Re:SF2 in EGM and a Bit of SF2 History
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Bang The Machine
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· Score: 1
Those bugs were patched in the Champion Edition and above, and they were not present in the Super NES version of the original SF2. They were also patched in later revisions of the arcade version of the original SF2. These bugs were just that -- bugs -- and were never considered an "official" part of the game.
Perhaps it was because they didn't want to spoil the fun or for some other nonsensical reason, but EGM refused to publish any information on the bugs. Here, let me dig up one of my old EGMs from 1992...
Ah! Here were are! Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) number 33, April 1992. Here is an excerpt from the reader letters published in that issue with the editors' response:
(Readers' letters:)
STREET FIGHTER 2 GLITCHES
Hats off to the first magazine who knows what a good arcade game is. Your Street Fighter 2 coverage was right on the money... One thing you didn't do though, is cover the 'freezes'.
Rob Shields
Eugene, OR
I just read your February magazine and it is awesome. In the
SF2 part, it said to write a letter if I find any secrets. There are some which you haven't talked about. While using Guile, I found a way to freeze and handcuff your opponent.
Brian Gray
Santa Ana, CA
(Editors' response:)
(Ed. Since we published our request for new SF2 moves and tricks, we
have received over 500 letters talking about everything from program glitches, like the freezes, to Guile's gun hiding in his boot! Most were just rumours, but the freezes are very real. We knew about them when we began the article, but have refrained from publishing how to do them as they can actually be harmful to the machine. These bugs have been removed from all new versions of Street Fighter II beginning with the Version 4.0 motherboard. Another famous Guile glitch is the Guile Blackout which actually resets the game (and causes you and your opponent to lose your credits). This has also been eradicated. It was also possible to reset the game with Dhalsim. Dhalsim could also turn invisible, Ken and Ryu have an endless hurricane kick where they continually spin across the screen until they get stuck in the corner. Another brilliant Guile handcuff glitch is playfully termed the Magic Throw in some circles. This is just one method to escape the Guile Handcuff. The frozen character can also initiate his/her own escape without being thrown. [...] Believe us when we say we have found everything there is to find in this truly incredible game. [...]
Well, if you really want to know more about these bugs, go to gamefaqs.com or some other knowledge base of videogame information, and you'll probably find the information there.
One thing that really galls me is the line, "they can actually be harmful to the machine." Did the EGM editors ever take computer science? Sure, the bugs will usually crash/hang the game (requiring the arcade owner to reset the machine and yell at you), but they are not "harmful" to the machine!! Oh well... I suppose there was not much point in publishing them, anyway, because they would not be guaranteed to be present in all versions or ports.
Re:SF2 in EGM and a Bit of SF2 History
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Bang The Machine
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· Score: 1
Well, for me, it wasn't exactly "by rote", as there were some distinct patterns to the joystick movements/button presses. But given how much I loved the game, I really didn't mind at all. For a while, in '92 and '93, I lived and breathed SF2.
SF2 in EGM and a Bit of SF2 History
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Bang The Machine
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· Score: 4, Informative
Does anyone remember all the fuss Electronic Gaming Monthly (or EGM) made over the game? They had nonstop coverage of SF2 in all their issues (and even in their spinoff, EGM^2) from 1992 to 1995!
I've got a box with a whole load of EGMs from that era right beside me now. SF2 was featured prominently in a lot of the issues, and whenever any version of the game was review, it always got high marks (with an exception, below). Granted, it deserved them at first (until it was obvious that Capcom was trying to milk the game too hard).
As a quick sidenote, there were five SF2 games:
the original (subtitled The World Warrior), released in early 1991. Play as one of eight fighters, beat the other seven, then fight the "mysterious Grand Masters", as the manual called them (the boss characters). You could play against another player, but the two of you couldn't pick the same character.
the Champion Edition, an upgrade released in March 1992 which allowed you to play as the four boss ("Grand Master") characters previously reserved only for computer use (Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison), allowed both characters to select the same character, and added various minor tweaks to the characters' abilities
the Turbo Hyper Fighting edition, released in December 1992, which was basically a patch for the Champion Edition which sped up the game by about 20% and attempted to even out the fighters' abilities. This was released partially in response to the number of unauthorized ("pirate") hacks circulating for the Champion Edition which allowed midair fireballs, etc.
Super Street Fighter II, released in September 1993, which featured improved backgrounds, reorchestrated stereophonic music (previous versions were mono), and added four new characters ("the New Challengers"): Fei Long, Cammy, Dee Jay, and Thunder Hawk (T. Hawk). This version was criticized because the faster gameplay from Turbo Hyper Fighting was eliminated (to "allow for more technique"), and there was very little in the new technique added. This also marked the transition for the game from the Capcom's CPS1 arcade system to the newer CPS2 system. Capcom also released some sort of networking kit which allowed an arcade owner to link four of the machines together for eight-player "tournament battles".
Super Street Fighter II Turbo, released in early- to mid-1994, the final upgrade and probably the best. This version introduced vast amounts of new technique and new moves to the game, such as ability to "juggle" your opponent by hitting them multiple times in the air before they fall (like in Mortal Kombat), the ability to "soften" throws, and "Super" moves, which were extremely powerful special attacks which could be executed only after filling one's super power meter (separate from the life meters at the top of the screen). True to its "Turbo" name, this version restored the faster gameplay from Turbo Hyper Fighting, but its most celebrated addition was the addition of a hidden boss character named "Akuma" in the English version, or "Gouki" (pronounced "Goki") in the Japanese version. This character may appear to fight you at the end of the game if you played well enough. The exact method to reach Akuma was never clearly documented and apparently was different between the various home versions (PC, 3DO, etc.).
I guess that wasn't a "quick" sidenote. Anyway, as you can see, except for perhaps the last version, each upgrade was only incremental in nature. This was probably done to keep the game fresh (apparently) and keep in the pages of game magazines and on the minds of game players. Capcom also released home versions of the games for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis (Megadrive in Europe and Japan). They first released a port of the original World Warrior game for the Super Nintendo in July 1992. In September and October 1993, they released a combination Turbo Hyper Fighting/Champion Edition for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. And in July 1994 (I think), they released Super Street Fighter II for both systems.
The first two releases of the game (World Warrior and Turbo) got high marks in all game magazines, but with Super, EGM broke ranks. EGM had been one of the biggest cheerleaders of SF2, as I mentioned above, but by this point, they finally started to see the continuous upgrades for what they were, and gave the home versions of Super marks like 6/10 and 7/10. This greatly upset Capcom, and EGM's editors had some interesting things to say about this, but I don't have time to retype their interesting editorials or drag out my scanner and OCR program.
If you didn't quite understand that, let me clarify here, since it's late at night and I can't be bothered to edit. Capcom released three home versions of the game -- now if you're a kid who got your parents to buy the original, and even the second version, could you get them to buy the third? And why bother, because, when you look at the release dates, the port of Super (the 4th arcade version) was release around the same time as the arcade release of Super Turbo (the 5th arcade version). Furthermore, Super Turbo added loads more technique not present in Super! Anyway, Capcom got into some financial trouble for this and had a lot of unsold Super cartridges for the Super NES and Genesis. Yes, there were home versions of Super Turbo for the PC and 3DO, but not the Super NES and Genesis, and this is where most of the money in home versions of arcade games was at the time.
I thought all the incremental upgrading was silly, myself, but I did plunk quarters into all five versions, and I played all three home console versions (in rental form), so Capcom made money off me with the game in some form. I left the video game scene in 1995, so I missed out on Alpha, Alpha 2, Alpha 2 Gold, Alpha 3, etc. I did recall seeing a Street Fighter 3 machine once, I think around 1997 or 1998. It was just labelled "THREE" which was pretty funny, because once it was clear what Capcom was up to with all the incremental upgrades of SF2, people would make jokes that Capcom couldn't count to three.
Anyway, despite that criticism of it, I still must say that Street Fighter II was truly a landmark game, not only because it was incredibly fun to play, but also because it revived a slumping arcade industry (at the time) and gave game companies everywhere a whole new format to copy! Remember all the SNK Neo-Geo fighting games?
If I ever see a "Top 20 Games of All Time" list with Street Fighter II not in the top five or (gasp!) not listed, in my eyes, the purveyor of said list has instantly lost all credibility!
I'm sorry if all of that was poorly written or didn't make much sense, but I'm tired and want to go to bed now. Thank you for reading.
Oh, and by the way, I never thought much of Chun Li. She never seemed very cute or very strong, and Cammy, the second female character who appeared in Super, was fucking ugly. Blecch.
