Frankly, the idea of forcing people to upgrade their browsers is ludicrous. I still use IE 4.something for my normal browser duties. (Yeah, I primarily use Windows. So flame me if ya want.) You know why I use it? Because Netscape 6 is slow, Netscape 4.x is to damn buggy and unstable, Opera still doesn't format all pages correctly (although this might be because of outdated HTML code), and IMO IE 5.x has more features that I dislike than new features that I do like. IE 4 is fast, it's stable, and it still parses 99% of the pages I visit correctly. And, what about my old P100 laptop that still uses Win 95 and Netscape 4.x for browsing. Hell, I wonder if IE 5 or Netscape 6 will even run on it. And let's not talk about the legions of people who do have internet access and either 1) don't know how to upgrade their browser, or 2) have such outdated equipment that the majority of the new browsers won't exactly prove to be an advantage due to their increase in system resources. Oh, and what about those people using various internet appliances who cannot upgrade their browsers. IMHO, such a move would only serve to hinder more people that it would help. It would do more bad than good.
I personally refuse to buy products with attached mail-in rebates unless I am prepared to buy the product for the full retail price. Within the past year I have lost over $100 worth of rebates from various sources. They included 3Dfx, Kingston, and Cannon. Frankly, although $100 might not sound like a lot of money, it is when you are a poor, borke, unemployed college student. Besides, it's not so much that I lost the money that it is the principle of the matter. If these companies offer the rebate, and we the customers properly complete and meet the requirements for the rebates, they should give us our money. I also will not ever buy products from Fuji Cameras due to their denying rebates on the ground that the camera was priced less than the MSRP. I wonder if we could possibly have some legal recourse against actions such as these. --------------------------------------
Well, this just makes me glad that I don't live in Michigan. However, if a law such as this were to pass it could set a dangerous precedent that other states will follow. I personally like the certain amount of anonimity that the internet affords, and I really don't want some law enforcement official to know that it was me who accessed the Natalie Portman Grits pr0n site.
Tracking people online is rathe similar to a police officer tailing you around out in the real world. Do police tail everybody in the real world, watching their every move to see if they are committing a crime? Of course not. The only tail the criminals or suspected criminals. So, why should it be any different online? Why should they be allowed to track everybody online. As the news post said, this law will most likely just identify everybody except for the criminals. This law sucks. If you live in Michigan I urge you to write your state legislature expressing your displeasure at such a law.
Geez... Next thing you know we'll be living in the UK where they screen all communications and insurance companies use genetic testing.;)
These types of regulation are absolutely rediculous. I seriously doubt that M rated games are having a detrimental effect on today's younger population. Violence is in human nature and you can't blame it on video games. Back before video games how many kids used to go outside and torture small insects for fun? Come on, it was part of growing up for most young boys. Or, you could just look at Roadrunner cartoons where ol' Wile E. would get crushed by an anvil or fall from a cliff. Did anybody ever think about the ramifications that kind of violence could have on kids? Hell no.
I'm kind of worried about the fate of the video game industry entirely if regulations such as this are passed. Quake, UT, and Halflife and all of it's various derivitaves together probably count for over half of the video game industry. (I'm not sure of the numbers but I'd be willing to bet my life savings on this. All $20 of it.) I've been playing violent vodeo games since back in the days of Mario. (You jumped on people's heads for Christ's sake. That's pretty violent.) I've been playing M rated games, or games that would have had an M rating since back in the days of Doom when I was probably 10 or 11, and I've come out no worse for the wear. In fact, I am probably one of the least violent people you will ever meet. It's not the games. It's the parents. Similarly, it's not the ISDA or Congress's place to try to keep these games out of kids hands. It's the parents. We as a society should not have to rely on some outside regulations committe to help us raise our children. This simply shows how lazy and complacent the American populace has become when it comes to child care. The prevalent attitude these days is to just sit them down in front of the TV and ignore them. How sad.
