What you talk about takes time. You don't really have people covering a large area, and the information is not immediately accessible to everyone. On the other hand, I could very easily see someone making a rather large price-comparison resource, that could be global, and would be accessible to anyone with a web browser.
I think metabrowsing for the lowest price can be nothing but good to the consumer, but I can easily see businesses not liking the liquidity of the market. I could also see businesses going.. well.. out of business from instant price comparisons of everyone, everywhere. There are businesses that stay alive because of their geography, and I can see them being real vulnerable.
On a completely unrelated point; companies forcing search engines to pay to index their sites? Are you serious? "Yes, that's right, unless you pay us X dollars, we're going to make ourselves less visible to the customers that pay us." I think blocking metabrowsing is bad, true, but honestly, it's not the end of the world.
Those are some really cool trains. You'll note the music actually corresponds to a terminal (It was either that or it corresponded to stopping/starting, I can't remember which).
The best part was when someone was blocking the doors, and the voice would say "Please move away from the doors, you are delaying the departure of this train." For some reason people would alwyas feel like they'd just been singled out, and everyone would inch in closer to the middle of the train. Hilarious;)
DISCLAIMER: For an idea of what I like: Jungle (Dieselboy, RAM Trilogy, right up to LTJ Bukem), Goa/Psy (Astral Projection, Hallucinogen), Hiphop (Herbaliser, DJ Shadow, DJ Krush), Minimal (_rohformat), Rock/Alt/Metal (Radiohead, Incubus, Esthero), Triphop (Massive Attack, Lamb). I'm finnicky about mixing quality as well.
OK, I've had time to check out everything on that site. End result: you get some nostalgia, and a lot of iffy music.
Basically it's a lot of videogame related tunes that fall into all sorts of traps.
MIDI-fied (I prefer the bleeps, thanks)
Drumloop repetition ("I'll add the Amen to this track, and just loop it! That'll make it cool!")
Drumloop repetition phobia ("I can never have the same drum sequence or loop twice" aka schizo drums)
Samples you've only heard 497 times before
Where's the Treble?
Where's the Bass?
I Must Use Every Effect Known to Man
You basically find:
MIDI-fied tunes
The old song sampled with a "New and Improved!" beat over top of it
A smattering of samples from the game layed down over an attempt at a song
That being said, there are some songs that are pretty decent, some novel ideas, and some that if nothing else make me think of making a longer version.
Doom E1M1 remix - Yeah, I like the original FM sounds too, but this has a great idea going. The drums could use a bit of work, and the whole could be more massive, but it's a really great take.
Dune Arrakis (Wormsign remix) - I've never heard the original, but I like this. The strings are not overpowering (SEE? SEE HOW GREAT THIS MELODY IS!?), the beat and samples all sound like they fit, and the song is actually going somewhere with a consistent them. Slightly better mixing would've made this a total winner.
Ghosts 'n' Goblins Instant remix - The bass is slightly out of tune, the treble's gone missing, and the bass/909hihat is hardly original. But what counts is that for once, this complements the original tune, and sounds like it fits as opposed to being a beat laid overtop.
Gradius Medley remix - Sticking true to original form, but very clean and crisp. I want more;)
Marioland Millenium remix - YES. This is very much worth having. The original tune basically untouched in sequencing, but it gets nice and chewed up by filters playing around here and there, and the drums are good.
Megaman II Flashman Flashfire remix - This has an amateurish sound to it, I think because the samples aren't all quite together (eg: drums sound like they're not from the same set, etc.). But the sequencing and melodies are very well done. This is a great portrayal of the original.
Metroid AmIEvil Bluebase remix - Short, reverbed piano.. why do I like this? There's some background ambiance that gives this the haunting feel the tune has. Also this is really inspiring me to go out and redo it;)
Zelda64 Ocarina Boogie remix - YES. Don't ask questions, just go get it.
Paperboy Dead Guys remix - Good idea of what it wants to be, the drums and that distorted bassline-ish lead sound are good to carry you along while you can listen to the little piano ditty. Ambiance in here too.
Now I know I left out an awful lot. There are tunes that are close, but no cigar. These were just the few that had that special something to them (to me anyway). You might also note that none of these tunes are by DJ Pretzel.. sorry man, but your sound is not quite there. The Mario Jazz thing is close, and pretty unique, but I prefer my jazz on the real thing, not sequenced...
Well.. hope someone puts these opinions to good use anyway...
Although I bet 99% of you haven't heard this stuff.
Aphex Twin - Bouncing Becephaluas (sp?) Ball, has a sample or two from Defender in it.
Jungle music takes old videogame samples kinda frequently actually. The only things I can think of off the top of my head (aside from 3 bajillion ragga-jungle tunes) are D-Type by Capone (aka Dillinja, it's got some R-Type samples/inspiration), Frogger by Ryme Tyme. There's also some dubplate I've heard mixed by Usual Suspects that has a nice little videogame ditty that I can't place, combined with tight drums. Who'd ever you thought you could make a videogame tune so damn massive.
Chrono Trigger fans could also check out The Education by Vinyl Matt, but I can't remember if it was put out on Tokyo Dawn Records, Theralite, or Mo'Playaz.
Anyway, just thought I'd say that other people do this too. And it's DAMN fine listening most of the time;)
...what corporations are going through. The issue of logging is definetly a double edged sword for them. It's all a question of what you want the logs to be used for, and then conversely what they could be used for. Basically it sounds like what you're asking is what's the best trade-off.
What do you log? As has been said, packet sniffing content would take ungodly amounts of storage, and if you're an ISP, you really shouldn't be doing it. It's Just Wrong (tm). Once again, it depends how tyrannical you want to be, but I think that just monitoring what IP's are hitting your boxes when is sufficient for most security concerns. At the most I'd say take note of traffic patterns, just incase a customer's box has been broken into and is doing things it didn't normally do.
Should logs be permanent? We all should be able to come up with one real simple example of a corporation that was burned by e-mail leaking out that honestly shouldn't have. Corporations are now beginning to take a policy of purging e-mail stores often, so it doesn't come back to bite them in the ass. Is this ethical? Probably not. Which is why you have every right to be dumping your logs too. If corporation XYZ comes to you looking to see if the maintainer of corporationxyzsucks.com is one of your customers... sorry, you dumped the log. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that ISP's shouldn't help big evil corporations if someone from them DoS'd them. I'm just saying that ISP's have a right to 'lose' information just like corporations do. Things are much less of a hassle that way.
