If you choose to use it, it's your own problem. If you installed their software package (a custom set of Netscape 4.something) their proxy and annoying homesite are pre-configured. Solution 1 (mine) is to configure (Windows, Linux) myself rather than let their CD within thirty feet of my drive and ignore the dang proxy server entirely -- they don't block port 80 anything, and instead rely on a Social Science number. Solution 2, if you've installed their crap, is to change the proxy settings and the homepage.
Painfully true, although Mr. Cobb, who taught us Pascal last year, actually taught us well enough that the brighter students in the class (myself, a few others) were able to make the langauge dance for us. This year, our teacher is (surprise!) a MATH teacher.
Two things bug me:
1. We're using Borland Turbo {Pascal, C++} for DOS. In the year 2000. And we're not allowed to use telnet to work with gcc on a linux box.
2. I've had to learn to do multiple-source executables on my own.
Take a look at the simple 'internet' presented in Front Mission III (Square, for Playstation). It starts off with a general topic selection, giving you a list of selections mapped on a hex grid. Selecting one drops your point of view down a level and expands a second map off of the first, where there are more specific selections, and so on. You can bookmark a site (nifty feature for a PSX game) to save yourself time digging through the layers, of course.
It's really a complicated 2D interface, but with the ability to open several subtrees at a time it could be very, very cool.
(Although the game one is organized by country, which I think many of us will agree is the Wrong Way to do things.)
Think about it -- Microsoft's Gaming Zone hosts several "premium" subscription-based games, including the reasonably-popular Asheron's Call (check out www.zone.com and read the number of players on Asheron's Call, it's usually around 10,000), proving that (at least for gaming) subscription models work. Add that to Verant's screaming sucess with EverQuest, another subscription-based game with an average user load closer to 50,000, and you start to see the draw of the model.
Has anyone else here read "All Tomorrow's Parties"? (Gibson, and it's a good read if you haven't) I think this "new" economy is about as real as the change in "everything" that Laney predicted -- in that case it was nanotechnology, but instead of "changing everything" it simply disappeared into the fabric of normal life -- NOTHING CHANGED.
I honestly don't see how these are the same at all. Napster, while officially for finding unsigned bands and legal MP3s, has become a haven for the trade of illegal MP3s and the Napster people have done nothing to stop it, making them part of that system. (Disclaimer: I love Napster.)
This technology, and any other new tech, can be abused, certainly, but (despite some of the more paranoid ravings) is equally valuable to those who would use it right.
Don't make unfounded parallels, unless you can prove that they're not unfounded.
While I agree, generally, with your point that we should be protected from inquiry without cause rather than from the specific acts, I can also see advantages to non-invasive monitoring, so long as it is only used to enforce just laws. If I knew that the police could 'scan' me for drugs, explosives, etc. without interfering in my life or being obvious about it, I likely wouldn't complain. If they picked something up off me, I would expect them to be courteous as long as I didn't make things difficult for them.
I'm a great believer in cooperation, and so long as authorities could co-operate with the rest of the world, I see no problem with the authorities monitoring the rest of the world.
The problem lies in most suppliers either being unwilling to sell a Windows-free computer or charging more to do so (just as with all other non-standard images).
Look somewhere up this thread for the rest of the idea.
Kuro5hin was a Slash-based (Slash is the code that runs Slashdot) news server with a smaller userbase and wider topic base than Slashdot, as well as a moderated submission queue, of sorts.
So they should apply for a domain in each country that they operate in. Only truly, provably global companies should be able to apply for straight.com domains -- I won't say what should qualify these compaines, tho.
The courts should not be involved in domain name disputes between two equally-valid uses of the domain. While the site displaying verses of the bible doesn't/really/ belong in.com space, neither does a soccer team, and no-one really cares that.com is commercial anymore. The two parties should have settled either with each other, or with a mutually-appointed mediator.
And to those of you who recall that domain names in fact name a machine, not a product or a company, you're absolutely right. But that distinction is lost on non-technical people, and seeing as the internet is now a truly public domain, is useless anyways.
While you're absolutely right, there is no such thing as 'potential sales', the original poster's point is still valid. The man was driven out of business because the media he relied upon was supplanted by a free, questionably-legal alternative. (No, porn's not illegal, but distributing captures of a pornographic movie is.)
I enjoy free stuff as much as the next guy, but your point is a little... misguided, perhaps?