I always thought "Geeko" was unoriginal and stupid, and I just pronounce SuSE as "sooz". I don't care about those stupid ads that said "It's pronounced soo-zuh" or the fact that SuSE is German. In English, "suse" would be pronounced "sooz" and that's how I'll pronounce it. I went for over a year saying "Line-ux" until the "Linnux" pronunciation was spread everywhere. I caved in because I didn't want to sound like an idiot.
I don't understand why everything in the Unix world has to have such unphonetic pronunciations and why the zealots have to be so particular about the pronunciations. Even CmdrTaco caught hell on Geeks In Space for pronouncing "TeX" as "tex". Apparently, it's supposed to be pronounced "teck". Excuse me?
And I hate that fucking penguin too. It's far too smug-looking.
I noticed that on the Corel Linux boxes, the penguin has an even bigger smile.
There seems to be a really strong Tom Baker emphasis here... (Which I completely agree with!)
But the 1st and 2nd doctor are also good. I don't think many Who fans have really watched the earlier episodes though... It's kinda like 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th are not as good as Tom Baker.. so the 1st and 2nd are probably not as good too..
Which is a shame, since IMHO the 1st and 2nd are quite close to Tom Baker's doctor, and a really good watch too.
It's a shame you posted that as an Anonymous Coward. I hope no one minds, but I quoted all of your comment above. Otherwise it wouldn't get archived. You should really get an account. The ACs have really fallen into disrepute in the last year... Everyone expects ACs to just post crap...
I've been watching Doctor Who on and off since I was a kid. Usually what happens is, I watch and tape it like mad while it's on, before it goes off the air. Which it invariably does, and it's always the same story...ratings...
The First and Second Doctors had some stories that looked really good, but they were lost. A very significant portion of the First Doctor's stories and most of the Second Doctor's stories were thrown in the trash by the BBC because they felt the episodes weren't profitable. After they had their turn on the air in the U.K., the episodes were licensed abroad for broadcast in other countries. The episodes were made in the '60s and were black-and-white, but by the '70s, with the rise of colour TV, the Beeb felt that no one wanted to watch black-and-white stuff anymore. A number of them have been recovered in whole or part, but a lot of good stuff is still missing. I'd really love to see The Daleks' Master Plan, Evil of the Daleks, and the last episode of The Tenth Planet (in which the First Doctor regenerates into the Second). Also, that Katarina girl in The Daleks' Master Plan looks hot...!
Anyway, I like the Third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee. He's a "man of action" who always gets the job done. Apparently, when asked about it, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he liked the Third Doctor. Anyway, it would be wrong to say he's my favourite...I kind of like all the Doctors.
I've noticed that a lot of Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) fans tend to be rather insecure. They take great offence if you diss their Doctor. Further up this discussion, someone called McCoy an "annoying twat" and got summarily slapped down to "0, Troll". If I had moderator points, I'd lift that comment to 1 so it would at least get archived, so the responses to it would make sense...
The Seventh Doctor was OK, I suppose. I think it was really stupid when he looked shocked and said "You killed it," when Ace blew up a Dalek early in Remembrance of the Daleks. Otherwise, he got some really good and sophisticated stories in his last two seasons. He also got some really crappy ones in his first season. It's a shame good stuff from the '60s was trashed but crappy stuff like Delta and the Bannermen is still preserved...!
I thought a lot of the Seventh Doctor's stories weren't filmed well. They were recorded directly onto videotape, giving them a really artifical look, almost like American sitcoms.
Anyway, this Slashdot article is about to drop off the bottom of the front page, which will surely kill off most of the activity here...
About a year ago, there was a Slashdot poll: "Most Powerful Doctor" with the choices "Dr. Evil", "Dr. Dre", "Dr. No", etc., but "Dr. Who" was conspicuously absent, and there were many comments to that effect. So, with this article, I'm glad the good Doctor finally got a mention on this website.
When I was a kid, the whole world was colour but monaural. Then, when I was about 12, I started fooling around with my parents' audio equipment. From then on, I could hear my whole world in glorious stereophonic sound! Man, those mono years sucked by comparison. I took piano lessons when I was a kid. I wonder what they would have sounded like in stereo?
Anyway, I took a class on photography in high school and did a presentation on colour photo printing. During my research, I saw a lot of early attempts at colour photography using black-and-white film. None were as clear as the pictures on that site, tho. Most didn't have the red, green, and blue colour plates quite lined up correctly causing red, green, and blue flaring at the edges of objects.
In fact, on closer inspection, some of Prokudin-Gorskii's pictures look like they were done by snapping three pictures in quick succession with the different filters. Take a look at the water in this one, which was probably not calm at the time. Also, look at the little guy on the far left in this picture. I guess he couldn't sit still!
Still, this photographer was really clever! Now if I can just figure out how to record stereophonic sound on a monaural tape recorder...
There are a few x-ray-like pictures of Antarctica I've seen here and there on the Net which show the position and size of the subglacial lake, including a small movie clip which even shows the lake's depth and dimensions.
The system is in place to promote and maintain intelligent discussion..
And should I consider "good fucking riddance" part of intelligent discussion?
...it's the Internet's best way (thus far) of maintaining a large community.
I'm sure you meant "it's Slashdot's best way...".
Getting modded up and replied to is nice, but the karma thing is NOT a game.
Well, for better or for worse, it has become a game to many Slashdot readers and contributors. I find it contradictory that the Slashdot staff want you to forget about karma but at the same time, they reward you with karma for having stories accepted (which is another game in itself), give you rewards for having high karma (+1 bonus), and penalize you for low karma (posts starting at 0 or -1).
As far as I know, karma is a feature of every Slash-based site. Slashdot probably doesn't want karma to be a game, but you should see what another Slash-based site is doing. I don't agree with you about karma not being a game, but I'm sure you can agree with me that what that site is doing takes it way too far!
I didn't expect any Nobel Prize material from the insights in this interview, but seriously, CowboyNeil dodged the first few questions faster than an MPAA lawyer in an indictment.
Notice how he completely ducked the question on karma. A simple database query would bring back the answer in a flash, but instead he effectively tells us, "You don't need to know." Well, why else would someone ask the question!?
I think CowboyNeal is toeing the Slashdot staff party line in a way here. In an interview on IRC, CmdrTaco was being repeatedly asked to remove the karma cap. He (naturally) declined, saying the usual stuff, "Karma is not a game, it's just a gauge of who would and wouldn't make a good moderator, etc. etc." Basically, they want us all to forget about our karma entirely and stop talking about it.
Perhaps they didn't like they way Signal11 and Enoch Root managed to accumulate so much. I'm not sure why that was a problem.
So, karma is not a game? We shouldn't care about our karma? Well, in that case, I don't really feel like making Insightful, Interesting, Informative, Funny, or Underrated comments on Slashdot anymore. Three points for submitting a story and getting it accepted? Who cares? Those are three karma points! We're not supposed to care about our karma, right? If I didn't know better, I'd just run around making Troll, Redundant, Overrated, Offtopic, or Flamebait posts.
Anyway, feel free to moderate this any way you please. I'm not supposed to care about my karma.
How would they stop you from burning an MP3 onto CD? I assume that these new, protected MP3s can be played in WinAmp, so how would they stop the "disk writer plug-in" that allows you to decompress an MP3 into WAV format and burn that wave file onto a CD in CD format?
WinAmp has a lot of plug-ins that support various formats, but the WinAmp input/output plug-in architecture doesn't seem to be as simple as that.
The copy of WinAmp I have on my PC at work has an ASF/WMA (Windows Media) player plug-in, but the "Disk Writer" output plug-in doesn't work with it. When I select "Disk Writer", and play an ASF file, the audio comes out the speakers and doesn't go onto the disk -- as if the output plug-in were still "Wave Out".
WinAmp is a handy player, but I don't view it as being "free music friendly" anymore. Also installed on my work PC is a plug-in for "Mjuice Secure MP3". I don't think that would work with "Disk Writer", either.
It seems to me that the ASF plug-in (and quite possibly the Mjuice plug-in) send music to the soundcard by themselves, bypassing the WinAmp output plug-in interface entirely. I can remove all the output plug-ins from WinAmp's plug-ins directory, and the ASFs still play. MP3s generate an error: "Can't find output plug-in".
