I used to think standards were a good idea. It would be wonderful if everything could interoperate like it's supposed to. More and more though with the rampant effects if both technical attack in the from of worms and sploits in addition to the Ass*ole attacts in the form of patents and lawsuits, we need to look back to nature.
Funny thing you mentioning nature... because as I recall, human evolution (not that I was actually there, mind you) involved not only the development of positive traits like the opposable thumb and the ability to stand up on two legs, but standardizations like language. When people learned to communicate with each other, when they standardized on a particular grunt meaning "food" and a different grunt meaning "threat," they were able to coordinate, increase the chances of their survival, etc. Language was the necessary beginnings of human interoperability. Incompatability meant ostracism, death, etc.
What does this have to do with the current topic? Plenty! The notion of claiming a standard would be like one proto-human claiming a language for his own and attacking anyone who used similar patterns. How long do you think that sorry schmuck would last on his own? In my opinion, too long, no matter how quickly he got eaten by a tiger! Public standards should be free, and anything which someone wants to claim as their own should never be allowed to become a public standard.
Now, for the other line of thinking that this whole thing spurred...
The big difference between humans and computers is that humans grow up with a huge database of information about the world, permissible actions, prohibited actions, and a certain amount of common sense.
Humans consider information by trying to integrate it into their experiences, and either accepting it if it fits, or, if it doesn't fit, trying to determine whether this new information is bad or they had gotten bad information from another source.
Computers will believe whatever crap you tell them.
But computers are operated by humans. The problem is that many humans (none of whom will read this on Slashdot, unfortunately) tend not to understand computers, and don't know enough to tell them not to accept any crap that comes down the pike. And even then, people who do know what they're doing only have to be caught off guard for one moment. "Social Engineering" can be summed up as the art or science of getting information or results by feeding bad information to good humans.
(And yes, I know, some lack the common sense and critical thinking skills to differentiate fantasy from reality or correct information from incorrect. We could say that the information is "bad," but I find it easier to believe that we have subhumans in our midst. >:) Clearly we must find them and keep them contained for the benefit of the species.)
The steps seem clear, but only because it's Sunday morning and I've had my coffee:
Better computer education,
Computers that are better at identifying where code comes from or what it does before the user clicks OK,
And let's round up them homo ovinus before they breed any more!
Of course, one of the biggest selling games of all time is clearly causing the breakdown of law and order in society. GTA has only sold 20 million copies - what are the odds that one of those 20 million people would be some kind of freak anyway?
Pretty damn good, actually. During the days when D&D was under fire for similar charges, organizations bent on leading the witch hunt -- er, charge -- would cite how many violent incidents were to blame for the "game."
The funny thing is that the violence rates for gamers were *lower* when compared to the average of the population (after the most tenuous and spurious attempts to implicate RPGs were swatted down). Games can have redeeming social values, if people would take the time to understand them.
We could use more studies like that... it could even be a major project. Take an average week, and note the causes of every single death that occurs in the USA. Then compare the statistics.
Some people find it much easier to fly off the handle than accept and process facts. By corollary, some people find it much easier to embark on a multi-state killing spree inspired by their personal vision of a game than to actually sit down and comprehend the moral of that game: that the multi-state killing spree usually ends up bad for everybody. Holding the makers of the game responsible in either case is not only pointless but counterproductive, since it takes the responsibilities off of the idiots and puts them in the laps of people who really DO know better but can't possibly exercise that sort of control over everybody.
What emerges? Gameplay? Is it just bubbling underneath the surface, where it rises like a big submarine?
In a word, yes. That's what game designers are talking about when they look for and deal with "emergent strategies" -- try as they might to create a fair, even environment, sometimes some paths toward a goal are easier than others. Even if a strategy would seem to be counter-intuitive, flaws in the game allow it to succeed. That's an "emergent strategy."
In a game which has no obvious strategies or goals, pretty much any form of game play which appears out of thin air is "emergent". People don't go into "The Sims Online" expecting much more than a chat room, and yet they have a mafia. Where did that come from?
Good luck even finding a dialing machine, by the way. I don't think they're even being produced anymore, but rather being traded and sold second-hand. You'll see them go for upward of $10k on ebay now and again.
Bah! Find a dialing machine...?
The first computer I used with a modem was a TRS-80 model 1. The modem was 300 baud and didn't have a tone generator -- once I had it off the hook, I had to call a set of delay loops that would click the connection on and off the required number of pulses for each digit. I wrote my own address book to keep track of the various BBSes I would call.
And yes, I did consider writing a script to automatically dial blocks of numbers in series to find other BBSes that I might not know about. It wasn't difficult; just seven registers and a handler to determine whether a connection would be valid or not, and I would've had it there. It should not technically be more difficult now to do something similar. Legally, absolutely, and rightly so, but if one weren't to be bothered by such trivialities like the law, technically it's not that hard, even today.
Oh, and that old wardialer I'd conceived of? I never did run it, because I figured that even one hang-up call might be considered annoying. Years later, it turns out that I'd be right. Moreover, it turns out that I then knew more than many people working in the telemarketing industry know now.
I bought a car alarm for my car. If I find someone trying to break into my car, can I charge the burgler for the cost of the alarm?
outragous? yes.
I bought a car alarm for my car. If I find someone trying to break into my car and need to update my car alarm, can I charge the burgler for the cost of the NEW alarm?
outragous? HELL YES.