Legal issues. If I were a customer of an ISP that suddenly decided to start logging everything, they damn well better tell me that their terms of service are changing. Anonymity is something I value, and is a key factor in my ISP choice. What with all the DoubleClick-ish privacy things going on right now, I would not get yourself into that mess. Let your customers know exactly what you're logging, they have every right to know.
Perhaps this is all remarkably obvious, and the opinions have been karma whored up by now, but I just thought I'd offer my two cents.
Hi Jon, I don't normally bash you, hell, I don't normally read what you write. But uhh... duh?
I think just about everyone here is all too aware of the extremely short leash technology allows. Geeks, more than anyone else, are inclined to cut off all communication when they go on vacation because... hell, even sitting at home with no faxes, cell-phones, e-mail is a vacation!
I'd have been much more fascinated if you'd covered two points.
Is it worth it? Sure we may moan and bitch about how bad being on constant call, even at 3am, is. Now, how does this compare to.. construction? Or.. cashier at burger king? We're getting much more compensation in terms of cash, but we're also paying them back with obscene amounts of time. I'll bet you construction workers aren't exactly on the same instant-demand schedule some of us need to be. I have honestly entertained the idea of saying 'fuck it' and doing a job that would pay just enough for getting by each month, but would allow me spare time to do what I wanted. Some of us in the tech industry may have attained the utopian "do what you like and get payed for it" so they don't really feel like they need that spare time to do their fun stuff; they're already doing it.
What can be done? We know it's bad. What have people done to try and make it better? I'd really like to know. I'm not far in here, what mistakes am I going to want to avoid? It's clearly a (dead horse) issue that needs fixing, but so far it seems as though there's been lots in the "Wow this is bad" and little in the "Wow this is how we made it better" department.
Now I know, by the time I post this, moderators will have moved on. I just hope I'm not the only here who thought that while yes, valid point jon, the/. crowd already knew that.
The problem here is that definitions and verifications of those definitions is really touchy stuff. It's going to be for quite some time.
Hacked - So, what is that exactly? Or rather.. where do you draw the line? Someone gaining root... someone gaining an account... someone executing foreign code (say some perl thing)... someone installing foreign programs (wanna boost those distributed.net stats?). What about being DoS'd? How about if someone spoofed their IP to look like it came from your place, and you ended up catching their backlash? Portscanning? Pinging? I mean, seriously.. what?
Security - How secure are you? Well.. I have brand X routers, brand Y boxes, brand Z OS, Foo Web Server, etc. etc. etc. There are too many combinations.. so they're going to get lumped. Then how attentive are they? Is there an admin wired in to the server farm? Is he on a pager leash? Does he check for patches daily? Etc. etc.
Verification - How are you going to prove to me that what you said happened really did? This could end up being quite costly in and of itself, having to around and trace where the stuff came from, what happened, etc. etc.
This is a needed thing, I believe... but it's also much too slippery a slope. There are too many 'wellll... maybe' issues.
The post to which this is replying has the proper links. Our friendly karma whore's/. reference is good, but the link to the paper isn't. The AC's posted great links. Modding 'em up would help.
You know, I really wish I had a link for this, it's a great story, and I know I'll screw it up.
Something like a year or two ago something really similar was done. A group of people had gotten together and decided to survey the 'net on security. They did this, as I recall, by doing your standard ping/traceroute/portscan for just about anything. IIRC, they also 'tested' to see if the then 10 most common exploits were vulnerable.
Two interesting things came about from this. One, of course, was the results. Only something in the vicinity of 12% of their search space was 'secure' by their tests..com's and.gov's were the most vulnerable, as well.
The second was the people they pissed off. Scr1pt K1dd13s DoS'd once or twice. Some network admins sent and e-mail asking why portscans had come from that domain. Others threatened legal action and had 'sent logs to the FBI.' And then there was this one guy... I can't even do him justice, but in.7 seconds he'd fscked their systems like you wouldn't believe.
Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me to find that something similar was happening again. I've got no problems with my box being probed. Honestly, if you freak at a portscan, you're a liittle paranoid.
Oh, and hey... some karma whore go dig that link up. May very well have been from this site;)
1) As has been pointed out, these are really early shots from a really early non-release. So go shut up for a while.
2) To those who are boo-hoo'ing the lack of total innovation, have you put no thought into this or what? If I'm going to design an 'easy-to-use' interface (to anything, computer or no), I'm going to go with whatever requires the least amount of extra learning, if any. By combining MacOS and Win elements, both of which are well known by Joe Q. Public, the Eazel folks are doing just that.
Really, I mean, give the folks some credit, ok? It's not exactly fun to sit here and read whine, bitch, moan. There are times when/.ers can really lay down some great ideas. You don't like what's there? Then what should be?
Wired seems to be painting a slightly different story. BMG is working with a startup to do almost damn near to the letter what my.mp3.com was doing. If there was ever any doubt in anyone's mind that this wasn't over profit and only profit, go have a read.
Call me naive, but for some reason up until now I was actually buying the bullshit they were feeding me. I actually thought they were going after my.mp3.com because it broke copyright and facilitated piracy. I had my doubts once I'd gone and tried it out myself. Now it makes perfect sense that the more cynical (hell, smart) have been screaming the word money. They don't care about this stuff being done online. They care that they're not making enormous amounts of money on it.
The most appealing aspect about online gaming to me, is the chance to actually have a sort of honor you'd never get in real life. It's difficult to explain it, but honor in gaming is an ideal that's not uncommon amongst my friends.
Honor doesn't take much, other than true skill. It's teaching the cheating bastard a lesson. It's taking on the guy attempting to rape the newbie as opposed to the newbie. It's sticking for the ideals of "That's just not fair, it's not right."
You're not often going to get the chance to do it in real life, I'd wager. I mean.. if you're truly pious and good you'll stick up for what's right. You'll probably get the shit kicked out of you a number of times too. As much as we'd like to be truly honorable all the time, we also have this thing about saving our own asses sometimes.
Online gaming culture has the chance to be different from this, to actually have some honor in it. Sadly this doesn't seem to be happening. More people become obsessed with being Ultimate Rambo, or winning at all costs, or taking down the easy ones. Online gaming is becoming more popular. I hate to sound nostalgic, but I'm dead sure the two are linked.
