The difference being that Google actually plays a useful role while gold is really nothing but a shiny bit of metal and pets.com was never going to be huge. While Google still obviously understands the Internet and current trends it's a pretty safe bet. If you start seeing them consistantly following instead of leading then you should sell and not until.
I still think Google hasn't even started to climb yet. With the amount of talent they have and their wise policy of nuturing their talents pet projects they are going to skyrocket as the years go on. The only major mistake I think they're making right now is in putting so much value in a degree while ignoring some of us that don't have PhD's but really understand the Internet thing and have a lot of talent and imagination. That mistake could eventually cost them but it hasn't happened yet and will probably not kill Google but only steal their thunder.
I was quite a bit annoyed when I installed the beta and it didn't warn me that it would remove the older version of IE. Thanks guys. Why the hell can't we have both without jumping through hoops? Web developers need the ability to have multiple versions of browsers on their computer. I know it's possible because I've done it but Microsoft makes it a real pain in the ass.
It does look like they've made some effort on their CSS support but it's still far from perfect. IE7 doesn't render my standard stylesheets correctly and it doesn't render my IE6 stylesheet correctly either. I guess I'll be needing to make a specialized IE7 stylesheet too. That wouldn't be so bad if they'd actually set a decent standard for declaring what browser stylesheets are for. I suggest adding a browser attribute to the link tag as is used with stylesheets. browser="Internet Explorer[=6],CSS[1]" sort of thing where the browser would choose the stylesheet that most closely matches itself.
Compared to those my last complaint seems like nothing but have you seen the UI? It's hideous. I hope they are going to make it look nicer and be more usable before releasing it.
Words don't hurt you and neither do video games. I'm a mix of white and native American and I have no problem whatsoever with games, movies, books, etc of this nature. It's fiction. It's fine if some people don't want to buy the game because of it's content but trying to get the company to change the game IS censorship. They are in effect trying to tell me that I can't buy this game if I want to do so because they are trying to force the game to be changed and games with similar content not to be made. To me, that is much more scary and is what really angers me.
I should have the right to say whatever i want and I should have the right to buy products that say what I want.
So.. do you have any idea who at Sprint I'd complain to about how shitty the Nextel mobile locator website is? Who would I have to talk to to get it fixed so that it is actually useful? Working with non-IE browsers would be a start. Allowing polling through a stable API would be even better. At least it should have is a plain-text mode not requiring Javascript, a crazy system of redirects, etc so that I could use the damn site through a text-based browser. I hate to think what a blind user would experience at the Sprint/Nextel websites.
If Sprint can't do a decent website how could I expect them to make a decent mobile site?
I'm a Square fan and the only PS2 game of theirs I've bothered buying is Final Fantasy Online which I stopped playing after a few months because it simply wasn't fun. Part of it is my limited time these days but I think another part is that their PS2 games just haven't seemed as appealing as their older games. To much emphasis on graphics and not enough on story, characters, and gameplay.
I hope for the PS3 they do something really fantastic. They should be able to create a huge and exciting world with that hardware. If they can put a FF8 or even FF9 quality story in I'll buy. The last game of that type that I really enjoyed wasn't even by them - Skies of Arcadia. I'd like to see something engaging like SoA.
I still see a Google Computer in the future too. They need an OS for it and Linux needs a major push to put it in every home. Google could do for Linux what Apple hardware does for Mac OS. Hardware support and branding.
For the majority of use the speed of even slow drives is plenty fast. The main problem is that most computers have way to little RAM which means the system has to swap which slows the system in general and slows the drive access a lot (and wears the drive out). If you have enough RAM then for almost every use even a low RPM drive will do.
If you have at least basic admin skills then it's only about $50 a month to host a dedicated Linux box. Not to hard for most people to afford. Or about $5 a month if you just want a dedicated account on someone elses machine.
The biggest problems are that A) websites don't have the proper design and styles for handhelds and B) that mobile devices don't properly support handheld styles. It's difficult to make a decent mobile website because phones and PDAs just don't have decent browsers that actually obey the rules. A major pain in the ass.
I do think at least a basic mobile site is important though. Basic information such as contact info, hours, product descriptions, etc should be available for mobiles.
