 10 concurrent users is just a smart networking policy. Geez... I surely wouldn't want my shared cable connection in the student apartment to be clogged with Jane Doe's traffic to/from her friends - all 58 of them.
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Who in the Hell wants to sit down at an expensive computer with an expensive broadband connection so SOMEONE ELSE can decide what music they will listen to? This is why MP3s are so popular, you can listen to what you want when you want for FREE! And who the Hell wants to be listening to their favorite song and some dumbass frined can click a button and popup a farting sound effect and animation in the middle of it? Computers are popular because they put YOU in control of YOUR media, information and communication. Why is a company lead by a man who is the richest guy in America always trying to GIVE AWAY software to us we didn't know we needed until they told us we did? Anyone remember the rant Gates went on when people were sharing his BASIC on paper punched tapes back in the old days? How ironic....
I think we all know who not to trust in this situation -- the people who want you to switch/upgrade your OS to run a glorified instant messanger.
/syle
[pause]
Well, I have to admit that this was apparently not very obvious to most of the dot-com crowd.
I'm sorry... I remember Microsoft Comic Chat all too well. The first time I saw
...
*** Dork has joined channel
*** Dork appears as Tika
mode +b *!*@msn.com was applied to the #
I just don't trust anything multimedia that comes out of Microsoft.. Too many ways to get viruses from applications that aren't supposed to get infected. This is the last thing we need.
Virulent Tikas spewing their pr0n and hijacking my browser. No thanks.
-beacher
Thank you! bill@microsoft.com has been added.
We'll be in touch via email once our beta goes live.
Poor ignorant kids are going to get sucked into the 'Micro-centric' worldview of Bill Gates and company - further padding revenue well into this century.
I'm wiping my daughter's windows box as soon as possible and reloading Linux; this has gone far enough.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
From the Ars Technica article:
Threedegrees is also a fascinating experiment in how music can be legally shared over the Internet. After much negotiation, the labels OK'd musicmix, once Microsoft agreed to somewhat hobble its features. (Playlists have a maximum of 60 tunes, and the songs won't play unless the original owner is participating.)
So let me see if I get this straight: When a monopoly uses its monopoly power to develop a monopoly in a new market, that's bad. But when a monopoly cuts a deal with a trust to develop a monopoly in a new market, that's OK? Where's the Microsoft monopoly abuse guy that was appointed when they lost their last court case?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Tell me, do you have a scrapbook of "going to the toilet in the middle of the night" ?
(blackadder reference)
graspee
Solution: Steal from movies!
Wasn't this thing microsoft describes in that movie "The Net".
BTW: I believe it was in "microsoft's home of the future" as well.
"What's with the arbitrary limitation? My kid sister's 'posse' (blech) is easily twice that big. Sounds like a mess."
Duh, like, all you have to do is, like, drop some of your friends, uh huh.
Seriously though, is anyone else as afraid as I am that in microsoft's future people are only allowed to have 10 friends.
How is the MS app better than the de facto standard apps that exist today ? Perhaps it is aimed at younger children ?
>|<*:=
Only a myopic, narrow-minded fool would ask such a question. Microsoft has developed and released some excellent products that continue to kick the fanny of most "free" applications. If all Microsoft software is crap, why do "free" software people keep trying to clone Word and Excel?
Upon occasion, I've been known to rag on Microsoft for their business practices, security holes, and over-featured monstrosities. They ruined Visual Studio with .Net (it's now REALLY slow and clunky), and Microsoft is often paranoid and downright nasty in their tactics. Word, for all of its good features, is a bloated corpse of technological excess. So hey, I'm no Microsoft shill, and more of my systems run Linux than run Windows.
Yet for all their faults, Microsoft has accomplished a lot in the last two decades, producing some useful and powerful software. Denying that is simple bigotry, seasoned with jealousy.
All about me
Er, reference on this page, I mean.
I discount the this is some "rebel" product within MS; that is PR spin 100%.
Everything else, with one major exception, is just a rehash of YIM, ICQ, AIM, blah blah..
The exception? The music sharing app, which seems cool in as much as they got the "major" labels to sign off on it.. They are actually creating a new type of "fair use." It probably took someone with MS's power and aggressiveness to pull that off.
