This is really pathetic. I mean, really? What does it matter? If someone types in "Olympics" in Yahoo, Google, etc., I'd say 10 to 1 that the very first web match is going to be the official site. What's there really to complain about?
Here's my problem with all this...whitehouse.gov and whitehouse.com. The two have existed now for at least four years. I am posative that if the government really wanted to, they could "pressure" whitehouse.com to change their domain name, but they don't. Why? Well, they're probably smart enough to know that they'd get some heavy fire if they did, but even so...one little mistake and some innocent kid looking up a government web site could find himself at a porn site.
So, if a government web site and a porn site can get along, why can't some stupid difference between www.olympics.com and www.olympics24_7.com?
Cyclically, companies who behave like this will have a brief period (or no not so brief - look at IBM, they managed for decades) of dominance, verging on monopoly - but their nemesis will come.
What about Microsoft? They've been doing crap like this for fifteen years, and it hasn't been till now that the DOJ's cracked down on them (sure, they've been through the courts before, but when you got plenty of $$$, they aren't a problem). Intel has also been doing it too...
...in fact, you really have to wonder if RAMBUS is doing all this on its own, or if Intel's also a major player. Remember, AMD's really growing in the market with their faster chips. Being as how Intel's loosing big-time with their 8xx chipsets, they really need to stop DDR RAM. I'm sure they've seen the performance results that the GeForce GTS video card has gotten with DDR, and they know that they're gonna get nailed real hard if they don't do anything about DDR. They got both billions of dollars in stock options as well as their processors on the line with RAMBUS, so they have plenty of incentive as well.
...but the problem lies in the fact that Rambus is trying to expand like Microsoft did fifteen years back. Their marketing is just filled with the same strategies.
1) Convince investors that what they produce is valuable. They have been releasing report after report of ever little "improvement" they've made to the computing industry.
2) Convince the computing industry that their company is powerful by making their stock worth something (Rambus had a 4-1 stocksplit just a few days ago...now THAT says something).
3) Once the money's in the bank, spread your "domain" over the rest of the market so it can eventually be controlled (what they're doing now with their patents).
4) Once everything is controled, halt sales of all other products and sell only your own.
On the current path, it appears that Rambus is trying to make themselves a monopoly. They've sided with Intel and now Toshiba...who knows who else down the road?
If anyone wants to get a good chuckle from Microsoft now that this ruling is final, check out their DOJ vs. Freedom To Innovate website. It's a hoot and a hollar if you ask me.
Man, it was a pain just trying to get into slashdot to read about this...all thanks to a million AC's who are busy posting strings of "Micro$oft $ucks."
I have been a PC computer technician now for about four years, and if there's one thing I just can't stand about companies and their products is the "See the HELPMR.PDF file for details."
First off, if I have some in-depth question I need answered, I need to do some in-depth reading. I can't do that on the computer screen! My eyes would go blind if I studied an on-line manual to try and figure out what to do!
Second off, search modes for PDF files don't do crap when you need to figure out exactly what's wrong. Say I'm installing something like, oh, say a DVD Decoder card for a DVD drive I bought, but it's not decoding the movies. I need to figure out why. Well, open up good ol' AcroRead, type in the search field "Specs," and I'll have to wade through countless hits of the word "Specs," often not finding what I need. Well, I need to get more specific, but if I get too specific, I won't find what I'm looking for. Often times the only way I can find something is to do the same thing I do in any other printed manual: go to the index or table of contents.
And most importantly, and I STRESS this above the rest, If the computer doesn't work, I ***NEED*** printed documentation!!! I hate trying to install something new on someone's computer only to find that it hoses the computer, and there's no frickin' way to find out what's wrong because I have to get the computer on to find out what's wrong! What if I'm installing a new CD-ROM Drive? If it doesn't work, how am I supposed to get to a.PDF file when I can't get the drive workin' in the first place?!?
I tell ya, some of those.PDF files are hilarious...just read them some time. You'll find questions like "What if my computer doesn't turn on after installing so-and-so?" "What if my CD-ROM drive or Hard Drive are unreadable after installing so-and-so?" How in the world would I be reading a.PDF if I can't get the computer working?!?
If someone is buying a boxed product, there NEEDS to be a printed manual with at least semi-detailed instructions. You don't have to enclose a 300 page manual, but look at the TI-8x or TI-9x series of calculators. Not only do you buy the calculator, but you also get a nice 200 page paperback explaining how it works. Imagine if you bought the calculator and it came with "If you wish to get instructions, please go to www.ti.com/support/ti/8x and print the 200 page manual."
...I love the pictures. Very nice pictures. Even if you don't understand a word the guy says, just go there for the pictures!