One more thing that I wonder about is R rated movies. Are the same kind of regulations in place for movies meant for mature audiences? If not, why is the video game industry then targeted in such a way?
Frankly, I think that regulations like this stink, and that if they pass I might finally have to write that letter to my congressman that I always talk about.
Its important that this is really a big leap forward, and this is made clear to developers before they'll even think about using this kind of code.
And that's where Aspect Oriented programming such as Aspect J will come in. Aspect oriented programming most likely is a big enough leap forward for developers to accept it whenever it goes mainstream. There are some definite clear cut advantages that aspect oriented programming has over OO. But It's late and I don't feel like listing any of them. Visit the site if you haven't already.
Actually, I did see that it was a money-grubbing corporation and I in fact said as much in my original post.... ahhh... I'm tired. I already forgot where I was going with this post. --------------------------------------
This is actually rather scary. Am I the only person who thinks that the UK is starting to look more and more like a police state ala 1984? Granted this wasn't the government this time, but still. How many more human rights violations will occur before somebody decides that they've had enough? Although I do not look forward to the next four years under Dubya here in the US, I'm certainly glad that I'm not living in the UK right now.
How about drinking games!? Those are zero sum games. There never really is a clear cut winner. In fact, even when you "lose" a round, you are still winning. After all, you're getting drunk and isn't that the point of the game? Eveybody just keeps playing until they're too drunk to be able to play anymore.
Well, I guess there is the possibility of running out of alcohol, but then everybody is a loser.
Hmm.. yeah. You have a good point about the cable TV. (Actually, that's why we switched to Satellite back home. We still get the same crappy channels, but we also get a few more than our local cable company provides and all of it for cheaper.:)
Anyway, a tier system sounds kind of good. That way I could alter my plan for the few months that I am at home on 56k. (Assuming we don't get dsl in town soon.) However, if I am going to pay money, I would much prefer higher quality music than mp3's, on a preferably non-proprietary music format. Preferrably one that I could easily make music CD's out of and mp3's for my Rio. In other words, a high-quality music format with no strings attached. I'm mostly just affraid that there will be strings attached, and that the record companies/RIAA will try to screw people out of their money.
But maybe I'm just being pessimistic. I do agree that subscription based service is where the industry is headed, but I'm just afraid at what the cost will be. Who knows, maybe people will continue to use the other, less tracable forms of peer to peer sharing like OpenNap or GNUtella.
Although I think you may be right on the track with this idea, I still feel that $30/month is way more to charge. The biggest problem being the large percentage of the population that's on dial-up. However, one must not discount the similarly large base of college students, who are typically not as well funded as the rest of the population. I for one, couldn't afford $30/month although it is a reasonable price. Furthermore, for the 3 months that I am at home on my pitiful 56k modem, I do not wish to pay $30/month. I download very few songs while on dial-up, mostly because of the long download times during which I may or may not get disconnected. Lastly, were the record industry to provide some alternate form of digital music, it would most likely be some kind of proprietary format, for which you have to download and/or pay for their proprietary media player. Not to mention, protection against mp3's meaning that I could not use my Rio. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they concocted some kind of protection scheme against burning to CD for such a music format. I wouldn't put it past the music industry at all.
I'm sure nobody here cares, but when I took the AP English test a few years ago one of the essays that we had to write involved some correspondence between Coca-Cola and a book publisher. Apparently, the book publisher was advertising some book (I can't remember which one now) as being "The Real Thing." Well, since Coke's slogan was "It's The Real Thing" they decided to take offense to this and sent some kind of cease and desist letter to the publisher. Anyway, the publisher sent back a letter something along the lines of "Although we could see where a person could walk into a book store, pick up a book with the slogan 'The Real Thing' and mistake it for a soft drink, we won't cancel our advertising campaign." The book publisher's reply was really quit witty and made good light of the situation.
Does anybody remember how D3D had an entire system set up to taunt your oponents in multiplayer? There's nothing quite like being able to hit a button and hear Duke say something witty like "Your face, your ass. What's the difference?" Heh. I've even taken to using a few of those taunts in my Counter Strike games.