I have a handicapped sister so development of games and software useful for people with very limited mobility is interesting to me. I made her a cd/dvd playing program that can be controlled entirely with two buttons and by default the two buttons are mouse buttons which are easily controlled by plugging things like sip & puff switches or jelly buttons into an adapter that lets them act like a mouse button. For those with a bit more mobility it isn't hard to adapt other switches to take on a mouse's ball control. A very good place for opensource and open hardware fans to work.
There are different methods required for a young project versus a mature project. When a project starts it is a benefit to have as low an overhead to contributing as possible. What a project matures it is more beneficial to have a set order to things. Doing the wrong thing at the wrong time can slow or kill a project.
I don't think that accepting input only from certified experts is the way to go or that moderating every single word is the way to go but moderating edits in general is a good idea. All you need to do is glance at the changes, if they seem suspiciously biased or spammy then ask the author to make changes and resubmit and otherwise pass them up the chain of command. Usually higher-ups just take the word of the first line of moderation so they just have to re-approve the changes. Not a big deal. The pending or even denied changes could still be viewable - just they wouldn't go in the primary copy of the article. Things that were questionable where the moderator wasn't sure if they were good or bad could be marked for peer review and the moderator could then make their decision from that peer review. You want to keep things fluid and make people feel like their contributions are going to be used but you don't want to let the few shitheads out there ruin the experience for everyone either.
If only it worked that way. Sadly they probably have well off parents and will avoid ever doing any hard work or cleaning up after brats like them. I guess I must live in the burbs now as there are lots of these punks running around causing havoc. A couple weeks ago I was at a Burger King and these boys ran in and started having a silly string fight. They got that crap all around and on people and then ran out again without so much as ordering anything. Sort of amussing to me is that the skater and surfer kids you associate with being trouble seem better behaved most of the time than the other kids I see around.
Of course cinema isn't the only influence but it does play a strong role especially for children that don't have any other strong role models. Not everyone is heavily influenced by media but a lot of us are.
I agree that it's okay to have some stuff of medium quality but IMO a lot of Disney's stuff in the past few years hasn't even been in that acceptable range. The artwork quality may have fallen within that range but not the stories. A lot of the stories are really bad quality. Sure He-Man was no high mark but it did tend to have a heroic story line about fighting evil and defending others from evil. Not much depth but at least a little surface moral to the story.
Also I think it's not a good idea to water down peoples expectations of your quality if you're a name like Disney. Better to create a second brand to produce stuff of that quality. A lot of Disney's stuff feels like it's like the cheesy Disney knockoff toys you can buy in places like Tijuana.
Unfortunately, by the amount of Dora toys I see floating around, I don't think every parent and child are as intelligent as you and yours. That may give your kid a slight edge which is good but it means she'll have to put up with being surrounded by idiots which is at best frustrating (especially when you work for them). Better to try to make all the kids smarter I think - better to be average in a world of brains than to be a star in a world of idiots.
Reputation plays a strong role in both wiki and Slashdot though. People with strong reputations (positive or negative) are likely to be known and be modded up or down (respectively) than someone that isn't known. I do think it'd be a good idea to make it optional to file some proof of identity that'd give your online persona a special mark, mod point, or some such thing that lets people know that someone has taken responsibility for this online identity but that would just strengthen the existing system and not replace it.
The interesting thing about a wiki is that while it can be changed it keeps a history so that you can see what was changed. That means you are free to recover what was removed and can actually back up your paranoid theories that someone is trying to bend the truth to the way they want it to be.
What wiki really needs is a control structure like big open source projects have. All sections owned by somebody that has to verify edits and pass them up the chain to owners of bigger sections, etc until you reach the top and the project maintainer stamps the edit as okay. Anyone in charge along the way should be able to revert the changes but not get rid of the record of the changes they turned down. Also it'd be cool if alternate reversions could be viewed alongside each other and modded up and down by the community. Karma like Slashdot has would be good too so anonymous and new user's changes are automatically trusted less than experienced users. On Slashdot I have high karma so my posts start off at a higher level than someone logged into a dummy account and overall that seems to be a good system for weeding out a lot of the garbage. Maybe even do a sort of eBay thing where people that have filed an offical id with their account get an extra mod point too by default since you can easily track who is making what changes and ban them if they are abussive.
They've been working on some of this stuff but it seems it has a ways to go before it works as well as the Linux kernel project or something like that. In general their code that wiki is based on could use some improvement with more flexibility added.
