Seems like everyone here is trumpeting the virtues of these cyber cafes, but to me it seemed like all the people they profiled were absolute social retards. The first guy can't carry on a conversation, can barely seem to do his job (he is customer service after all), can't even fold a damn shirt, and if I had to bet would be severely lacking in a whole host of social skills . If we're on the verge of seeing tons and tons of places like these, this is NOT a good thing.
portraying PCBang culture as stereotypical asocial loser nerd pervert stuff, when in fact it's pretty much normal social life in Korea (where these things come from).
As you point out, you're talking about Korea a place where Hello-Kitty and anime are nearly as popular as it is in Japan, and born-against Christianity is hugely popular partly because it provides a ready-made social circle. Even if it is "normal social life in Korea" (it isn't; it's still a minority of people who occupy themselves so), it doesn't make it any less asocial loser nerd stuff. If the phenomenon were to grow much more, I would be very, very worried if I were Korean and concerned about the next generation's social skills.
If I understand the concept correctly (can't follow the links...slashdotted), similar approaches have been done many times before.
For instance, in the days of the Apple II, when the standard text display was 40 characters wide, there was a word-processor called "Magic Window", designed for people who didn't have the money for the 80-column cards. Basically it, too, gave you a "peephole" into a 40x24-character window which moved around your document as you typed. You never saw all your document, but usually you saw enough.
I loved that little program and used it as my main word-processor for writing and printing out my high-school essays (on a shitty Apple thermal printer lacking descenders!).
I want a device to record Cartoon Network from 10:00-11:00 PM on sundays so I dont miss Aqua Teen Hunger...You shouldn't have to pay ongoing fees just to use a device you bought.
And yet, you pay money for cable TV/satellite so that you can use the TV you bought ?
The bar holds 16 ingredients with which it can currently mix 188 drinks
Is one of those ingredients Rohypnol ? Seems like geeks geeky enough to build something like this would need the machine to mix in some roofies if they hope to get any...
If I were less cynical, I might think that naming the series *after himself* wasn't *just* an ego-stroking maneuver, aimed at garnering maximum publicity. Please, someone inside Prentice-Hall tell me it was their idea to come up with that goofy series name and not Perens' - after all, we all know Perens seems to like to keep his name out of the press...
This is a research grant, not tuition. Foreign students generally pay far more than residents due to ineligibility for federal/state grants.
Except that big grants enable the host institutions to offer fellowships and/or stipends to students - at MIT, many of them foreign - which enable them to study there.
who says I have to sit there or even take notes unless the class requires participation? I've had a disdain for professors who either require attendance and/or "undevided attention" when I know the course material or no participation in class ins necessary.
As a former teacher at a major university, I can say that I wouldn't care if you don't pay attention. I *would* care, however, when students are checking their email or IM'ing each other because that activity inevitably distracts other students who *are* trying to pay attention, just the same as students who are whispering to each other constantly or passing notes. Images changing on a screen in front of a student can't help but draw their attention away. Hell, if laptops weren't necessary for a particular class, I would even consider disallowing use of *those* because the cacophony of keyboards-a-clicking is very distracting.
My stance was always that I didn't care if you came to class or not, but I did care if your decision affected other students.
The most fun multiplayer game I've ever played was the original Grand Theft Auto, with the overhead view. I've seen copies of GTA2 in the bargain bins at places like Staples for $10 or less.
Other than that my favorite multiplayer games are Age of Empires 2, and Battlefield 1942. Yes, I know the latter is WAY beyond the specs of the poster, but hell - not everyone here is so constrained, are we ? This is the first game I've ever played which actually made me go out and buy hardware ( a joystick) to play it. The only problem is the shell-shock-induced nightmares I've been having....
the only way we are going to convince them to clean up their act is to waste _their_ disk space, their time, and their network bandwidth more than they waste ours.
To me, this seems exactly the right strategy, although how well it works in practice will be interesting to watch.
To me, this is about as hypocritical a strategy I can imagine. If something is wrong, it's wrong.
How - and why - should it be ? AFAIK, MS never disclosed their e.g. Word or Excel binary formats, so why should they be exposed if they fail to disclose, or even obfuscate, an XML schema ?
Overall, I think that Apple's action is an example of the effects of the year-old "open source" movement: of its plan to appeal to business with the purely materialistic goal of faster development, while putting aside the deeper issues of freedom, community, cooperation, and what kind of society we want to live in.
