I'm slowly building a new type of universal online community over at http://www.half-empty.org. It's been linked via a K5 article (which was linked on/.) a while back.
The site allows users to post whatever is on their minds or what they want to contribute for discussion, and uses a democratic style rating system to keep out trolls and reward popular posters with more posting ability. So far it seems to be working, and it's an interesting read nontheless.
There are data types (int, float, etc.) which are not objects in Java. There are static methods and variables which do not belong to a particular object, either.
I've never used Smalltalk, but either of these two things (the first more than the second) take away from the "true" OOPness of Java.
Unfortunately, the rating system doesn't work as I intended it unless you have javascript turned on. I'd rather have the message there so lynx people know that there is a text only skin in existence. If you have javascript turned off in a browser that supports it, thems the breaks.
A large part of the "freedom" of the internet, in my opinion, stems from the fact that anyone right now can stake a claim and put up a homepage (on geocities, or whatever) or sit in their room and hack away and make a website (like I did.)
My site is a bit of an exception to the rule, since it actually has money based on donations (and ad banners, which bring back a bit of money.)
The thing is, the money to supply the hardware and bandwidth has to come from SOMEWHERE. Before commercial interest in the net came to be, it was quite a pain in the ass to set up a decent website, and you had to drop money out of your own pocket most of the time. The only exception was acadamia, which was funded by tuition anyway.
I remember having my dinky homepage with 1MB of space that I payed $20 a month for. Now I can put up a larger site for free if I look around, or, if I can get the hits, I can break even on advertising some of the time if I'm using the right amount of bandwidth/ad displays if I wanted to run a more complex, database driven site.
I'm annoyed by banner ads and commercialization just as much as everyone else. There's probably a better model for revenue, but people shouldn't bitch because nobodys thought of one as of yet.
Sure, if all commercial interests in the web vanished tommorow we'd lose priceline.com and nytimes.com, but we'd also probably lose sites like stileproject and x-entertainment, who are run by dudes with nothing better to do, but need ad money to keep them going.
You'll find that the opinion on/. is that micropayments will work better than ads. I'm sure if you think about it for a second, you'll realize that Uncle Bob with his iMac wouldn't know how to fill out the form to even make a micropayment. Advertising for revenue does not require user interaction.. user interaction is something that many people who use the web have not quite mastered yet.
Plus the whole mentality of alot of people is that they shouldn't pay for anything (warez, mp3s, divx's) so I'm highly doubtful you'd find micropayments useful on a site with an audience that for the most part doesn't give a shit about the site administrators. Slashdotters scream micropayments in the same post as boycott the MPAA and RIAA (while downloading MP3s and DivX movies). I'm doubtful that most of these people will pay for anything. Yes yes, there are different ideologies behind the RIAA/MPAA thing and not paying for websites, but I'm betting that most people "boycotting" these entities are doing so because they can just get it for free.
I'm not boycotting the refridgerator industry if I don't buy a fridge and then go jack one from the local Sears after the store closes.
I look through the forum here, and I can see a bunch of people who have obviously never run a professional website.
This thing you call the Internet, while yes, originally came about because of hackers and geeks, thrives today not only because of them, but because of invested capital in companies based upon projected profits from advertising. This is the case with not just e-commerce sites but many sites that you probably use daily and take for granted that they exist.
I'm so tired of people bitching about advertising on the internet. Yes, you can ignore it. You can turn off javascript, and outside banners, or whatever. That's fine and good, but it's also pretty damn inconsiderate when you realize that while it is an annoyance, it is what is driving the people (alot of the time) to keep the site running.
I run a site that has a very promising future. I posted an article on k5 about it, and it was completely bashed because the site has banner ads. I was shocked at how naive everyone was about the magnitute of revenue ads generate and their purpose. Bandwidth isn't free. Hardware isn't free. My ad revenue doesn't even get mailed to me, it gets mailed to my provider since they're DONATING bandwidth since they have so much faith in my site and are LOSING money because of it.
Once again, the geeks come out in droves and show me how spoiled they are. This Internet revolution is possible not only because of the software and design, but because of the money that's been dumped into it as well.
The first method is to generate every possible screen name (x characters) and do those. This is too much and too slow, impossible.