And to take the analogy to its most excellent extreme:
I bought a car alarm for my car. If I find that someone has taped a note to my steering wheel telling me that my car alarm is wired incorrectly, and lists ways to
fix it, can I charge the cost of the burglar for the costs of the new alarm AND a the time and effort it takes to inventory my car to see if he took anything while he was in there?
(And you know something? It just occurred to me: he demonstrated that the system's security was flawed. If they find signs of intrusion, why are they so sure the guy that told them about the problem is the only one to get in there? Shooting the messenger is a sure-fire way to make sure you get fewer messages in the future.)
As someone else pointed out, analogy isn't the best form of argument. However, it does very well to illustrate how poorly the "logic" of a given solution applies to other real-life problems.
(From Dilbert, on reorganization to solve problems:) PHB: If your car has a flat tire, what do you do? Wally: If I'm you, I rotate the tires and drive home.
(Sadly, the Dilbert archives don't go back to October 31, 1995, the original publication date.)
Other posters have added their commentary to this already, including mentioning the potential for tampering with critical systems and the possibility that it can escalate to something more dangerously non-cyber.
The question arises, though: okay, we now have cyber-war. How can we possibly force cyber-peace on them? I don't know of any political body which can put them on probation or give them a temporary disconnect/"stand in the corner", nor is there any established penalty for violating protocols; if there was such a thing, we wouldn't have the problems with oriental spam we have now.
I see this as a very bad thing because on the digital frontier it represents yet another nasty land war. They could let it simmer, they could find some way to make it worse, or someone could impose civility and order upon them. Either way, it demonstrates that people with sufficient motivation can't be trusted to mind their own business and play neighborly with other peoples' systems.
Any measure which is sufficient to contain the problem will stifle the air of freedom and community which makes the Internet a good place when everything runs smoothly. How's that for a consequence?
I can only think of one PS2 game that was both online-capable and had some voice chat capabilities. That was SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals. The big boxed set actually comes with a Logitech USB headset, rebranded for the SOCOM package.
(Incidentally, the headset as it comes out of the box will plug and play nicely with your computer too, as I found out one night by experimenting.)
One big problem with VOIP console games is that they absolutely require broadband to play. It says so on the box, too. A player's voice-stream takes up quite a bit of bandwidth, so a mere dial-up account won't cut it.
The other problem with VOIP console games is that they need a microphone. SOCOM got around that particular problem by bundling a microphone in with the game, but that's the only game I've seen do that yet.
Consent is an issue. Emotional attachment is an issue. Wasted effort is an issue. None, however, are
the issue. The issue is that people don't like losing. (Permanent death) amounts to a statement of total, that's-all-folks loss. There's no wheedling out of it; it's final. That's what people dislike about it.
Designing Virtual Worlds, Richard R. Bartle, New Riders Press, p. 417
The whole point of the article was that punishments had to be introduced into games to encourage players to approach problems differently and not to use cheating or cheesy emergent strategies. It isn't about the designers not trying to excel, it's about the designers forcing the players to excel. The introduction of negative consequences forces players to think through their actions, or to act much more quickly and carefully when the time comes.
The problem occurs when the importance or difficulty of the task doesn't match up with the severity of the punishment. Too little punishment or consequences and the game is seen as boring or easy (designers hate that perception), too much and the game is compared to prison rape.
I've never had or even seen an idiot boss. The closest thing I've seen is one boss (not mine) who thought that the only way to get people to do anything was to scream at them. People mostly just ignored him.
Idiocy comes in many forms, grasshopper.
I had a boss once who (no foolin'!) asked me if it was possible to track internet users by GPS. Clearly, he was a dip.
But depending on the role the boss plays in the organization, he (or she) has to understand many different things: the product or service the company produces, the tech the company uses to do what it does, management of the company's resources and inventory, its finances, and especially its people.
Among skills in the people category is motivating workers, giving instructions, solving interpersonal problems, and getting feedback. If he gives instructions in such a way that people fail to listen to him, or he causes more interpersonal problems than he resolves, then congratulations! Houston, we have achieved idiot!
Let's start by looking at what it is the average business actually does, shall we? They either sell some sort of product (like a manufactured good) or service (which creates or utilizes a product; looked at another way, the product being sold is the manufacturing itself).
Who is buying the product or service? People that want their stuff advertised.
Who is getting paid for the product or service? The spammer.
What is the product or service? Ah, now here's where it gets interesting.
Many people cited that the difference is scale, that if you had several hundred menus dropped off on your doorstep daily, you'd be miffed. There's another problem with that analogy, though...
In the fast-food place example, they're the producer, you're the prospective customer, and they are telling you about their product. This is a relatively non-intrusive form of advertising (assuming the menus aren't dropped off by the truckload).
In the spammer's case, they're the producer, someone else is the customer, and you are the product. They are trying to sell your attention. But first they have to get your attention without paying for it first.
This is my objection to all advertising, but especially to spamming: that the waste of bandwidth, disk space, and time trying to deal with the inundating tide of mailbox crap is tantamount to theft, and you are the victim.
This is why colas sell 'image' instead of 'this cola tastes good', for instance. Its called 'selling the sizzle, not the steak', and is pretty much 101 in marketing.
In much the same way, the studios' scapegoating of text messaging could be called "blaming the fart, not the ass."