This passage made me sick. The notion that any "movement" that is not compatible with FSF philosophies necessarily puts "aside the deeper issues" is so self-important and self-righteous, even coming from Stallman's mouthpiece. Sorry, there are plenty of people who have considered the issue who do NOT feel that our society must engender all the rules and restrictions that you would have placed on us. The FSF's world-view is not the only considered one. Many people who adopt non-"free" (as defined by FSF gospel) licenses do so after careful consideration of all the issues and deciding that non-"free" licenses more closely reflect the world *they* want to live in. Who the hell is the FSF to decide ? Keep your self-righteous ramblings to issues like GPL violations...
This group starts a project, based on Apple's Darwin, which is released under a particular license. Then this group has problems with that license, so they suspend the project, and raise hell and high water while doing so ?
Is that what's going on ? If so, who the hell is running that particular ship ? Was that manifesto penned by Stallman ? Why even *get involved* with a project with a license they find philosophically unpalatable in the first place ? Is it because he figures to get a bigger podium and more press by attacking a big company rather than some obscure GPL-violators ?
I'd be hard-pressed to call what they were streaming "cool". If they wanted cool, they should have been streaming video out cams hidden in the ventilation registers of good-looking coed's dorm rooms. Oh wait, I forgot, they're at Carnegie Mellon.
Which reminds me of an old, old joke: Nine out of ten girls in California are good-looking. The other one goes to Stanford.
One way to help prevent this kind of behavior is to punish these people severely. Punish them just like they *did* plant a bomb in the computer room, that *could* take out machines and cost many hours of work, just like the 'logic' bomb that was planted. Punish them under securities laws just as if they were trading on 'real' or conventional insider information. Treat these crimes as the serious ones they are, and you will at least have as much of a deterrent as you have preventing people from planting real bombs. Treat it just like it's mischief, and people will be encouraged to continue trying to do this.
I'm already cringing at what I *know* is going to happen. They're going to release some stuff - exactly what they're obligated to - under the GPL. But other stuff - say DRM - will certainly NOT be under the GPL. Then there's going to be such a hoopla and whining in forums such as this one even though these companies have done exactly what they're obligated to. "They should give back to the community", etc, ad nauseum, and some people will be wondering why, if the open/free software implies some sort of larger obligation to a community, why these weren't written into the licenses.
Whether or not releasing a port of some old Windows game makes good business sense is debatable. But what are these people thinking when they spend good time and money porting a game that wasn't successful on Windows ? If it ain't successful on Windows, how do they expect to make their money on Linux, where there are far fewer gamers ? Wouldn't it make more sense to port some game that was moderately succesful ? Maybe this is some stealth MS project designed to make Linux look really bad...
Here's what I don't understand: If they open up these frequencies now, doesn't this mean that these areas are never going to get tv signals over the air ? And, if these frequencies aren't being used now, doesn't this imply that the utility of e.g. wireless is somewhat diminished in these areas, if only because it seems likely that there aren't that many people there ??
This seems somewhat shortsighted. To paraphrase the old children's saw, once they give it away,they're never going to be able to take it back again.
At the time, OS/2 had extremely heavy system requirements compared to Win 3.x. In particular, I recall that it required an enormous amount of memory to run comfortably by comparison to Windows. This was at a time where memory was running at probably $100 or more per 4 MB (my own memory is failing), and at the time, it was just really difficult to justify for many people. Towards the latter part of the '90s, its requirements didn't seem so onerous, but by then Windows had become too entrenched and Win95 was on its way.
I also strongly believe Win/OS2 killed any incentive to write native OS/2 apps.
More interestingly, I wonder why many of the same people who argue that things like P2P and hacking only point to some other larger problem like outdated RIAA/MPAA policies, and who argue that things like P2P should not be restricted, are often among the first to call for gun control legislation.
They're a publicly traded company. If they were using their resources to do anything other than increase shareholder value, their shareholders would rightfully be pissed. The company's only duty is to increase shareholder value. If the company does that, then it's up to the shareholders to do what they want with the increased value - and if they want, they can donate it to charity themselves. But I, for one, as a shareholder wouldn't want MY company deciding which charities or causes they should be spending what is essentially MY money on. I can do that myself well enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems like everyone here is trumpeting the virtues of these cyber cafes, but to me it seemed like all the people they profiled were absolute social retards. The first guy can't carry on a conversation, can barely seem to do his job (he is customer service after all), can't even fold a damn shirt, and if I had to bet would be severely lacking in a whole host of social skills . If we're on the verge of seeing tons and tons of places like these, this is NOT a good thing.
portraying PCBang culture as stereotypical asocial loser nerd pervert stuff, when in fact it's pretty much normal social life in Korea (where these things come from).