And second, I'm not really into physics, but if my understanding of Einstein's Theory of Relativity holds true, what this guy's saying is that if one could create a way (anti-gravity generators) to cancel the gravitational affects of mass to an absolute minimum or nothing at all, the energy created when light speed is achieved would by none at all, canceling the infinite amount of energy generated at the speed of light, making light speed possible.
...at least, that's what I think he said! (Can a mathematician or physicist help me out here?)
...first off, it's running on the NT 4 kernel... apparently, Bill didn't want little kids to get the Blue-Screen-Of-Death each time they played their favority video game.
Secondly, this thing needs more RAM! I'd rather have a smaller hard drive than get fragged while my character was moving at one frame per second since the hard drive was trying to crank data out of the swap file!
And finally, since this thing's going to be using the internet, I can just imagine a whole line of links aimed solely at the X-Box to try and make the thing crash miserably.
Remembering all the kinds of encrypt forms I learned as a kid, one of the easiest was to throw in dummy characters (things that never meant anything but helped make things look more confusing). There's a few things to look at here:
1) Possibly, some characters (maybe the ones in all caps, the ones upside-down, or whatever) are just thrown in there to confuse the decryptor.
or 2) The different alignment of characters was meant to allude to different meanings. For example, if this letter could have been secretly written by Poe himself, maybe he based the text on allusions to his different works, or maybe on only one alone. Perhaps each letter alluded to a different word in a work of his.
perhaps 3) The combination of the allignment and case of the letters was only meant to throw people off, and instead means absolutely nothing.
Thinking about Poe's work, this particular code seems to fit. In almost all of his works, he has two sides, the light and dark. The fact that the code has right-side-up, upside-down, upper, and lower case seems to blend in with it. Come to think of it, perhaps it is two messages blended into one?
...Except maybe Mulder just wanted to show off how he looked in the get-up!
I normally don't watch X-Files, but when I saw the preview for this one, I thought it had to be a must see. Man, was I wrong. The storyline started great (I loved them bragging about getting their IPO!), but it went downhill so fast. Nothing of the plot was ever resolved...granted, X-Files loves to little details hanging for suspense, but they didn't even give one shread of evidence of why she jumped from one computer to the other, why the program could actually kill, etc.
The only thing I really liked about the episode was bring up the subject of male testosterone. We have a laser tag arena in our town, and I can relate perfectly to "the need to blow the crap out of others."
There's one thing that all the studies in the world can't point out: it's a risk, but it's not reality.
The fact of the matter is, the internet is a lot like television. They're both a means of communication that allow us to view the rest of the world through a window rather than through our own eyes. The only difference is that the internet has grown to be interactive, but all-in-all, both are equivalent to one another.
Here's where the problem arises though...because the internet is an interactive medium, plenty of people claim that it's not harmful to one's social life. But guess what? Humans need physical social activity in order to thrive. I don't know of anyone who wouldn't go crazy if they locked themselves up in a room and only talked to everyone else through the phone. Everyone needs some kind of physical contact every now and then, and to only communicate through the internet is as dangerous as watching TV 16 hours a day. But, there's a problem with this logic, and that's why everyone's misunderstanding what these reports mean.
Back when television was invented, a two step process occured: first, people were amazed by the ability to finally see a picture with what they heard on the radio, and people rushed to get their own TV set. Then the second step occured...studies showed that people were beginning to watch too much television, cutting back on their social interaction. Everyone thought it meant that humans would soon just sit in front of their television set and watch TV all day long. They were wrong.
Why people changed their time schedules in order to watch more TV, and why people are now changing their time schedules to get in more time on the internet, is because both mediums are replacing previous ways to obtain information. Before the radio, people had to wait a day for the newspaper to arrive. Then, before the TV, people had to wait anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours for the news to arrive. Then, before the internet, people had to wait around five minutes to find the news in between the adds and channel changes. But now, the internet allows us to view the news in less than a minute. It's "there at our fingertips." Each medium replaced the last because each medium gave us the chance to get more done in less time. And since each medium saved time, naturally, humans spent more time on it to get more things done at once.
What the studies on television proved is fairly the same amount of material that this study proves: too much viewing can lead to a decrease in social interaction. What they didn't say, though, is that just because someone was a "TV Junkie" or "Internet Junkie" didn't mean that they're not socially involved...it only proved that the oportunity was there for it to occur. Sure, if someone spends over 8 hours a day watching television, they might develop a social problem. If someone spends over 8 hours a day on the internet, they might develop a social problem as well. It all depends on how deeply involved the person gets.
...but I can't seem to find two of which seem to be thriving as well...
...Chat rooms and discussion forums.
Course, many people would argue that discussion forms themselves are just parts of other web sites, but then there's also MUDs, FreeNets, Telnet BBSs, Instant Messengers (MIRC, ICQ, AIM, etc)...
How bout something like a "CommNet Continent" as well?
...but I can't seem to find two of which seem to be thriving as well...
...Chat rooms and discussion forums.