The alternative method is to generate words off a dictionary (pseudo words) using syllables and stuff, since alot of screen names are not real words. This actually worked pretty well in guessing actual names, but again these screen names were usually not active for ages.
Well, not all e-mail addresses (most, I'm betting) are AOL screen names.
Also, the trick is finding "active" screen names. The ones coming in and out of chat rooms are the best cases for that, afaik. Ones that have big buddy lists probably are too.
There'd have to be a way to automate the process of "hacking" an account, getting the buddy list, and then doing the same on all of those, rinse, repeat.
I think you need to use that AOL tool though, so it's probably an impossibility to automate such a process.
A while back I was playing with the idea of getting lists of AIM user screen names to use for sending random stuff to at my will. The only way that I knew of to get screen names of AIM users was to either do a search in the directory or look in chat rooms. I also tried generating them, but that didn't work well.
Of course, the system had to be automated, so I decided to go the route of chat rooms. I wrote a AIM TOC client in Java (and some bot stuff too, but that's another story), hooked it up to some scripts, and before I knew it I had a list of like 500k or so screen names (acquired over a period of like 2 weeks of sitting and harvesting)
It was fully automated, grabbing the latest open chat rooms from the web at AOL's site and parsing them out via perl script. It was pretty scary, actually. Once or twice I IM'ed a few random ones just to see if I really was getting screen names of real people, and sure enough they were always like "Who the hell is this?".. it was freaky:)
I did some more research and realized that was I was doing was against AOLs terms of use, so before it got out of control, I stopped. The names I had gotten, anyway, were just stupid AOL people who were usually less than 14 years old and probably asked "a/s/l" several times an hour.
This little hole though makes me wonder if there's a way to get a list of ALL the screen names.. the college kids, the working adults, not just the AOL geeks who use the "AIM chat rooms".
You shouldn't do it because of the legal implications, but I'm betting someone would pay a hefty sum for a list of several million active screen names for IMing advertisements to. I had a whole plan of this myself, but of course that's WAY against their terms of use.
I'm pretty sure k5 sets a limit of <100 queries on a page before they start worrying about performance. At least that's what Rusty said if I remember correctly. I'm guessing they probably run about 10-20 queries on most pages, however.
My site runs about 10-20, but thats only after caching lots of data in memory.
This isn't a ban on video games.. oh how the/. authors love to use that word. It's an age restriction. If it were a ban then Indianapolis would be exporting all violent video games out of the city, am I correct? THAT would be ridiculous.. but this is just parents watching out for their kids. If you want your kid to get the latest game out by id, go to the store and buy it for them.
Note that the moderation system (despite this thread) isn't the purpose of the site. It's also a really neat place and you can post content rich stuff with images and files.
This is a common complaint about the system I've set up.
The point of the whole thing is that the points will not BLOCK people from posting. There will not be people dominating the site. If there are, there are variables I can tweak.
The point system is designed for two things
1) Keep out spam
2) Provide quirks for users who post consistent, popular posts.
These quirks include posting in the busiest categories of the day (these change constantly, there are more than 100 categories) and appearing on a top ten list.
It's an experiment. If it turns out to rely too much on moderation and people are dominating the site, well then I will lighten it up a bit.
With such an open site, it becomes necessary to implement a system such that spamming can get destroyed easily without my intervention. To do this I have to find a balance.
Uhm, you seem like more of the moron here. You're drawing conclusions about this guy because he didn't like the movie "Pi" ??
I guess it would've suited you better if he said "I didn't enjoy that movie" instead of that it "sucked ass" ?? Big deal. I'm a big fan of thinking movies, but I also feel that Pi tried too hard and wasn't that good of a movie (and I've seen it several times, I gave it a few extra chances because people continued to tell me I didn't "get it") Whatever.
You've come off pretty childish in your post, moreso than the person who you're bashing.
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I'm slowly building a new type of universal online community over at http://www.half-empty.org. It's been linked via a K5 article (which was linked on /.) a while back.
The site allows users to post whatever is on their minds or what they want to contribute for discussion, and uses a democratic style rating system to keep out trolls and reward popular posters with more posting ability. So far it seems to be working, and it's an interesting read nontheless.
There are data types (int, float, etc.) which are not objects in Java. There are static methods and variables which do not belong to a particular object, either.