Thankfully my soundcard has the ability to record its own output, as if has its own "internal loopback", so these "secure" formats can't foil me entirely. However, the loopback has some hiss and a very quiet grating sound that is apparent if you turn up the volume, so there is a significant reduction in quality. And you can always connect a tape recorder to the output of any soundcard and get the same result.
Anyway, I think the architects of "Napster 2" realize this, so they'll add some kind of analogue watermarking into the audio (grrr...). Furthermore, since the audio was decoded with your own personal key, the watermarking will contain data to lead the copyright police directly to you.
I remember an interview with Hemos and CmdrTaco where they admitted to messing with someone's karma who was trying to sell their Slashdot account on eBay. Cmdr's opinion was (at the time of the interview that is) that karma doesn't matter, that it's not THAT important.
I remember reading that... I believe it was a log of an IRC chat. Can you post a link to it? I don't remember where it was. I don't think it was an article on Slashdot.
If I remember correctly, the owner of the account "FascDot Killed My Pr" was selling his account on eBay because he didn't want to post on Slashdot anymore, and given the account's high karma (above the karma cap) and low user number, he considered it marketable. He advertised it by continuing to post regularly, but with "Bid on me! (Serious offers only)" as his signature with a link to the auction page on eBay.
Well, CmdrTaco found out, and, right at the exact minute the auction ended (and the winning bidder was chosen), he reset the account's karma to zero. When questioned about it in the IRC chat you mentioned, his justification for his action was, "Virtual property is stupid."
I do remember Taco and co. talking about people trying to sell their EverQuest accounts on eBay last spring on Geeks In Space. I don't remember exactly what they were saying, but I think basically they were making fun of the idea.
Anyway, it's quite clear that for better or for worse, karma has become a sort of pissing game that has affected a lot of people. Heck, I'm kind of annoyed that I only had about +35 karma when the karma cap was put in place. I think it would have been cool to have "excessive karma", even if only for a short time.
I've been a Slashdot reader since early 1999, and I got my account in January 2000. I don't remember too well, but checking the archives suggests that CmdrTaco and co. used to regularly participate in the discussions and post news stories about various changes and amendments to the Slashdot rules. These days, of course, they don't. Today, Taco seems more like an enigmatic figure behind the curtain, secretly manipulating Slashdot (bitchslapping people, instituting karma caps, adding lameness filters, etc.) from behind the scenes. I think if he came out into the open again and had a regular dialogue with the readers, people would understand his actions and be a lot less critical of him. He could do all the things he's doing now, and people would understand. Perhaps Slashdot's huge userbase or Andover.Net's control prevents him from doing so.
That said (just had to get it off my chest), some earlier posts in the discussion pointed out that Sony has a clause in the EverQuest enduser licence that forbids selling characters.
As for more Slashdot accounts going on sale, I believe at least one other account was sold on eBay, but secretly. I'm not too sure about that. I also know Signal11's account was given to a troll to "burn off the karma". Basically, someone was using Signal11's high karma to flame and insult people with the score +1 bonus. It was great fun to read, just because of the extreme rudeness "Signal11" exhibited. Eventually, he trolled one of Michael's (jellicle's) stories and Michael changed the password, effectively banning "Signal11".
Anyway, if Slashdot doesn't explicitly forbid the trade of user accounts, karma and all, they shouldn't object to it when people do it. But, to be safe, if you're going to auction or sell your Slashdot account, don't let Taco and co. know. Advertise it on Kuro5hin, or better yet, WonkoSlice or Plastic.
Thanks for mentioning this. I was hoping someone would.
[The last time I checked] Slashdot was a bunch of Linux hackers in Holland, Michigan, not cnn.com!...It's [CmdrTaco's] website!
He's only a figurehead now. On June 28, 1999, Andover.Net bought Slashdot and all of Malda's "Blockstackers" company for $1.5 million. Malda is now Andover.Net's employee.
Will the new digital radio incorporate any features like copy control (as will be present in HDTV). Perhaps like SCMS (Serial Copy Management System)?
Just to clarify, I was referring to SCMS in whatever digital recording systems we have in the future. It would be easy to capture the analog output of the digital radio and tape it with an analog tape recorder.
Though this does make me wonder about watermarking in the analog audio output...
I hear that the U.S. is going to adopt digital radio using the DAB IBOC (Digital Audio Broadcast, In-Band On-Channel) system. With this system, backward compatibility is maintained for a short time by transmitting the digital information slightly above and below the analog signal in the spectrum. Then, when it is believed there are very few analog receivers left, digital takes over the full frequency and the station goes all-digital. Perhaps I have a few details incorrect... Please correct me if so.
Why do we need digital radio? A high-end analog FM receiver receiving a strong signal provides excellent quality. Sony markets FM receivers boasting up to 76dB of dynamic range when receiving a strong signal. And with AM radio, you could just use AM stereo, which has much better quality than regular AM and maintains perfect backward compatibility with existing AM receivers -- with no transition to incompatibility as with digital.
Will the new digital radio incorporate any features like copy control (as will be present in HDTV). Perhaps like SCMS (Serial Copy Management System)? Will my kids and grandkids still be able to tape their favourite music from the radio?
It seems to me that IBOC, especially on FM in crowded markets, could seriously threaten low-power broadcasting. It also makes it difficult for hobbyists to receive far-away signals that have frequencies close to local stations. The IBOC transmissions sit over a much wider piece of the spectrum, eating more of the dial and requiring greater spacing between stations.
Finally, this is digital radio, so like with DVDs, and the upcoming DVD audio discs, will there be any encryption involved in the signal? Could it be engineered so would electronics manufacturers have to license the decryption algoritm from someone? It would really suck if it weren't possible to build or repair one's own radio. Will it be illegal to reverse-engineer or break the algorithm? Will the digital encoding of the audio, itself, use a proprietary algorithm, or a widely known one like MPEG?
It would also suck if IBOC drove up the price of radios. I've got many perfectly good radios right now and I would hate for them to become useless in 10 to 15years.
Anyway, why do you think so many of us have taken to trolling?
Trolling? Well, if you believe Y2K was fake, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. I just pointed out that article to try to convince you otherwise.
I believe we have another such burst of nonesense scheduled for 2008 and 2014, right?
In 2038, 32-bit time_t variables roll over, but hopefully, everyone have recompiled their code on at least 64-bit platforms. Byte magazine had an article showing other Y2K-like incidents along the way, mostly due to clock rollovers. If I can find it, I'll post some of it...
Anyone who thinks Y2K was fake and we were all tricked should read this article.
It talks about Peter de Jager, the foremost expert on the Y2K problem. In late 1998, after the industry had finally started to move on the problem, Mr. de Jager was convinced that the disaster would be averted. However, the media continued to proclaim doom and gloom, and anti-computer Luddites everywhere continued to stock up on supplies.
When the lights stayed on at the stroke of midnight, Mr. de Jager was suddenly considered a snake-oil seller and even received death-threats.
Y2K was beaten, well before Jan. 1, 2000, but the media had us believing otherwise.
Good point. However, I think a more accurate way of describing the entertainment industry's profiting from the DMCA is by introducing new technologies and devices that make it impossible to exercise one's fair use rights without breaking the law.
Case in point: You're allowed to make personal backup copies of any media you own, so you might want to make a backup copy of a DVD you just bought. Perhaps it's your all-time favourite movie, and you don't want to lose it if your copy gets wrecked. You have a right to back up that DVD to videotape, but the DVD player adds Macrovision (analogue video copy control) to the analogue video signal output from the player. You could buy a device to defeat the Macrovision copy control, but that would require someone else to distribute a "device designed to circumvent the scheme regulating access to a copyrighted work" (more or less the wording in the DMCA). So, it's illegal to acquire a device to exercise your right to make a backup.
Here we have two legal issues conflicting with one another. There's the "liberal" right to make backups, and the "conservative" DMCA which says, "no acquiring devices to defeat control schemes". You can't even create such a device; the DMCA disallows that, too.
So, which is right? Well, in these times, it would appear the "conservative" issue takes precedence. Who cares about you're right to make backups? It's quite sad.
I'm rather pissed that the stories on Slashdot scroll down the front page so quickly, because with this story in the "older stories" sidebar, very few people will read it and your comment.
The public is being sedated. Few people want to stand up for their rights. It's sad when hosts of AM- and shortwave-radio talk shows and readers of websites like this are the only ones who care. The rest of the public has been lulled into a stupor by the entertainment industry whereby we just accept what we're given. I could comment a bit more on the inaction of today's population, but I don't think anyone else will read it.