Woo! Thanks. I know that there's also an HTML tag out there that you can apply so that a browser won't process the enclosed tags, but my HTML is extremely rusty, and I can't for the life of me remember what it is. I never thought of doing it your way, though...
Although, now that I look at the "Allowed HTML" codes, I don't exactly recognize any codes as being the HTML code I'm looking for, so...
The problem is that to do all this would require some amount of effort on the part of the online merchant. *sarcasm* After all, why should they perform such measures when it's much quicker and easier to do everything the insecure way? The only person that gets hurt is the consumer, so let's leave it up to them to determine if their credit card is stolen. */sarcasm* Perhaps we should have some sort of legislation requiring online merchants to institute some kind of security policy/measures. That's not a bad idea is it? (Or do we already have something similar and my ignorant self just doesn't know about it?)
...and how the frick do I get the browser to/not/ process my made up html codes... --------------------------------------
Wow! 1 in 250 chance of somebody getting hit!? The odds of winning the powerball lottery here in Louisiana are something in the range of 1 in 80M. But in all reality, the odds of an Iridium satellite actually hitting me are really quite low. Just by using basic combinatorics, one can easily see that for any one particular person there is only approximately a 1 in 1.5 trillion chance of them getting hit by an Iridium satellite. See, I really do have a better chance of winning the lottery! (Although, since I practically failed my last test, somebody probably should check my math.) --------------------------------------
That's a very good point. With the current pace of medical progression however, we will have to answer more and more of these questions as time goes on. And I belive that as medical technology progresses, so will our ethical values change. Would it really be murder if the body was specifically grown for another individual? By today's standards yes, but who knows how long it will be before such an act is not seen as murder.
I know that this sounds fantastic, but if this technique could be used to regenerate spinal cord tissue, then why wouldn't we be able to perform full brain transplants. Imagine if we could "grow" new bodies for those whose bodies have severe genetic defects, and then transfer their brain to the new, geneticly pure body. We could then graft the bone marrow to the spinal cord to make the necessary connections to the brain. Viola! The little kid down the street who has muscular dystrophy can now go outside to play with all the other kids.
And by the way there is a fair number of physically challenged people living on medicine to sustain their life who have contributed considerably to technology, art or entreat associations.
I believe Stephen Hawking(sp?) would be the supreme example of this. He has contributed possibly as much to the science of physics as did Albert Einstein. And yet he is among the most physically challenged of our society.
Further more getting back to the survival of the fittest notion. Who's to say that we aren't more fit simply because of our ability to produce medicines that can help us to sustain life for just a little bit longer?
I would like to say the now cliche "We shouldn't play God," but i shouldn't say that since I don't think there is a God
But if we play God, then would there not be a god? In which case it would be alright for you to use the cliche. But then that would also mean that the vast majority of society would end up worshiping themselves because they are playing God and yet also worship God. But then, how is this any differnt from society today? A large portion of society seems to be a bunch of self-worshiping pricks. What a coincidence that they also seem to be among the most religously adament of society.
[Let me apologize now for offending anybody. Years of living in the bible belt of America have left me with a very jaded attitude of religion.]
The sad thing is that there were probably people like you, saying the exact same things duing the plagues of the 14th century. How exactly do they attack the vary basis of humanity? What's wrong with a technique that could possibly cure neural diseases such as Parkinson's Disease? The idea of humanity is just that. It's an idea. Meaning it only exists in your head. Just because we might have a pig valve implanted in our heart or any number of other medical techniques based on animals does not make us any less than who we really are. In fact, I would venture to say that would make us even more human, as we would be even more unique than the rest. Furthermore, I simply cannot see where it would compromise our morals to employ medical technology discovered in animals or technology that employs the use of parts from animals. Because after all, like Shoeboy said, we as human beings, homo sapiens, are nothing more than animals ourselves. Our intelligence makes us no different from the common house cat in that respect.