The utter and complete irony of this whole thing is not lost on me. Who here remembers the article that Wired Magazine ran on Hollywood's tracking boards? The one in which Hollywood's studio people would boost or slam a movie, often without even reading the script, and from that information alone deciding whether to produce a picture or not?
Hollywood should stop buying its own sizzle and take a good look at what's making that smell. The Wired article above mentions a movie by name, I recall: Kangaroo Jack. It had buzz, they said. And we all know how that turned out, right? Mind you, it could always have been worse...
So why is the average price per system $1,900,000/260 = $7300, when the Cluster Node XServe goes for $2799 retail? Is the Navy getting a lot of extra hardware to go with this?
Man, those add-ons will knife you in the wallet!
The article doesn't get into specifics, but figure: submarines probably require very specialize mil-spec rack mountings, cabling, and for all we know cameras and monitors too. It is for an image manipulation system, after all, and they need *some* way to capture and later display the images after they manipulate them.
When most people point at the prices of equipment from government contractors and scream bloody blue murder, they don't take into account that the precision and sometimes specialized purposes of the equipment will naturally increase the prices. Or they do take it into account and claim that they can't possibly need that much precision.
You want a "Story That Wouldn't Die" story? Look no further than Planet of the Apes. I mean the original series of films, not the contemporary remake.
The production staff concocted a good, popular movie with a sharp twist ending on a relatively small budget.
Good enough? Nope. The studio wanted another. The crew didn't really want to do a second movie because the first was hard enough. Charlton Heston didn't want to do the second one either. The film crew managed to convince him to do the second one by showing him a script which would all but guarantee he'd never have to do another one ever again. Oh, and the studio said they had less budget to make this one with too.
And it did well too. Was the studio satisfied? Hell no! They figured there was still money in that cash cow, so they had to keep milking. Somehow, working from the end of the frigging world they had to create a script for a third film. Oh, and could they do it again with even less money this time?
And so it continued--as far as I can remember, every movie in the PotA series was made with a smaller budget. And each subsequent film suffered for it. The makeup effects that everyone had in the first movie were reduced to major characters in each subsequent film; crowd scenes in later movies looked worse and worse, until they no longer had crowd scenes because the crew couldn't afford as many extras!
Personally, by the fifth I think the series was running on fumes, but they still made a sixth. And taken as a whole, the hexology made a certain sense, but the series suffered greatly because it was forced to dance to faster and faster music in the same steadily worn-down shoes, to coin a metaphor. But it got to where it did by clever writing, good directing, and more than a little dumb luck.
Which brings up the question, why would people want to violate continuity and push something way past its prime? Because someone thinks they can get more money by doing so. Thus has the conflict forever run between the worlds of art and profit.
Sound to me like the marketplace is deciding whether or not I can exercise my fair use rights.
Not quite. The response was saying that the sellers have the right to put their product in whatever tight, restrictive, packaging they want. The quality of the product may be impacted severely, or completely eliminated with such restrictions, but it is their right to produce the product in that way.
And according to that same response, the consumer does not have the right to remove the restrictions to use the product in ways other than the seller will allow. In short, the consumer is buying a pig-in-a-poke, and must keep the pig in the poke, even if it means he can't use the pig as he wants.
It is, as you observed, a seller's market, as the sellers rights to produce the product in their way seem to be trumping the buyer's rights to use the produce in their way. And if you were selling product, you'd trump your buyer's rights to use as well.
The consumer's responsibility then is to consider the desirability of the product, weigh it against the terms of use, and decide whether it's worth the price or not.
Yes, this IS leading up to one of those "Boycott the Music Industry!" messages, but at least I think I built up to it in a much more rational manner. Most people say that just because they hate the music industry. I'm saying it now because I assert that the music simply isn't worth it.
Quick, we're sinking! Bolt on more lifeboats!
on
AOL: Amazon Who?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Okay, so let's see if I understand this correctly...
AOL, one of the largest (and arguably hoariest) national internet service providers around, is losing business because of some questionable business practices and needs to generate more revenue.
In order to do this, they've severed ties with a prominent internet business (Amazon) and are going to attempt to run their own physical media music store...
...bearing in mind that the music industry is also taking a royal screwing due in one way or another to their own questionable business practices. People are avoiding buying CDs for whatever reason. (Either because they can get their music online through P2P, because they think the current catalog selections are tepid crap, or because they are trying to boycott the industry. More likely a combination of the three.)
Excuse me? Where's the sense in this?? If you have a business model that's doing poorly, you are not supposed to tack on another business model that's also doing poorly! If the problem is too much fat, the solution is not to tack more on.
As someone at Adbusters said, "Economists must learn to subtract." While the specific application is different in this case, the basic principle holds true for most businessmen, accountants, and marketers who can only think of "bigger" and "more profitable" and not "streamlined" and "more responsible."
For a bunch geeks, a bunch of people hear such do seem to be hating a potentially cool new technology.
Come on, can you blame them? The way business is run these days, people are leery of anything to do with advertising. You should take warning when the technically sophisticated are concerned about a technology.
It's almost axiomatic now: if someone develops a new somethingorother "to make peoples' lives easier," some company (or more likely, scads and scads of them) will find a way to abuse it. Spam and pop-ups plague our email and browsing experiences. The new technology will come, and shortly after that will come the matching exploit (because hacks are supposed to be illegal).