The downside? This is sweet candy designed to lock the younger generation into MS-Land. This is aimed directly at keeping LINIX OFF the desktop! That's the real threat.
http://www.hawknest.com/
I used to use sixdegrees.com, it let you commuicate with groups, set types of relationships, build networks, share info etc. Had chat, email and IM on the system.
It died about 3 years ago.
If MS try and patent this, i'll be yelling prior art!
great! now there'll be even more file sharing and music piracy for the RIAA to get their teeth into - all logged and traced by M$ of course! ...couple that with an even better way of peadophiles to do some net grooming....they can even narrow down their victims... and flirt with them without the others seeing/hearing
The problem (Windows shows the splash screen, but then BSODs) sounds like it could have been caused by using the Linux NTFS driver in r/w mode. I broke a machine once by doing that, I thought that just copying a single file across would be okay, but it wasn't. I knew the write support in ntfs was experimental but hadn't realized it was quite _that_ experimental...
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I guess ICQ is close, but is not been very linux friendly.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
If people would set aside their biases, I think they'd be surprised at how good a lot of MS software is. Doesn't change the fact that a lot of it is bad, and that their approach to customers and business interaction is immoral at best.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
.. then I totally "want this"
Sure...it's not the same as downloading music via P2P, but I find it real interesting that the article states that lables (meaning...more than one? all the big ones?) okayed Musicmix. Which seems a lot like streaming music to me. A 60-tune playlist is still several hours of music...and because Microsoft asked nicely and because they're Microsoft...it's okay. So any internet radio stations still are under flack...but this form is legit.
I'm wondering if file transfers between group members will have some sort of MB limit or rather will spawn tiny groups of Morpheus users.
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
... (wait) until a terrorist network uses threedegrees... we'll see how long that lasts.
Then MS would be unpatriotic.
This space for rent.
1) you need to have licenses (maybe via media player DRM modules?)
2) you can't play more than 60 songs on the playlist
3) others can't play your songs if you are offline.
1) where have you seen this said? I must have missed it. (not sarcasm, I really don't know)
2) you also can't have more than 10 people in a group. As far as I can tell, these are both because its still something like a version 2 prebeta
3) I don't see how you could expect MS to make software that sent out 600 mp3s just because somebody loaded a playlist. That would be both grossly bandwidth intensive, and blatent piracy.
I've fairly certain that this software is quite a bit outside of microsoft's world domination plan... at least, until it's popular.
.sig last updated March 9, 1894
What, was sixdegrees too much?
haha, change your Depends grandpal!
Legal music-sharing.
Other than that it's just a really, really complicated instant messager.
It's not plagarism when you properly attribute it to the original author, genius.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
This is not a bad idea. I know my younger sib and friends are their target demographic. And I know they use MSN, b/c well it's easy:
/. people are proud of feeding information into their old tape recorder or reviving an old boxen using some unsupported distro, but MSFT is going after a generation of computer literates and illiterates. (there's a lot of people out there have no idea how to troubleshoot, let alone know what a kernel is).
It checks if you have hotmail (free email) plus you can msg people live. That is a plus, it's hassle free for a generation that never knew life before internet.
This new product is a deeper concentration into that area, where people can communicate through IM, email, and can transfer information seemlessly without having to deal with settings and multiple mouse clicks.
I know in
If this receives well, they can start putting it on wireless devices, cell phones and palms, with net connection. Maybe influence those markets... if I was their long-term marketer, the possibilities are endless.
When I first read the article, I thought 'how is this a big deal'? It sounds just like Messenger, with another module. You know, all those little useless things in the menu on the right side (Win version): drawing board, surf together (ha!), etc.
Now, if only Apple would bloody well release the Rendezvous-enabled iTunes, we'd have a standards-compliant, streaming, ZeroConf version. If you believe the rumours about the next iChat having video capabilities, and supporting the other flavours ala Trillian/Fire (hell I'd settle for just Jabber).... then add mod_rendezvous.... mmmmmmmm.
(btw I'm not trying to start an Apple vs MS comparison, it's just curious to notice how both MS and Apple are looking for other ways to integrate 'live' net communications, all of a sudden.)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
As has been pointed out already, most of what it does is already in IRC. And Mac OS has iChat for IM. (I kind of wish it did IRC, too, but that's not stopping me from using IRC.) I'm not going to lose any sleep over that.