Anyway, thanks for that post. One's computer has a sanctity almost equivalent to one's home. I don't allow the tendrils of the intellectual property police into my home, and I will not allow them into my computer.
I'm not sure if a move toward XML is necessarily a good thing. I hope I don't sound like a modern Luddite, so please hear me out.
HTML and most browsers allow a large "fudge factor" -- your tag names can be uppercase or lowercase, you can quote your tag clause values if you want or not (like <P ALIGN="RIGHT"> or <P ALIGN=RIGHT>), you can use the header tags (<H1>...<H6>) in any order, etc.
In HTML, you can develop your own coding style.
I prefer uppercase tag names and tag-clause names, quoted tag-clause values for strings, nonquoted tag-clause values for numbers, free arrangement of headers.
Along comes the W3C, the "trusted" authority on browser standards and forces XHTML on us which has incredibly rigid syntax. Now it's all lowercase tags, all quoted tag clause values. We're supposed to adopt the single-tag XML syntax for <BR> and <HR>, etc. (like "<BR/>" and "<HR/>"), but we shouldn't use it for <P> or various other tags which normally had an end tag in HTML because it might screw up some browsers...? Can they even get the XML-ization of HTML right?
There is even an "ISO HTML" standard which demands the header elements always be in "proper" order. I find it's much easier to whip out <H1> or <H2> when I need big text than going <FONT SIZE=+2> or defining a new style sheet class. Besides, the W3C doesn't want me using <FONT>, anyway...
There's an ANSI C standard, but it doesn't dictate that you always use the "one true brace" style, does it? I was taught code differently. But at the same time, I respect those who use the "one true brace" style.
Also, while we're talking about small, less-capable devices like PDAs, etc., how about people with lower bandwidth. I always try to make my HTML as compact as possible within reason. The damn picky Validator told me I had to add a TYPE="text/javascript" clause in my <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2"> tags because the LANGUAGE clause was deprecated. That's stupid. First, due to differences in implementation of JavaScript between the various versions, it's necessary to say LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2" to tell the browser "execute this code using JavaScript 1.2 rules". I don't think there's such a MIME type as "text/javascript1.2" or "text/javascript1.1". Secondly (and this was the point I wanted to make), they're just asking for more bytes to be added to size of the page. I have many <SCRIPT> tags on this one page I'm working on. I want it to load quickly for dial-up users, and I'm supposed to make it larger? The TYPE clause above and separating space is only 23 bytes, but with many tags, that adds up.
Someone else was talking about <B> and <I>, etc. being dropped and being replaced with style sheets. (I haven't read that much of the specification so I don't know for sure.) Apart from the fact that style sheets are harder to learn, this (once again) slows down loading times because of the extra request from the client to fetch the style sheet.
And, with XHTML, every tag clause value needs to be quoted -- even numeric ones? That's unreasonable!
I realize we can't have anarchy and a standard is needed, but I don't think the W3C is totally in touch with what the Web has become and the business around it. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were trying to bring us back to 1993 with all pages being really basic and simple and all <H1> and <H3> elements having <H2> (not <h2>!!) elements between them.
What if a company has a standard coding style of uppercase elements, nonquoted tag-clause values? Are they forced to change?
Sure we use tables, <FONT> tags, and transparent GIF spacers like nuts. I'm sure it upsets Lynx users. But perhaps we're not catering to Lynx users. Most visitors to my pages are using IE 5.5, 5.0, or Netscape 4.51 or higher. Less than 0.1% are using Lynx. In business, you want an attractive page, and if that means making it difficult for one or two people so you can get more business from several thousand, so be it.
My apologies to those who prefer to code with lowercase tags, etc. We're all entitled to our own styles...until we get to XHTML.
A technology that shouldn't have died? AM STEREO!!
I surprised no one has mentioned this yet. I hope I get some responses. (Hey, Taco, how about setting the default view to "newest first"?)
(What follows is a brief synopsis. You can find all sorts of information and everything you ever wanted to know about AM stereo by going here.)
Back in the early '80s, there were a lot of AM music stations. AM radio sounded tinny and mono, while FM was crisp, clear, and stereophonic. There was legislation in many countries requiring FM stations to water down their content to help the AM stations compete, but the AM stations couldn't count on that legislation to be around forever. And with so much music on AM, there was a desire from both listeners and broadcasters to have better sound quality.
In 1982, four competing methods for broadcasting higher-quality stereophonic sound on AM while maintaining backward compatibility with existing AM radios were proposed. But the FCC, instead of quickly deciding on one as the standard, decided to try a "free market" approach. They would allow broadcasters to use which ever stereo-encoding method they wanted, and allow electronics manufacturers to support which every method they wanted. It was felt that after a few years one method would dominate and could be approved as the standard.
However, with no encoding method approved as the official standard, very few AM stereo radios were built. What if a company spent loads of time and money building a radio for one stereo-encoding method, only to have another emerge as the standard?
So, throughout the 1980s and into the '90s, many AM stations pumped out clearer, FM-like sound, but the listeners could only hear the familiar, tinny, monaural squawking they were used to, and probably wondered what the DJs were talking about when they ID'd their station as "The new WQZX, 1530 AM stereo!"
In 1993, the FCC finally approved a standard, but by then it was too late.
I can remember listening, as a kid and a teenager, to my town's top 40 station, which was AM. I always wished I could hear them in stereo. I knew that a handful of car radios supported AM stereo, but I never knew why no home receiver did. Eventually, the FM content restrictions were relaxed, and a top 40 FM station went on the air and quickly replaced my local AM top 40 station as my station of choice.
Eventually, the top 40 AM station switched to an all-sports format, but not before having one last try at keeping their music format: During their last year, they switched to an all dance-music format. They also played a lot of very new music. I always heard the newest stuff first on the AM station. But I always wished they would move to FM so I could hear them in stereo. Why they didn't, I'll probably never know.
Recently, I started working at a radio station, so a lot of my questions about AM stereo, this "phantom technology", were answered. I recently bought an AM stereo radio from eBay. You must realize that AM stereo isn't just tinny, squawking sound in stereo -- normal AM stations have a frequency cutoff at 2.5 kHz. AM stereo stations cut off at 7.5 kHz. It's still not quite as good as FM, but it's a lot better than regular AM. I'm not sure why regular AM radios don't pick up the extended frequency range. Perhaps they filter out anything above 2.5 kHz as if it were noise.
Anyway, there's only four AM stations left in my town, and only one plays music -- oldies. Only one of the four stations (not the oldies one) still transmits in stereo, the others having given up on it due to the lack of support.
The one remaining AM stereo has a news/talk format. It's kind of cool to hear their station IDs in stereo. Every Sunday, though, they send a few DJs to a local record store to play samples of new CDs on the radio for half an hour. This is the one time I ever get to hear AM stereo music, and let me tell you, it's heavenly. If only I had known about all this when I had a top 40 AM station!
It's not quite like listening to a CD, but it's a nice taste of a wonderful technology from the past that just wasn't given a chance...
Now imagine the alternative: Al Gore as president, and Mrs. PMRC herself, Tipper Gore as first lady. Yuck. Just what I need, a new guy in charge of telling me what I want and what's good for me.
Good point. There's also Joe Lieberman. Back in 1993, he started a crusade against violent videogames. He was throwing around absurd charges, like Sega being responsible for the arcade version of Mortal Kombat (it was actually Midway). I don't want a politician to tell me what I can and can't play, either.
The electoral college is NOT a holdover from colonial days. It was purposely created to KEEP majorities from always winning. If it were not for the electoral college, the more highly populated urban areas would always win by the shear weight of their populations.
Why, then, do highly populated states, like California, New York, Texas, and Florida have far more electoral-college votes than less-populated states, like in the midwest?
California has 54 electoral-college votes and Texas has 32, while some midwest and north-west states have as few as 3.
In advance, I would like to sincerely apologize to all citizens of the U.K. You are very nice people; I took a trip to Europe a few years ago and thought the British were the friendliest people in the world.
That said, is it just me, is there a real sense of "copyright snobbishness" among British publications? In an issue of Doctor Who Magazine (another British publication), there was an article about fans getting video cameras, creating make-shift costumes and making their own "episodes" of Doctor Who, a cult sci-fi series in Britain. However, the author of the article and the editor of the magazine refused to disclose any information about the "actors" or even how to contact them because of "copyright concerns" or some crap like that.
Now look at this BBC Online article -- it focuses more on how these emulators are "breaking copyright" and "depriving programmers of revenue" and far less on the nostalgia factor.