Course, many people would argue that discussion forms themselves are just parts of other web sites, but then there's also MUDs, FreeNets, Telnet BBSs...
How bout something like a "CommNet Continent" as well?
That Navigator 6 is going to be a hit needs to get his head out of the clouds. No, I'm not saying that M13 is bad...far from it. In my opinion, it's about as equivalent as Nav 4.7 as far as speed and how often it crashes (which is quite good, considering that 4.7 is a final release and M13's still in the making). Anyway, the problem here is AOL. AOL's version of Navigator is going to be some cheap piece of junk. They'll send it through beta testing, release it 6 months too early, and load it so full of crap (aka plugins) that it won't be worth anything. I'm sorry, but most of us don't use AIM, and the last thing I want is to be attacked every five minutes by some spinning AOL logo which says "Hey, come visit AOL!" What I'll be waiting for is when someone like RedHat or Corel will take Mozilla and develop it into their own Linux Web browser...something that Linux users would want to see. You just know that AOL's going to try and push everything they can through Navigator to users (just look at Netscape's web site)!
No, you give me a break. I have no problem whatsoever if you're not a Christian. But the etchical practices are hardly bizzare. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Sound bizzare? Not by the least bit.
And what about the 10 Commandments? We have people now who aren't Christian but say that they think that they should be posted in schools across the country! Why? Because it's ethical, and it's something that people should understand and reflect upon!
Guess what? You're living in a country that was founded on Christian Ethics!
1) The hard-core computer users, mainly those who specialize deeply in some area of computers, like programming, Linux, BSD, BeOS, applications, etc.
2) Thosw who aren't too in-depth about computers but enjoy working with them and love to learn more about them from the Group #1 users.
3) Those who are here to flame.
The great thing about John Katz is he lies in group number two, and he offers something that very few people on/. can...a journalistic opinion. Sure, he can say things about DeCSS that we already know, but the thing that's great is he offers not an overview, but an opinion, and a professional one at that. Granted, I usually don't agree with him either, but I'd rather see a different perspective on an issue than my own pig-headed one!
JK, if you're reading this comment (even though there are probably going to be at least 500 by the day's end), a few things popped into my head while reading your interview...
About Anonymous Cowards...
But youre asking honest questions and you deserve honest answers, and the truth is, AC's have increasingly made Slashdot's Threads a laughingstock on the Web.
How bout this...create a moderation post for Anonymous Cowards. Have them write a message and post it as just "Anonymous," then before it's posted, either get it listed as "Anonymous Flame," "Anonymous Coward," or "Intelligent Anonymous Coward."...or something to that effect.
And then, something short and sweet to add to your comments about religion...
I believe religion has no place in politics, education or technology.
I agree with you, because religion can often be a scapegoat for lobbyists, protestors, parents, and so many other political groups, but here's what I believe...
I believe that religion has no place in politics, education, or technology, but the moral ethics taught by Christianity should be present everywhere.
Now, I'd rate the probablity of actually getting said money at just about the same as, say, Rob and Heather Graham dating.
Yea, and I probably would have said that the probability of them getting money is just as likely as Dennis Rodman remarrying Carmen Electra, but well, ya know...
Now, I'd rate the probablity of actually getting said money at just about the same as, say, Rob and Heather Graham dating.
Yea, and I probably would have said that the probability of them getting money is just as likely as Dennis Rodman remarrying Carmen Electra, but well, ya know...
But looking at that mascot, only one name comes to mind...
...Smiley.
I don't know who gave that chamelion a smile, but "SuSE's Smiley" just has a nice ring to it... or maybe "Smiley SuSE!"...no, wait, then smiley would be an adjective...how bout...no, that wouldn't work either...
Is the only way for anyone to fix a problem is to do so by the most controversal means necessary?
Apply this to DeCSS. Why not make a public outcry to the world that DVD retailers are discriminating against alternate OSs and supporting the Windows monopoly by locking out DVD to Linux? Why instead did the entire code have to be cracked?
Before you respond, I already know most people are thinking "The only way to be heard is to do something drastic!" But look what you've done! Sure, you say that you have no intensions of copying DVD software, but you've opened the door for it to be done! You may have publically opened the door for Linux users to finally view DVDs, but you've also managed to leave the door open for anyone else who wants to do something a little more illegal.
Let's look back at history. Are we seeing people race against the clock to try and back up their DOS 1.0 disks? Nope. Why? Because it's useless. I have some old floppy disks which have stuck with it for over 10 years (Win 3.0, DOS 5.0...). They still work, but am I ever going to install them on anything else? Course not.
My church just upgraded their computer system. They were using good ol' Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS, but now they have WP 9. What'd they do with all their data files? Either trash them, or use the dot-matrix printer one last time to print them to hard copy. Granted, we still could have opened up the DOS files in WP9 and saved them in that format, but most of them we didn't need.
