The last time this story ran, he was helping a woman figure out what was wrong with her Macbook. Afterwards people said to her, "do you know who that was?"
Can you link to the article where this story appeared? I'd love to see the original text, sounds like a great little tale to share with people.
There are also other, less known virtual worlds that have been doing it since prior to 2005. (I think Active Worlds had this running in the same year or earlier? Needs to be checked.)
I wonder if this patent would hold against this sort of a prior art?
What has been described in the press so far doesn't sound anything like Second Life, except at the most superficial level. These systems are targeting things like IMVU and Puzzle Pirates. There are more similarities between Slashdot and Livejournal than there are between Second Life and Sony Home.
Parent has it right.
This is targeting the "We (corporate) create stuff - you buy it" market, that is populated by the mainstream typical user who doesnt want to learn how to create their own content or shape their own environment.
This is about you coming in and buying like a good little consumerist, then going to a fancy club populated by other cool people and run a dance animation for 2 hours trying to get compliments for your self assembled looks and get people to go play a game with you.
Ofcourse, this stuff is happening in SecondLife - but that is because SecondLife enables people to create an environment where this is possible, as well as other places where other types of behavior are encouraged.
Doing anything except for this particular behavior is not going to be possible nor encouraged in Sony's Home service.
SecondLife is failing because while the idea was good, the implementation missed the mark:
- People dont want a single, unified global environment. They want their own private, locked out bubbles of reality where they can control every single aspect, and possibly allow visitors in.
- The user interface was designed by an engineer. And it shows.
- The company itself was initially ran by engineers who had no idea how to provide a user experience, and is now being ran by a marketing team that cares more about corporate big bucks then the users themselves. Result: Nobody really worked on a proper user experience for newbies, causing them to feel lost and disoriented with a sense of having nothing to do.
The tutorials - when available - tend to focus more on how to use the client rather then how to use the world to get a positive experience. This is lacking since as a user created world rather then a planned and company controlled one (such as MMORPGs), you cant really provide people with an easy path for positive experiences right off the bat.
So yea. All these points are what caused SL to end up sucking for most people who arent into the virtual world field, and more.
But it had nothing to do with "haha virtual worlds suck moving on" or "OH SHIT, FURRIES".
Frankly, the term 'Virtual World' has been foggied up so badly by clueless marketing droids that no one really knows what the term means anymore.
Back in the 90's it was more used toward worlds where you can build content and create your own environment - sort of a take from Virtual Reality. But now days it feels like people decided that anything 3D and multiplayer/multiuser is a "virtual world" - so the term doesnt mean much anymore.
So we end up having to use examples.
And I wouldnt use SecondLife as an example for Sony's implementation. There doesnt seem to be anything there about user creativity, only consumerism.
This isnt about your content: This is about them selling YOU content.
Ofcourse, they may add some ways for you to make a buck, or I suppose other people will come up with ways to make a buck despite Sony's objections (e.g. coming up with gold farming in EverQuest).
Heck, look at SecondLife: Its own in-world currency wasnt worth anything other then being a game token until someone decided it was worth real life dollars. And the rest is obsessed, greedy, overly-advertised history.
"Ryoji Akagawa of Sony said that around 24 game design companies would provide the content needed for Home - but didn't give much else away. "
This is nothing like SecondLife, then - barely even an imitation.
SecondLife is about user content and creativity while Sony's - and quite possibly Microsoft's - solution is about you paying them for the right to purchase items created by other companies. You have zero capacity to create your own content and items.
In other words, this isn't a virtual world: This is a 3D chat room, straight from the jolly 90's.
You'll be surprised by what DOS can do. But lets ignore for a moment the fact that anything Windows up to 98/Me can do DOS can do too, since these versions of Windows were a DOS program from the get go.
On the more technical side, DOS is the best choice to go with when you buy a clean PC. Not just because "DOS can do just about anything anyway", but also because its the best option for doing stuff such as BIOS upgrades and related.
DOS is not for stupid people. If you cant handle DOS, you obviously cant handle Linux. And if you know how to handle DOS, then you can handle Linux - which means you dont have to bother with DOS anyway.
But most important: I keep seeing people advocating for Linux and just about shooting anything that ISNT Linux even remotely. Thats not very open-minded, is it. Just because you dont use a certain OS doesnt mean you can ignore its abilities, and then start whining around when someone uses something else instead of your favorate whatever.