Remember Steve's now-famous iTunes demo where he showed how you could play music from somebody else's iTunes playlists? It's not exactly the same, but I think being able to pick my own music would be at least as good as what 3degrees has.
On a positive note, maybe since Microsoft got a "plays-my-music-on-your-computer" thing past the record companies, Apple will finally be able to ship the new iTunes with that feature. It was demoed months ago. The only reason I can imagine for the holdup is the lawyers.
So microsoft has now invented IRC? Only in this case, its IRC with a limit on how many people can be in a room? Cute. How many "cliques" do you belong to that are only 10 people? Particularly online, this is not the case.
Too little, too late, mediocre at best, again. The microsoft way.
I've had ZERO problems with XP since week one, when I stopped using explorer ("exploder") as a shell.
I've run webservers, fileservers, gameservers, done sound and video editing, played games, encoded movies, watched DVDs, image editing, rendering, etc etc, all in various combinations without any trouble - and had month long uptimes. (Choosing to shut down every time) I'm not going to go saying that it's as stable as Linux can be... this is all just my experience. I still choose to have Linux on other computers.
If you dont like stuff crashing, I'd highly suggest an alternative shell. (look for a 4.10 version in the boards if you're bleeding-edge-inclined).
.sig last updated March 9, 1894
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is it just me of does 'musicmix' scream out 'double standard'? Unless users of the product are having to pay the same bogus "internet radio" fees to which all net broadcasters are subject?
MORTAR COMBAT!
from the MSNBC article...
Then there are "winks": small animations that you trigger to run on everyone's screen. Some of the standards include big lips smacking a kiss or a heavyset cartoon character who drops trou and cuts the cheese.
An animation of a fat kid farting? No thanks. How about a "wink" that automatically opens their copy of IE and loads up goatse.cx?
Hell has just frozen over. It would also appear that the devil has cornered the market in ice skate manufacturing. Stay tuned for further devilopements...
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
1. Create a grand social study (younger people lack the experience-are naive)
2. find/create a pecking order
3. ????
4. Profit
Climatising youth to less privacy, with ways to control decent, with somewhat a plassable deniability.
The stigmatizer and population is on the same side, I've yet to see a conviction even though I have seen acknowledgement of said practice. If the victim reacts, the victim reacts to the population because of access and misidentification.
At least when things like columbine happen there will be a *paper* trail.
... and I already feel violated. Maybe I'm way out of touch with young people, but I don't think any of the 13-24's that I know would be fool enough to fall for this pap. Talk about clueless.
.nosig
Ok, so apart from sharing the playlists, this sounds exactly like iChat for OS X. In iChat I can do all the things 3degrees claims to do - perhaps not the playlist thing... but I can share pictures by dragging a pic into the chat, files and folders by dragging and dropping. I can put all my music into my webserver directory, and hey, I don't even need to be connected to the Internet with Rendevous. In addition, when Apple decides to to that iTunes-over-Rendezvous thing, it will be even better. Looks like M$ is just playing catch up; and trying to appeal to the masses - from which, I can see their point, and I'm not dissing them for doing so. It's just that its nothing to jump about (which, I thnk, is the general reaction here anyway...) ;)
Fight Crime - Shoot Back!
3Degrees is Microsoft trying to lure youngsters. It's ok; that's what business is about. What the OSS community should do, then, is compete in that field too.
:-)
Any coders up to do a killing youngster app? Microsoft wouldn't stand a chance.
Mondongo
;) so this cannot be undeployed
Oh well, hopefully someone can figure out how to make instant messaging useful.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I've got one word for you..."Bob".
-R
"I want to have them on my hard drive so that I don't have to go about changing discs."
It certainly is taxing! "40 seconds? I want it now!"
Steven Levy, well-known fan of the Macintosh (and unfan of Microsoft)
Maybe I missed it... Before I turned off the NewsSpeak (thank you, Jello Biafra...) I remember reading Levy rolling around like a puppy on stink about how XP was great. This was his preview piece on it, before it came out. He loved the stability.
Anyone else got that uncontrollable urge to doink someone in the eyes really hard, three stooges style?
Goldak!
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
when i started at high-school, i spend the first year MUDding most of the time; i lost some 20kg because i was skipping meals, and my friends all thought i was sucking bong way too often cause i looked like a zombie.