As you point out, you're talking about Korea a place where Hello-Kitty and anime are nearly as popular as it is in Japan, and born-against Christianity is hugely popular partly because it provides a ready-made social circle. Even if it is "normal social life in Korea" (it isn't; it's still a minority of people who occupy themselves so), it doesn't make it any less asocial loser nerd stuff. If the phenomenon were to grow much more, I would be very, very worried if I were Korean and concerned about the next generation's social skills.
Before all these spam companies just move off-shore to avoid litigation ?
If I understand the concept correctly (can't follow the links...slashdotted), similar approaches have been done many times before.
For instance, in the days of the Apple II, when the standard text display was 40 characters wide, there was a word-processor called "Magic Window", designed for people who didn't have the money for the 80-column cards. Basically it, too, gave you a "peephole" into a 40x24-character window which moved around your document as you typed. You never saw all your document, but usually you saw enough.
I loved that little program and used it as my main word-processor for writing and printing out my high-school essays (on a shitty Apple thermal printer lacking descenders!).
I want a device to record Cartoon Network from 10:00-11:00 PM on sundays so I dont miss Aqua Teen Hunger ...You shouldn't have to pay ongoing fees just to use a device you bought.
And yet, you pay money for cable TV/satellite so that you can use the TV you bought ?
The bar holds 16 ingredients with which it can currently mix 188 drinks
Is one of those ingredients Rohypnol ? Seems like geeks geeky enough to build something like this would need the machine to mix in some roofies if they hope to get any...
If I were less cynical, I might think that naming the series *after himself* wasn't *just* an ego-stroking maneuver, aimed at garnering maximum publicity. Please, someone inside Prentice-Hall tell me it was their idea to come up with that goofy series name and not Perens' - after all, we all know Perens seems to like to keep his name out of the press...
This is a research grant, not tuition. Foreign students generally pay far more than residents due to ineligibility for federal/state grants.
Except that big grants enable the host institutions to offer fellowships and/or stipends to students - at MIT, many of them foreign - which enable them to study there.
who says I have to sit there or even take notes unless the class requires participation? I've had a disdain for professors who either require attendance and/or "undevided attention" when I know the course material or no participation in class ins necessary.
As a former teacher at a major university, I can say that I wouldn't care if you don't pay attention. I *would* care, however, when students are checking their email or IM'ing each other because that activity inevitably distracts other students who *are* trying to pay attention, just the same as students who are whispering to each other constantly or passing notes. Images changing on a screen in front of a student can't help but draw their attention away. Hell, if laptops weren't necessary for a particular class, I would even consider disallowing use of *those* because the cacophony of keyboards-a-clicking is very distracting.
My stance was always that I didn't care if you came to class or not, but I did care if your decision affected other students.
Salon just posted its technology and business predictions for 2003...Slashdot sells out
Are you sure these were predictions for 2003, and not some sort of recap ?
*ducks*
The most fun multiplayer game I've ever played was the original Grand Theft Auto, with the overhead view. I've seen copies of GTA2 in the bargain bins at places like Staples for $10 or less.
Other than that my favorite multiplayer games are Age of Empires 2, and Battlefield 1942. Yes, I know the latter is WAY beyond the specs of the poster, but hell - not everyone here is so constrained, are we ? This is the first game I've ever played which actually made me go out and buy hardware ( a joystick) to play it. The only problem is the shell-shock-induced nightmares I've been having....
the only way we are going to convince them to clean up their act is to waste _their_ disk space, their time, and their network bandwidth more than they waste ours.
To me, this seems exactly the right strategy, although how well it works in practice will be interesting to watch.
To me, this is about as hypocritical a strategy I can imagine. If something is wrong, it's wrong.
How - and why - should it be ? AFAIK, MS never disclosed their e.g. Word or Excel binary formats, so why should they be exposed if they fail to disclose, or even obfuscate, an XML schema ?
Overall, I think that Apple's action is an example of the effects of the year-old "open source" movement: of its plan to appeal to business with the purely materialistic goal of faster development, while putting aside the deeper issues of freedom, community, cooperation, and what kind of society we want to live in.
...