The technology is intended to provide information, yes, but there are two possible methods of abuse:
1. Undesired information could be given to the user (nuisance), or
2. Unintended information could be obtained from the user (violation of privacy).
In the case of 1, there's always pop-up, incessant, or just plain annoying ads. And depending on how standardized the phone system is, much worse. Imagine pointing your phone at a link and discovering that you've just downloaded a virus. Oopsie! Admittedly, it depends on how secure your phone is, but if it involves getting information to your phone, someone will come up with what they think is a way to make money by sending you information that they don't care that you don't want.
In the case of 2, the information has to get to you somehow. What if someone comes up with an exploit which downloads your phone book? Uses your phone number to look up all sorts of personal information on you? Tracks your movements?
Continuing in that binary vein, remember that there are two conditions under which people fear technology:
1. They don't understand it, or
2. They understand it, and are worried that there are a lot of people who will misuse it.
Most of those/.ers who fear this newish technology understand hyperlinks, wireless communications, and so forth. They fear it solely for that second reason. And it doesn't have to be about the world ending. It just has to do with getting really annoyed with someone who's using your cell phone in unexpected ways.
Along the same vein as the parent, there's Apple Hungary, which admittedly appears to lag a bit behind the home office.
Open the two together and note the differences in typeface. And why is there no mention of Jaguar/Panther/Anything 10.x.x on the Hungary site?
The multinationalization efforts are easy enough to spot on the Dell Hungary page too. And the difficulties in translation too -- some portions are still in English.
I can see here where the differences in companies' national sites would drive people to use the one with more information and choices.
MORPG's just aren't my thing, I was thinking about getting Star Wars Galaxies due to my love of the Star Wars Universe (ep. I and II def. do not count).
That is the power of licensing (yet another point DOG:AIG brought up): Star Wars is a happy, familiar name which they can stick on the front of the box/program/server to bring people in. It's also good for developers because it provides them with a predesigned universe to work with.
Sure, they have less creative freedom on a licensed product -- LucasArts will be watching over their shoulders like a flock of salivating hawks for any straying from canon -- but given Lucas' own liberties with the material, they probably won't have any trouble there.
I was looking for more than a "shoot some rodents, get some loot" game. Mabey it will change,
Oh, rest assured, it will, young Jedi, it will!!
Think of an enormous brain. It starts out untextured and rather bland because it's had no experience. As it grows and learns, it develops its own complexity and those familiar crennelations that you're so familiar with in traditional pictures of brains.
MMORPGs are no different (although perhaps less squishy). The designers can create every single texture, every single landscape, every single character mesh, but until the world they design has players interact with it, find emergent strategies, and develop the culture of the place, it's still going to seem rather bland.
but until it proves to me that it is worth the subscription fees and whatnot, I am going to stick with my good old fashoned 1 player games that don't require fees and most importantly, have an ending.
Now, now... it could be argued that the lack of a definitive all-encompassing ending is the MMORPG's greatest draw. When it gets rolling good, the "universe" will encompass dozens, maybe hundreds of individual plots, some of which start as (or because) others end, and very few of which run in their own vacuum. Plot-threads have a way themselves of...interacting.
Not that the one-player game has no appeal of its own...
Historically, this is where the most churn develops, after the initial rush of early adopters, during the two- to three-month "honeymoon" period after a game's launch. New players often don't read documentation or do online research on how to get the most out of a game, so when they enter the game for the first time, there is an element of confusion about how the interface works and what actions to perform to advance their character's skills, weaponry, money, and so forth.
There's more to it than that, even. In the first month or two, a game will not have a fully established culture, or a "way of doing things". Players may be easily confused because there isn't an established routine yet.
As someone who spends more than a little time on MMORPGs myself, I've seen it: some players are thick as the proverbial brick, cannot be bothered to type RULES or NEWS, and want the system (and staff!) (and other players!!) to serve entertainment up for them on a silver platter garnished with $50 bills. When they say "this game sucks," what they really mean is "You should tell me how to do everything" or "I can't be bothered to read the rules" or "You people aren't fun enough."
And no, I'm not exaggerating. I heard a horror story not long ago about someone taking up about 12 man-hours of staff time (on an understaffed MUSH which is still in Alpha) in character generation, and then publicly declaring that the "staff aren't helpful." And the staff there are volunteers -- it's not a pay-to-play system. If people were paying for the privilege of playing there, I think the problem would be ten or more times worse.
Depending on the system, and how well the documentation is organized, it may take a little more or less than a month to get into.
If you're really impatient, or you've seen enough and finally decide that you could do a better job yourself, you should download yourself a driver, order DOG:AIG, and try it.
And when you finally do fire up the finished project, lemme know and I'll log in there... for a month.
Warning: the book was originally bundled with a CD with all the Perl source files in Mac format. (Sad how often this happens.) Perl interpreters on other platforms don't grok this, so they withdrew this printing and replaced it with a corrected version. The screwed-up version was sold off to remainder houses.
I think the greatest irony of the decision to do this is that you can change the linefeed characters with a Perl one-liner:
perl -pi -e 's/\n/\r/g' mac_file.txt
will produce a UNIX-formatted file from a Mac-formatted file. Ahhh, interoperability. Of course, this implies that the person trying to use the source code on the CD has some form of Perl installed to make those changes -- oh, wait...
Yes, it's another casting of that "slippery slope" problem. Whoop-de-frigging-doo.