A few companies around my area that I see upgrading their computers scroll through the old datafiles, print out the financial ones they need to keep record for, and trash the rest. Why worry about a business letter typed up to a company 15 - 20 years ago?
Heck, why pay $20/$25 for a DVD to copy when you can now do it for only $3/$4! I mean, just wait for the DVD-R to get cheaper media (like around $5 to $10), and I can have a movie perminately for $8-$15 what I normally would have to pay $20-$25 for! And who says I have to make just one?!?
Personally, I think it's ignorant of them to think they can get by piracy issues by making the disk self-destructable. Whether I copy it the first time I read the disk, or the 100th time, either/or, it's still pirating the media.
And who says I'd have to make a copy in the first place? The report said that this was a physical aspect of the disk where the disk could change color and become unreadable. What if we found a way to change it back? If there's a will, there's a way. Put it up to a black light? Dump it in really hot or cold water? Give enough people a chance, and I'm sure you'll find a work-around!
The internet's such a wonderful idea in that it's anarchy. People can throw whatever they want on whatever web site they want and/supposedly/ not get in trouble for it. Only problem: with freedom comes chaos. Kids in Colorado post their list of people they want to kill on their web site. Spammers flood e-mailboxes every day with useless plugs to buy things or visit porno sites. Anonymous Cowards fill the message boards with "FIRST POST" and other useless chatter.
With any course of action comes a consequence.
Do members of these communities - that's us - have any responsibility to challenge people who assault others online, create environments in which some of the most urgent issues of our lifetimes can be discussed and debated in a coherent, civil and rational way?
Not if we allow it to happen. Course, if we start saying "You can do this, you can't do this...," we loose the freedom of the net. Rationality and freedom clash.
I'm sure many people can relate when I go back to the time of BBSing. Sure, you hade message subs that many people wanted to carry on a "rational, intelligent conversation," but there was/were always some jerk/s who just tore up the subs with flames of hate and profanity. Of course, back then, if that user was enough of a jerk, the sysop could toss him out. We don't have that here. Anyone and everyone anonymous can talk away.
Slashdot posts urgent issues. That's the thing I like about it...rather than wading around through CNet, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Tom's Hardware, and numerous other sites to get my news quota of the day, I get it right here, and I can talk about it with others. But where can I find an intelligent conversation if at least half the posts are just useless yelling between the ACs?
America is one of the most censorious countries in the world, blocking open discussion of many religious and political issues and increasingly deploying a whole industry of censorship technologies - blocking and filtering programs, V-Chips, insanely quixotic and unworkable ratings systems - to try and curb the very freedom it celebrates.
What, if you call the TV ratings system unworkable, I'll call Slashdot's ratings system unworkable (mods, hold the - points until you finish reading this). Yes, I started out hating the TV ratings system. I hated President Clinton parading around the "V-Chip" as a way of saving kids from TV's violence. I still hate the idea of the V-Chip, but yet, I like the ratings system. Parents watching TV with their kids can keep them from watching a program if the little black box in the corner says something about the program (sexual content, violence, etc.) that they don't want their kids to see/hear. Slashdot's point system is the same thing! There are plenty of times where I don't have too much time to look through the entire mass of 400 or 500 comments on some hot topic, so I'll just find the posts with a 3+ rating. If I have the time and find the subject quite intreaging, I'll read many posts, no matter what they're rated.
Both ratings systems don't keep you from watching the program or reading the post, but it just informs you of what there is to see or read. And hey, if you don't want to read what the ACs have to say, just skip over them!
Case In Point: Katz is right in saying that America keeps trying to limit the freedoms that they "claim" to hold dear. The internet is the new gateway for us to express our freedoms without being punished for it. If you want to keep this freedom, you'll have to deal with what comes with it. By attempting to eliminate those people you don't "want around," you're doing your own practice of censorship.
From the time it was first proposed, it took scientists around 1500 years to prove the existance of the atom.
It's strange though, how people would refuse to believe in something that they couldn't see, but now, not only do we believe in atoms, but also quarks, photons,...
We keep finding smaller and smaller particles as the days go by. So we've discovered that atoms, the building blocks of the universe, have their own building blocks, but there must be something even smaller than that, since we've discovered that light has mass (albeit very little), and who knows how small small is!
Do you see an end/limit on "building blocks" of matter? Do you see in the near future the discovery of the barrier between mass and energy?
In the late 1800's/early 1900's, we saw some large trust companies rise up from fast growing industries...Steel, oil, etc.
Now, in the late 1990's/early 2000's, we're seeing some other large trust companies rise forth from fast growing industries up...communications, computers, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
This is really pathetic. I mean, really? What does it matter? If someone types in "Olympics" in Yahoo, Google, etc., I'd say 10 to 1 that the very first web match is going to be the official site. What's there really to complain about?