Anyway, I guess my point is online gaming appeals to me because I have the chance to cultivate a (albeit small) culture akin to Arthur's Knights. Sounds stupid, but feels cool. Whatever keeps me happy?...
I apologize for the stupid topic, but honestly, I'm just trying to get eyes here. The whole Aureate ordeal has been around for quite some time. It's also been debunked for some time. Debunked as in a hoax. It's not quite a hoax, but it's not Big-Brother either.
The 'spyware' program does nothing more than say what ads have been received, and what have been clicked. Period. I don't know about you, but I don't do my surfing through ads. Hell, I get weird enough ads from Doubleclick crap as it is.
The problem is that this has been claimed as spyware.. ie: it monitors your surfing habits, and I've even heard that it could see which programs are installed on the HD. This is where the paranoia overtakes the fact.
I have yet to see comprehensive proof that this does (only or all of) what either side of this issue says it does. Most people take for proof that Aureate/Radiate is evil the presence of any of the 'bad' DLL's.
The program has been proven to exist, true. Get some simple network tools and a little registry viewer and sure enough, you'll notice something's set stuff up in the registry, and something's calling home. Nobody has given proof that shows what it's actually doing beyond that.
It's a task I'd think someone in the/. audience would be glad to undertake. At this point both my curiousity and rage at the propensity of this falsehood to spread so easily are motivating me to crack down as much as I can. Only.. I don't really have the time, I don't have the resources or knowledge either. Someone needs to just sit down with a packet sniffer on a controlled network, and see what's up. I personally, can't tell what to look for, but I'm positive that someone can.
Steve Gibson claims that some of the scarier stuff like arbitrary execution has been proven. I ask... show me the proof.
Ok, I just sat down and read all these comments modded as Insightful, up to around 3-5, and NOT A ONE was different from the other. They all said the same thing about plot holes and slo-mo. Thanks, I think the review said that folks.
I, for one, was glad to sit down for about 2 hours and just go 'ooooo.'
Gratuitous slow motion? Hello, meet John Woo. I was glad enough that he had a budget to use hi-speed cameras as opposed to slowing down the frames.
Plot holes and no character development? Hello, meet Action Genre.
Insult to intelligence? Hello, meet the PG-13 rating. This was a concious choice to broaden the audience. Think of it as backlash from the loud "What the hell?" the audience gave the first one.
Matrix ripoff? Hello, what the fuck did you think the Wachowski brothers are inspired by? They had Jet Li's choreographer for crying out loud.
I walked in expecting some nice-as-hell fight scenes, explosions that weren't re-shot from five different angles, an attempt at plot, no attempt at character development, and a hot member of the opposite sex. I walked out getting what I expected.
All in all, it's a fun flick, I'd go see it again at matinee or something.
Lars has some valid points, this is true. I really hate to say he doesn't get it, because I do think he has a point when he goes on about Internet Extremists (hellooooo slashdot). So what I'll instead say is that he has views that differ fundementally from mine.
A record company is about promotion and not about "being a bank." There is nothing I like more than getting my music heard, and liked. The best way for me to do that is to promote it. Record companies do just that for me, so they should get money for services rendered. What we have today, sadly, is a gross deformity of a bank/business. I could go on and on about this, but then you'd be hearing more of a rant than a comment, so..
The Internet was ripe 2 years ago for bands to begin online music distribution. Now -- with broadband ever increasing and college students coming to campus with a view of bandwidth being as essential as water -- now the internet is approaching mass consumerization. Mp3.com may not have the Puff Daddy or Britney Spears (in terms of popularity) but they have a lot of music that broadband people can get pretty quickly, and easily. If Metallica had sold their stuff online before they went after Napster, I think they would have had so much less of a problem. Lars thinks that "we're getting to that point" where artists can viably disrtibute online. I think we're past that point.
Digital music distribution does promote independents. It's almost like compilation albums: if I see artists I like, and artists I'ver never heard of in the same place, you can bet your ass I'm going to check out the new people. I know I'm not alone when I say I have discovered countless artists whose work I have purchased after I heard them on MP3.
I believe we do have the right to just about anything we get on the Internet. Actually, practically an entire generation of people believe this. I don't think I have the right to the hax0r-w4r3z version of program XYZ. I do have the right to get what I'd like for what I'm willing to pay. I'm willing to pay a small amount (75 cents) per song for music I get. I can't do that yet, and because the MP3 cat is out of the bag, I'm sorry, but I'm not about to completely stop getting music until someone gets their act together. This is a generation that like it or not is accustomed to convenience. It is currently more convenient to get the music from napster than it is to put down way too much money for it. This is a backlash that's resulting from as Lars put it, the record companies' fuckup, but I think it's way past time people stopped fighting the symptoms and took care of the cause.
I agree with Lars when talks about napster and lack of permission for distribution, etc. Valid, and I agree. The problem is that it's more a matter of people's demand, not napster capability. Napster didn't put the songs there, the people did.
The way I've explain Napster to those who have asked is quite simple. It's basically a giant room where people say "I have such & such a song" and other people are asking for "such & such's song." Clearly you can't say that the room is illegal.. it's just there. Everyone I've talked to always agrees on that point. They may not be thinking, like me, about online distribution models, about convenience, etc. But they do agree, it's pretty stupid to outlaw a room.
These thoughts are my own and not karma-whoring fodder, flamebait, me-too'ing or what have you. I'm telling you what I want. Lars, in all of his research, will hopefully be checking this place out.
This is just for those of you too anal to get it. Yes these lists of things that'll get posted are starting to get common. Want to know why? They're criticism in the form of satire. It's not just making fun of the views (Which, as zealous as some people get about this stuff, is needed), it's making fun of the fact that we the slashdot crowd are actually that predictable.
I chose to post this cause frankly.. I agree with everything I posted. But a wishy-washy "well this is good but then that is good also and so is this" is not a good read. It's boring. This way, if nothing else, you get a good laugh.
Oh, and the next person who posts one of these lists, you have to put in the obvious "post describing everything that will be posted." I thought the irony was pretty damn well implied by the last comment;)
Just thought I'd give the meaningless little drivel behind 10 minutes of fun.