First, the standard disclaimer: I live in Canada. There, now that that's out of the way, it seems to me that the United States lawyers are trying really, really hard to turn the internet into a police state, sans police. The companies and organizations that hire the lawyers get so bent on protecting their own interests, paranoid about 'piracy' (a term which has surpassed buzzword status and is now utterly meaningless except as a newspeak-esque blanket accusation) of their 'intellectual property' (likewise) that they are willing to do irrational and potentially self destructive things to protect said IP. And now, with the lawyers firmly involved, a lot of bad laws designed to facilitate corporate control of the internet are being passed -- primarily DMCA and UCITA, at present. And you know what? As far as I can tell, there's sweet fuck all you can do about it. You can't really vote for someone who will make a change because you're voting for a figurehead -- I have yet to see Bill Clinton make one intelligent comment on United States policy that got implemented into law at any time. He seems to just run around waving at foreign diplomats. Canada's better, in my view, but not much. While we don't have corporate control to nearly that extent, our government is so locked in battle with itself that nothing effective gets done. One province (Quebec)'s leaders are convinced that remiving their entire province from Canada is the only way to protect their culture because they're unwilling to change -- but the people in Quebec, when polled in a referendum, can't decide whether to leave or not. (The last referendum turned up 49.1% yes, 50.9% no, and we're all positive that there'll be another one as soon as they can legally hold it.) As a result, the federal government is handing them privledges left and right and paying next to no attention to international affairs or technological advances. The Western world needs a good, swift kick in the government, and people (myself included) are too lazy to do it themselves.
1: Why not revert to the origins of ad banners -- the image is hosted by the advertised site, rather than an ad server, and not rotated? Sure, you can still use an ad agency to get ahold of people who might be interested in your advertising... I don't know, probably too inconvenient.
2: Make it unlawful to attach a tracking system to a person without a warrent or the victim's explicit permission? (Vis, opting out isn't enough, you'd have to opt/in/) This doesn't just cover ads and cookies on the web, this would also forbid someone to put a tracer on your car. What? You say that'd be an invasion of privacy? Well what a f'n surprise...
No, what he's saying is that warranty requirements should be the same for large corporations and for the guy who wrote a hundred-line hack and let it loose under the GPL.
There's a difference between that and saying what you read.
Yes. Frankly, revolutions are never tidy: people end up homeless, broke, dead, or otherwise... inconvenienced.
This is unacceptable. We claim to speak FOR human rights, and yet we encourage revolutions which, while providing those rights in the long term, run a severe risk of trampling those rights in the short term.
Slashdot Mirror
If you choose to use it, it's your own problem. If you installed their software package (a custom set of Netscape 4.something) their proxy and annoying homesite are pre-configured. Solution 1 (mine) is to configure (Windows, Linux) myself rather than let their CD within thirty feet of my drive and ignore the dang proxy server entirely -- they don't block port 80 anything, and instead rely on a Social Science number. Solution 2, if you've installed their crap, is to change the proxy settings and the homepage.
Bad @home, no biscuit.
-Owen
If someone stole my gun and ran someone over with it? What? :)
Have a nice day!
BS
High-school student here.
Painfully true, although Mr. Cobb, who taught us Pascal last year, actually taught us well enough that the brighter students in the class (myself, a few others) were able to make the langauge dance for us. This year, our teacher is (surprise!) a MATH teacher.
Two things bug me:
1. We're using Borland Turbo {Pascal, C++} for DOS. In the year 2000. And we're not allowed to use telnet to work with gcc on a linux box.
2. I've had to learn to do multiple-source executables on my own.
--BS
...thus justifying the MPAA's concerns about DeCSS.
Can we have some foresight in aisle five, please?
--BS
Take a look at the simple 'internet' presented in Front Mission III (Square, for Playstation). It starts off with a general topic selection, giving you a list of selections mapped on a hex grid. Selecting one drops your point of view down a level and expands a second map off of the first, where there are more specific selections, and so on. You can bookmark a site (nifty feature for a PSX game) to save yourself time digging through the layers, of course.
It's really a complicated 2D interface, but with the ability to open several subtrees at a time it could be very, very cool.
(Although the game one is organized by country, which I think many of us will agree is the Wrong Way to do things.)
--BS
And if you buy that pile of fetid donkey scrapings, I have a bridge I want to sell you.
:)
Seriously, though, I'm 17, well-adjusted, very against the death penalty, and even I found that video amusing. Lighten up, not everything is a lesson.
Besides, who'd show their kid that?
The Acrimonous BS.
Actually, it's worse -- the SS thought that GURPS:Cyberpunk (the role-playing supplement in question) WAS a handbook for crackers.
They still haven't got some of the computers back, either.
Oddly enough, as a gamer, I blame games for this.
Think about it -- Microsoft's Gaming Zone hosts several "premium" subscription-based games, including the reasonably-popular Asheron's Call (check out www.zone.com and read the number of players on Asheron's Call, it's usually around 10,000), proving that (at least for gaming) subscription models work. Add that to Verant's screaming sucess with EverQuest, another subscription-based game with an average user load closer to 50,000, and you start to see the draw of the model.
C$0.02,
Owen
Has anyone else here read "All Tomorrow's Parties"? (Gibson, and it's a good read if you haven't) I think this "new" economy is about as real as the change in "everything" that Laney predicted -- in that case it was nanotechnology, but instead of "changing everything" it simply disappeared into the fabric of normal life -- NOTHING CHANGED.
The "New Economy" seems similar...
The really twisted thing is that I, 17-year-old-hormonal male that I am, hate the Tomb Raider franchise with a passion.