.sic lies
i had online sex before irl-sex.
i guess what i want to say is, sure there is a market among kids for this kind of stuff, and if it's an easy UI it might hook people who otherwise are turned off by IRC or Telnet or even by having to switch between kazaa & ICQ for their comm needs.
i'm not saying it's "good" or anything, but since when has marketing sellable goods been directed by "good" intentions? it might just be the one app that manages to create a big enough community of people (and future microserfs who will not be able to change OS because microsoft has stored all their private data and will publish it if you try to divorce ms) to make online friends an (more so) accepted phenomenon of human relations; thereby releasing all hell onto earth in form of sociopathic computer-bound anemic freaks with special needs and demographically specialized products & services (oh, wait, we're here already...).
i, on the other hand, am still waiting for those communities that gibson envisioned (in mona lisa overdrive, was it?) where i can buy sweatshop-programmed street wear for my randewuuz in cyberspace.
this
No, it's never possible for anything good to come out of Redmond. Something may seem good, but there's always a catch.
Microsoft has announced technology to enable a "virtual circle jerk". Leveraging the pre-teen market of it's successful threedegrees offering, Microsoft is encouraging users entering puberty to click and drag pr0n to the desktops of friends. Microsoft is also believed to be working on a means for delivering Kleenex tissues and screenwipes remotely.
All I have read on this discussion made me wonder, How flexible are Nautilus desktop Icons?
I mean, If I dragged ann dropped something, enything, could I tie a process to the icon and made it process the dropped thing, whatever it was? (a makefile would be maked, files in some icon would pop a dialog propting for a mail direction to mail the files, or even print them, another would recive an xml file and would start an icq(or ither im) connection with whatever was descripted on the file, etc) ?
I think I'll propose/ask about this on its mailing list, if it has one.
errera hunamum ets
You can see it here. From the way these reviewers seem to describe Threedegrees, it is basically a limited IRC chat (10 at a time, why 10?) with some other features that already exist elsewhere (the common playlist idea isn't new, and "Winks" is just a cute, marketable term), and a bunch of stuff that you can see in iStorm.
One difference is, iStorm doesn't talk about "marketing its product to 13-24 year olds." The developers see it as a tool for brainstorming. The other difference is, iStorm is probably actually used to help people think through ideas, whereas Threedegrees will be yet another way (along with AIM, Counterstrike, and most college social life) for people to just sit around engaging in mental masturbation.
Maybe I'm being too harsh.
I'm right smack in the middle of their taget demographic, and I think this is totally lame. So would my friends.
On another note, I'd say this looks like the MS version of HelloWorld.
The moment I saw the threedegrees flash demo I was reminded of a recent app I was reading about.
It's called HelloWorld and is made by Co/Operating Systems, Inc.
It is a P2P app that overlays the desktop, supports drag and drop file transfers, does instant messaging, sends/shares images and even lets you send emoticons including kissing lips. The CoSI product seems to be considerably more advanced, however.
This could just be a big coincidence and both Microsoft and Co/Operating Systems had similar ideas at the same time but then Microsoft does have a history of usurping others ideas...
Yes, David Mohring is NZheretic, the one and the same. original author
I have doubts that this software will be successful, but what's most sad is this: the group reminds me of the early Apple and Microsoft companies - lots of ideas and everyone questioning them. But, here's the sad part: Microsoft and Apple blossomed into huge companies with enormous profits, but these "kids" will have their product owned by the big boys. No huge profits, just grinding away making money for "the man". It's sad that the big companies co-opt everything new and bankroll everything into their own pockets, rather than anyone actually being capable of (god forbid) profiting from their own invention.
...the Microsoft Scroll Wheel Mouse is the best in it's class. They're durable, work great and are reasonably priced. I highly recommend them.
As far as software goes, I'd have to give M$ a pretty bad review.
But their mice rock.
It looks like this software could be used, not only to bring a group of kids together, but also to spy on them. Does this concern anyone?
Ever since Microsoft introduced Passport.net, where they will store all your personal information for you (gee, thanks), and their new parental filters for MSN that require you registring your kids at passport.net, it's occurred to me that parents must not care very much for their children's privacy.
Microsoft is a marketing company - not a technology company. All their technology is a hack of technology that they've stolen or 'bought out' (stolen) from real technology companies. They want to know all about your children, because that's who they hope to market to next.