There are many other factors for why people choose
who they choose. Keep looking at the shallow
side, and you'll never get anywhere.
Not that you tried to, anyway.
PS: Incase you didnt notice, we didnt fire
a single shot against those "poor, innocent"
people for months. And yet, they keep on shooting.
When we do shoot, its rare, and in response to
something they did. Very inhuman. I guess that we
should stop responding at all and just sit back
and get killed. Fun, isnt it.
And dont start with the "who did what first". When you get killed, it doesnt matter. When we tried to talk, they didnt stop shooting for a moment. During the peace process, they kept saying that "peace is just a cover! We will kill them all anyway!" in public radio and TV. But, its ok. They're palestinians. They are permitted to do it.
Anyway, as an Israeli I can assure you that the
"situation" has some really low chances of
hurting any tourist. Fact: i'm taking the bus
on a daily basis and yet i'm still alive. And
I -live- here. So, really. The media just like
to over bloat things.
On the down side: Its freaking HOT. Dont get
here unless you're heat tolerant. I'd take
a trip to swiss instead at any time.
They'll be able to stop it by making the ad window
a "sticky window" that goes with you where ever you
go on the desktop. Its allready possible on most of
the Virtual Desktop systems.
Ofcourse, cracking the stick options will be quite easy
in comparison to most methods...
I pay quite alot of cash for my 24/7, unlimited
time internet connection (its a dial-up).
I also pay quiet alot of money as phone-bill,
although I am allready receiveing major discounts
due to the large sum of money that is spent.
Forcing me to view ads before entering a site,
and when trying to leave it will only add more
to the final bill that I will have to pay.
This means: advertisers get cash, I loose.
This is happening right now, with ad-banners,
that load on my expense. But usually they are
small and I can allready view the site when they
load, so it doesnt matter. But the new system
will force me to WAIT before entering the site,
by this wasting valuable time.
Another important factor for me on the internet,
is speed. And i'm not talking about transfer
speed: I'm talking about ACCESS speed. The time
it takes from the moment I clicked on a link
until I get the information I wanted to is
VERY important for me. If someone will try to
slow me down by forcing me to view irrelevent
and unwanted information before letting me
view the information I want, then this will
just cause me to work less efficently, and in
general cause me to loat that site or service
to the bone.
Advertisments are obviously necessary for
economical reasons, but they have to do it in
away that doesnt make the web a place that sucks.
Bah! That would have never had happened on
Gopher..
I hope that in the future it will be possible to change the character reading. The face of the current character looks like she smoked something.. (that pale skin color and black circles around the eyes. Hey! actually, maybe she's a good fit. Most people look like this during late-night programming after tons of coffee..)
Maybe we're lucky its not the animated series. I really hated that poni/unicorn/whatever.
What I would REALLY like to see, though, is a Dragon Lance movie! that would be great.. though something tells me we can count on them that they will ruin the movie. Its just one of those feelings.
The material that the Paper computer is seposed to be made of will be flexible. Can you imagine how much this can help the wearable computer industry? (your computer as part of your jacket. hm..)
Declaring Windows as the national OS and still keeping on "using it for free" wouldnt make much appeal in the eyes of the rest of the world, including M$ who you can only bet that they would notice. Now, I dont have an idea if that gov even care on how they look like in the eyes of the rest of the world (including M$, as powerfull as they are), but Linux seems to solve this problem. You can copy without anyone saying you've done something bad.
You have mentioned that some spammers include 1-800 numbers.
I've heard of cases, when the actually money came to the spammer from these numbers.. see, they included a number, but it was not free. On the contrary. It was one of these numbers that take a big charge, and it was diverted to an international call. There they would hold you with a "please wait" message, and by the time you're done, you also get quite a big phone bill. The money will then go to the company operating the so called "phone service".
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if it's too late to switch back to the old pager.
The last time this story ran, he was helping a woman figure out what was wrong with her Macbook. Afterwards people said to her, "do you know who that was?"
Can you link to the article where this story appeared? I'd love to see the original text, sounds like a great little tale to share with people.
Microsoft has patented this in 2006.
Second Life has been doing this since March 2005.
There are also other, less known virtual worlds that have been doing it since prior to 2005.
(I think Active Worlds had this running in the same year or earlier? Needs to be checked.)
I wonder if this patent would hold against this sort of a prior art?