Yes, the article specifically mentioned pointing those cameras at places where nobody is supposed to be.
For now.
For years, the government has gotten around the Constitution by outsourcing its atrocities. They can't really abridge the rights of people by interrogating them here, so they let their allies do it. They're prevented from infringing the privacy of the people (but in many cases still do it), but they're fine with letting companies collect the data and then rifling through their records.
They've made a science of preserving the illusion of freedom while making it scarcer and scarcer in real life. That's because the government's primary goal is to protect itself. The consumers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hitizens come a distant second.
If by some miracle the webcam idea works (and I really don't think it will, except as a psychological deterrent to attacks on soft targets), someone will suggest it gets "spread" to other places. The citizens of the nation will manage to keep themselves under tight scrutiny at the behest of the government. Can you say "worst case scenario," boys and girls?
Is it just my imagination, or does this article try to paint the Hollywood "agents" and "enforcers" as some sort of quasi-law-enforcement personnel?
None of the above. It's not just your imagination, and it's not just the article. It's becoming increasingly common for large businesses to hire their own security forces to protect their product whatever it might be.
Remember how the RIAA tried to legislate their own police powers? It's not uncommon; corporations want as much power for themselves as possible. And power is not just money. Power is also control over what one produces, be it legal, electronic, or physical.
The problem is that they want to maintain absolute control over their content, and ultimately that's nigh-impossible, as I discussed before.
On the way to trying to develop this degree of control, the content becomes increasingly difficult to enjoy. Are they in danger because of this? I'm afraid not, at least not until someone disrupts their current source of revenue: consumers with low standards.
My fear is that it's such a big addition to apple- will they loss focus. Look at the problems sony electronics have trying to be cutting edge but catering to Sony music's fears of piracy.
Ironically, the marriage of Apple and Universal could be relatively peaceful contrasted against the existing joining of Sony with itself. Look at the history of Sony's key divisions:
On the one hand, Sony Music set about promoting the artists and producing the music to the specifications of the producers and, probably more lawyers than you can shake a stick at. (Though they're lawyers. Why would you just shake that stick at them?)
On the other hand, Sony Technology set out to produce überkewl gadgets to sway the hearts and minds of consumers. Some things they make are trivial, and some are their own little universes (the PS2 for example), but some are quite plainly geared to the tastes of the people, like CD players, DVD players, etc.
Then Sony came to the fork in the road...and tried to take it. Suddenly they found themselves in an ugly conflict of interests: the music division's profits lay up one way (pleasing the producers and lawyers, pushing hard DRM, etc.) and the technology division's profits lay up the other (not pissing off the consumers). When last seen, this ponderous beast was trying to dig its own path between the two forks.
About Apple and Universal, I have some reservations. Let's face it, everyone knows that Apple rumors taste even better cooked over a hickory fire than roast snipe. And I could see most sensible businessmen wanting to avoid the whole nasty business of music distribution (whose culture has moss growing on its underside). And even if they do somehow get the sale together, the actual division of power could be muddied beyond recognition between the power struggle of the tech company and the music company (see Sony's plight above).
However, if they do get together and have a merger, and Apple somehow comes out on top, then Steve Jobs would be in a perfect position to tell Universal, "No... we go this way. Quality and accessibility will take you much farther than unsatisfied, unwilling consumers will."
I could also see the whole music industry wanting to do things the new, more profitable way, but that would involve abuses of prescription medications beyond that which my body could handle. Apple changing the music industry? Unlikely, except in the way that Apple changes Microsoft -- by demonstrating neat UI widgets and not complaining bitterly every time one of them ends up in Windows' next release.
So... yeah, if it's not a joke, and if Steve Jobs wants to dirty his hands in that unsavory way, and he manages to browbeat down Universal, the transition could go smoother for them than Sony has it now.
Slashdot Mirror
What does this have to do with the current topic? Plenty! The notion of claiming a standard would be like one proto-human claiming a language for his own and attacking anyone who used similar patterns. How long do you think that sorry schmuck would last on his own? In my opinion, too long, no matter how quickly he got eaten by a tiger! Public standards should be free, and anything which someone wants to claim as their own should never be allowed to become a public standard.
Now, for the other line of thinking that this whole thing spurred...
The big difference between humans and computers is that humans grow up with a huge database of information about the world, permissible actions, prohibited actions, and a certain amount of common sense.
Humans consider information by trying to integrate it into their experiences, and either accepting it if it fits, or, if it doesn't fit, trying to determine whether this new information is bad or they had gotten bad information from another source.
Computers will believe whatever crap you tell them.
But computers are operated by humans. The problem is that many humans (none of whom will read this on Slashdot, unfortunately) tend not to understand computers, and don't know enough to tell them not to accept any crap that comes down the pike. And even then, people who do know what they're doing only have to be caught off guard for one moment. "Social Engineering" can be summed up as the art or science of getting information or results by feeding bad information to good humans.
(And yes, I know, some lack the common sense and critical thinking skills to differentiate fantasy from reality or correct information from incorrect. We could say that the information is "bad," but I find it easier to believe that we have subhumans in our midst. >:) Clearly we must find them and keep them contained for the benefit of the species.)
The steps seem clear, but only because it's Sunday morning and I've had my coffee:
The funny thing is that the violence rates for gamers were *lower* when compared to the average of the population (after the most tenuous and spurious attempts to implicate RPGs were swatted down). Games can have redeeming social values, if people would take the time to understand them.