What's the deal here? A lot of people think the U.S. is a really copyright snob nation, what with the DMCA and organizations like the RIAA and MPAA. In the U.K., it appears, the "copyright snob" mentality permeates to much lower levels! What's up here?
Reader 11131719 contributed this review... Good lord, they don't even refer to us by name anymore...
I was thinking the same thing. >:^) Everyone's complaining about Slashdot's moderation system, stories getting posted too late, Signal11 leaving (well, maybe not that...:^))... Basically they're tearing Rob Malda to shreds over these issues, but they're ignoring the real reason Slashdot sucks these days-- that "User #xxxxx Info" link.
It used to say just "User Info", but Rob doesn't want to bother remember our names anymore. Now, I'm reader #144525. You're reader #16212. Since our comments and traffic are helping Rob and co. stay rich, we're not people -- we're just numbers. If we were citizens of a country, we'd have UPC-style barcodes and machine-readable numbers tattooed on our foreheads at birth.
You'll never get away with this, Taco! I am a person, not a number!!
I would hope that/. boys coded the whole database so that passwords were one-way encrypted. Then it would be that much of an issue to change your password.
They aren't. If you forget your password, Slashdot will mail it to you (the "mailpasswd" button on/users.pl when you're logged out). Slashdot emails you your password, in clear text. So, even if the passwords are encrypted, they can be decrypted. How else would Slashdot be able to tell you your password?
DavesClassics and PayPal
on
Typosquatting
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· Score: 2
I used to frequently visit an emulation site called Dave's Classics (www.davesclassics.com). I had to be very careful typing in the address because if I typed:
I remembered someone on Slashdot mentioning that PayPal had a problem with a site typosquatting on paypaI.com and grabbing people's credit card numbers. (The lowercase 'l' and uppercase 'I' are almost indistinguishable in some fonts...)
Slashdot Mirror
Those bugs were patched in the Champion Edition and above, and they were not present in the Super NES version of the original SF2. They were also patched in later revisions of the arcade version of the original SF2. These bugs were just that -- bugs -- and were never considered an "official" part of the game.
Perhaps it was because they didn't want to spoil the fun or for some other nonsensical reason, but EGM refused to publish any information on the bugs. Here, let me dig up one of my old EGMs from 1992...
Ah! Here were are! Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) number 33, April 1992. Here is an excerpt from the reader letters published in that issue with the editors' response:
(Readers' letters:)
(Editors' response:)
Well, if you really want to know more about these bugs, go to gamefaqs.com or some other knowledge base of videogame information, and you'll probably find the information there.
One thing that really galls me is the line, "they can actually be harmful to the machine." Did the EGM editors ever take computer science? Sure, the bugs will usually crash/hang the game (requiring the arcade owner to reset the machine and yell at you), but they are not "harmful" to the machine!! Oh well... I suppose there was not much point in publishing them, anyway, because they would not be guaranteed to be present in all versions or ports.
Well, for me, it wasn't exactly "by rote", as there were some distinct patterns to the joystick movements/button presses. But given how much I loved the game, I really didn't mind at all. For a while, in '92 and '93, I lived and breathed SF2.
Does anyone remember all the fuss Electronic Gaming Monthly (or EGM) made over the game? They had nonstop coverage of SF2 in all their issues (and even in their spinoff, EGM^2) from 1992 to 1995!
I've got a box with a whole load of EGMs from that era right beside me now. SF2 was featured prominently in a lot of the issues, and whenever any version of the game was review, it always got high marks (with an exception, below). Granted, it deserved them at first (until it was obvious that Capcom was trying to milk the game too hard).
As a quick sidenote, there were five SF2 games:
I guess that wasn't a "quick" sidenote. Anyway, as you can see, except for perhaps the last version, each upgrade was only incremental in nature. This was probably done to keep the game fresh (apparently) and keep in the pages of game magazines and on the minds of game players. Capcom also released home versions of the games for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis (Megadrive in Europe and Japan). They first released a port of the original World Warrior game for the Super Nintendo in July 1992. In September and October 1993, they released a combination Turbo Hyper Fighting/Champion Edition for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. And in July 1994 (I think), they released Super Street Fighter II for both systems.
The first two releases of the game (World Warrior and Turbo) got high marks in all game magazines, but with Super, EGM broke ranks. EGM had been one of the biggest cheerleaders of SF2, as I mentioned above, but by this point, they finally started to see the continuous upgrades for what they were, and gave the home versions of Super marks like 6/10 and 7/10. This greatly upset Capcom, and EGM's editors had some interesting things to say about this, but I don't have time to retype their interesting editorials or drag out my scanner and OCR program.
If you didn't quite understand that, let me clarify here, since it's late at night and I can't be bothered to edit. Capcom released three home versions of the game -- now if you're a kid who got your parents to buy the original, and even the second version, could you get them to buy the third? And why bother, because, when you look at the release dates, the port of Super (the 4th arcade version) was release around the same time as the arcade release of Super Turbo (the 5th arcade version). Furthermore, Super Turbo added loads more technique not present in Super! Anyway, Capcom got into some financial trouble for this and had a lot of unsold Super cartridges for the Super NES and Genesis. Yes, there were home versions of Super Turbo for the PC and 3DO, but not the Super NES and Genesis, and this is where most of the money in home versions of arcade games was at the time.
I thought all the incremental upgrading was silly, myself, but I did plunk quarters into all five versions, and I played all three home console versions (in rental form), so Capcom made money off me with the game in some form. I left the video game scene in 1995, so I missed out on Alpha, Alpha 2, Alpha 2 Gold, Alpha 3, etc. I did recall seeing a Street Fighter 3 machine once, I think around 1997 or 1998. It was just labelled "THREE" which was pretty funny, because once it was clear what Capcom was up to with all the incremental upgrades of SF2, people would make jokes that Capcom couldn't count to three.
Anyway, despite that criticism of it, I still must say that Street Fighter II was truly a landmark game, not only because it was incredibly fun to play, but also because it revived a slumping arcade industry (at the time) and gave game companies everywhere a whole new format to copy! Remember all the SNK Neo-Geo fighting games?
If I ever see a "Top 20 Games of All Time" list with Street Fighter II not in the top five or (gasp!) not listed, in my eyes, the purveyor of said list has instantly lost all credibility!
I'm sorry if all of that was poorly written or didn't make much sense, but I'm tired and want to go to bed now. Thank you for reading.
Oh, and by the way, I never thought much of Chun Li. She never seemed very cute or very strong, and Cammy, the second female character who appeared in Super, was fucking ugly. Blecch.
Whoever named the SuSE emblem "Geeko"...
There was a contest to name the SuSE chameleon over a year ago. Here's the announcement on Slashdot of the winning submission.
I always thought "Geeko" was unoriginal and stupid, and I just pronounce SuSE as "sooz". I don't care about those stupid ads that said "It's pronounced soo-zuh" or the fact that SuSE is German. In English, "suse" would be pronounced "sooz" and that's how I'll pronounce it. I went for over a year saying "Line-ux" until the "Linnux" pronunciation was spread everywhere. I caved in because I didn't want to sound like an idiot.
I don't understand why everything in the Unix world has to have such unphonetic pronunciations and why the zealots have to be so particular about the pronunciations. Even CmdrTaco caught hell on Geeks In Space for pronouncing "TeX" as "tex". Apparently, it's supposed to be pronounced "teck". Excuse me?
And I hate that fucking penguin too. It's far too smug-looking.
I noticed that on the Corel Linux boxes, the penguin has an even bigger smile.
There seems to be a really strong Tom Baker emphasis here... (Which I completely agree with!)
But the 1st and 2nd doctor are also good. I don't think many Who fans have really watched the earlier episodes though... It's kinda like 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th are not as good as Tom Baker.. so the 1st and 2nd are probably not as good too..
Which is a shame, since IMHO the 1st and 2nd are quite close to Tom Baker's doctor, and a really good watch too.
It's a shame you posted that as an Anonymous Coward. I hope no one minds, but I quoted all of your comment above. Otherwise it wouldn't get archived. You should really get an account. The ACs have really fallen into disrepute in the last year... Everyone expects ACs to just post crap...
I've been watching Doctor Who on and off since I was a kid. Usually what happens is, I watch and tape it like mad while it's on, before it goes off the air. Which it invariably does, and it's always the same story...ratings...