Here's my problem with all this...whitehouse.gov and whitehouse.com. The two have existed now for at least four years. I am posative that if the government really wanted to, they could "pressure" whitehouse.com to change their domain name, but they don't. Why? Well, they're probably smart enough to know that they'd get some heavy fire if they did, but even so...one little mistake and some innocent kid looking up a government web site could find himself at a porn site.
So, if a government web site and a porn site can get along, why can't some stupid difference between www.olympics.com and www.olympics24_7.com?
Cyclically, companies who behave like this will have a brief period (or no not so brief - look at IBM, they managed for decades) of dominance, verging on monopoly - but their nemesis will come.
What about Microsoft? They've been doing crap like this for fifteen years, and it hasn't been till now that the DOJ's cracked down on them (sure, they've been through the courts before, but when you got plenty of $$$, they aren't a problem). Intel has also been doing it too...
...in fact, you really have to wonder if RAMBUS is doing all this on its own, or if Intel's also a major player. Remember, AMD's really growing in the market with their faster chips. Being as how Intel's loosing big-time with their 8xx chipsets, they really need to stop DDR RAM. I'm sure they've seen the performance results that the GeForce GTS video card has gotten with DDR, and they know that they're gonna get nailed real hard if they don't do anything about DDR. They got both billions of dollars in stock options as well as their processors on the line with RAMBUS, so they have plenty of incentive as well.
...but the problem lies in the fact that Rambus is trying to expand like Microsoft did fifteen years back. Their marketing is just filled with the same strategies.
1) Convince investors that what they produce is valuable. They have been releasing report after report of ever little "improvement" they've made to the computing industry.
2) Convince the computing industry that their company is powerful by making their stock worth something (Rambus had a 4-1 stocksplit just a few days ago...now THAT says something).
3) Once the money's in the bank, spread your "domain" over the rest of the market so it can eventually be controlled (what they're doing now with their patents).
4) Once everything is controled, halt sales of all other products and sell only your own.
On the current path, it appears that Rambus is trying to make themselves a monopoly. They've sided with Intel and now Toshiba...who knows who else down the road?
That's a laugh.
If anyone wants to get a good chuckle from Microsoft now that this ruling is final, check out their DOJ vs. Freedom To Innovate website. It's a hoot and a hollar if you ask me.
Man, it was a pain just trying to get into slashdot to read about this...all thanks to a million AC's who are busy posting strings of "Micro$oft $ucks."
What'd they threaten John with? The BFG-9000?
I have been a PC computer technician now for about four years, and if there's one thing I just can't stand about companies and their products is the "See the HELPMR.PDF file for details."
.PDF file when I can't get the drive workin' in the first place?!?
.PDF files are hilarious...just read them some time. You'll find questions like "What if my computer doesn't turn on after installing so-and-so?" "What if my CD-ROM drive or Hard Drive are unreadable after installing so-and-so?" How in the world would I be reading a .PDF if I can't get the computer working?!?
First off, if I have some in-depth question I need answered, I need to do some in-depth reading. I can't do that on the computer screen! My eyes would go blind if I studied an on-line manual to try and figure out what to do!
Second off, search modes for PDF files don't do crap when you need to figure out exactly what's wrong. Say I'm installing something like, oh, say a DVD Decoder card for a DVD drive I bought, but it's not decoding the movies. I need to figure out why. Well, open up good ol' AcroRead, type in the search field "Specs," and I'll have to wade through countless hits of the word "Specs," often not finding what I need. Well, I need to get more specific, but if I get too specific, I won't find what I'm looking for. Often times the only way I can find something is to do the same thing I do in any other printed manual: go to the index or table of contents.
And most importantly, and I STRESS this above the rest, If the computer doesn't work, I ***NEED*** printed documentation!!! I hate trying to install something new on someone's computer only to find that it hoses the computer, and there's no frickin' way to find out what's wrong because I have to get the computer on to find out what's wrong! What if I'm installing a new CD-ROM Drive? If it doesn't work, how am I supposed to get to a
I tell ya, some of those
If someone is buying a boxed product, there NEEDS to be a printed manual with at least semi-detailed instructions. You don't have to enclose a 300 page manual, but look at the TI-8x or TI-9x series of calculators. Not only do you buy the calculator, but you also get a nice 200 page paperback explaining how it works. Imagine if you bought the calculator and it came with "If you wish to get instructions, please go to www.ti.com/support/ti/8x and print the 200 page manual."
...I love the pictures. Very nice pictures. Even if you don't understand a word the guy says, just go there for the pictures!
And second, I'm not really into physics, but if my understanding of Einstein's Theory of Relativity holds true, what this guy's saying is that if one could create a way (anti-gravity generators) to cancel the gravitational affects of mass to an absolute minimum or nothing at all, the energy created when light speed is achieved would by none at all, canceling the infinite amount of energy generated at the speed of light, making light speed possible.