User Friendly rules - "At last! Illiad is getting recognition he deserves! This stuff is so amazingly great! It expresses the opinions of this underdog community so well, it's scary. There's everything a geek could want.. quake, internet, caffeine, linux, anti-MS.. it's all there! This review is awesome!"
User Friendly blows - "Illiad is dumb. UF sold out ages ago. Back in the day, it used to be funny. Now it's old and tired. I mean, before, when he was linux jokes and MS bashing.. it was funny. Now it's just nothing but stupid linux jokes and MS bashing. He's marketing his soul on material that is so lame. I don't care if it's his job or anything... the drawing blows. I completely disagree with the review."
(some random comic) is better - "Sluggy. Real life. PVP. After Y2k. Penny Arcade. The Bench. etc." (ok, maybe not the last one) "It's so much better! Why don't they have a book out, huh? I'd buy it!"
Karma... whoring, trolling, signal 11, trollmastah, poll mastah, hot grits, beowulf cluster of UF books ("will this be compatible with the first one?") etc.
IDG is Evil - "You know this should have been Evil Geniuses for Dummies. Bastards."
I love you variant - "Yes that's right, the 340 millionth variant to come out this month arrives with the subject 'I'm Friendly!' and will silently make UF your start page, and kill all files/folders that begin with 'win'. It mails itself out to all people that have msn or hotmail addresses in your address book."
Distro wars - "UF says this distro sucks" "Well this distro is better!" "Oh yeah, well my distro is gonna incorporate AtheOS!!" "Oh yeah, well my distro is gonna incorporate Aqua!!"
Actual posts commenting on the book itself (other than "I will buy it" or "It will suck") - Decidedly absent....
That's subjective. I actually DISLIKED mario64 when it came out, this was supposed to be n64's flagship game that made the system worth buying. I was turned by Zelda and some other other titles. Just cause there's nothing out now that interests you doesn't mean it's not worth buying.
"Hardware's potential is not being used in current games library"
Sorry to be this blunt, but are a moron or something? Name one first-gen console game that has really used the full potential of the hardware. Go ahead, I'm waiting. If you were a console developer instead of a PC developer, you might understand why I'm so pissed off here. Developing for a console is basically re-inventing the wheel everytime something new comes out. It doesn't help that the way the PS2 is set up makes it drastically different efficiency-wise than what's out there right now.
"Sony aims to create an "entertainment monopoly", and the PS2 is one of the cornerstones "
.. OK you're actually right here. Really right. I'm worried about this myself, but fact is, PS2 is nice. If it ends up winning market share, it'll be cause of its own merits.
"Sony is a consumer electronics company, not a games company. They don't give a shit about the quality of the games"
I'm sorry what? History has clearly proven if the games aren't there to back the system up, away it goes. Sony - The Business - would probably like money, and to get that they need market share, and to get that... hey! whaddya know! they need good games. You wanna bitch, you don't bitch to sony, you bitch to the developers.
"The PlayStation has a games library of over 500 titles. Roughly 20 - 30 of those were huge hits, and some of them only in niche genres (music/dance games etc.) The rest just.. Umm.. Sucked"
How is this different from any console? Seriously, perhaps you're thinking back in the days of the NES, when everything was golden and good. Here's a wake up call.. the NES is the PSX. It was the major marketshare, so it had the most games. A lot of them, incidentally, were shit. You may remember the good ones, but how about the 10-20 other mediocre ones that were alongside it on the store shelf? This is no different. Nil.
Personally, I say.. wait. Wait to buy, wait to pass judgement, wait to flame, wait to defend. Don't take a look at one system and the ghost of another, and try to make comparisons, ok?
To present to those of us who hit slashdot instead of five other sites for geeknews a full account of what has happened so far
To present a controversial story and get hits
To keep some ongoing coverage on what has become one of the most public exhibitions of open-source software
To show the other side of the story to those of us who heard the "removal of something promoting privacy" and "AOL" in the same sentence, and went rabid. (admitedly it is a whole.. what, 5 paragraphs down?)
To start flamewars to test the load on the new server when they switch over
To promote some discussion on how effective this feature really is
To present something for a Geek to read that is of a topic he likes
Far too many people have trouble with that last one...
This is posted too late to get seriously modded up to get read, and you may have heard it before, but I feel I need to post my views here I've got: 13.1GB 7200 RPM EIDE HD AGP TNT2 w/ 32 MB RAM, P2-350 bumped up to 400 192 MB RAM Win98 (cringe)
I play religiously at 640*480. I am not in any clan, nor am I the best of the best. I just don't like getting disoriented. I don't aim for 120fps or anything. I aim for 30fps in a worst-case scenario. Period. When I'm playing a twitch game, the framerate should be above 30 as much as possible.
I don't CARE how high above 30 it is, but I do care how far below 30 it gets, and how often.
Generally right now I tend to get the texture detail up, and keep the resolution low. I just have more chance of keeping it above 30fps that way, while keeping things looking nice. Sure I like seeing those 1024*768 shots, but that's all I see with my setup.. shots, no movement.
Right now I have a setup that pretty much guarantees 30fps at 16-bit at 640*480. What I'm concerned with, is which of these cards is going to guarantee over 30 fps, at 32-bit color, at 1024*768? FSAA is an added bonus, and if the V5 can push 800*600 at that rate with it, I'll seriously look at it.
\windows\command? what? come on, if you were true to the roots, you'd have it in c:\dos;)
Seriously though, the powers of command-line vs. GUI still apply with pkzip vs. winzip. If I want to extract 100 zip files to the same directory.. one simple command. Same for vice-versa... what's all this drag-n-drop crap?;)
One thing that kinda gets me.. how exactly is WinZip related to this? That is.. is it just a wrapper to pkunzip or is it actually a modified compression algorithm or what? If you'll recall, there actually was an 'official' PKZip for windows (though I do not know what the actual name of it was). Terrible interface though.. shame..
Katz will be missed, as many have said here before, his programs most likely changed the way we do computing today.
I've seen your arguement before. AOL fosters newbies who will eventually see the pure shit they are using and eventually 'grow up' to a 'real' ISP. I agree with it, but at the same time I think you're wrong.
Think about the average AOL user, ie: your mom, your grandparents, someone who's been enticed by the latest TV commercial. These are the people who use the computer only for word processing or for faxing. They don't need much else. They take this same "If it's got what I need, I'm happy" stance towards internet access. If AOL can give them stock quotes, e-mail, weather, shopping, IM's... why should they bother growing up?
