Altavista "did an Amiga"* and gave up its leadership position by completely standing still in the face of strong competition. A couple of years after I had moved over to google, I had a look to see what Altavista had done and it seemed that they had copied some of the google front page layout. And nothing else.
I sometimes crave for the old Altavista days when the search engine searched for what you told it to rather than trying to be clever. Google can be nearly unusable when you don't want it search for declinations and synonyms. Helping it along in the beginning, Google enjoyed a short period of having a very tight, accurate database to work with before the spammers got wise. The automatic ad engine was easy to fool too so that you could amuse friends and family with a screenshot proclaiming: "Amazon has lots of books about Bill Gates being cruel to children". However, 95% of the time Google finds what I'm looking for and as a result I'm confident enough to bookmark only the obscure sites and stuff that I use daily. I keep Lycos as my backup.
*Or "an Acorn", or "a 3DFX" etc./me tries to click on the monkey to win a prize in a fit of nostalgia.
We were able to contact a representative of the company and he had this to say:
"Everyone needs a pickmeup, and if you understood some of the pressures I was under you'd get off my back. It's no different from taking a drink or smoking cigarettes. I suppose it was the FDA who told you about this? It's pretty funny for me that you believe everything that they say about me, but you're loving this aren't you? Finally, you get to call me a fuckup just like you've always wanted to. This is probably the greatest day of your life. I know what I'm doing and what I can handle."
Sound advice in terms of ethics and respecting other people, but it's more likely: He'll tire of what ever game he's playing around the time his finals come round. Then he'll go "Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!" and have to do loads of work. He'll have learned a valuable lesson about time management. He'll learn it the best way - the hard way. Like we've all had to from time to time.
COME. OVER. TO. THE. UK. Seriously, you'll love it here. We're turning it into a totalitarian extreme socialist state. I've no doubt it will soon be permissible to use force to stop people from playing a computer game too much, if it's deemed "not good for them".
The first I-War game was designed for software rendering and the 3D was bolted on afterwards. This meant that the ingame rendering on a 3DFX card was noticeably higher quality than the pre-rendered cut scenes.
They are two classes of user but there are more than two classes. Add into the mix the guy who's machine is downloading all day. There ought to be a limit to how much a person can consume but he's the guy who barely even looks at most of the stuff he collects. A generation earlier, he would have had drawer fulls of never looked at disks for his Amiga.
People who do a substantial amount of media downloading are amongst the least profitable customers for an ISP. An old granny who just checks her email from time to time is an ideal customer for the ISP.
As an aside, More's novel describes a constructed society that had strived for perfection with absurd outcomes. Always makes me smile when people assume Utopia to mean an ideal society. Having said that, perhaps the hubris is typically apt. BTW, nearly 500 years old but still a highly recommended short read.
They should have made Prey into the Duke Nukem Game. They would have taken a small hit to their credibility, but at least they would have had a slightly above average game released a few years ago.
Stripping naked people? It would depend how wide the strips were. Oh, I see your reasoning, if the people were torn into 3" strips, perhaps Rockstar games could be persuaded to pick up the development. The problem is that they'd need to find a technology news site that would document every part of the release process in order to generate enough publicit... Oh right... Good idea.
Exactly right. Let's say you see a band at a local venue and you like their music. After the gig they set up a table selling some CDs that they've made on sale for $4. They're going to struggle because they're competing with professionally produced and marketed material for free.
I bet the major labels would have gone out of business by now if it wasn't for downloading. Making all the mainstream stuff free has stopped the independent musicians from going into business for themselves.
This is something I've been wondering about for the last ten years or so, but I've never been able to get much an answer out of people in the know. It does seem naive to suppose that the world is just so big, nothing we do will have an impact.
The closest I've seen to an acknowledgement of these issues was from Arthur C Clarke. He speculated that as the byproduct of energy conversion is heat, these renewable energy sources will be dumping extra heat into the atmosphere.
Slashdot Mirror
Altavista "did an Amiga"* and gave up its leadership position by completely standing still in the face of strong competition. A couple of years after I had moved over to google, I had a look to see what Altavista had done and it seemed that they had copied some of the google front page layout. And nothing else.