We could use more studies like that... it could even be a major project. Take an average week, and note the causes of every single death that occurs in the USA. Then compare the statistics.
Some people find it much easier to fly off the handle than accept and process facts. By corollary, some people find it much easier to embark on a multi-state killing spree inspired by their personal vision of a game than to actually sit down and comprehend the moral of that game: that the multi-state killing spree usually ends up bad for everybody. Holding the makers of the game responsible in either case is not only pointless but counterproductive, since it takes the responsibilities off of the idiots and puts them in the laps of people who really DO know better but can't possibly exercise that sort of control over everybody.
In a game which has no obvious strategies or goals, pretty much any form of game play which appears out of thin air is "emergent". People don't go into "The Sims Online" expecting much more than a chat room, and yet they have a mafia. Where did that come from?
The first computer I used with a modem was a TRS-80 model 1. The modem was 300 baud and didn't have a tone generator -- once I had it off the hook, I had to call a set of delay loops that would click the connection on and off the required number of pulses for each digit. I wrote my own address book to keep track of the various BBSes I would call.
And yes, I did consider writing a script to automatically dial blocks of numbers in series to find other BBSes that I might not know about. It wasn't difficult; just seven registers and a handler to determine whether a connection would be valid or not, and I would've had it there. It should not technically be more difficult now to do something similar. Legally, absolutely, and rightly so, but if one weren't to be bothered by such trivialities like the law, technically it's not that hard, even today.
Oh, and that old wardialer I'd conceived of? I never did run it, because I figured that even one hang-up call might be considered annoying. Years later, it turns out that I'd be right. Moreover, it turns out that I then knew more than many people working in the telemarketing industry know now.
As someone else pointed out, analogy isn't the best form of argument. However, it does very well to illustrate how poorly the "logic" of a given solution applies to other real-life problems.
(From Dilbert, on reorganization to solve problems:)
PHB: If your car has a flat tire, what do you do?
Wally: If I'm you, I rotate the tires and drive home.
(Sadly, the Dilbert archives don't go back to October 31, 1995, the original publication date.)
Hmph. It must've been "friendly fire."
The question arises, though: okay, we now have cyber-war. How can we possibly force cyber-peace on them? I don't know of any political body which can put them on probation or give them a temporary disconnect/"stand in the corner", nor is there any established penalty for violating protocols; if there was such a thing, we wouldn't have the problems with oriental spam we have now.
I see this as a very bad thing because on the digital frontier it represents yet another nasty land war. They could let it simmer, they could find some way to make it worse, or someone could impose civility and order upon them. Either way, it demonstrates that people with sufficient motivation can't be trusted to mind their own business and play neighborly with other peoples' systems.
Any measure which is sufficient to contain the problem will stifle the air of freedom and community which makes the Internet a good place when everything runs smoothly. How's that for a consequence?
(Incidentally, the headset as it comes out of the box will plug and play nicely with your computer too, as I found out one night by experimenting.)
One big problem with VOIP console games is that they absolutely require broadband to play. It says so on the box, too. A player's voice-stream takes up quite a bit of bandwidth, so a mere dial-up account won't cut it.
The other problem with VOIP console games is that they need a microphone. SOCOM got around that particular problem by bundling a microphone in with the game, but that's the only game I've seen do that yet.
The problem occurs when the importance or difficulty of the task doesn't match up with the severity of the punishment. Too little punishment or consequences and the game is seen as boring or easy (designers hate that perception), too much and the game is compared to prison rape.
I had a boss once who (no foolin'!) asked me if it was possible to track internet users by GPS. Clearly, he was a dip.
But depending on the role the boss plays in the organization, he (or she) has to understand many different things: the product or service the company produces, the tech the company uses to do what it does, management of the company's resources and inventory, its finances, and especially its people.
Among skills in the people category is motivating workers, giving instructions, solving interpersonal problems, and getting feedback. If he gives instructions in such a way that people fail to listen to him, or he causes more interpersonal problems than he resolves, then congratulations! Houston, we have achieved idiot!
Who is buying the product or service? People that want their stuff advertised.
Who is getting paid for the product or service? The spammer.
What is the product or service? Ah, now here's where it gets interesting.
Many people cited that the difference is scale, that if you had several hundred menus dropped off on your doorstep daily, you'd be miffed. There's another problem with that analogy, though...
In the fast-food place example, they're the producer, you're the prospective customer, and they are telling you about their product. This is a relatively non-intrusive form of advertising (assuming the menus aren't dropped off by the truckload).
In the spammer's case, they're the producer, someone else is the customer, and you are the product. They are trying to sell your attention. But first they have to get your attention without paying for it first.
This is my objection to all advertising, but especially to spamming: that the waste of bandwidth, disk space, and time trying to deal with the inundating tide of mailbox crap is tantamount to theft, and you are the victim.
The utter and complete irony of this whole thing is not lost on me. Who here remembers the article that Wired Magazine ran on Hollywood's tracking boards ? The one in which Hollywood's studio people would boost or slam a movie, often without even reading the script , and from that information alone deciding whether to produce a picture or not?
Hollywood should stop buying its own sizzle and take a good look at what's making that smell. The Wired article above mentions a movie by name, I recall: Kangaroo Jack. It had buzz, they said. And we all know how that turned out, right? Mind you, it could always have been worse...