This is the stance of the Common Everday Non-Techy Person, which is AOL's prime market. So they see a couple ads? They don't see a bunch of weird techy configuration stuff (my parents description of window's dial-up networking configs:P), they only see what they need and some minor hindrances.
My point is, more technical users (ie: those interested in computers, coders, gamers, etc.) will grow up to ISP's. However, this is a small fraction of AOL's user base, and that is why we will continue to have headaches like I've seen described here.
The AOL'ization of America was inevitable. If it wasn't AOL who came to fill the huge market gap that ISP's frankly can't deal with (while satisfying techies like us), someone else would. It's called business. All you elitist people out there are just going to have to realize that getting everyone online means getting everyone online, idiots and ignorants included. I'm reminded of a Dennis Miller quote: "Think of the average person in America. Now realize that 50% of America is dumber than that."
I've seen your arguement before. AOL fosters newbies who will eventually see the pure shit they are using and eventually 'grow up' to a 'real' ISP. I agree with it, but at the same time I think you're wrong. Think about the average AOL user, ie: your mom, your grandparents, someone who's been enticed by the latest TV commercial. These are the people who use the computer only for word processing or for faxing. They don't need much else. They take this same "If it's got what I need, I'm happy" stance towards internet access. If AOL can give them stock quotes, e-mail, weather, shopping, IM's... why should they bother growing up?. This is the stance of the Common Everday Non-Techy Person, which is AOL's prime market. So they see a couple ads? They don't see a bunch of weird techy configuration stuff (my parents description of window's dial-up networking configs:P), they only see what they need and some minor hindrances. My point is, more technical users (ie: those interested in computers, coders, gamers, etc.) will grow up to ISP's. However, this is a small fraction of AOL's user base, and that is why we will continue to have headaches like I've seen described here. The AOL'ization of America was inevitable. If it wasn't AOL who came to fill the huge market gap that ISP's frankly can't deal with (while satisfying techies like us), someone else would. It's called business. All you elitist people out there are just going to have to realize that getting everyone online means getting everyone online, idiots and ignorants included. I'm reminded of a Dennis Miller quote: "Think of the average person in America. Now realize that 50% of America is dumber than that." It's a pain, but we will have to deal.
The linked article has an example about how the graphics processing capability is so great that it would be suitable in the head of a tomahawk missile that needs to 'see' where it's going. While everyone in/. is going to be cracking jokes about this (speak softly and carry a palm pilot with missile guidance), someone tell me, please, how feasible is this?
No really, I'm asking. I'm not technically proficient enough to dissassemble a PS2, nor do I know how its innards work. I am no circuitry expert, just a Geek who's not afraid to take a peek.
I'll tell you why I think this is wrong, so you guys tell me where it is I'm screwing up. Japan woke up and noticed that, well gee, consoles are getting damn powerful. They're (once again) just about on par with PC's. Apparently, they're also just about on par with the tech inside of a tomahawk missile's guidance system. The tomahawk needs to be able to quickly process where it's at, so it's gotta do image recognition, which is no easy feat. Well, it wasn't anyway.
Now all of a sudden a playstation's circuitry could supposedly in some half-ass way be re-wired to do this task. So all the terrorist needs now is.. all the rest... casing, explosives, triggers, fuel, launchers.
Gee ya know, I'd think if someone had access to those resources they'd have access to a CPU. Actually.. aren't CPU's right now about the same in terms of raw computing power as the next-gen consoles? Hey, ya know, those things cost just slightly more too. Hey and they don't have customn circuitry to futz with either, they're general purpose things. Wouldn't be too hard to get a little CPU/Mobo/Linux missile guidance system (heh), at least no less than it would to rip out the innards of a customn designed system.
It's a given that this is FUBAR, but the question is are we going to start seeing more of this? Wouldn't surprise me. PC's have a huge consumer market and a ton of people like us to drive software and hardware development forward. Military? Once it works, it works, why bother upgrading?
Slashdot Mirror
What you talk about takes time. You don't really have people covering a large area, and the information is not immediately accessible to everyone. On the other hand, I could very easily see someone making a rather large price-comparison resource, that could be global, and would be accessible to anyone with a web browser.
I think metabrowsing for the lowest price can be nothing but good to the consumer, but I can easily see businesses not liking the liquidity of the market. I could also see businesses going.. well.. out of business from instant price comparisons of everyone, everywhere. There are businesses that stay alive because of their geography, and I can see them being real vulnerable.
On a completely unrelated point; companies forcing search engines to pay to index their sites? Are you serious? "Yes, that's right, unless you pay us X dollars, we're going to make ourselves less visible to the customers that pay us." I think blocking metabrowsing is bad, true, but honestly, it's not the end of the world.
The best part was when someone was blocking the doors, and the voice would say "Please move away from the doors, you are delaying the departure of this train." For some reason people would alwyas feel like they'd just been singled out, and everyone would inch in closer to the middle of the train. Hilarious ;)
OK, I've had time to check out everything on that site. End result: you get some nostalgia, and a lot of iffy music.
Basically it's a lot of videogame related tunes that fall into all sorts of traps.
You basically find:
That being said, there are some songs that are pretty decent, some novel ideas, and some that if nothing else make me think of making a longer version.
Now I know I left out an awful lot. There are tunes that are close, but no cigar. These were just the few that had that special something to them (to me anyway). You might also note that none of these tunes are by DJ Pretzel.. sorry man, but your sound is not quite there. The Mario Jazz thing is close, and pretty unique, but I prefer my jazz on the real thing, not sequenced...
Well.. hope someone puts these opinions to good use anyway...
Aphex Twin - Bouncing Becephaluas (sp?) Ball, has a sample or two from Defender in it.
Jungle music takes old videogame samples kinda frequently actually. The only things I can think of off the top of my head (aside from 3 bajillion ragga-jungle tunes) are D-Type by Capone (aka Dillinja, it's got some R-Type samples/inspiration), Frogger by Ryme Tyme. There's also some dubplate I've heard mixed by Usual Suspects that has a nice little videogame ditty that I can't place, combined with tight drums. Who'd ever you thought you could make a videogame tune so damn massive.
Chrono Trigger fans could also check out The Education by Vinyl Matt, but I can't remember if it was put out on Tokyo Dawn Records, Theralite, or Mo'Playaz.