Why should kids watch crap anymore than adults? Letting kids watch crap is how we end up with stupid kids. If a movie has depth and meaning then it will help to shape the audience and kids are especially open to this shaping. If not then it will either have no effect or a negative effect. Movies like Robin Hood and the Sword and the Rose combined with my collection of fantasy and sci fi adventure books certainly helped shape my mindset and morals. I don't want children that have been shaped for nothing other than to be a good consumer and a pacifist.
Okay I have a grudge this week. The other day I was at McDonalds and a bunch (maybe two dozen) of junior high kids came in and literally were having a massive food fight and left without even dumping their trays in the trash. Obviously all brats that have been taught no values or respect for other people at all. Worse, some of their parents were there and let them do it.
Only make a third if it has the same quality.
on
Toy Story 3 Scrapped
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Toy Story 2 surprisingly managed to be even better than Toy Story 1. If they could make a third movie that was again even better then I say go for it. The reason Toy Story is so good isn't because of it's plot or how it's rendered - it's the personalities and relationships of the characters. The movies have a plot simple enough for children to follow but a depth that will keep adults interested. It's just good movie making. We really learned to care about the characters. That is really the important part about any movie.
I for one will not use Vista. It's time to just put my foot down and stop the madness. I'm no longer going to let Microsoft control me, make me suffer, make me waste my time. Taking control of my computer and letting someone else control my computer is just going to far. I'll keep XP for testing in IE for a while - otherwise it's Linux and OS X for my future.
Yeah, when I was 17 I'd go a week at a time without sleep. Ten years later I'm lucky to go two or three days straight without sleep. Sunday is usually my day of the week to recover. Don't sleep more than a couple hours a night during the week and then sleep all day Sunday.
True. A lot of college kids have already been an admin for a few years though and do have quite a bit of experience. Look for someone that's done it at home and maybe for a church group or community group or some such thing. It's really pretty common. A lot of young geeks donate their time to get extra experience so they are great finds if you can find them.
Really not to hard. A lot of the time you can break any logic of game objects down to run in their own threads so it shouldn't be to hard to schedule the engine to run as many game objects as you can while still processing physics and and graphics and such. Not as easy as a linear program but not so hard either and it allows you to get more done in a given slice of time.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference being that Google actually plays a useful role while gold is really nothing but a shiny bit of metal and pets.com was never going to be huge. While Google still obviously understands the Internet and current trends it's a pretty safe bet. If you start seeing them consistantly following instead of leading then you should sell and not until.
I still think Google hasn't even started to climb yet. With the amount of talent they have and their wise policy of nuturing their talents pet projects they are going to skyrocket as the years go on. The only major mistake I think they're making right now is in putting so much value in a degree while ignoring some of us that don't have PhD's but really understand the Internet thing and have a lot of talent and imagination. That mistake could eventually cost them but it hasn't happened yet and will probably not kill Google but only steal their thunder.
I was quite a bit annoyed when I installed the beta and it didn't warn me that it would remove the older version of IE. Thanks guys. Why the hell can't we have both without jumping through hoops? Web developers need the ability to have multiple versions of browsers on their computer. I know it's possible because I've done it but Microsoft makes it a real pain in the ass.
It does look like they've made some effort on their CSS support but it's still far from perfect. IE7 doesn't render my standard stylesheets correctly and it doesn't render my IE6 stylesheet correctly either. I guess I'll be needing to make a specialized IE7 stylesheet too. That wouldn't be so bad if they'd actually set a decent standard for declaring what browser stylesheets are for. I suggest adding a browser attribute to the link tag as is used with stylesheets. browser="Internet Explorer[=6],CSS[1]" sort of thing where the browser would choose the stylesheet that most closely matches itself.
Compared to those my last complaint seems like nothing but have you seen the UI? It's hideous. I hope they are going to make it look nicer and be more usable before releasing it.
Words don't hurt you and neither do video games. I'm a mix of white and native American and I have no problem whatsoever with games, movies, books, etc of this nature. It's fiction. It's fine if some people don't want to buy the game because of it's content but trying to get the company to change the game IS censorship. They are in effect trying to tell me that I can't buy this game if I want to do so because they are trying to force the game to be changed and games with similar content not to be made. To me, that is much more scary and is what really angers me.
I should have the right to say whatever i want and I should have the right to buy products that say what I want.