What has been described in the press so far doesn't sound anything like Second Life, except at the most superficial level. These systems are targeting things like IMVU and Puzzle Pirates. There are more similarities between Slashdot and Livejournal than there are between Second Life and Sony Home.
Parent has it right.
This is targeting the "We (corporate) create stuff - you buy it" market, that is populated by the mainstream typical user who doesnt want to learn how to create their own content or shape their own environment.
This is about you coming in and buying like a good little consumerist, then going to a fancy club populated by other cool people and run a dance animation for 2 hours trying to get compliments for your self assembled looks and get people to go play a game with you.
Ofcourse, this stuff is happening in SecondLife - but that is because SecondLife enables people to create an environment where this is possible, as well as other places where other types of behavior are encouraged.
Doing anything except for this particular behavior is not going to be possible nor encouraged in Sony's Home service.
SecondLife is failing because while the idea was good, the implementation missed the mark:
- People dont want a single, unified global environment. They want their own private, locked out bubbles of reality where they can control every single aspect, and possibly allow visitors in.
- The user interface was designed by an engineer. And it shows.
- The company itself was initially ran by engineers who had no idea how to provide a user experience, and is now being ran by a marketing team that cares more about corporate big bucks then the users themselves. Result: Nobody really worked on a proper user experience for newbies, causing them to feel lost and disoriented with a sense of having nothing to do.
The tutorials - when available - tend to focus more on how to use the client rather then how to use the world to get a positive experience. This is lacking since as a user created world rather then a planned and company controlled one (such as MMORPGs), you cant really provide people with an easy path for positive experiences right off the bat.
So yea. All these points are what caused SL to end up sucking for most people who arent into the virtual world field, and more.
But it had nothing to do with "haha virtual worlds suck moving on" or "OH SHIT, FURRIES".
Using second life as a target displays a considerable lack of ambition.
Obviously that means that you can easily create your own Second Life platform with minimum effort? ;D
Frankly, the term 'Virtual World' has been foggied up so badly by clueless marketing droids that no one really knows what the term means anymore.
Back in the 90's it was more used toward worlds where you can build content and create your own environment - sort of a take from Virtual Reality. But now days it feels like people decided that anything 3D and multiplayer/multiuser is a "virtual world" - so the term doesnt mean much anymore.
So we end up having to use examples.
And I wouldnt use SecondLife as an example for Sony's implementation. There doesnt seem to be anything there about user creativity, only consumerism.
Same goes with Microsoft AFAIK.
As far as I can see, no.
This isnt about your content: This is about them selling YOU content.
Ofcourse, they may add some ways for you to make a buck, or I suppose other people will come up with ways to make a buck despite Sony's objections (e.g. coming up with gold farming in EverQuest).
Heck, look at SecondLife: Its own in-world currency wasnt worth anything other then being a game token until someone decided it was worth real life dollars. And the rest is obsessed, greedy, overly-advertised history.
"Ryoji Akagawa of Sony said that around 24 game design companies would provide the content needed for Home - but didn't give much else away. "
This is nothing like SecondLife, then - barely even an imitation.
SecondLife is about user content and creativity while Sony's - and quite possibly Microsoft's - solution is about you paying them for the right to purchase items created by other companies. You have zero capacity to create your own content and items.
In other words, this isn't a virtual world: This is a 3D chat room, straight from the jolly 90's.
You'll be surprised by what DOS can do. But lets ignore for a moment the fact that anything Windows up to 98/Me can do DOS can do too, since these versions of Windows were a DOS program from the get go.
On the more technical side, DOS is the best choice to go with when you buy a clean PC. Not just because "DOS can do just about anything anyway", but also because its the best option for doing stuff such as BIOS upgrades and related.
DOS is not for stupid people. If you cant handle DOS, you obviously cant handle Linux. And if you know how to handle DOS, then you can handle Linux - which means you dont have to bother with DOS anyway.
But most important: I keep seeing people advocating for Linux and just about shooting anything that ISNT Linux even remotely. Thats not very open-minded, is it. Just because you dont use a certain OS doesnt mean you can ignore its abilities, and then start whining around when someone uses something else instead of your favorate whatever.
Linux is not the answer for -everything-.
Remote proxies.
Me? Oh, i'm not from Israel. I'm from... Canada! Oh, not good? Right-o! how about... Japan!