The First and Second Doctors had some stories that looked really good, but they were lost. A very significant portion of the First Doctor's stories and most of the Second Doctor's stories were thrown in the trash by the BBC because they felt the episodes weren't profitable. After they had their turn on the air in the U.K., the episodes were licensed abroad for broadcast in other countries. The episodes were made in the '60s and were black-and-white, but by the '70s, with the rise of colour TV, the Beeb felt that no one wanted to watch black-and-white stuff anymore. A number of them have been recovered in whole or part, but a lot of good stuff is still missing. I'd really love to see The Daleks' Master Plan, Evil of the Daleks, and the last episode of The Tenth Planet (in which the First Doctor regenerates into the Second). Also, that Katarina girl in The Daleks' Master Plan looks hot...!
Anyway, I like the Third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee. He's a "man of action" who always gets the job done. Apparently, when asked about it, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he liked the Third Doctor. Anyway, it would be wrong to say he's my favourite...I kind of like all the Doctors.
I've noticed that a lot of Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) fans tend to be rather insecure. They take great offence if you diss their Doctor. Further up this discussion, someone called McCoy an "annoying twat" and got summarily slapped down to "0, Troll". If I had moderator points, I'd lift that comment to 1 so it would at least get archived, so the responses to it would make sense...
The Seventh Doctor was OK, I suppose. I think it was really stupid when he looked shocked and said "You killed it," when Ace blew up a Dalek early in Remembrance of the Daleks. Otherwise, he got some really good and sophisticated stories in his last two seasons. He also got some really crappy ones in his first season. It's a shame good stuff from the '60s was trashed but crappy stuff like Delta and the Bannermen is still preserved...!
I thought a lot of the Seventh Doctor's stories weren't filmed well. They were recorded directly onto videotape, giving them a really artifical look, almost like American sitcoms.
Anyway, this Slashdot article is about to drop off the bottom of the front page, which will surely kill off most of the activity here...
About a year ago, there was a Slashdot poll: "Most Powerful Doctor" with the choices "Dr. Evil", "Dr. Dre", "Dr. No", etc., but "Dr. Who" was conspicuously absent, and there were many comments to that effect. So, with this article, I'm glad the good Doctor finally got a mention on this website.
When I was a kid, the whole world was colour but monaural. Then, when I was about 12, I started fooling around with my parents' audio equipment. From then on, I could hear my whole world in glorious stereophonic sound! Man, those mono years sucked by comparison. I took piano lessons when I was a kid. I wonder what they would have sounded like in stereo?
Anyway, I took a class on photography in high school and did a presentation on colour photo printing. During my research, I saw a lot of early attempts at colour photography using black-and-white film. None were as clear as the pictures on that site, tho. Most didn't have the red, green, and blue colour plates quite lined up correctly causing red, green, and blue flaring at the edges of objects.
In fact, on closer inspection, some of Prokudin-Gorskii's pictures look like they were done by snapping three pictures in quick succession with the different filters. Take a look at the water in this one, which was probably not calm at the time. Also, look at the little guy on the far left in this picture. I guess he couldn't sit still!
Still, this photographer was really clever! Now if I can just figure out how to record stereophonic sound on a monaural tape recorder...
Here is an article from Wired magazine on Lake Vostok.
There are a few x-ray-like pictures of Antarctica I've seen here and there on the Net which show the position and size of the subglacial lake, including a small movie clip which even shows the lake's depth and dimensions.
...good fucking riddance.
I see why you call yourself "Rudeboy777".
The system is in place to promote and maintain intelligent discussion..
And should I consider "good fucking riddance" part of intelligent discussion?
I'm sure you meant "it's Slashdot's best way...".
Getting modded up and replied to is nice, but the karma thing is NOT a game.
Well, for better or for worse, it has become a game to many Slashdot readers and contributors. I find it contradictory that the Slashdot staff want you to forget about karma but at the same time, they reward you with karma for having stories accepted (which is another game in itself), give you rewards for having high karma (+1 bonus), and penalize you for low karma (posts starting at 0 or -1).
As far as I know, karma is a feature of every Slash-based site. Slashdot probably doesn't want karma to be a game, but you should see what another Slash-based site is doing. I don't agree with you about karma not being a game, but I'm sure you can agree with me that what that site is doing takes it way too far!
I didn't expect any Nobel Prize material from the insights in this interview, but seriously, CowboyNeil dodged the first few questions faster than an MPAA lawyer in an indictment.
Notice how he completely ducked the question on karma. A simple database query would bring back the answer in a flash, but instead he effectively tells us, "You don't need to know." Well, why else would someone ask the question!?
I think CowboyNeal is toeing the Slashdot staff party line in a way here. In an interview on IRC, CmdrTaco was being repeatedly asked to remove the karma cap. He (naturally) declined, saying the usual stuff, "Karma is not a game, it's just a gauge of who would and wouldn't make a good moderator, etc. etc." Basically, they want us all to forget about our karma entirely and stop talking about it.
Perhaps they didn't like they way Signal11 and Enoch Root managed to accumulate so much. I'm not sure why that was a problem.
So, karma is not a game? We shouldn't care about our karma? Well, in that case, I don't really feel like making Insightful, Interesting, Informative, Funny, or Underrated comments on Slashdot anymore. Three points for submitting a story and getting it accepted? Who cares? Those are three karma points! We're not supposed to care about our karma, right? If I didn't know better, I'd just run around making Troll, Redundant, Overrated, Offtopic, or Flamebait posts.
Anyway, feel free to moderate this any way you please. I'm not supposed to care about my karma.
How would they stop you from burning an MP3 onto CD? I assume that these new, protected MP3s can be played in WinAmp, so how would they stop the "disk writer plug-in" that allows you to decompress an MP3 into WAV format and burn that wave file onto a CD in CD format?
WinAmp has a lot of plug-ins that support various formats, but the WinAmp input/output plug-in architecture doesn't seem to be as simple as that.
The copy of WinAmp I have on my PC at work has an ASF/WMA (Windows Media) player plug-in, but the "Disk Writer" output plug-in doesn't work with it. When I select "Disk Writer", and play an ASF file, the audio comes out the speakers and doesn't go onto the disk -- as if the output plug-in were still "Wave Out".
WinAmp is a handy player, but I don't view it as being "free music friendly" anymore. Also installed on my work PC is a plug-in for "Mjuice Secure MP3". I don't think that would work with "Disk Writer", either.
It seems to me that the ASF plug-in (and quite possibly the Mjuice plug-in) send music to the soundcard by themselves, bypassing the WinAmp output plug-in interface entirely. I can remove all the output plug-ins from WinAmp's plug-ins directory, and the ASFs still play. MP3s generate an error: "Can't find output plug-in".
Thankfully my soundcard has the ability to record its own output, as if has its own "internal loopback", so these "secure" formats can't foil me entirely. However, the loopback has some hiss and a very quiet grating sound that is apparent if you turn up the volume, so there is a significant reduction in quality. And you can always connect a tape recorder to the output of any soundcard and get the same result.
Anyway, I think the architects of "Napster 2" realize this, so they'll add some kind of analogue watermarking into the audio (grrr...). Furthermore, since the audio was decoded with your own personal key, the watermarking will contain data to lead the copyright police directly to you.
I remember an interview with Hemos and CmdrTaco where they admitted to messing with someone's karma who was trying to sell their Slashdot account on eBay. Cmdr's opinion was (at the time of the interview that is) that karma doesn't matter, that it's not THAT important.
I remember reading that... I believe it was a log of an IRC chat. Can you post a link to it? I don't remember where it was. I don't think it was an article on Slashdot.
If I remember correctly, the owner of the account "FascDot Killed My Pr" was selling his account on eBay because he didn't want to post on Slashdot anymore, and given the account's high karma (above the karma cap) and low user number, he considered it marketable. He advertised it by continuing to post regularly, but with "Bid on me! (Serious offers only)" as his signature with a link to the auction page on eBay.
Well, CmdrTaco found out, and, right at the exact minute the auction ended (and the winning bidder was chosen), he reset the account's karma to zero. When questioned about it in the IRC chat you mentioned, his justification for his action was, "Virtual property is stupid."
I do remember Taco and co. talking about people trying to sell their EverQuest accounts on eBay last spring on Geeks In Space. I don't remember exactly what they were saying, but I think basically they were making fun of the idea.
Anyway, it's quite clear that for better or for worse, karma has become a sort of pissing game that has affected a lot of people. Heck, I'm kind of annoyed that I only had about +35 karma when the karma cap was put in place. I think it would have been cool to have "excessive karma", even if only for a short time.