So.. do you have any idea who at Sprint I'd complain to about how shitty the Nextel mobile locator website is? Who would I have to talk to to get it fixed so that it is actually useful? Working with non-IE browsers would be a start. Allowing polling through a stable API would be even better. At least it should have is a plain-text mode not requiring Javascript, a crazy system of redirects, etc so that I could use the damn site through a text-based browser. I hate to think what a blind user would experience at the Sprint/Nextel websites.
If Sprint can't do a decent website how could I expect them to make a decent mobile site?
I'm a Square fan and the only PS2 game of theirs I've bothered buying is Final Fantasy Online which I stopped playing after a few months because it simply wasn't fun. Part of it is my limited time these days but I think another part is that their PS2 games just haven't seemed as appealing as their older games. To much emphasis on graphics and not enough on story, characters, and gameplay.
I hope for the PS3 they do something really fantastic. They should be able to create a huge and exciting world with that hardware. If they can put a FF8 or even FF9 quality story in I'll buy. The last game of that type that I really enjoyed wasn't even by them - Skies of Arcadia. I'd like to see something engaging like SoA.
I still see a Google Computer in the future too. They need an OS for it and Linux needs a major push to put it in every home. Google could do for Linux what Apple hardware does for Mac OS. Hardware support and branding.
For the majority of use the speed of even slow drives is plenty fast. The main problem is that most computers have way to little RAM which means the system has to swap which slows the system in general and slows the drive access a lot (and wears the drive out). If you have enough RAM then for almost every use even a low RPM drive will do.
It'd be awesome if a major hosting provider bought some of these and let you buy space in whatever size chunks you needed.
If you have at least basic admin skills then it's only about $50 a month to host a dedicated Linux box. Not to hard for most people to afford. Or about $5 a month if you just want a dedicated account on someone elses machine.
The biggest problems are that A) websites don't have the proper design and styles for handhelds and B) that mobile devices don't properly support handheld styles. It's difficult to make a decent mobile website because phones and PDAs just don't have decent browsers that actually obey the rules. A major pain in the ass.
I do think at least a basic mobile site is important though. Basic information such as contact info, hours, product descriptions, etc should be available for mobiles.
I have a handicapped sister so development of games and software useful for people with very limited mobility is interesting to me. I made her a cd/dvd playing program that can be controlled entirely with two buttons and by default the two buttons are mouse buttons which are easily controlled by plugging things like sip & puff switches or jelly buttons into an adapter that lets them act like a mouse button. For those with a bit more mobility it isn't hard to adapt other switches to take on a mouse's ball control. A very good place for opensource and open hardware fans to work.
There are different methods required for a young project versus a mature project. When a project starts it is a benefit to have as low an overhead to contributing as possible. What a project matures it is more beneficial to have a set order to things. Doing the wrong thing at the wrong time can slow or kill a project.
I don't think that accepting input only from certified experts is the way to go or that moderating every single word is the way to go but moderating edits in general is a good idea. All you need to do is glance at the changes, if they seem suspiciously biased or spammy then ask the author to make changes and resubmit and otherwise pass them up the chain of command. Usually higher-ups just take the word of the first line of moderation so they just have to re-approve the changes. Not a big deal. The pending or even denied changes could still be viewable - just they wouldn't go in the primary copy of the article. Things that were questionable where the moderator wasn't sure if they were good or bad could be marked for peer review and the moderator could then make their decision from that peer review. You want to keep things fluid and make people feel like their contributions are going to be used but you don't want to let the few shitheads out there ruin the experience for everyone either.
If only it worked that way. Sadly they probably have well off parents and will avoid ever doing any hard work or cleaning up after brats like them. I guess I must live in the burbs now as there are lots of these punks running around causing havoc. A couple weeks ago I was at a Burger King and these boys ran in and started having a silly string fight. They got that crap all around and on people and then ran out again without so much as ordering anything. Sort of amussing to me is that the skater and surfer kids you associate with being trouble seem better behaved most of the time than the other kids I see around.
Of course cinema isn't the only influence but it does play a strong role especially for children that don't have any other strong role models. Not everyone is heavily influenced by media but a lot of us are.
I agree that it's okay to have some stuff of medium quality but IMO a lot of Disney's stuff in the past few years hasn't even been in that acceptable range. The artwork quality may have fallen within that range but not the stories. A lot of the stories are really bad quality. Sure He-Man was no high mark but it did tend to have a heroic story line about fighting evil and defending others from evil. Not much depth but at least a little surface moral to the story.