I sometimes crave for the old Altavista days when the search engine searched for what you told it to rather than trying to be clever. Google can be nearly unusable when you don't want it search for declinations and synonyms. Helping it along in the beginning, Google enjoyed a short period of having a very tight, accurate database to work with before the spammers got wise. The automatic ad engine was easy to fool too so that you could amuse friends and family with a screenshot proclaiming: "Amazon has lots of books about Bill Gates being cruel to children". However, 95% of the time Google finds what I'm looking for and as a result I'm confident enough to bookmark only the obscure sites and stuff that I use daily. I keep Lycos as my backup.
*Or "an Acorn", or "a 3DFX" etc. /me tries to click on the monkey to win a prize in a fit of nostalgia.
I don't want to be normal. I like being a geek.
Maybe they were typing it on a first gen Pentium?
The high price was also a factor that worked against it.
We were able to contact a representative of the company and he had this to say: "Everyone needs a pickmeup, and if you understood some of the pressures I was under you'd get off my back. It's no different from taking a drink or smoking cigarettes. I suppose it was the FDA who told you about this? It's pretty funny for me that you believe everything that they say about me, but you're loving this aren't you? Finally, you get to call me a fuckup just like you've always wanted to. This is probably the greatest day of your life. I know what I'm doing and what I can handle."
This tech can only lead to one thing: John McCain II for 2032!
Sound advice in terms of ethics and respecting other people, but it's more likely: He'll tire of what ever game he's playing around the time his finals come round. Then he'll go "Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!" and have to do loads of work. He'll have learned a valuable lesson about time management. He'll learn it the best way - the hard way. Like we've all had to from time to time.
COME. OVER. TO. THE. UK. Seriously, you'll love it here. We're turning it into a totalitarian extreme socialist state. I've no doubt it will soon be permissible to use force to stop people from playing a computer game too much, if it's deemed "not good for them".
True. For a while it was a two horse race between that one and the 3dfx.
The first I-War game was designed for software rendering and the 3D was bolted on afterwards. This meant that the ingame rendering on a 3DFX card was noticeably higher quality than the pre-rendered cut scenes.
Speaking of Voodoo memories: "Click!"
And when that condition was met, Slashdot would explode like the computer at the end of Logan's Run.
I once heard about a guy who could do the Kessle run in 12 parsecs.
You're another class of customer that they probably wish that they could get rid of.
They are two classes of user but there are more than two classes. Add into the mix the guy who's machine is downloading all day. There ought to be a limit to how much a person can consume but he's the guy who barely even looks at most of the stuff he collects. A generation earlier, he would have had drawer fulls of never looked at disks for his Amiga.
People who do a substantial amount of media downloading are amongst the least profitable customers for an ISP. An old granny who just checks her email from time to time is an ideal customer for the ISP.
As an aside, More's novel describes a constructed society that had strived for perfection with absurd outcomes. Always makes me smile when people assume Utopia to mean an ideal society. Having said that, perhaps the hubris is typically apt. BTW, nearly 500 years old but still a highly recommended short read.
They should have made Prey into the Duke Nukem Game. They would have taken a small hit to their credibility, but at least they would have had a slightly above average game released a few years ago.
Her boobies looked fake anyway.
Stripping naked people? It would depend how wide the strips were. Oh, I see your reasoning, if the people were torn into 3" strips, perhaps Rockstar games could be persuaded to pick up the development. The problem is that they'd need to find a technology news site that would document every part of the release process in order to generate enough publicit... Oh right... Good idea.
Am I the only one who thought, "I'd RATHER that malware corrupted a Windows installation than it sat there, harvesting data"?
No it doesn't put out as much heat as a Dual Core CPU.
Thanks for clearing that up. Now, Led Zeppelin - is that heavy metal or hard rock?
At least the TV adaptation could be split into "good tape"/"crap tape" on VHS.
Exactly right. Let's say you see a band at a local venue and you like their music. After the gig they set up a table selling some CDs that they've made on sale for $4. They're going to struggle because they're competing with professionally produced and marketed material for free.
I bet the major labels would have gone out of business by now if it wasn't for downloading. Making all the mainstream stuff free has stopped the independent musicians from going into business for themselves.
This is something I've been wondering about for the last ten years or so, but I've never been able to get much an answer out of people in the know. It does seem naive to suppose that the world is just so big, nothing we do will have an impact.
The closest I've seen to an acknowledgement of these issues was from Arthur C Clarke. He speculated that as the byproduct of energy conversion is heat, these renewable energy sources will be dumping extra heat into the atmosphere.