It's my GIRLFRIEND who enjoys them.
Gha.
Two words: Valkerie Wilde.
(Kudos to those of you who got that.)
-Owen
This technology, and any other new tech, can be abused, certainly, but (despite some of the more paranoid ravings) is equally valuable to those who would use it right.
Don't make unfounded parallels, unless you can prove that they're not unfounded.
Owen
I'm a great believer in cooperation, and so long as authorities could co-operate with the rest of the world, I see no problem with the authorities monitoring the rest of the world.
Owen
Somewhere around c.
Owen
The problem lies in most suppliers either being unwilling to sell a Windows-free computer or charging more to do so (just as with all other non-standard images).
Look somewhere up this thread for the rest of the idea.
Owen
Kuro5hin was a Slash-based (Slash is the code that runs Slashdot) news server with a smaller userbase and wider topic base than Slashdot, as well as a moderated submission queue, of sorts.
BoneShintai
So they should apply for a domain in each country that they operate in. Only truly, provably global companies should be able to apply for straight .com domains -- I won't say what should qualify these compaines, tho.
BoneShintai
The courts should not be involved in domain name disputes between two equally-valid uses of the domain. While the site displaying verses of the bible doesn't /really/ belong in .com space, neither does a soccer team, and no-one really cares that .com is commercial anymore. The two parties should have settled either with each other, or with a mutually-appointed mediator.
And to those of you who recall that domain names in fact name a machine, not a product or a company, you're absolutely right. But that distinction is lost on non-technical people, and seeing as the internet is now a truly public domain, is useless anyways.
BoneShintai.
While you're absolutely right, there is no such thing as 'potential sales', the original poster's point is still valid. The man was driven out of business because the media he relied upon was supplanted by a free, questionably-legal alternative. (No, porn's not illegal, but distributing captures of a pornographic movie is.)
I enjoy free stuff as much as the next guy, but your point is a little... misguided, perhaps?
BoneShintai
*sigh* My apologies. I meant to hit "Plain old text" and forgot...
:)
It's been a long day.
BoneShintai
First, the standard disclaimer: I live in Canada. There, now that that's out of the way, it seems to me that the United States lawyers are trying really, really hard to turn the internet into a police state, sans police. The companies and organizations that hire the lawyers get so bent on protecting their own interests, paranoid about 'piracy' (a term which has surpassed buzzword status and is now utterly meaningless except as a newspeak-esque blanket accusation) of their 'intellectual property' (likewise) that they are willing to do irrational and potentially self destructive things to protect said IP. And now, with the lawyers firmly involved, a lot of bad laws designed to facilitate corporate control of the internet are being passed -- primarily DMCA and UCITA, at present. And you know what? As far as I can tell, there's sweet fuck all you can do about it. You can't really vote for someone who will make a change because you're voting for a figurehead -- I have yet to see Bill Clinton make one intelligent comment on United States policy that got implemented into law at any time. He seems to just run around waving at foreign diplomats. Canada's better, in my view, but not much. While we don't have corporate control to nearly that extent, our government is so locked in battle with itself that nothing effective gets done. One province (Quebec)'s leaders are convinced that remiving their entire province from Canada is the only way to protect their culture because they're unwilling to change -- but the people in Quebec, when polled in a referendum, can't decide whether to leave or not. (The last referendum turned up 49.1% yes, 50.9% no, and we're all positive that there'll be another one as soon as they can legally hold it.) As a result, the federal government is handing them privledges left and right and paying next to no attention to international affairs or technological advances. The Western world needs a good, swift kick in the government, and people (myself included) are too lazy to do it themselves.
Two thoughts, actually.
/in/) This doesn't just cover ads and cookies on the web, this would also forbid someone to put a tracer on your car. What? You say that'd be an invasion of privacy? Well what a f'n surprise...
1: Why not revert to the origins of ad banners -- the image is hosted by the advertised site, rather than an ad server, and not rotated? Sure, you can still use an ad agency to get ahold of people who might be interested in your advertising... I don't know, probably too inconvenient.
2: Make it unlawful to attach a tracking system to a person without a warrent or the victim's explicit permission? (Vis, opting out isn't enough, you'd have to opt
-Owen
No, what he's saying is that warranty requirements should be the same for large corporations and for the guy who wrote a hundred-line hack and let it loose under the GPL.
There's a difference between that and saying what you read.
-BS
Yes. Frankly, revolutions are never tidy: people end up homeless, broke, dead, or otherwise... inconvenienced.
This is unacceptable. We claim to speak FOR human rights, and yet we encourage revolutions which, while providing those rights in the long term, run a severe risk of trampling those rights in the short term.
-Owen
Well, I searched down a bit and no-one mentionned this, soooo:
-Rurouni Kenshin (DEFINITELY see the OAVs)
-Patlabour 1
Other things that people have mentionned are almost all good IMO. Lain rocked my world, ditto Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Eva.
BoneShintai out.