...at least, that's what I think he said! (Can a mathematician or physicist help me out here?)
...first off, it's running on the NT 4 kernel... apparently, Bill didn't want little kids to get the Blue-Screen-Of-Death each time they played their favority video game.
Secondly, this thing needs more RAM! I'd rather have a smaller hard drive than get fragged while my character was moving at one frame per second since the hard drive was trying to crank data out of the swap file!
And finally, since this thing's going to be using the internet, I can just imagine a whole line of links aimed solely at the X-Box to try and make the thing crash miserably.
Remembering all the kinds of encrypt forms I learned as a kid, one of the easiest was to throw in dummy characters (things that never meant anything but helped make things look more confusing). There's a few things to look at here:
1) Possibly, some characters (maybe the ones in all caps, the ones upside-down, or whatever) are just thrown in there to confuse the decryptor.
or 2) The different alignment of characters was meant to allude to different meanings. For example, if this letter could have been secretly written by Poe himself, maybe he based the text on allusions to his different works, or maybe on only one alone. Perhaps each letter alluded to a different word in a work of his.
perhaps 3) The combination of the allignment and case of the letters was only meant to throw people off, and instead means absolutely nothing.
Thinking about Poe's work, this particular code seems to fit. In almost all of his works, he has two sides, the light and dark. The fact that the code has right-side-up, upside-down, upper, and lower case seems to blend in with it. Come to think of it, perhaps it is two messages blended into one?
...Except maybe Mulder just wanted to show off how he looked in the get-up!
I normally don't watch X-Files, but when I saw the preview for this one, I thought it had to be a must see. Man, was I wrong. The storyline started great (I loved them bragging about getting their IPO!), but it went downhill so fast. Nothing of the plot was ever resolved...granted, X-Files loves to little details hanging for suspense, but they didn't even give one shread of evidence of why she jumped from one computer to the other, why the program could actually kill, etc.
The only thing I really liked about the episode was bring up the subject of male testosterone. We have a laser tag arena in our town, and I can relate perfectly to "the need to blow the crap out of others."
There's one thing that all the studies in the world can't point out: it's a risk, but it's not reality.
The fact of the matter is, the internet is a lot like television. They're both a means of communication that allow us to view the rest of the world through a window rather than through our own eyes. The only difference is that the internet has grown to be interactive, but all-in-all, both are equivalent to one another.
Here's where the problem arises though...because the internet is an interactive medium, plenty of people claim that it's not harmful to one's social life. But guess what? Humans need physical social activity in order to thrive. I don't know of anyone who wouldn't go crazy if they locked themselves up in a room and only talked to everyone else through the phone. Everyone needs some kind of physical contact every now and then, and to only communicate through the internet is as dangerous as watching TV 16 hours a day. But, there's a problem with this logic, and that's why everyone's misunderstanding what these reports mean.
Back when television was invented, a two step process occured: first, people were amazed by the ability to finally see a picture with what they heard on the radio, and people rushed to get their own TV set. Then the second step occured...studies showed that people were beginning to watch too much television, cutting back on their social interaction. Everyone thought it meant that humans would soon just sit in front of their television set and watch TV all day long. They were wrong.
Why people changed their time schedules in order to watch more TV, and why people are now changing their time schedules to get in more time on the internet, is because both mediums are replacing previous ways to obtain information. Before the radio, people had to wait a day for the newspaper to arrive. Then, before the TV, people had to wait anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours for the news to arrive. Then, before the internet, people had to wait around five minutes to find the news in between the adds and channel changes. But now, the internet allows us to view the news in less than a minute. It's "there at our fingertips." Each medium replaced the last because each medium gave us the chance to get more done in less time. And since each medium saved time, naturally, humans spent more time on it to get more things done at once.
What the studies on television proved is fairly the same amount of material that this study proves: too much viewing can lead to a decrease in social interaction. What they didn't say, though, is that just because someone was a "TV Junkie" or "Internet Junkie" didn't mean that they're not socially involved...it only proved that the oportunity was there for it to occur. Sure, if someone spends over 8 hours a day watching television, they might develop a social problem. If someone spends over 8 hours a day on the internet, they might develop a social problem as well. It all depends on how deeply involved the person gets.
...but I can't seem to find two of which seem to be thriving as well...
...Chat rooms and discussion forums.
Course, many people would argue that discussion forms themselves are just parts of other web sites, but then there's also MUDs, FreeNets, Telnet BBSs, Instant Messengers (MIRC, ICQ, AIM, etc)...
How bout something like a "CommNet Continent" as well?
...but I can't seem to find two of which seem to be thriving as well...
...Chat rooms and discussion forums.
Course, many people would argue that discussion forms themselves are just parts of other web sites, but then there's also MUDs, FreeNets, Telnet BBSs...