I've been a Slashdot reader since early 1999, and I got my account in January 2000. I don't remember too well, but checking the archives suggests that CmdrTaco and co. used to regularly participate in the discussions and post news stories about various changes and amendments to the Slashdot rules. These days, of course, they don't. Today, Taco seems more like an enigmatic figure behind the curtain, secretly manipulating Slashdot (bitchslapping people, instituting karma caps, adding lameness filters, etc.) from behind the scenes. I think if he came out into the open again and had a regular dialogue with the readers, people would understand his actions and be a lot less critical of him. He could do all the things he's doing now, and people would understand. Perhaps Slashdot's huge userbase or Andover.Net's control prevents him from doing so.
That said (just had to get it off my chest), some earlier posts in the discussion pointed out that Sony has a clause in the EverQuest enduser licence that forbids selling characters.
As for more Slashdot accounts going on sale, I believe at least one other account was sold on eBay, but secretly. I'm not too sure about that. I also know Signal11's account was given to a troll to "burn off the karma". Basically, someone was using Signal11's high karma to flame and insult people with the score +1 bonus. It was great fun to read, just because of the extreme rudeness "Signal11" exhibited. Eventually, he trolled one of Michael's (jellicle's) stories and Michael changed the password, effectively banning "Signal11".
Anyway, if Slashdot doesn't explicitly forbid the trade of user accounts, karma and all, they shouldn't object to it when people do it. But, to be safe, if you're going to auction or sell your Slashdot account, don't let Taco and co. know. Advertise it on Kuro5hin, or better yet, WonkoSlice or Plastic.
Thanks for mentioning this. I was hoping someone would.
[The last time I checked] Slashdot was a bunch of Linux hackers in Holland, Michigan, not cnn.com! ...It's [CmdrTaco's] website!
He's only a figurehead now. On June 28, 1999, Andover.Net bought Slashdot and all of Malda's "Blockstackers" company for $1.5 million. Malda is now Andover.Net's employee.
Will the new digital radio incorporate any features like copy control (as will be present in HDTV). Perhaps like SCMS (Serial Copy Management System)?
Just to clarify, I was referring to SCMS in whatever digital recording systems we have in the future. It would be easy to capture the analog output of the digital radio and tape it with an analog tape recorder.
Though this does make me wonder about watermarking in the analog audio output...
Why do we need digital radio?
I hear that the U.S. is going to adopt digital radio using the DAB IBOC (Digital Audio Broadcast, In-Band On-Channel) system. With this system, backward compatibility is maintained for a short time by transmitting the digital information slightly above and below the analog signal in the spectrum. Then, when it is believed there are very few analog receivers left, digital takes over the full frequency and the station goes all-digital. Perhaps I have a few details incorrect... Please correct me if so.
Why do we need digital radio? A high-end analog FM receiver receiving a strong signal provides excellent quality. Sony markets FM receivers boasting up to 76dB of dynamic range when receiving a strong signal. And with AM radio, you could just use AM stereo, which has much better quality than regular AM and maintains perfect backward compatibility with existing AM receivers -- with no transition to incompatibility as with digital.
Will the new digital radio incorporate any features like copy control (as will be present in HDTV). Perhaps like SCMS (Serial Copy Management System)? Will my kids and grandkids still be able to tape their favourite music from the radio?
It seems to me that IBOC, especially on FM in crowded markets, could seriously threaten low-power broadcasting. It also makes it difficult for hobbyists to receive far-away signals that have frequencies close to local stations. The IBOC transmissions sit over a much wider piece of the spectrum, eating more of the dial and requiring greater spacing between stations.
Finally, this is digital radio, so like with DVDs, and the upcoming DVD audio discs, will there be any encryption involved in the signal? Could it be engineered so would electronics manufacturers have to license the decryption algoritm from someone? It would really suck if it weren't possible to build or repair one's own radio. Will it be illegal to reverse-engineer or break the algorithm? Will the digital encoding of the audio, itself, use a proprietary algorithm, or a widely known one like MPEG?
It would also suck if IBOC drove up the price of radios. I've got many perfectly good radios right now and I would hate for them to become useless in 10 to 15years.
Why do we need digital radio?
Anyway, why do you think so many of us have taken to trolling?
Trolling? Well, if you believe Y2K was fake, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. I just pointed out that article to try to convince you otherwise.
I believe we have another such burst of nonesense scheduled for 2008 and 2014, right?
In 2038, 32-bit time_t variables roll over, but hopefully, everyone have recompiled their code on at least 64-bit platforms. Byte magazine had an article showing other Y2K-like incidents along the way, mostly due to clock rollovers. If I can find it, I'll post some of it...
Anyone who thinks Y2K was fake and we were all tricked should read this article.
It talks about Peter de Jager, the foremost expert on the Y2K problem. In late 1998, after the industry had finally started to move on the problem, Mr. de Jager was convinced that the disaster would be averted. However, the media continued to proclaim doom and gloom, and anti-computer Luddites everywhere continued to stock up on supplies.
When the lights stayed on at the stroke of midnight, Mr. de Jager was suddenly considered a snake-oil seller and even received death-threats.
Y2K was beaten, well before Jan. 1, 2000, but the media had us believing otherwise.
Good point. However, I think a more accurate way of describing the entertainment industry's profiting from the DMCA is by introducing new technologies and devices that make it impossible to exercise one's fair use rights without breaking the law.
Case in point: You're allowed to make personal backup copies of any media you own, so you might want to make a backup copy of a DVD you just bought. Perhaps it's your all-time favourite movie, and you don't want to lose it if your copy gets wrecked. You have a right to back up that DVD to videotape, but the DVD player adds Macrovision (analogue video copy control) to the analogue video signal output from the player. You could buy a device to defeat the Macrovision copy control, but that would require someone else to distribute a "device designed to circumvent the scheme regulating access to a copyrighted work" (more or less the wording in the DMCA). So, it's illegal to acquire a device to exercise your right to make a backup.
Here we have two legal issues conflicting with one another. There's the "liberal" right to make backups, and the "conservative" DMCA which says, "no acquiring devices to defeat control schemes". You can't even create such a device; the DMCA disallows that, too.
So, which is right? Well, in these times, it would appear the "conservative" issue takes precedence. Who cares about you're right to make backups? It's quite sad.
I'm rather pissed that the stories on Slashdot scroll down the front page so quickly, because with this story in the "older stories" sidebar, very few people will read it and your comment.
The public is being sedated. Few people want to stand up for their rights. It's sad when hosts of AM- and shortwave-radio talk shows and readers of websites like this are the only ones who care. The rest of the public has been lulled into a stupor by the entertainment industry whereby we just accept what we're given. I could comment a bit more on the inaction of today's population, but I don't think anyone else will read it.
Anyway, thanks for that post. One's computer has a sanctity almost equivalent to one's home. I don't allow the tendrils of the intellectual property police into my home, and I will not allow them into my computer.
I'm not sure if a move toward XML is necessarily a good thing. I hope I don't sound like a modern Luddite, so please hear me out.
/>" and "<HR />"), but we shouldn't use it for <P> or various other tags which normally had an end tag in HTML because it might screw up some browsers...? Can they even get the XML-ization of HTML right?
HTML and most browsers allow a large "fudge factor" -- your tag names can be uppercase or lowercase, you can quote your tag clause values if you want or not (like <P ALIGN="RIGHT"> or <P ALIGN=RIGHT>), you can use the header tags (<H1>...<H6>) in any order, etc.
In HTML, you can develop your own coding style.
I prefer uppercase tag names and tag-clause names, quoted tag-clause values for strings, nonquoted tag-clause values for numbers, free arrangement of headers.
Along comes the W3C, the "trusted" authority on browser standards and forces XHTML on us which has incredibly rigid syntax. Now it's all lowercase tags, all quoted tag clause values. We're supposed to adopt the single-tag XML syntax for <BR> and <HR>, etc. (like "<BR
There is even an "ISO HTML" standard which demands the header elements always be in "proper" order. I find it's much easier to whip out <H1> or <H2> when I need big text than going <FONT SIZE=+2> or defining a new style sheet class. Besides, the W3C doesn't want me using <FONT>, anyway...
There's an ANSI C standard, but it doesn't dictate that you always use the "one true brace" style, does it? I was taught code differently. But at the same time, I respect those who use the "one true brace" style.