This passage made me sick. The notion that any "movement" that is not compatible with FSF philosophies necessarily puts "aside the deeper issues" is so self-important and self-righteous, even coming from Stallman's mouthpiece. Sorry, there are plenty of people who have considered the issue who do NOT feel that our society must engender all the rules and restrictions that you would have placed on us. The FSF's world-view is not the only considered one. Many people who adopt non-"free" (as defined by FSF gospel) licenses do so after careful consideration of all the issues and deciding that non-"free" licenses more closely reflect the world *they* want to live in. Who the hell is the FSF to decide ? Keep your self-righteous ramblings to issues like GPL violations
This group starts a project, based on Apple's Darwin, which is released under a particular license. Then this group has problems with that license, so they suspend the project, and raise hell and high water while doing so ?
Is that what's going on ? If so, who the hell is running that particular ship ? Was that manifesto penned by Stallman ? Why even *get involved* with a project with a license they find philosophically unpalatable in the first place ? Is it because he figures to get a bigger podium and more press by attacking a big company rather than some obscure GPL-violators ?
Exactly how much did VA Linux pay for you guys ?
I'll wait a couple weeks until the scary people aren't going anymore.
I don't think a couple of weeks is going to be enough.
I'd be hard-pressed to call what they were streaming "cool". If they wanted cool, they should have been streaming video out cams hidden in the ventilation registers of good-looking coed's dorm rooms. Oh wait, I forgot, they're at Carnegie Mellon.
Which reminds me of an old, old joke: Nine out of ten girls in California are good-looking. The other one goes to Stanford.
One way to help prevent this kind of behavior is to punish these people severely. Punish them just like they *did* plant a bomb in the computer room, that *could* take out machines and cost many hours of work, just like the 'logic' bomb that was planted. Punish them under securities laws just as if they were trading on 'real' or conventional insider information. Treat these crimes as the serious ones they are, and you will at least have as much of a deterrent as you have preventing people from planting real bombs. Treat it just like it's mischief, and people will be encouraged to continue trying to do this.
I'm already cringing at what I *know* is going to happen. They're going to release some stuff - exactly what they're obligated to - under the GPL. But other stuff - say DRM - will certainly NOT be under the GPL. Then there's going to be such a hoopla and whining in forums such as this one even though these companies have done exactly what they're obligated to. "They should give back to the community", etc, ad nauseum, and some people will be wondering why, if the open/free software implies some sort of larger obligation to a community, why these weren't written into the licenses.
Whether or not releasing a port of some old Windows game makes good business sense is debatable. But what are these people thinking when they spend good time and money porting a game that wasn't successful on Windows ? If it ain't successful on Windows, how do they expect to make their money on Linux, where there are far fewer gamers ? Wouldn't it make more sense to port some game that was moderately succesful ? Maybe this is some stealth MS project designed to make Linux look really bad...
in areas where they are not being used
Here's what I don't understand: If they open up these frequencies now, doesn't this mean that these areas are never going to get tv signals over the air ? And, if these frequencies aren't being used now, doesn't this imply that the utility of e.g. wireless is somewhat diminished in these areas, if only because it seems likely that there aren't that many people there ??
This seems somewhat shortsighted. To paraphrase the old children's saw, once they give it away,they're never going to be able to take it back again.
At the time, OS/2 had extremely heavy system requirements compared to Win 3.x. In particular, I recall that it required an enormous amount of memory to run comfortably by comparison to Windows. This was at a time where memory was running at probably $100 or more per 4 MB (my own memory is failing), and at the time, it was just really difficult to justify for many people. Towards the latter part of the '90s, its requirements didn't seem so onerous, but by then Windows had become too entrenched and Win95 was on its way.
I also strongly believe Win/OS2 killed any incentive to write native OS/2 apps.
More interestingly, I wonder why many of the same people who argue that things like P2P and hacking only point to some other larger problem like outdated RIAA/MPAA policies, and who argue that things like P2P should not be restricted, are often among the first to call for gun control legislation.
big corporation and caring about others....
They're a publicly traded company. If they were using their resources to do anything other than increase shareholder value, their shareholders would rightfully be pissed. The company's only duty is to increase shareholder value. If the company does that, then it's up to the shareholders to do what they want with the increased value - and if they want, they can donate it to charity themselves. But I, for one, as a shareholder wouldn't want MY company deciding which charities or causes they should be spending what is essentially MY money on. I can do that myself well enough.