Anyway, just thought I'd say that other people do this too. And it's DAMN fine listening most of the time ;)
What do you log? As has been said, packet sniffing content would take ungodly amounts of storage, and if you're an ISP, you really shouldn't be doing it. It's Just Wrong (tm). Once again, it depends how tyrannical you want to be, but I think that just monitoring what IP's are hitting your boxes when is sufficient for most security concerns. At the most I'd say take note of traffic patterns, just incase a customer's box has been broken into and is doing things it didn't normally do.
Should logs be permanent? We all should be able to come up with one real simple example of a corporation that was burned by e-mail leaking out that honestly shouldn't have. Corporations are now beginning to take a policy of purging e-mail stores often, so it doesn't come back to bite them in the ass. Is this ethical? Probably not. Which is why you have every right to be dumping your logs too. If corporation XYZ comes to you looking to see if the maintainer of corporationxyzsucks.com is one of your customers... sorry, you dumped the log. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that ISP's shouldn't help big evil corporations if someone from them DoS'd them. I'm just saying that ISP's have a right to 'lose' information just like corporations do. Things are much less of a hassle that way.
Legal issues. If I were a customer of an ISP that suddenly decided to start logging everything, they damn well better tell me that their terms of service are changing. Anonymity is something I value, and is a key factor in my ISP choice. What with all the DoubleClick-ish privacy things going on right now, I would not get yourself into that mess. Let your customers know exactly what you're logging, they have every right to know.
Perhaps this is all remarkably obvious, and the opinions have been karma whored up by now, but I just thought I'd offer my two cents.
I think just about everyone here is all too aware of the extremely short leash technology allows. Geeks, more than anyone else, are inclined to cut off all communication when they go on vacation because... hell, even sitting at home with no faxes, cell-phones, e-mail is a vacation!
I'd have been much more fascinated if you'd covered two points.
Now I know, by the time I post this, moderators will have moved on. I just hope I'm not the only here who thought that while yes, valid point jon, the /. crowd already knew that.
That was my first thought exactly.
The problem here is that definitions and verifications of those definitions is really touchy stuff. It's going to be for quite some time.
This is a needed thing, I believe... but it's also much too slippery a slope. There are too many 'wellll... maybe' issues.
The post to which this is replying has the proper links. Our friendly karma whore's /. reference is good, but the link to the paper isn't. The AC's posted great links. Modding 'em up would help.
Something like a year or two ago something really similar was done. A group of people had gotten together and decided to survey the 'net on security. They did this, as I recall, by doing your standard ping/traceroute/portscan for just about anything. IIRC, they also 'tested' to see if the then 10 most common exploits were vulnerable.
Two interesting things came about from this. One, of course, was the results. Only something in the vicinity of 12% of their search space was 'secure' by their tests. .com's and .gov's were the most vulnerable, as well.
The second was the people they pissed off. Scr1pt K1dd13s DoS'd once or twice. Some network admins sent and e-mail asking why portscans had come from that domain. Others threatened legal action and had 'sent logs to the FBI.' And then there was this one guy... I can't even do him justice, but in .7 seconds he'd fscked their systems like you wouldn't believe.
Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me to find that something similar was happening again. I've got no problems with my box being probed. Honestly, if you freak at a portscan, you're a liittle paranoid.
Oh, and hey... some karma whore go dig that link up. May very well have been from this site ;)
1) As has been pointed out, these are really early shots from a really early non-release. So go shut up for a while.
2) To those who are boo-hoo'ing the lack of total innovation, have you put no thought into this or what? If I'm going to design an 'easy-to-use' interface (to anything, computer or no), I'm going to go with whatever requires the least amount of extra learning, if any. By combining MacOS and Win elements, both of which are well known by Joe Q. Public, the Eazel folks are doing just that.
Really, I mean, give the folks some credit, ok? It's not exactly fun to sit here and read whine, bitch, moan. There are times when /.ers can really lay down some great ideas. You don't like what's there? Then what should be?
Call me naive, but for some reason up until now I was actually buying the bullshit they were feeding me. I actually thought they were going after my.mp3.com because it broke copyright and facilitated piracy. I had my doubts once I'd gone and tried it out myself. Now it makes perfect sense that the more cynical (hell, smart) have been screaming the word money. They don't care about this stuff being done online. They care that they're not making enormous amounts of money on it.
Yet...
Honor doesn't take much, other than true skill. It's teaching the cheating bastard a lesson. It's taking on the guy attempting to rape the newbie as opposed to the newbie. It's sticking for the ideals of "That's just not fair, it's not right."
You're not often going to get the chance to do it in real life, I'd wager. I mean.. if you're truly pious and good you'll stick up for what's right. You'll probably get the shit kicked out of you a number of times too. As much as we'd like to be truly honorable all the time, we also have this thing about saving our own asses sometimes.
Online gaming culture has the chance to be different from this, to actually have some honor in it. Sadly this doesn't seem to be happening. More people become obsessed with being Ultimate Rambo, or winning at all costs, or taking down the easy ones. Online gaming is becoming more popular. I hate to sound nostalgic, but I'm dead sure the two are linked.
Anyway, I guess my point is online gaming appeals to me because I have the chance to cultivate a (albeit small) culture akin to Arthur's Knights. Sounds stupid, but feels cool. Whatever keeps me happy?...
The 'spyware' program does nothing more than say what ads have been received, and what have been clicked. Period. I don't know about you, but I don't do my surfing through ads. Hell, I get weird enough ads from Doubleclick crap as it is.
The problem is that this has been claimed as spyware.. ie: it monitors your surfing habits, and I've even heard that it could see which programs are installed on the HD. This is where the paranoia overtakes the fact.
I have yet to see comprehensive proof that this does (only or all of) what either side of this issue says it does. Most people take for proof that Aureate/Radiate is evil the presence of any of the 'bad' DLL's.
The program has been proven to exist, true. Get some simple network tools and a little registry viewer and sure enough, you'll notice something's set stuff up in the registry, and something's calling home. Nobody has given proof that shows what it's actually doing beyond that.
It's a task I'd think someone in the /. audience would be glad to undertake. At this point both my curiousity and rage at the propensity of this falsehood to spread so easily are motivating me to crack down as much as I can. Only.. I don't really have the time, I don't have the resources or knowledge either. Someone needs to just sit down with a packet sniffer on a controlled network, and see what's up. I personally, can't tell what to look for, but I'm positive that someone can.