Last I checked, democracy isnt perfect.
There are many other factors for why people choose who they choose. Keep looking at the shallow side, and you'll never get anywhere.
Not that you tried to, anyway.
PS:
Incase you didnt notice, we didnt fire a single shot against those "poor, innocent" people for months. And yet, they keep on shooting. When we do shoot, its rare, and in response to something they did. Very inhuman. I guess that we should stop responding at all and just sit back and get killed. Fun, isnt it.
And dont start with the "who did what first". When you get killed, it doesnt matter. When we tried to talk, they didnt stop shooting for a moment. During the peace process, they kept saying that "peace is just a cover! We will kill them all anyway!" in public radio and TV. But, its ok. They're palestinians. They are permitted to do it.
Bla bla. Politics. Bla.
Anyway, as an Israeli I can assure you that the
"situation" has some really low chances of
hurting any tourist. Fact: i'm taking the bus
on a daily basis and yet i'm still alive. And
I -live- here. So, really. The media just like
to over bloat things.
On the down side: Its freaking HOT. Dont get
here unless you're heat tolerant. I'd take
a trip to swiss instead at any time.
Wasnt this story allready posted before?
Oh well. Nice to see that they are still around.
Too much vapor in computer companies latly.
They'll be able to stop it by making the ad window
a "sticky window" that goes with you where ever you
go on the desktop. Its allready possible on most of
the Virtual Desktop systems.
Ofcourse, cracking the stick options will be quite easy
in comparison to most methods...
I pay quite alot of cash for my 24/7, unlimited
time internet connection (its a dial-up).
I also pay quiet alot of money as phone-bill,
although I am allready receiveing major discounts
due to the large sum of money that is spent.
Forcing me to view ads before entering a site,
and when trying to leave it will only add more
to the final bill that I will have to pay.
This means: advertisers get cash, I loose.
This is happening right now, with ad-banners,
that load on my expense. But usually they are
small and I can allready view the site when they
load, so it doesnt matter. But the new system
will force me to WAIT before entering the site,
by this wasting valuable time.
Another important factor for me on the internet,
is speed. And i'm not talking about transfer
speed: I'm talking about ACCESS speed. The time
it takes from the moment I clicked on a link
until I get the information I wanted to is
VERY important for me. If someone will try to
slow me down by forcing me to view irrelevent
and unwanted information before letting me
view the information I want, then this will
just cause me to work less efficently, and in
general cause me to loat that site or service
to the bone.
Advertisments are obviously necessary for
economical reasons, but they have to do it in
away that doesnt make the web a place that sucks.
Bah! That would have never had happened on
Gopher..
It allready was.
I'm just suprised that my system didnt cought
a virus for linux so far.
I hope that in the future it will be possible
to change the character reading. The face of
the current character looks like she smoked
something.. (that pale skin color and black
circles around the eyes. Hey! actually, maybe
she's a good fit. Most people look like this
during late-night programming after tons of
coffee..)
Maybe we're lucky its not the animated series.
I really hated that poni/unicorn/whatever.
What I would REALLY like to see, though, is
a Dragon Lance movie! that would be great..
though something tells me we can count on them
that they will ruin the movie.
Its just one of those feelings.
I dont see any reason for gender separation
in the "top ten" list. Both genders can be
added to the list.
The material that the Paper computer is seposed
to be made of will be flexible. Can you imagine
how much this can help the wearable computer
industry? (your computer as part of your
jacket. hm..)
Declaring Windows as the national OS and still
keeping on "using it for free" wouldnt make
much appeal in the eyes of the rest of the world,
including M$ who you can only bet that they would
notice. Now, I dont have an idea if that gov even
care on how they look like in the eyes of the
rest of the world (including M$, as powerfull
as they are), but Linux seems to solve this
problem. You can copy without anyone saying
you've done something bad.
You have mentioned that some spammers include
1-800 numbers.
I've heard of cases, when the actually money
came to the spammer from these numbers.. see,
they included a number, but it was not free.
On the contrary.
It was one of these numbers that take
a big charge, and it was diverted to an
international call. There they would hold you
with a "please wait" message, and by the time
you're done, you also get quite a big phone bill.
The money will then go to the company operating
the so called "phone service".
Can DOS handle USB?
My main system is DR-DOS 7.03 and Linux. Wonder
if DOS will be able to use any USB devices..