Actually, I truthfully prefer ICQ. I used ICQ99b for quite a while until my most recent format. I do absolutely love the way it doesn't pop up when you get a message. Combine that with the offline messaging feature and it makes ICQ great for trying to coordinate an online game of Counter Strike with friends around the nation. The only problem I had with it was that the vast majority of my friends don't use it. And the ones that do also use AIM, so I never bothered to reinstall it after my format. My roommate however, uses 2000 and it doesn't have any ads as well. And as for squelching the pop-ups in AIM, I usually just keep an away message up with the "disable windows" checkbox checked. I believe that you can still hear when somebody IMs you, but you can answer it at your own leisure.
As for the alternate versions of ICQ, I believe that I used a version in the past for linux entitled Licq, and had no complaints with it's operation. And AIM Express (the java applet) is also a pretty nice little utility, especially when combined with the latest version of AIM that stores your buddy list on their servers, as well as locally. AIMe's great when you're at some public terminal or a non-windoze box to be able to instant message a friend with a question. Not to mention that keeping your buddylist stored on their server makes it much easier for me to keep my list coordinated between all three of my machines.
Why would anyone want to leave an open decentralized interactive chat service like IRC
Who said we even used IRC in the first place?
proprietary
*shrugs* what's that matter if all my friends also use the proprietary software?
forces you to upgrade your client (and OS if needed) every time and again,
When has this happened? It seems to me that all older versions of AIM are always backwards compatible with the newer ones. As for ICQ, I don't use it much, but I believe it is the same case here.
only supports one or two OSes
Yeah, ok. You do have a point here. But, in all fairness to all us *nix users, Windoze and MAC OS are slightly more mainstream.
changes their protocols to deliberately foil free implementations spams you with ads and calls it the "price" for your using the SW free
I don't really see the problem here. It costs money to maintain those servers that AIM and ICQ use. That's why the put ads in the AIM client. To try and make money off this thing. After all, they didn't have to make it in the first place. And all those free versions out there just use the resources of AOL's servers without providing anything in return. They're in it to make money, and I don't think they ever claimed otherwise. Besides, it's not hard to ignore an ad. I don't think I could tell you any of the last ten ads I saw on AIM.
tells you what you can and cannot say
Again, I'm not sure where you got this, but even if it is so, I don't think I've ever heard a story where AOL has chosen to enforce this policy.
reserves the power to cancel your account for any reason
In AIM and ICQ, AOL is providing a service free of charge. Furthermore, we agree to a liscensing agreement in order to use this free service. Seeing as we have not paid any money to use this service, we should not be able to complain if they wish to cancel our free account. That's not to say that I wouldn't be miffed if my account were canceled, but since I have no monetary stake in this service, I see no real reason that I should maintain control over my membership.
Now, that's not to say that IRC sucks either. It is a very nice service. However, it also lacks the UI of AIM and ICQ that, although have features represented in IRC, provide them in a more user friendly environment, one that I have found very convienient.
Slashdot Mirror
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I personally refuse to buy products with attached mail-in rebates unless I am prepared to buy the product for the full retail price. Within the past year I have lost over $100 worth of rebates from various sources. They included 3Dfx, Kingston, and Cannon. Frankly, although $100 might not sound like a lot of money, it is when you are a poor, borke, unemployed college student. Besides, it's not so much that I lost the money that it is the principle of the matter. If these companies offer the rebate, and we the customers properly complete and meet the requirements for the rebates, they should give us our money. I also will not ever buy products from Fuji Cameras due to their denying rebates on the ground that the camera was priced less than the MSRP. I wonder if we could possibly have some legal recourse against actions such as these.
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Well, this just makes me glad that I don't live in Michigan. However, if a law such as this were to pass it could set a dangerous precedent that other states will follow. I personally like the certain amount of anonimity that the internet affords, and I really don't want some law enforcement official to know that it was me who accessed the Natalie Portman Grits pr0n site.