Please be careful with your children's future! Don't sell them out to Microsoft! For the sake of technology, and even your community, you should be doing as much to distance yourself from this shameless corporate hitler as possible.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
...designed by and for out-of-touch, braying, soulless marketing cretins. I hope it dies on its arse like Microsoft Bob.
"Unlike Bob, however, threedegrees has been created and tweaked by the same kinds of people who will use it."
I'm-so-wacky corporate freaks? Guess what you jackasses, instant messanging already provides all the functionality you describe with none of the empty-headed bullshit!
I for one will not be validating the pathetic excretions of these creativity-free oxygen thieves with my attention or CPU cycles.
This entire concept manages to be far more offensive to my sensibilities than the most devious of DRM plots. There's nothing worse than greedy suits pretending to be 'down with the kidz': Just look at J Allard.
Preferences > Homepage > Customize stories on homepage > Authors > Zonk > Uncheck
It's been nagging at me all day, and I just remembered where I'd seen something like this before.
It's "Hive" from Aplese. Here's the URL:
http://www.alberg.com/products/hive.html
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Al Gore invented IRC
Twenty-somethings into filesharing do it because they want as much content as possible for free, with absolutely no restrictions. Microsoft will not give them this.
I'm right in the middle of the "Internet Generation", so I would expect this software that's targeted at me to appeal to me. It doesn't. Again, Microsoft shows its thorough incapacity to innovate (and I type this on my WinXP machine). Pretty much, they're saying that this threedegrees has three features: Chat, Winks, and Musicmix. The chat thing has already been done by n-1 different programs, (Trillian, AIM, MSIM, Yahoo!IM, etc.). All of these I find to be imperfect (tho' functional; I'm using AIM right now). I'd really like a messenger service that's tuned to fuse instant messaging and e-mail; that is, if I'm at my computer, I can communicate syncronously with a friend, but if I'm away, my friend can always leave a message. I don't see that happening with threedegrees. Winks? Winks? Are these animations supposed to excite me? Or insult me? 'nuff said. Musicmix? I don't really get that. From the looks of things, it's not well implemented. I could see a lot of fights breaking out over which song gets played when (at least, with folk like my friends). Will music actually get played, or will one person turn off another's music and play his own? So what would be a good product for the "Internet Generation?" I like messaging my friends. I can type a lot faster and more accurately than I can speak, and IMing allows me to carry on coherant conversations with half a dozen people simultaneously. Still, the messaging ought to be able to flex; good messaging should be able to allow for clear, effective communcation both synchronously and asynchronously. The Musicmix thing might be pretty neat, but it looks to be horribly implemented at the moment. I'd like to see some functions that allow moderation, and perhaps hosting privilges. I'd like to see something that can play games. Even board games like Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, or card games like Hearts, Rummy, Spades, and Spoons would be pretty cool. (Of course, original games would be welcome!) When I'm with my friends in real life, we normally wind up playing something; I'd like to do the same online. Do any 13-24 year olds think the threedegrees is cool? If so, speak up. I might just be odd.
im 16 and im 100% posotive this will fail, except with the few computer nerds who will try it and toss it cos its gay
As a person who's not entirely far from the age bracket their aiming, I can honestly say this looks to be the biggest, gayest, piece of software I've seen in a while.
Blink was around like, two years in the scene before :)
they "sold out" so to speak. Before they started
showing up as guest VJ's on mtv. A lot of the people
that don't like Blink don't like them for the same
reason. They are just one of 230498293087 billion
bands that sound exactly like Less Than Jake. If
you never liked Less Than Jake to begin with, why
like 230498293087 billion bands that sound just like
them? That and a lot of people think "type of music"
when they hear the word "punk". They don't think
"lifestyle" or "scene". Scenesters are annoying no
matter what scene they are trying their hardest
to fit into.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
One big show-stopper for threedegrees could possibly be problems xferring files back and forth when some of the users are behind a firewall.
I don't know how much care MS has taken to deal with this issue -- but here's hoping it's not using sloppy "DirectPlay" type code, where the games may be talking on any random subset of thousands of possible port numbers!
Even on the venerable IRC chat, DCC of files has been troublesome. Many clients require tweaking of settings before they'll properly do a DCC receive or send.