Also I think it's not a good idea to water down peoples expectations of your quality if you're a name like Disney. Better to create a second brand to produce stuff of that quality. A lot of Disney's stuff feels like it's like the cheesy Disney knockoff toys you can buy in places like Tijuana.
Unfortunately, by the amount of Dora toys I see floating around, I don't think every parent and child are as intelligent as you and yours. That may give your kid a slight edge which is good but it means she'll have to put up with being surrounded by idiots which is at best frustrating (especially when you work for them). Better to try to make all the kids smarter I think - better to be average in a world of brains than to be a star in a world of idiots.
Reputation plays a strong role in both wiki and Slashdot though. People with strong reputations (positive or negative) are likely to be known and be modded up or down (respectively) than someone that isn't known. I do think it'd be a good idea to make it optional to file some proof of identity that'd give your online persona a special mark, mod point, or some such thing that lets people know that someone has taken responsibility for this online identity but that would just strengthen the existing system and not replace it.
The interesting thing about a wiki is that while it can be changed it keeps a history so that you can see what was changed. That means you are free to recover what was removed and can actually back up your paranoid theories that someone is trying to bend the truth to the way they want it to be.
What wiki really needs is a control structure like big open source projects have. All sections owned by somebody that has to verify edits and pass them up the chain to owners of bigger sections, etc until you reach the top and the project maintainer stamps the edit as okay. Anyone in charge along the way should be able to revert the changes but not get rid of the record of the changes they turned down. Also it'd be cool if alternate reversions could be viewed alongside each other and modded up and down by the community. Karma like Slashdot has would be good too so anonymous and new user's changes are automatically trusted less than experienced users. On Slashdot I have high karma so my posts start off at a higher level than someone logged into a dummy account and overall that seems to be a good system for weeding out a lot of the garbage. Maybe even do a sort of eBay thing where people that have filed an offical id with their account get an extra mod point too by default since you can easily track who is making what changes and ban them if they are abussive.
They've been working on some of this stuff but it seems it has a ways to go before it works as well as the Linux kernel project or something like that. In general their code that wiki is based on could use some improvement with more flexibility added.
Why should kids watch crap anymore than adults? Letting kids watch crap is how we end up with stupid kids. If a movie has depth and meaning then it will help to shape the audience and kids are especially open to this shaping. If not then it will either have no effect or a negative effect. Movies like Robin Hood and the Sword and the Rose combined with my collection of fantasy and sci fi adventure books certainly helped shape my mindset and morals. I don't want children that have been shaped for nothing other than to be a good consumer and a pacifist.
Okay I have a grudge this week. The other day I was at McDonalds and a bunch (maybe two dozen) of junior high kids came in and literally were having a massive food fight and left without even dumping their trays in the trash. Obviously all brats that have been taught no values or respect for other people at all. Worse, some of their parents were there and let them do it.
Toy Story 2 surprisingly managed to be even better than Toy Story 1. If they could make a third movie that was again even better then I say go for it. The reason Toy Story is so good isn't because of it's plot or how it's rendered - it's the personalities and relationships of the characters. The movies have a plot simple enough for children to follow but a depth that will keep adults interested. It's just good movie making. We really learned to care about the characters. That is really the important part about any movie.
I burn a lot of downloads from the net before I even look at them. So what am I?
I for one will not use Vista. It's time to just put my foot down and stop the madness. I'm no longer going to let Microsoft control me, make me suffer, make me waste my time. Taking control of my computer and letting someone else control my computer is just going to far. I'll keep XP for testing in IE for a while - otherwise it's Linux and OS X for my future.
Yeah, when I was 17 I'd go a week at a time without sleep. Ten years later I'm lucky to go two or three days straight without sleep. Sunday is usually my day of the week to recover. Don't sleep more than a couple hours a night during the week and then sleep all day Sunday.
True. A lot of college kids have already been an admin for a few years though and do have quite a bit of experience. Look for someone that's done it at home and maybe for a church group or community group or some such thing. It's really pretty common. A lot of young geeks donate their time to get extra experience so they are great finds if you can find them.
I don't sleep, or barely sleep, and it works fine for me. ;)
Really not to hard. A lot of the time you can break any logic of game objects down to run in their own threads so it shouldn't be to hard to schedule the engine to run as many game objects as you can while still processing physics and and graphics and such. Not as easy as a linear program but not so hard either and it allows you to get more done in a given slice of time.