Tracking people online is rathe similar to a police officer tailing you around out in the real world. Do police tail everybody in the real world, watching their every move to see if they are committing a crime? Of course not. The only tail the criminals or suspected criminals. So, why should it be any different online? Why should they be allowed to track everybody online. As the news post said, this law will most likely just identify everybody except for the criminals. This law sucks. If you live in Michigan I urge you to write your state legislature expressing your displeasure at such a law.
Geez... Next thing you know we'll be living in the UK where they screen all communications and insurance companies use genetic testing. ;)
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These types of regulation are absolutely rediculous. I seriously doubt that M rated games are having a detrimental effect on today's younger population. Violence is in human nature and you can't blame it on video games. Back before video games how many kids used to go outside and torture small insects for fun? Come on, it was part of growing up for most young boys. Or, you could just look at Roadrunner cartoons where ol' Wile E. would get crushed by an anvil or fall from a cliff. Did anybody ever think about the ramifications that kind of violence could have on kids? Hell no.
I'm kind of worried about the fate of the video game industry entirely if regulations such as this are passed. Quake, UT, and Halflife and all of it's various derivitaves together probably count for over half of the video game industry. (I'm not sure of the numbers but I'd be willing to bet my life savings on this. All $20 of it.) I've been playing violent vodeo games since back in the days of Mario. (You jumped on people's heads for Christ's sake. That's pretty violent.) I've been playing M rated games, or games that would have had an M rating since back in the days of Doom when I was probably 10 or 11, and I've come out no worse for the wear. In fact, I am probably one of the least violent people you will ever meet. It's not the games. It's the parents. Similarly, it's not the ISDA or Congress's place to try to keep these games out of kids hands. It's the parents. We as a society should not have to rely on some outside regulations committe to help us raise our children. This simply shows how lazy and complacent the American populace has become when it comes to child care. The prevalent attitude these days is to just sit them down in front of the TV and ignore them. How sad.
One more thing that I wonder about is R rated movies. Are the same kind of regulations in place for movies meant for mature audiences? If not, why is the video game industry then targeted in such a way?
Frankly, I think that regulations like this stink, and that if they pass I might finally have to write that letter to my congressman that I always talk about.
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And that's where Aspect Oriented programming such as Aspect J will come in. Aspect oriented programming most likely is a big enough leap forward for developers to accept it whenever it goes mainstream. There are some definite clear cut advantages that aspect oriented programming has over OO. But It's late and I don't feel like listing any of them. Visit the site if you haven't already.
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Actually, I did see that it was a money-grubbing corporation and I in fact said as much in my original post.... ahhh... I'm tired. I already forgot where I was going with this post.
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Ironically enough, IIRC Marina Sirtis is Greek.
Yes I'm a geek.
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Well, I guess there is the possibility of running out of alcohol, but then everybody is a loser.
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Anyway, a tier system sounds kind of good. That way I could alter my plan for the few months that I am at home on 56k. (Assuming we don't get dsl in town soon.) However, if I am going to pay money, I would much prefer higher quality music than mp3's, on a preferably non-proprietary music format. Preferrably one that I could easily make music CD's out of and mp3's for my Rio. In other words, a high-quality music format with no strings attached. I'm mostly just affraid that there will be strings attached, and that the record companies/RIAA will try to screw people out of their money.
But maybe I'm just being pessimistic. I do agree that subscription based service is where the industry is headed, but I'm just afraid at what the cost will be. Who knows, maybe people will continue to use the other, less tracable forms of peer to peer sharing like OpenNap or GNUtella.
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I'm sure nobody here cares, but when I took the AP English test a few years ago one of the essays that we had to write involved some correspondence between Coca-Cola and a book publisher. Apparently, the book publisher was advertising some book (I can't remember which one now) as being "The Real Thing." Well, since Coke's slogan was "It's The Real Thing" they decided to take offense to this and sent some kind of cease and desist letter to the publisher. Anyway, the publisher sent back a letter something along the lines of "Although we could see where a person could walk into a book store, pick up a book with the slogan 'The Real Thing' and mistake it for a soft drink, we won't cancel our advertising campaign." The book publisher's reply was really quit witty and made good light of the situation.
