Allright, lets all pull out our Treasures of Infocom books, and our boxes of Spectrum and Commodore games, and our grandparent's comics from the depression, and go on a sue-a-thon! Let that be a message to anybody who gets a copyright on anything at all... make sure your company stays in business right to the bitter end, so that you can suddenly make billions when the next Blizzard takes the name you gave to your pong nockoff:P
Hell, the first pseudo-game I ever made was in basic... it was a quasi-text adventure game.. of course, every room gave you 2 choices... one of them killed you and the other let you continue, so it (quite obviously) sucked:P But I called it ShadowPhase... I wonder if I could sue over someone using that name? I wonder if anyone ever used that name? I wonder if the only copy of the game is still on the 100mb hard drive of the beat up 386 with all the cables disconnected sitting inoperational on the shelf in my brother's room, along with my DOS Prompt Changer and Emoticon Generator, and all the pathetically simple menu systems i made for my brother who can't grasp the concept of a command line... I wonder...
You people are altogether far to upset over banner ads... LIVE WITH THEM. Yeah, popups are irritating, and link-trapping should be stopped, but plain old ads are no big deal... They are the reason we dont have to pay for some of the sites we rely on (slashdot, webmonkey, newsforge, need i say more?). Out of all the billions of ideas that have been pitched, I can gather the following as useful:
1 - All ads should be in some way related to the page they are being displayed on. Slashdot does this very well... I have clicked on more/. ads than I have in total online anywhere else. The first time Slashdot tells me to Punch the Monkey and win 30 dollars, I will cry.
2 - Popups should be easily closeable, not too big, and should not open new popups when they close
3 - NO LINK TRAPPING. My back button should always go back.
4 - No website should ever change the size of my browser window... it is carefully sized to allow me to watch TV at a decent window size, use ICQ and browse most sites without horizontal scrolling (i must admit, windows is my primary OS at the moment)... I don't need to re-precision size my window every time i mistype the address of a CJB site...
5 - Ads should not interfere with a site's design... if a sight is meant to fit in the window without scrolling, then dont put an ad at the top so you have to scroll... this is the one situation when popups (that conform to rule 2) are preferable
Oh well
Most of this will never happen
I just think there is way too much stink over banner ads, go bug TV commercials or Coming Attractions Reels why dont you?
I actually thought of this once myself... mainly because I still, unfortunately, use Windows as my primary operating system (convincing a computer illiterate family that prompts are better is tough)... After mudding and zorking way way way too much, I went to use DOS for some reason or another, and kept subconsciously typing "look" for "dir" and "save" at random points for no apparent reason ("Always remember: SAVE OFTEN")... I was extremely close to blowing the dust of my DOS Batch file book, when my laziness got the better of me.
I think the slashdot shirt says it all. Code Poet. Code is as much an art as poetry. Granted, alot of programmers think they can replicate Michelangelo with crayons on paper bag, hence the development of crap code. However, a great piece of coding is akin to a living organism or, in this case, a piece of art.
I had a website up to do with a movie myself and some friends were making as an english assignment. Naturally, we wanted to be able to access it from school. Unfortunately, I found out that Bess blocks all free hosting programs (this one was on Free2Surf) by default. I thought this was stupid. Although, in Bess's defence, they were very prompt to allow access to the site when I send them a Review Request through their online form.
I think its just stupid. In all of the reccomended domains, I thought that 2 were really intelligent and good suggestions:
.web and.xxx
If all newly registered adult oriented sites were forced to use.xxx, that would just sort things out a bit. As far as reducing.com congestion,.web would be perfect. Sure, alot of bigger companies would register.web equivalents of their.com's, its not a permanent solution, but it would definately help. Alot of the other ones that just havent worked have a reason...
.ws, even though it was a ccTLD, was advertised by register.com as standing for WebSite. It would be good, but think about it phonetically:
"Oh, im at kickassdomain.double-you ess" or "Im at kickassdomain.com"
Some poeple done think so, but being able to say a domain easily (without having to spell or indicate hyphens) is a big thing. Thats why sites that have done things like www.ita.ly (i think thats one) are annoying, because you have to explain that one for about 5 minutes before someone gets it right...
Oh well, ICANN is stupid, i guess we have to accept that.
I am 15... As far as I recall, I saw my first snippet of code at 9. It was done in qBasic, and was a screen saver that made random dots on the screen until it was full. Now I know that it was extremely messy code, which was why I couldn't decipher it. My parents bought me a qBasic book at 10, and I was making programs in no time. I kept at it, until I discovered Visual Basic around 12, and just last year I started working with my first non-microsoft language, Delphi... but still for the windows platform. It was about the same time that I discovered the Unix platform, and I still can't really program for it because I have to teach myself... I have taught myself 90% of what I know about computers, and its really a frigging pain. I mean, with all the computer courses in my school, only ONE covers C++, and even thats only for about the last 1/4 of the year. Now I'm looking at the new curriculum for years that come after me (im in Ontario, fellow ontarionians will know what I mean) and I gag. Grade 9: VB, Grade 10: Delphi, Grade 11: Delphi/C++. Not to mention the teachers dont know a thing and if you code based on their suggestions for "clean code" you will be lynched by any open source community in the world. I've found a couple online resources for teen programmers, but they are terrible. Webmonkey is great for web-programming, but nothing for app programming. I've lately been doing a website for my company, its an article site, slightly similar to Slashdot, based around the "typical teenage guy" topics: music, cars, movies, sports, dating. Im thinking I will take my engine and set up a resource for teen programmers. But before I can convince my colleauges to agree to this project, I need to see some support. If you would be interested in, and USE such a site, send an e-mail to me at intervention@home.com
If this interests you at all, i suggest reading Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer (my personal second favourite Sci-Fi author, next to Douglas Adams and Isaac Asimov)
Its a piece of fiction about the discovery of the higgs boson.