I've never used Smalltalk, but either of these two things (the first more than the second) take away from the "true" OOPness of Java.
Unfortunately, the rating system doesn't work as I intended it unless you have javascript turned on. I'd rather have the message there so lynx people know that there is a text only skin in existence. If you have javascript turned off in a browser that supports it, thems the breaks.
A large part of the "freedom" of the internet, in my opinion, stems from the fact that anyone right now can stake a claim and put up a homepage (on geocities, or whatever) or sit in their room and hack away and make a website (like I did.)
My site is a bit of an exception to the rule, since it actually has money based on donations (and ad banners, which bring back a bit of money.)
The thing is, the money to supply the hardware and bandwidth has to come from SOMEWHERE. Before commercial interest in the net came to be, it was quite a pain in the ass to set up a decent website, and you had to drop money out of your own pocket most of the time. The only exception was acadamia, which was funded by tuition anyway.
I remember having my dinky homepage with 1MB of space that I payed $20 a month for. Now I can put up a larger site for free if I look around, or, if I can get the hits, I can break even on advertising some of the time if I'm using the right amount of bandwidth/ad displays if I wanted to run a more complex, database driven site.
I'm annoyed by banner ads and commercialization just as much as everyone else. There's probably a better model for revenue, but people shouldn't bitch because nobodys thought of one as of yet.
Sure, if all commercial interests in the web vanished tommorow we'd lose priceline.com and nytimes.com, but we'd also probably lose sites like stileproject and x-entertainment, who are run by dudes with nothing better to do, but need ad money to keep them going.
You'll find that the opinion on /. is that micropayments will work better than ads. I'm sure if you think about it for a second, you'll realize that Uncle Bob with his iMac wouldn't know how to fill out the form to even make a micropayment. Advertising for revenue does not require user interaction.. user interaction is something that many people who use the web have not quite mastered yet.
Plus the whole mentality of alot of people is that they shouldn't pay for anything (warez, mp3s, divx's) so I'm highly doubtful you'd find micropayments useful on a site with an audience that for the most part doesn't give a shit about the site administrators. Slashdotters scream micropayments in the same post as boycott the MPAA and RIAA (while downloading MP3s and DivX movies). I'm doubtful that most of these people will pay for anything. Yes yes, there are different ideologies behind the RIAA/MPAA thing and not paying for websites, but I'm betting that most people "boycotting" these entities are doing so because they can just get it for free.
I'm not boycotting the refridgerator industry if I don't buy a fridge and then go jack one from the local Sears after the store closes.
If I didn't post already, I'd mod you up :)
:) sick of these spoiled brats on here.
Preach on brutha
I look through the forum here, and I can see a bunch of people who have obviously never run a professional website.
This thing you call the Internet, while yes, originally came about because of hackers and geeks, thrives today not only because of them, but because of invested capital in companies based upon projected profits from advertising. This is the case with not just e-commerce sites but many sites that you probably use daily and take for granted that they exist.
I'm so tired of people bitching about advertising on the internet. Yes, you can ignore it. You can turn off javascript, and outside banners, or whatever. That's fine and good, but it's also pretty damn inconsiderate when you realize that while it is an annoyance, it is what is driving the people (alot of the time) to keep the site running.
I run a site that has a very promising future. I posted an article on k5 about it, and it was completely bashed because the site has banner ads. I was shocked at how naive everyone was about the magnitute of revenue ads generate and their purpose. Bandwidth isn't free. Hardware isn't free. My ad revenue doesn't even get mailed to me, it gets mailed to my provider since they're DONATING bandwidth since they have so much faith in my site and are LOSING money because of it.
Once again, the geeks come out in droves and show me how spoiled they are. This Internet revolution is possible not only because of the software and design, but because of the money that's been dumped into it as well.
..when most of the other houses on the street have their doors open and people walking in and out..
Well, to brute force it would take a lot of work.
The first method is to generate every possible screen name (x characters) and do those. This is too much and too slow, impossible.
The alternative method is to generate words off a dictionary (pseudo words) using syllables and stuff, since alot of screen names are not real words. This actually worked pretty well in guessing actual names, but again these screen names were usually not active for ages.
Well, not all e-mail addresses (most, I'm betting) are AOL screen names.
Also, the trick is finding "active" screen names. The ones coming in and out of chat rooms are the best cases for that, afaik. Ones that have big buddy lists probably are too.