Steve Gibson claims that some of the scarier stuff like arbitrary execution has been proven. I ask... show me the proof.
I, for one, was glad to sit down for about 2 hours and just go 'ooooo.'
Gratuitous slow motion? Hello, meet John Woo. I was glad enough that he had a budget to use hi-speed cameras as opposed to slowing down the frames.
Plot holes and no character development? Hello, meet Action Genre.
Insult to intelligence? Hello, meet the PG-13 rating. This was a concious choice to broaden the audience. Think of it as backlash from the loud "What the hell?" the audience gave the first one.
Matrix ripoff? Hello, what the fuck did you think the Wachowski brothers are inspired by? They had Jet Li's choreographer for crying out loud.
I walked in expecting some nice-as-hell fight scenes, explosions that weren't re-shot from five different angles, an attempt at plot, no attempt at character development, and a hot member of the opposite sex. I walked out getting what I expected.
All in all, it's a fun flick, I'd go see it again at matinee or something.
Lars has some valid points, this is true. I really hate to say he doesn't get it, because I do think he has a point when he goes on about Internet Extremists (hellooooo slashdot). So what I'll instead say is that he has views that differ fundementally from mine.
A record company is about promotion and not about "being a bank." There is nothing I like more than getting my music heard, and liked. The best way for me to do that is to promote it. Record companies do just that for me, so they should get money for services rendered. What we have today, sadly, is a gross deformity of a bank/business. I could go on and on about this, but then you'd be hearing more of a rant than a comment, so..
The Internet was ripe 2 years ago for bands to begin online music distribution. Now -- with broadband ever increasing and college students coming to campus with a view of bandwidth being as essential as water -- now the internet is approaching mass consumerization. Mp3.com may not have the Puff Daddy or Britney Spears (in terms of popularity) but they have a lot of music that broadband people can get pretty quickly, and easily. If Metallica had sold their stuff online before they went after Napster, I think they would have had so much less of a problem. Lars thinks that "we're getting to that point" where artists can viably disrtibute online. I think we're past that point.
Digital music distribution does promote independents. It's almost like compilation albums: if I see artists I like, and artists I'ver never heard of in the same place, you can bet your ass I'm going to check out the new people. I know I'm not alone when I say I have discovered countless artists whose work I have purchased after I heard them on MP3.
I believe we do have the right to just about anything we get on the Internet. Actually, practically an entire generation of people believe this. I don't think I have the right to the hax0r-w4r3z version of program XYZ. I do have the right to get what I'd like for what I'm willing to pay. I'm willing to pay a small amount (75 cents) per song for music I get. I can't do that yet, and because the MP3 cat is out of the bag, I'm sorry, but I'm not about to completely stop getting music until someone gets their act together. This is a generation that like it or not is accustomed to convenience. It is currently more convenient to get the music from napster than it is to put down way too much money for it. This is a backlash that's resulting from as Lars put it, the record companies' fuckup, but I think it's way past time people stopped fighting the symptoms and took care of the cause.
I agree with Lars when talks about napster and lack of permission for distribution, etc. Valid, and I agree. The problem is that it's more a matter of people's demand, not napster capability. Napster didn't put the songs there, the people did.
The way I've explain Napster to those who have asked is quite simple. It's basically a giant room where people say "I have such & such a song" and other people are asking for "such & such's song." Clearly you can't say that the room is illegal.. it's just there. Everyone I've talked to always agrees on that point. They may not be thinking, like me, about online distribution models, about convenience, etc. But they do agree, it's pretty stupid to outlaw a room.
These thoughts are my own and not karma-whoring fodder, flamebait, me-too'ing or what have you. I'm telling you what I want. Lars, in all of his research, will hopefully be checking this place out.
This is just for those of you too anal to get it. Yes these lists of things that'll get posted are starting to get common. Want to know why? They're criticism in the form of satire. It's not just making fun of the views (Which, as zealous as some people get about this stuff, is needed), it's making fun of the fact that we the slashdot crowd are actually that predictable.
I chose to post this cause frankly.. I agree with everything I posted. But a wishy-washy "well this is good but then that is good also and so is this" is not a good read. It's boring. This way, if nothing else, you get a good laugh.
Oh, and the next person who posts one of these lists, you have to put in the obvious "post describing everything that will be posted." I thought the irony was pretty damn well implied by the last comment ;)
Just thought I'd give the meaningless little drivel behind 10 minutes of fun.
That's subjective. I actually DISLIKED mario64 when it came out, this was supposed to be n64's flagship game that made the system worth buying. I was turned by Zelda and some other other titles. Just cause there's nothing out now that interests you doesn't mean it's not worth buying.
"Hardware's potential is not being used in current games library"
Sorry to be this blunt, but are a moron or something? Name one first-gen console game that has really used the full potential of the hardware. Go ahead, I'm waiting. If you were a console developer instead of a PC developer, you might understand why I'm so pissed off here. Developing for a console is basically re-inventing the wheel everytime something new comes out. It doesn't help that the way the PS2 is set up makes it drastically different efficiency-wise than what's out there right now.
"Sony aims to create an "entertainment monopoly", and the PS2 is one of the cornerstones "
.. OK you're actually right here. Really right. I'm worried about this myself, but fact is, PS2 is nice. If it ends up winning market share, it'll be cause of its own merits.
"Sony is a consumer electronics company, not a games company. They don't give a shit about the quality of the games"
I'm sorry what? History has clearly proven if the games aren't there to back the system up, away it goes. Sony - The Business - would probably like money, and to get that they need market share, and to get that... hey! whaddya know! they need good games. You wanna bitch, you don't bitch to sony, you bitch to the developers.
"The PlayStation has a games library of over 500 titles. Roughly 20 - 30 of those were huge hits, and some of them only in niche genres (music/dance games etc.) The rest just.. Umm.. Sucked"
How is this different from any console? Seriously, perhaps you're thinking back in the days of the NES, when everything was golden and good. Here's a wake up call.. the NES is the PSX. It was the major marketshare, so it had the most games. A lot of them, incidentally, were shit. You may remember the good ones, but how about the 10-20 other mediocre ones that were alongside it on the store shelf? This is no different. Nil.