Also, while we're talking about small, less-capable devices like PDAs, etc., how about people with lower bandwidth. I always try to make my HTML as compact as possible within reason. The damn picky Validator told me I had to add a TYPE="text/javascript" clause in my <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2"> tags because the LANGUAGE clause was deprecated. That's stupid. First, due to differences in implementation of JavaScript between the various versions, it's necessary to say LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2" to tell the browser "execute this code using JavaScript 1.2 rules". I don't think there's such a MIME type as "text/javascript1.2" or "text/javascript1.1". Secondly (and this was the point I wanted to make), they're just asking for more bytes to be added to size of the page. I have many <SCRIPT> tags on this one page I'm working on. I want it to load quickly for dial-up users, and I'm supposed to make it larger? The TYPE clause above and separating space is only 23 bytes, but with many tags, that adds up.
Someone else was talking about <B> and <I>, etc. being dropped and being replaced with style sheets. (I haven't read that much of the specification so I don't know for sure.) Apart from the fact that style sheets are harder to learn, this (once again) slows down loading times because of the extra request from the client to fetch the style sheet.
And, with XHTML, every tag clause value needs to be quoted -- even numeric ones? That's unreasonable!
I realize we can't have anarchy and a standard is needed, but I don't think the W3C is totally in touch with what the Web has become and the business around it. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were trying to bring us back to 1993 with all pages being really basic and simple and all <H1> and <H3> elements having <H2> (not <h2>!!) elements between them.
What if a company has a standard coding style of uppercase elements, nonquoted tag-clause values? Are they forced to change?
Sure we use tables, <FONT> tags, and transparent GIF spacers like nuts. I'm sure it upsets Lynx users. But perhaps we're not catering to Lynx users. Most visitors to my pages are using IE 5.5, 5.0, or Netscape 4.51 or higher. Less than 0.1% are using Lynx. In business, you want an attractive page, and if that means making it difficult for one or two people so you can get more business from several thousand, so be it.
My apologies to those who prefer to code with lowercase tags, etc. We're all entitled to our own styles...until we get to XHTML.
A technology that shouldn't have died? AM STEREO!!
I surprised no one has mentioned this yet. I hope I get some responses. (Hey, Taco, how about setting the default view to "newest first"?)
(What follows is a brief synopsis. You can find all sorts of information and everything you ever wanted to know about AM stereo by going here.)
Back in the early '80s, there were a lot of AM music stations. AM radio sounded tinny and mono, while FM was crisp, clear, and stereophonic. There was legislation in many countries requiring FM stations to water down their content to help the AM stations compete, but the AM stations couldn't count on that legislation to be around forever. And with so much music on AM, there was a desire from both listeners and broadcasters to have better sound quality.
In 1982, four competing methods for broadcasting higher-quality stereophonic sound on AM while maintaining backward compatibility with existing AM radios were proposed. But the FCC, instead of quickly deciding on one as the standard, decided to try a "free market" approach. They would allow broadcasters to use which ever stereo-encoding method they wanted, and allow electronics manufacturers to support which every method they wanted. It was felt that after a few years one method would dominate and could be approved as the standard.
However, with no encoding method approved as the official standard, very few AM stereo radios were built. What if a company spent loads of time and money building a radio for one stereo-encoding method, only to have another emerge as the standard?
So, throughout the 1980s and into the '90s, many AM stations pumped out clearer, FM-like sound, but the listeners could only hear the familiar, tinny, monaural squawking they were used to, and probably wondered what the DJs were talking about when they ID'd their station as "The new WQZX, 1530 AM stereo!"
In 1993, the FCC finally approved a standard, but by then it was too late.
I can remember listening, as a kid and a teenager, to my town's top 40 station, which was AM. I always wished I could hear them in stereo. I knew that a handful of car radios supported AM stereo, but I never knew why no home receiver did. Eventually, the FM content restrictions were relaxed, and a top 40 FM station went on the air and quickly replaced my local AM top 40 station as my station of choice.
Eventually, the top 40 AM station switched to an all-sports format, but not before having one last try at keeping their music format: During their last year, they switched to an all dance-music format. They also played a lot of very new music. I always heard the newest stuff first on the AM station. But I always wished they would move to FM so I could hear them in stereo. Why they didn't, I'll probably never know.
Recently, I started working at a radio station, so a lot of my questions about AM stereo, this "phantom technology", were answered. I recently bought an AM stereo radio from eBay. You must realize that AM stereo isn't just tinny, squawking sound in stereo -- normal AM stations have a frequency cutoff at 2.5 kHz. AM stereo stations cut off at 7.5 kHz. It's still not quite as good as FM, but it's a lot better than regular AM. I'm not sure why regular AM radios don't pick up the extended frequency range. Perhaps they filter out anything above 2.5 kHz as if it were noise.
Anyway, there's only four AM stations left in my town, and only one plays music -- oldies. Only one of the four stations (not the oldies one) still transmits in stereo, the others having given up on it due to the lack of support.
The one remaining AM stereo has a news/talk format. It's kind of cool to hear their station IDs in stereo. Every Sunday, though, they send a few DJs to a local record store to play samples of new CDs on the radio for half an hour. This is the one time I ever get to hear AM stereo music, and let me tell you, it's heavenly. If only I had known about all this when I had a top 40 AM station!
It's not quite like listening to a CD, but it's a nice taste of a wonderful technology from the past that just wasn't given a chance...
Once again, go here to learn more about AM stereo radio.
-- Rahoule
Now imagine the alternative: Al Gore as president, and Mrs. PMRC herself, Tipper Gore as first lady. Yuck. Just what I need, a new guy in charge of telling me what I want and what's good for me.
Good point. There's also Joe Lieberman. Back in 1993, he started a crusade against violent videogames. He was throwing around absurd charges, like Sega being responsible for the arcade version of Mortal Kombat (it was actually Midway). I don't want a politician to tell me what I can and can't play, either.
The electoral college is NOT a holdover from colonial days. It was purposely created to KEEP majorities from always winning. If it were not for the electoral college, the more highly populated urban areas would always win by the shear weight of their populations.
Why, then, do highly populated states, like California, New York, Texas, and Florida have far more electoral-college votes than less-populated states, like in the midwest?
California has 54 electoral-college votes and Texas has 32, while some midwest and north-west states have as few as 3.
In advance, I would like to sincerely apologize to all citizens of the U.K. You are very nice people; I took a trip to Europe a few years ago and thought the British were the friendliest people in the world.
That said, is it just me, is there a real sense of "copyright snobbishness" among British publications? In an issue of Doctor Who Magazine (another British publication), there was an article about fans getting video cameras, creating make-shift costumes and making their own "episodes" of Doctor Who, a cult sci-fi series in Britain. However, the author of the article and the editor of the magazine refused to disclose any information about the "actors" or even how to contact them because of "copyright concerns" or some crap like that.
Now look at this BBC Online article -- it focuses more on how these emulators are "breaking copyright" and "depriving programmers of revenue" and far less on the nostalgia factor.
What's the deal here? A lot of people think the U.S. is a really copyright snob nation, what with the DMCA and organizations like the RIAA and MPAA. In the U.K., it appears, the "copyright snob" mentality permeates to much lower levels! What's up here?
Reader 11131719 contributed this review...
Good lord, they don't even refer to us by name anymore...
I was thinking the same thing. >:^) Everyone's complaining about Slashdot's moderation system, stories getting posted too late, Signal11 leaving (well, maybe not that...:^))... Basically they're tearing Rob Malda to shreds over these issues, but they're ignoring the real reason Slashdot sucks these days-- that "User #xxxxx Info" link.
It used to say just "User Info", but Rob doesn't want to bother remember our names anymore. Now, I'm reader #144525. You're reader #16212. Since our comments and traffic are helping Rob and co. stay rich, we're not people -- we're just numbers. If we were citizens of a country, we'd have UPC-style barcodes and machine-readable numbers tattooed on our foreheads at birth.
You'll never get away with this, Taco! I am a person, not a number!!
I would hope that /. boys coded the whole database so that passwords were one-way encrypted. Then it would be that much of an issue to change your password.
They aren't. If you forget your password, Slashdot will mail it to you (the "mailpasswd" button on /users.pl when you're logged out). Slashdot emails you your password, in clear text. So, even if the passwords are encrypted, they can be decrypted. How else would Slashdot be able to tell you your password?
I used to frequently visit an emulation site called Dave's Classics (www.davesclassics.com). I had to be very careful typing in the address because if I typed:
DavesClassics is now known as VintageGaming.com.
I remembered someone on Slashdot mentioning that PayPal had a problem with a site typosquatting on paypaI.com and grabbing people's credit card numbers. (The lowercase 'l' and uppercase 'I' are almost indistinguishable in some fonts...)