The article doesn't get into specifics, but figure: submarines probably require very specialize mil-spec rack mountings, cabling, and for all we know cameras and monitors too. It is for an image manipulation system, after all, and they need *some* way to capture and later display the images after they manipulate them.
When most people point at the prices of equipment from government contractors and scream bloody blue murder, they don't take into account that the precision and sometimes specialized purposes of the equipment will naturally increase the prices. Or they do take it into account and claim that they can't possibly need that much precision.
Good enough? Nope. The studio wanted another. The crew didn't really want to do a second movie because the first was hard enough. Charlton Heston didn't want to do the second one either. The film crew managed to convince him to do the second one by showing him a script which would all but guarantee he'd never have to do another one ever again. Oh, and the studio said they had less budget to make this one with too.
And it did well too. Was the studio satisfied? Hell no! They figured there was still money in that cash cow, so they had to keep milking. Somehow, working from the end of the frigging world they had to create a script for a third film. Oh, and could they do it again with even less money this time?
And so it continued--as far as I can remember, every movie in the PotA series was made with a smaller budget. And each subsequent film suffered for it. The makeup effects that everyone had in the first movie were reduced to major characters in each subsequent film; crowd scenes in later movies looked worse and worse, until they no longer had crowd scenes because the crew couldn't afford as many extras!
Personally, by the fifth I think the series was running on fumes, but they still made a sixth. And taken as a whole, the hexology made a certain sense, but the series suffered greatly because it was forced to dance to faster and faster music in the same steadily worn-down shoes, to coin a metaphor. But it got to where it did by clever writing, good directing, and more than a little dumb luck.
Which brings up the question, why would people want to violate continuity and push something way past its prime? Because someone thinks they can get more money by doing so. Thus has the conflict forever run between the worlds of art and profit.
And according to that same response, the consumer does not have the right to remove the restrictions to use the product in ways other than the seller will allow. In short, the consumer is buying a pig-in-a-poke, and must keep the pig in the poke, even if it means he can't use the pig as he wants.
It is, as you observed, a seller's market, as the sellers rights to produce the product in their way seem to be trumping the buyer's rights to use the produce in their way. And if you were selling product, you'd trump your buyer's rights to use as well.
The consumer's responsibility then is to consider the desirability of the product, weigh it against the terms of use, and decide whether it's worth the price or not.
Yes, this IS leading up to one of those "Boycott the Music Industry!" messages, but at least I think I built up to it in a much more rational manner. Most people say that just because they hate the music industry. I'm saying it now because I assert that the music simply isn't worth it.
AOL, one of the largest (and arguably hoariest) national internet service providers around, is losing business because of some questionable business practices and needs to generate more revenue.
In order to do this, they've severed ties with a prominent internet business (Amazon) and are going to attempt to run their own physical media music store...
Excuse me? Where's the sense in this?? If you have a business model that's doing poorly, you are not supposed to tack on another business model that's also doing poorly! If the problem is too much fat, the solution is not to tack more on.
As someone at Adbusters said, "Economists must learn to subtract." While the specific application is different in this case, the basic principle holds true for most businessmen, accountants, and marketers who can only think of "bigger" and "more profitable" and not "streamlined" and "more responsible."
It's almost axiomatic now: if someone develops a new somethingorother "to make peoples' lives easier," some company (or more likely, scads and scads of them) will find a way to abuse it. Spam and pop-ups plague our email and browsing experiences. The new technology will come, and shortly after that will come the matching exploit (because hacks are supposed to be illegal).
The technology is intended to provide information, yes, but there are two possible methods of abuse:
1. Undesired information could be given to the user (nuisance), or
2. Unintended information could be obtained from the user (violation of privacy).
In the case of 1, there's always pop-up, incessant, or just plain annoying ads. And depending on how standardized the phone system is, much worse. Imagine pointing your phone at a link and discovering that you've just downloaded a virus. Oopsie! Admittedly, it depends on how secure your phone is, but if it involves getting information to your phone, someone will come up with what they think is a way to make money by sending you information that they don't care that you don't want.
In the case of 2, the information has to get to you somehow. What if someone comes up with an exploit which downloads your phone book? Uses your phone number to look up all sorts of personal information on you? Tracks your movements?
Continuing in that binary vein, remember that there are two conditions under which people fear technology:
1. They don't understand it, or
2. They understand it, and are worried that there are a lot of people who will misuse it.
Most of those /.ers who fear this newish technology understand hyperlinks, wireless communications, and so forth. They fear it solely for that second reason. And it doesn't have to be about the world ending. It just has to do with getting really annoyed with someone who's using your cell phone in unexpected ways.
Open the two together and note the differences in typeface. And why is there no mention of Jaguar/Panther/Anything 10.x.x on the Hungary site?
The multinationalization efforts are easy enough to spot on the Dell Hungary page too. And the difficulties in translation too -- some portions are still in English.
I can see here where the differences in companies' national sites would drive people to use the one with more information and choices.
Sure, they have less creative freedom on a licensed product -- LucasArts will be watching over their shoulders like a flock of salivating hawks for any straying from canon -- but given Lucas' own liberties with the material, they probably won't have any trouble there.