Personally, I say.. wait. Wait to buy, wait to pass judgement, wait to flame, wait to defend. Don't take a look at one system and the ghost of another, and try to make comparisons, ok?
Perhaps....
Far too many people have trouble with that last one...
I've got:
13.1GB 7200 RPM EIDE HD
AGP TNT2 w/ 32 MB RAM,
P2-350 bumped up to 400
192 MB RAM
Win98 (cringe)
I play religiously at 640*480. I am not in any clan, nor am I the best of the best. I just don't like getting disoriented. I don't aim for 120fps or anything. I aim for 30fps in a worst-case scenario. Period. When I'm playing a twitch game, the framerate should be above 30 as much as possible.
I don't CARE how high above 30 it is, but I do care how far below 30 it gets, and how often.
Generally right now I tend to get the texture detail up, and keep the resolution low. I just have more chance of keeping it above 30fps that way, while keeping things looking nice. Sure I like seeing those 1024*768 shots, but that's all I see with my setup.. shots, no movement.
Right now I have a setup that pretty much guarantees 30fps at 16-bit at 640*480. What I'm concerned with, is which of these cards is going to guarantee over 30 fps, at 32-bit color, at 1024*768? FSAA is an added bonus, and if the V5 can push 800*600 at that rate with it, I'll seriously look at it.
Seriously though, the powers of command-line vs. GUI still apply with pkzip vs. winzip. If I want to extract 100 zip files to the same directory.. one simple command. Same for vice-versa... what's all this drag-n-drop crap? ;)
One thing that kinda gets me.. how exactly is WinZip related to this? That is.. is it just a wrapper to pkunzip or is it actually a modified compression algorithm or what? If you'll recall, there actually was an 'official' PKZip for windows (though I do not know what the actual name of it was). Terrible interface though.. shame..
Katz will be missed, as many have said here before, his programs most likely changed the way we do computing today.
I've seen your arguement before. AOL fosters newbies who will eventually see the pure shit they are using and eventually 'grow up' to a 'real' ISP. I agree with it, but at the same time I think you're wrong.
Think about the average AOL user, ie: your mom, your grandparents, someone who's been enticed by the latest TV commercial. These are the people who use the computer only for word processing or for faxing. They don't need much else. They take this same "If it's got what I need, I'm happy" stance towards internet access. If AOL can give them stock quotes, e-mail, weather, shopping, IM's... why should they bother growing up?
This is the stance of the Common Everday Non-Techy Person, which is AOL's prime market. So they see a couple ads? They don't see a bunch of weird techy configuration stuff (my parents description of window's dial-up networking configs :P), they only see what they need and some minor hindrances.
My point is, more technical users (ie: those interested in computers, coders, gamers, etc.) will grow up to ISP's. However, this is a small fraction of AOL's user base, and that is why we will continue to have headaches like I've seen described here.
The AOL'ization of America was inevitable. If it wasn't AOL who came to fill the huge market gap that ISP's frankly can't deal with (while satisfying techies like us), someone else would. It's called business. All you elitist people out there are just going to have to realize that getting everyone online means getting everyone online, idiots and ignorants included. I'm reminded of a Dennis Miller quote: "Think of the average person in America. Now realize that 50% of America is dumber than that."
It's a pain, but we will have to deal
I've seen your arguement before. AOL fosters newbies who will eventually see the pure shit they are using and eventually 'grow up' to a 'real' ISP. I agree with it, but at the same time I think you're wrong. Think about the average AOL user, ie: your mom, your grandparents, someone who's been enticed by the latest TV commercial. These are the people who use the computer only for word processing or for faxing. They don't need much else. They take this same "If it's got what I need, I'm happy" stance towards internet access. If AOL can give them stock quotes, e-mail, weather, shopping, IM's... why should they bother growing up?. This is the stance of the Common Everday Non-Techy Person, which is AOL's prime market. So they see a couple ads? They don't see a bunch of weird techy configuration stuff (my parents description of window's dial-up networking configs :P), they only see what they need and some minor hindrances. My point is, more technical users (ie: those interested in computers, coders, gamers, etc.) will grow up to ISP's. However, this is a small fraction of AOL's user base, and that is why we will continue to have headaches like I've seen described here. The AOL'ization of America was inevitable. If it wasn't AOL who came to fill the huge market gap that ISP's frankly can't deal with (while satisfying techies like us), someone else would. It's called business. All you elitist people out there are just going to have to realize that getting everyone online means getting everyone online, idiots and ignorants included. I'm reminded of a Dennis Miller quote: "Think of the average person in America. Now realize that 50% of America is dumber than that." It's a pain, but we will have to deal.
The linked article has an example about how the graphics processing capability is so great that it would be suitable in the head of a tomahawk missile that needs to 'see' where it's going. While everyone in /. is going to be cracking jokes about this (speak softly and carry a palm pilot with missile guidance), someone tell me, please, how feasible is this?
No really, I'm asking. I'm not technically proficient enough to dissassemble a PS2, nor do I know how its innards work. I am no circuitry expert, just a Geek who's not afraid to take a peek.
I'll tell you why I think this is wrong, so you guys tell me where it is I'm screwing up. Japan woke up and noticed that, well gee, consoles are getting damn powerful. They're (once again) just about on par with PC's. Apparently, they're also just about on par with the tech inside of a tomahawk missile's guidance system. The tomahawk needs to be able to quickly process where it's at, so it's gotta do image recognition, which is no easy feat. Well, it wasn't anyway.
Now all of a sudden a playstation's circuitry could supposedly in some half-ass way be re-wired to do this task. So all the terrorist needs now is.. all the rest... casing, explosives, triggers, fuel, launchers.
Gee ya know, I'd think if someone had access to those resources they'd have access to a CPU. Actually.. aren't CPU's right now about the same in terms of raw computing power as the next-gen consoles? Hey, ya know, those things cost just slightly more too. Hey and they don't have customn circuitry to futz with either, they're general purpose things. Wouldn't be too hard to get a little CPU/Mobo/Linux missile guidance system (heh), at least no less than it would to rip out the innards of a customn designed system.
It's a given that this is FUBAR, but the question is are we going to start seeing more of this? Wouldn't surprise me. PC's have a huge consumer market and a ton of people like us to drive software and hardware development forward. Military? Once it works, it works, why bother upgrading?
So... talk amongst yourselves