ICQ seems to be trying to avoid much of this hassle by placing their centralized server(s) in the middle of data transactions, as sort of a middle-man that ensures a chat or file request gets from point A to point B. Is that the MS strategy here too?
What's up with the whole ".com.com" thing, anyway? Why do so many sites link to stories using news.com.com URLs rather than just news.com?
Your blue-screen is probably an "Inaccessible boot device" error. RH7 & 8 did this to my old machine because of the way I had it set up (single hdd on a raid controller). I was able to fix the problem by re-installing windows as an upgrade. Not the best fix in the world, but it did work. Apparently, re-partitioning can cause this problem. It can be doubly bad if your boot drive (not your windows partition mind you) is NTFS. You may also try 'fixboot' and/or 'fixmbr' from the Windows recovery console. Beware that these may render your linux partition unusable. My advice to you is to plan very well your partition layout, and get it working with Windows BEFORE you install linux. That way, everything should still work fine.
Obviously, your problem may be different, so if this info. is useless, I apologize in advance.
There's already a Spanish site with a similar concept, and to top it off it's called 360 degrees (in English).
http://www.360degrees.tv/
You have a choice: tax and spend Democrats, or borrow and spend Republicans. Choose wisely.
but (2) and (3) are in the original article. Quoting
Threedegrees is also a fascinating experiment in how music can be legally shared over the Internet. After much negotiation, the labels OK'd musicmix, once Microsoft agreed to somewhat hobble its features. (Playlists have a maximum of 60 tunes, and the songs won't play unless the original owner is participating.)
Originally I must have thought of DRM because
a) they are using media player
b) the records won't let them get away with sharing stuff that's not "authenticated"
c) the "other's can't play your song if you are not participating" part
(a) is a deduction; (b) is an assumption (though one based on much precedence); (c) could be argued that it's just a limitation on the P2P nature - but on the other hand "participating" is a tricky word - does that mean if you are not online or in 3deg? I can imagine I have a perfectly good connection, but am participating in another group, or doing research paper, but would want my friends to listen to my tunes. (granted, might just send them over, or write a "song server" bot).
so, I apologize for the inaccurate information - but I still stands that it would be unlikely (no DRM) otherwise.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I can see it now. It will be hacked nine ways to Sunday. Imagine posing as a posse member and dishing out some executable to all the friends on the list. Heck, you won't even have to hack the new protocols, etc. Just hack the box like always. Pose as little jr and kill his friends computers! Nice way to get oneself kicked out of the posse!
This could backfire in a big way! Look at me Ma, no hands! Oops, Smack, years worth of dental work.
They better come up with better security than what 's on MSN Messenger!
You would not believe how many morons ask me to help them with their computers at home and how much they whine that their new Broadband is slow. I get there and they've got three computers so heavily infected with viruses, trojans, worms, and spyware that it's no wonder what happened to their bandwidth! The number one culprits who caused the mess in the first place? Kids!
All the same it's an interesting idea but a huge time waster. Sounds like a DotBomb idea until MS figures out how to generate revenue from it. Corporations everywhere will end up having to ban it for security and bandwidth consumption.
I honestly have never really liked instant messaging and chat. I use it some times but it annoys me, I know the other person is having 6 conversations while doing work and talking on the phone not to mention you cannot hear voice tones. Honestly as a 21 century person some things are better the old way, telephones or how about human contact. I agree email is a really useful tool but until we get widespread video im I am not about it.
This is a complete load of shite. A completely useless program, though of course it makes smart business sense - what's the most effective way to make people buy a product? Make their children want it. Microsoft wants to get into yet another market, and they're doing it by introducing a completely useless product. What's next, a little image of a paperclip that displays error messages in little speech bubbles and searches through help files? Oh, wait.
"...creates a peer-to-peer social group in which people can chat, share photos, listen to music and meet friends"
Most of my friends don't have 'net access at all, but I also know a bunch of people who I've only ever spoken with over the internet. In fact, there's only one person who I see on a regular basis and chat with over IM. But even if all my friends were geeks, I can do all those things already. I run an OpenBSD system, and a combination of Gaim, FTP, gtk-gnutella, and some webspace courtesy of Webslum, I can share music, share photographs, talk to people and meet other people. With my other friends, I share music via the ancient technique of "CD burning" and chat via "spoken word" and occasionally "telephone".