There'd have to be a way to automate the process of "hacking" an account, getting the buddy list, and then doing the same on all of those, rinse, repeat.
I think you need to use that AOL tool though, so it's probably an impossibility to automate such a process.
Both harvesting screen names and sending unsolicited communications is against their terms.
A while back I was playing with the idea of getting lists of AIM user screen names to use for sending random stuff to at my will. The only way that I knew of to get screen names of AIM users was to either do a search in the directory or look in chat rooms. I also tried generating them, but that didn't work well.
.. it was freaky :)
:)
Of course, the system had to be automated, so I decided to go the route of chat rooms. I wrote a AIM TOC client in Java (and some bot stuff too, but that's another story), hooked it up to some scripts, and before I knew it I had a list of like 500k or so screen names (acquired over a period of like 2 weeks of sitting and harvesting)
It was fully automated, grabbing the latest open chat rooms from the web at AOL's site and parsing them out via perl script. It was pretty scary, actually. Once or twice I IM'ed a few random ones just to see if I really was getting screen names of real people, and sure enough they were always like "Who the hell is this?"
I did some more research and realized that was I was doing was against AOLs terms of use, so before it got out of control, I stopped. The names I had gotten, anyway, were just stupid AOL people who were usually less than 14 years old and probably asked "a/s/l" several times an hour.
This little hole though makes me wonder if there's a way to get a list of ALL the screen names.. the college kids, the working adults, not just the AOL geeks who use the "AIM chat rooms".
You shouldn't do it because of the legal implications, but I'm betting someone would pay a hefty sum for a list of several million active screen names for IMing advertisements to. I had a whole plan of this myself, but of course that's WAY against their terms of use.
Or you could just OSS the whole list
I'm pretty sure k5 sets a limit of <100 queries on a page before they start worrying about performance. At least that's what Rusty said if I remember correctly. I'm guessing they probably run about 10-20 queries on most pages, however.
My site runs about 10-20, but thats only after caching lots of data in memory.
Gravity would clean up midair accidents quick!
(Nevermind about the people UNDERNEATH the accident!)
:)
Glasscode does it :)
Connelly is my Math professor for my Linear Algebra class this semester. Pretty cool to see his name pop up on /. :)
This isn't a ban on video games.. oh how the /. authors love to use that word. It's an age restriction. If it were a ban then Indianapolis would be exporting all violent video games out of the city, am I correct? THAT would be ridiculous.. but this is just parents watching out for their kids. If you want your kid to get the latest game out by id, go to the store and buy it for them.
The posts don't get deleted. If you lose posting privileges you can dig yourself out of a hole by doing some moderation.
Note that the moderation system (despite this thread) isn't the purpose of the site. It's also a really neat place and you can post content rich stuff with images and files.
The points don't censor people. They're designed to keep out garbage. Read my other post on the subject.
This is a common complaint about the system I've set up.
:)
The point of the whole thing is that the points will not BLOCK people from posting. There will not be people dominating the site. If there are, there are variables I can tweak.
The point system is designed for two things
1) Keep out spam
2) Provide quirks for users who post consistent, popular posts.
These quirks include posting in the busiest categories of the day (these change constantly, there are more than 100 categories) and appearing on a top ten list.
It's an experiment. If it turns out to rely too much on moderation and people are dominating the site, well then I will lighten it up a bit.
With such an open site, it becomes necessary to implement a system such that spamming can get destroyed easily without my intervention. To do this I have to find a balance.
Wish me luck
You are slashdotting my poor linux box! YOU BASTARDS!
I hope I don't lose my cable service!
Dammit! I can't take the slashdot effect!
-The admin of half-empty.org
Everytime I've seen people do it they get really hot and burn up. Weird.
Uhm, you seem like more of the moron here. You're drawing conclusions about this guy because he didn't like the movie "Pi" ??
I guess it would've suited you better if he said "I didn't enjoy that movie" instead of that it "sucked ass" ?? Big deal. I'm a big fan of thinking movies, but I also feel that Pi tried too hard and wasn't that good of a movie (and I've seen it several times, I gave it a few extra chances because people continued to tell me I didn't "get it") Whatever.
You've come off pretty childish in your post, moreso than the person who you're bashing.