Oh, rest assured, it will, young Jedi, it will!!Think of an enormous brain. It starts out untextured and rather bland because it's had no experience. As it grows and learns, it develops its own complexity and those familiar crennelations that you're so familiar with in traditional pictures of brains. MMORPGs are no different (although perhaps less squishy). The designers can create every single texture, every single landscape, every single character mesh, but until the world they design has players interact with it, find emergent strategies, and develop the culture of the place, it's still going to seem rather bland.
Now, now... it could be argued that the lack of a definitive all-encompassing ending is the MMORPG's greatest draw. When it gets rolling good, the "universe" will encompass dozens, maybe hundreds of individual plots, some of which start as (or because) others end, and very few of which run in their own vacuum. Plot-threads have a way themselves ofNot that the one-player game has no appeal of its own...
As someone who spends more than a little time on MMORPGs myself, I've seen it: some players are thick as the proverbial brick, cannot be bothered to type RULES or NEWS, and want the system (and staff!) (and other players!! ) to serve entertainment up for them on a silver platter garnished with $50 bills. When they say "this game sucks," what they really mean is "You should tell me how to do everything" or "I can't be bothered to read the rules" or "You people aren't fun enough."
And no, I'm not exaggerating. I heard a horror story not long ago about someone taking up about 12 man-hours of staff time (on an understaffed MUSH which is still in Alpha) in character generation, and then publicly declaring that the "staff aren't helpful." And the staff there are volunteers -- it's not a pay-to-play system. If people were paying for the privilege of playing there, I think the problem would be ten or more times worse.
Depending on the system, and how well the documentation is organized, it may take a little more or less than a month to get into.
If you're really impatient, or you've seen enough and finally decide that you could do a better job yourself, you should download yourself a driver, order DOG:AIG, and try it.
And when you finally do fire up the finished project, lemme know and I'll log in there... for a month.
perl -pi -e 's/\n/\r/g' mac_file.txt
will produce a UNIX-formatted file from a Mac-formatted file. Ahhh, interoperability. Of course, this implies that the person trying to use the source code on the CD has some form of Perl installed to make those changes -- oh, wait...
Yes, the article specifically mentioned pointing those cameras at places where nobody is supposed to be.
For now.
For years, the government has gotten around the Constitution by outsourcing its atrocities. They can't really abridge the rights of people by interrogating them here, so they let their allies do it. They're prevented from infringing the privacy of the people (but in many cases still do it), but they're fine with letting companies collect the data and then rifling through their records.
They've made a science of preserving the illusion of freedom while making it scarcer and scarcer in real life. That's because the government's primary goal is to protect itself. The consumers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hitizens come a distant second.
If by some miracle the webcam idea works (and I really don't think it will, except as a psychological deterrent to attacks on soft targets), someone will suggest it gets "spread" to other places. The citizens of the nation will manage to keep themselves under tight scrutiny at the behest of the government. Can you say "worst case scenario," boys and girls?
Remember how the RIAA tried to legislate their own police powers? It's not uncommon; corporations want as much power for themselves as possible. And power is not just money. Power is also control over what one produces, be it legal, electronic, or physical.
The problem is that they want to maintain absolute control over their content, and ultimately that's nigh-impossible, as I discussed before.
On the way to trying to develop this degree of control, the content becomes increasingly difficult to enjoy. Are they in danger because of this? I'm afraid not, at least not until someone disrupts their current source of revenue: consumers with low standards.
Ironically, the marriage of Apple and Universal could be relatively peaceful contrasted against the existing joining of Sony with itself. Look at the history of Sony's key divisions:
On the one hand, Sony Music set about promoting the artists and producing the music to the specifications of the producers and, probably more lawyers than you can shake a stick at. (Though they're lawyers. Why would you just shake that stick at them?)
On the other hand, Sony Technology set out to produce überkewl gadgets to sway the hearts and minds of consumers. Some things they make are trivial, and some are their own little universes (the PS2 for example), but some are quite plainly geared to the tastes of the people, like CD players, DVD players, etc.
Then Sony came to the fork in the road ...and tried to take it. Suddenly they found themselves in an ugly conflict of interests: the music division's profits lay up one way (pleasing the producers and lawyers, pushing hard DRM, etc.) and the technology division's profits lay up the other (not pissing off the consumers). When last seen, this ponderous beast was trying to dig its own path between the two forks.
About Apple and Universal, I have some reservations. Let's face it, everyone knows that Apple rumors taste even better cooked over a hickory fire than roast snipe. And I could see most sensible businessmen wanting to avoid the whole nasty business of music distribution (whose culture has moss growing on its underside). And even if they do somehow get the sale together, the actual division of power could be muddied beyond recognition between the power struggle of the tech company and the music company (see Sony's plight above).
However, if they do get together and have a merger, and Apple somehow comes out on top, then Steve Jobs would be in a perfect position to tell Universal, "No... we go this way. Quality and accessibility will take you much farther than unsatisfied, unwilling consumers will."
I could also see the whole music industry wanting to do things the new, more profitable way, but that would involve abuses of prescription medications beyond that which my body could handle. Apple changing the music industry? Unlikely, except in the way that Apple changes Microsoft -- by demonstrating neat UI widgets and not complaining bitterly every time one of them ends up in Windows' next release.
So... yeah, if it's not a joke, and if Steve Jobs wants to dirty his hands in that unsavory way, and he manages to browbeat down Universal, the transition could go smoother for them than Sony has it now.