"The ability to form personal, ad hoc communities and perform shared tasks means this product will have a lot of appeal in the 13- to-24-year-old market"
I can do that already. It's called my "contact list".
"Another feature, known as Winks, lets one customer send animation to everyone in the group. "Winks is an activity where they can basically 'wink' at someone across the room, but (you) do it virtually--flirt with them," Savage said."
What the fuck? I can't even begin to make sense of this passage. Why on earth would I want to send something to every person I know at once? Especially not some kind of "animation". I have no desire to "flirt" to a bunch of people I can't see.
"Group members also can share photos and, more importantly, listen to music available in a common playlist."
Me too! I have several CD's copied off my friends, and they have more of mine. I've also put together a bunch of compilations from MP3's I've got off the internet (usually bands that are scared of releasing stuff in England or where there's just no hope of buying it out here in the countryside, and have been recomended to me by friends in other countries, or that I've recorded off late-night radio shows, or whatever). Friends of mine have copies of them. We listen to them in school, which would be kind of difficult if they were on my computer at home.
Over the internet, I don't need some special program to tell me what they're listening to - they can use an instant messanger to say to me "Today I am listening to Half Man Half Biscuit" and I can say "That's funny, so am I! Fred Titmus!", or whatever.
I could go on. This is essentially a completely useless program - especially to me, a person who lives in the middle of nowhere on a
There seem to be a bunch of pointless arbitrary limits. Why 10 people? While I can imagine it useful as a tool for bullying ("sorry, we'd love to speak to you, but we're up to our limit of ten people! Isn't life a bitch?"), is there a rational reason I can't have, say, 11 friends?
Why a playlist of 60 songs? I have three compilation CDR's with more than that on, and that's just scraping the surface of my music collection (and of course, ignoring the hundreds of pounds-worth of music I've paid for legally and my friends have also paid for legally).
You'd think I was some grumbling old man who remembers when music sharing was done by gathering around the gramophone, but I'm a 16-year old who uses the internet for many social purposes. And I, one of the so-called "NetGen" (okay, so probably the average "NetGen" person doesn't spend most of their free time coding computer games, but it's their definition, not mine) can recognise this for the pointless bullshit it is.
Windows XP had bugs. So they fixed (a lot of) them, presumably including something that is required for Threedegrees.
Also, if you actually go and try to run Threedegrees, one of the downloads you have to get is this IPV6 thing, which frankly I'm not sure Windows 2000 supports yet. (I'll have to go check what's slated in SP4, I suppose.)
It's not an evil plot to 'get you', it really isn't. I'd much rather have Windows XP telling me I need to download the (free) updates than telling me... nothing at all, leaving me susceptible to all kinds of unfun problems.
1) iChat is an AIM wrapper. A nice one, but it's just like using AIM.
2) Rendezvous is nice, but has nothing to do with threedegrees or instant messenging.
3) If you need an autoconfigurating wireless protocol to chat with somebody else's computer IN THE SAME ROOM, you've got bigger problems than that.
When MS came to my school I had a little chat with one of the reps... he wasn't on the IE team, but I asked him about IE anyway - I want to know what's going on with IE7. I told him that I can't wait to have the #1 market-share browser get some more standards support, so that writing (and viewing) web pages would be a lot easier. He told me that standards support and pedestrian things like HTML rendering aren't that important, and wouldn't I rather have those developers working to add things like PowerPoint-style page transitions or 3D special effects to web pages? At this point I thought about punching him in the face and running in one direction for an hour. I just don't get it.
I don't know how they're planning to make money off it, but I can see a LOT of people using this. I rarely get songs off Kazaa anymore - I usually grab stuff from my friends' FTP servers if they suggest something, or they upload something themselves to mine. This just seems like a more intuitive user interface for such a thing. Given some improvements (like the inevitable hack to remove all those silly limitations) this seems like a great idea for college campuses where lots of students want to share stuff. I mean, KaZaA's nice, but you have to know what you're looking for. It's much nicer to have somebody hand you something you've never heard of and say "Hey, you might like this."
eCircles did all these things from 1997 until 2000.
They eventually ran out of money and were bought by Classmates.
it would be unlikely (no DRM) otherwise
Well, I think you'll be quite surprised, then. We'll see
.sig last updated March 9, 1894