Anyway, not that anybody cares...
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Although, now that I look at the "Allowed HTML" codes, I don't exactly recognize any codes as being the HTML code I'm looking for, so...
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Wow! 1 in 250 chance of somebody getting hit!? The odds of winning the powerball lottery here in Louisiana are something in the range of 1 in 80M. But in all reality, the odds of an Iridium satellite actually hitting me are really quite low. Just by using basic combinatorics, one can easily see that for any one particular person there is only approximately a 1 in 1.5 trillion chance of them getting hit by an Iridium satellite. See, I really do have a better chance of winning the lottery! (Although, since I practically failed my last test, somebody probably should check my math.)
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I believe Stephen Hawking(sp?) would be the supreme example of this. He has contributed possibly as much to the science of physics as did Albert Einstein. And yet he is among the most physically challenged of our society.
Further more getting back to the survival of the fittest notion. Who's to say that we aren't more fit simply because of our ability to produce medicines that can help us to sustain life for just a little bit longer?
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But if we play God, then would there not be a god? In which case it would be alright for you to use the cliche. But then that would also mean that the vast majority of society would end up worshiping themselves because they are playing God and yet also worship God. But then, how is this any differnt from society today? A large portion of society seems to be a bunch of self-worshiping pricks. What a coincidence that they also seem to be among the most religously adament of society.
[Let me apologize now for offending anybody. Years of living in the bible belt of America have left me with a very jaded attitude of religion.]
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As for the alternate versions of ICQ, I believe that I used a version in the past for linux entitled Licq, and had no complaints with it's operation. And AIM Express (the java applet) is also a pretty nice little utility, especially when combined with the latest version of AIM that stores your buddy list on their servers, as well as locally. AIMe's great when you're at some public terminal or a non-windoze box to be able to instant message a friend with a question. Not to mention that keeping your buddylist stored on their server makes it much easier for me to keep my list coordinated between all three of my machines.
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Who said we even used IRC in the first place?
proprietary
*shrugs* what's that matter if all my friends also use the proprietary software?
forces you to upgrade your client (and OS if needed) every time and again,
When has this happened? It seems to me that all older versions of AIM are always backwards compatible with the newer ones. As for ICQ, I don't use it much, but I believe it is the same case here.
only supports one or two OSes
Yeah, ok. You do have a point here. But, in all fairness to all us *nix users, Windoze and MAC OS are slightly more mainstream.
changes their protocols to deliberately foil free implementations
spams you with ads and calls it the "price" for your using the SW free
I don't really see the problem here. It costs money to maintain those servers that AIM and ICQ use. That's why the put ads in the AIM client. To try and make money off this thing. After all, they didn't have to make it in the first place. And all those free versions out there just use the resources of AOL's servers without providing anything in return. They're in it to make money, and I don't think they ever claimed otherwise. Besides, it's not hard to ignore an ad. I don't think I could tell you any of the last ten ads I saw on AIM.
tells you what you can and cannot say
Again, I'm not sure where you got this, but even if it is so, I don't think I've ever heard a story where AOL has chosen to enforce this policy.
reserves the power to cancel your account for any reason
In AIM and ICQ, AOL is providing a service free of charge. Furthermore, we agree to a liscensing agreement in order to use this free service. Seeing as we have not paid any money to use this service, we should not be able to complain if they wish to cancel our free account. That's not to say that I wouldn't be miffed if my account were canceled, but since I have no monetary stake in this service, I see no real reason that I should maintain control over my membership.
Now, that's not to say that IRC sucks either. It is a very nice service. However, it also lacks the UI of AIM and ICQ that, although have features represented in IRC, provide them in a more user friendly environment, one that I have found very convienient.
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