How bout something like a "CommNet Continent" as well?
That Navigator 6 is going to be a hit needs to get his head out of the clouds. No, I'm not saying that M13 is bad...far from it. In my opinion, it's about as equivalent as Nav 4.7 as far as speed and how often it crashes (which is quite good, considering that 4.7 is a final release and M13's still in the making). Anyway, the problem here is AOL. AOL's version of Navigator is going to be some cheap piece of junk. They'll send it through beta testing, release it 6 months too early, and load it so full of crap (aka plugins) that it won't be worth anything. I'm sorry, but most of us don't use AIM, and the last thing I want is to be attacked every five minutes by some spinning AOL logo which says "Hey, come visit AOL!" What I'll be waiting for is when someone like RedHat or Corel will take Mozilla and develop it into their own Linux Web browser...something that Linux users would want to see. You just know that AOL's going to try and push everything they can through Navigator to users (just look at Netscape's web site)!
No, you give me a break. I have no problem whatsoever if you're not a Christian. But the etchical practices are hardly bizzare. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Sound bizzare? Not by the least bit.
And what about the 10 Commandments? We have people now who aren't Christian but say that they think that they should be posted in schools across the country! Why? Because it's ethical, and it's something that people should understand and reflect upon!
Guess what? You're living in a country that was founded on Christian Ethics!
There's three kinds of people who post here on /.:
/. can...a journalistic opinion. Sure, he can say things about DeCSS that we already know, but the thing that's great is he offers not an overview, but an opinion, and a professional one at that. Granted, I usually don't agree with him either, but I'd rather see a different perspective on an issue than my own pig-headed one!
...or something to that effect.
1) The hard-core computer users, mainly those who specialize deeply in some area of computers, like programming, Linux, BSD, BeOS, applications, etc.
2) Thosw who aren't too in-depth about computers but enjoy working with them and love to learn more about them from the Group #1 users.
3) Those who are here to flame.
The great thing about John Katz is he lies in group number two, and he offers something that very few people on
JK, if you're reading this comment (even though there are probably going to be at least 500 by the day's end), a few things popped into my head while reading your interview...
About Anonymous Cowards...
But youre asking honest questions and you deserve honest answers, and the truth is, AC's have increasingly made Slashdot's Threads a laughingstock on the Web.
How bout this...create a moderation post for Anonymous Cowards. Have them write a message and post it as just "Anonymous," then before it's posted, either get it listed as "Anonymous Flame," "Anonymous Coward," or "Intelligent Anonymous Coward."
And then, something short and sweet to add to your comments about religion...
I believe religion has no place in politics, education or technology.
I agree with you, because religion can often be a scapegoat for lobbyists, protestors, parents, and so many other political groups, but here's what I believe...
I believe that religion has no place in politics, education, or technology, but the moral ethics taught by Christianity should be present everywhere.
Now, I'd rate the probablity of actually getting said money at just about the same as, say, Rob and Heather Graham dating.
Yea, and I probably would have said that the probability of them getting money is just as likely as Dennis Rodman remarrying Carmen Electra, but well, ya know...
Now, I'd rate the probablity of actually getting said money at just about the same as, say, Rob and Heather Graham dating.
Yea, and I probably would have said that the probability of them getting money is just as likely as Dennis Rodman remarrying Carmen Electra, but well, ya know...
But looking at that mascot, only one name comes to mind...
...no, wait, then smiley would be an adjective...how bout...no, that wouldn't work either...
:)
...Smiley.
I don't know who gave that chamelion a smile, but "SuSE's Smiley" just has a nice ring to it... or maybe "Smiley SuSE!"
...Well, anyway, how bout Smiley?
But my question is this:
Is the only way for anyone to fix a problem is to do so by the most controversal means necessary?
Apply this to DeCSS. Why not make a public outcry to the world that DVD retailers are discriminating against alternate OSs and supporting the Windows monopoly by locking out DVD to Linux? Why instead did the entire code have to be cracked?
Before you respond, I already know most people are thinking "The only way to be heard is to do something drastic!" But look what you've done! Sure, you say that you have no intensions of copying DVD software, but you've opened the door for it to be done! You may have publically opened the door for Linux users to finally view DVDs, but you've also managed to leave the door open for anyone else who wants to do something a little more illegal.
Let's look back at history. Are we seeing people race against the clock to try and back up their DOS 1.0 disks? Nope. Why? Because it's useless. I have some old floppy disks which have stuck with it for over 10 years (Win 3.0, DOS 5.0...). They still work, but am I ever going to install them on anything else? Course not.
My church just upgraded their computer system. They were using good ol' Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS, but now they have WP 9. What'd they do with all their data files? Either trash them, or use the dot-matrix printer one last time to print them to hard copy. Granted, we still could have opened up the DOS files in WP9 and saved them in that format, but most of them we didn't need.
A few companies around my area that I see upgrading their computers scroll through the old datafiles, print out the financial ones they need to keep record for, and trash the rest. Why worry about a business letter typed up to a company 15 - 20 years ago?
Case in Point: Much ado about nothing.
Forget disposable stuff...think about pirating!
Heck, why pay $20/$25 for a DVD to copy when you can now do it for only $3/$4! I mean, just wait for the DVD-R to get cheaper media (like around $5 to $10), and I can have a movie perminately for $8-$15 what I normally would have to pay $20-$25 for! And who says I have to make just one?!?
Personally, I think it's ignorant of them to think they can get by piracy issues by making the disk self-destructable. Whether I copy it the first time I read the disk, or the 100th time, either/or, it's still pirating the media.
And who says I'd have to make a copy in the first place? The report said that this was a physical aspect of the disk where the disk could change color and become unreadable. What if we found a way to change it back? If there's a will, there's a way. Put it up to a black light? Dump it in really hot or cold water? Give enough people a chance, and I'm sure you'll find a work-around!
...there's no such thing.
/supposedly/ not get in trouble for it. Only problem: with freedom comes chaos. Kids in Colorado post their list of people they want to kill on their web site. Spammers flood e-mailboxes every day with useless plugs to buy things or visit porno sites. Anonymous Cowards fill the message boards with "FIRST POST" and other useless chatter.
The internet's such a wonderful idea in that it's anarchy. People can throw whatever they want on whatever web site they want and
With any course of action comes a consequence.
Do members of these communities - that's us - have any responsibility to challenge people who assault others online, create environments in which some of the most urgent issues of our lifetimes can be discussed and debated in a coherent, civil and rational way?
Not if we allow it to happen. Course, if we start saying "You can do this, you can't do this...," we loose the freedom of the net. Rationality and freedom clash.
I'm sure many people can relate when I go back to the time of BBSing. Sure, you hade message subs that many people wanted to carry on a "rational, intelligent conversation," but there was/were always some jerk/s who just tore up the subs with flames of hate and profanity. Of course, back then, if that user was enough of a jerk, the sysop could toss him out. We don't have that here. Anyone and everyone anonymous can talk away.
Slashdot posts urgent issues. That's the thing I like about it...rather than wading around through CNet, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Tom's Hardware, and numerous other sites to get my news quota of the day, I get it right here, and I can talk about it with others. But where can I find an intelligent conversation if at least half the posts are just useless yelling between the ACs?
America is one of the most censorious countries in the world, blocking open discussion of many religious and political issues and increasingly deploying a whole industry of censorship technologies - blocking and filtering programs, V-Chips, insanely quixotic and unworkable ratings systems - to try and curb the very freedom it celebrates.
What, if you call the TV ratings system unworkable, I'll call Slashdot's ratings system unworkable (mods, hold the - points until you finish reading this). Yes, I started out hating the TV ratings system. I hated President Clinton parading around the "V-Chip" as a way of saving kids from TV's violence. I still hate the idea of the V-Chip, but yet, I like the ratings system. Parents watching TV with their kids can keep them from watching a program if the little black box in the corner says something about the program (sexual content, violence, etc.) that they don't want their kids to see/hear. Slashdot's point system is the same thing! There are plenty of times where I don't have too much time to look through the entire mass of 400 or 500 comments on some hot topic, so I'll just find the posts with a 3+ rating. If I have the time and find the subject quite intreaging, I'll read many posts, no matter what they're rated.
Both ratings systems don't keep you from watching the program or reading the post, but it just informs you of what there is to see or read. And hey, if you don't want to read what the ACs have to say, just skip over them!
Case In Point: Katz is right in saying that America keeps trying to limit the freedoms that they "claim" to hold dear. The internet is the new gateway for us to express our freedoms without being punished for it. If you want to keep this freedom, you'll have to deal with what comes with it. By attempting to eliminate those people you don't "want around," you're doing your own practice of censorship.
From the time it was first proposed, it took scientists around 1500 years to prove the existance of the atom.
...
It's strange though, how people would refuse to believe in something that they couldn't see, but now, not only do we believe in atoms, but also quarks, photons,
We keep finding smaller and smaller particles as the days go by. So we've discovered that atoms, the building blocks of the universe, have their own building blocks, but there must be something even smaller than that, since we've discovered that light has mass (albeit very little), and who knows how small small is!
Do you see an end/limit on "building blocks" of matter? Do you see in the near future the discovery of the barrier between mass and energy?
In the late 1800's/early 1900's, we saw some large trust companies rise up from fast growing industries...Steel, oil, etc.
Now, in the late 1990's/early 2000's, we're seeing some other large trust companies rise forth from fast growing industries up...communications, computers, etc.
Just an observation...