As I first read this, I almost immediately brushed it off as another annoying gamer habit, but once i looked at it I was very impressed. He has done a good job of capturing some of the scenes! I am particularly impressed by the Saigon and Rodney King images. I would like to see what he would do with the Kent State photo.
I am inclined to agree. There is the possibility that W3 is going somewhere with this, or that in the future as handhelds progress this will become more useful. But for now, its not. Still, if people do implement it, its better they do it to standards than fuck up like the browser companies did. I guess its just something to keep in mind if you are making wireless software with the J2ME
This patent applies to all world wide web content that falls under the category of WebShit. WebShit is defined as:
a) Sites with no practical purpose beyond moronic jokes and vulgar humour directed at 4 year olds that somehow make millions of dollars in advertising (examples include www.stickdeath.com and www.newgrounds.com)
b) Sites made by someone who has no concept of design and hence incorporate elements such as Starry Background Images, stock animated gifs with backgrounds that dont match the page, ugly text colours and links to similar bad sites. (examples include anything hosted on Angelfire)
c) www.microsoft.com
All corporations/individuals that are the proprieters of category B sites will pay me an arbitrary rate monthly, or be sued for infringement upon my patent. All corporations/individuals that maintain/visit category A sites will be killed immediately. All corporations/individuals that maintain category C sites will hopefully die anyway.
It should be brought to your attention that by offering ThinkGeek related prizes you are infringing upon several laws which I have recently made up. Many of us are addicted to ThinkGeek merchandise, and I would like to suggest that taunting us with it is similar to getting children addicted to crack, and then selling it to them for money they steal from their parents. Now excuse me while I rob a bank to get more Bawls and Penguin Mints...
We live in an age where lemonade has artificial flavouring and cleaning fluid is made with real lemon. Perhaps we can live in an age where lemonade is made with real cleaning fluid, and cleaning fluid with artificial lemonade. Good, I've gone and confused myself again.
A patent on those annoying conversations over IM services where you can't establish a direct TCP/IP connection, so your message gets there 5 minutes late and you end up holding 8 different conversations with a person at the same time, all of them backwards.
Slashdot Mirror
Allright, lets all pull out our Treasures of Infocom books, and our boxes of Spectrum and Commodore games, and our grandparent's comics from the depression, and go on a sue-a-thon! Let that be a message to anybody who gets a copyright on anything at all... make sure your company stays in business right to the bitter end, so that you can suddenly make billions when the next Blizzard takes the name you gave to your pong nockoff :P
:P But I called it ShadowPhase... I wonder if I could sue over someone using that name? I wonder if anyone ever used that name? I wonder if the only copy of the game is still on the 100mb hard drive of the beat up 386 with all the cables disconnected sitting inoperational on the shelf in my brother's room, along with my DOS Prompt Changer and Emoticon Generator, and all the pathetically simple menu systems i made for my brother who can't grasp the concept of a command line... I wonder...
Hell, the first pseudo-game I ever made was in basic... it was a quasi-text adventure game.. of course, every room gave you 2 choices... one of them killed you and the other let you continue, so it (quite obviously) sucked
--
I can't even make it all the way through that...
/. ads than I have in total online anywhere else. The first time Slashdot tells me to Punch the Monkey and win 30 dollars, I will cry.
You people are altogether far to upset over banner ads... LIVE WITH THEM. Yeah, popups are irritating, and link-trapping should be stopped, but plain old ads are no big deal... They are the reason we dont have to pay for some of the sites we rely on (slashdot, webmonkey, newsforge, need i say more?). Out of all the billions of ideas that have been pitched, I can gather the following as useful:
1 - All ads should be in some way related to the page they are being displayed on. Slashdot does this very well... I have clicked on more
2 - Popups should be easily closeable, not too big, and should not open new popups when they close
3 - NO LINK TRAPPING. My back button should always go back.
4 - No website should ever change the size of my browser window... it is carefully sized to allow me to watch TV at a decent window size, use ICQ and browse most sites without horizontal scrolling (i must admit, windows is my primary OS at the moment)... I don't need to re-precision size my window every time i mistype the address of a CJB site...
5 - Ads should not interfere with a site's design... if a sight is meant to fit in the window without scrolling, then dont put an ad at the top so you have to scroll... this is the one situation when popups (that conform to rule 2) are preferable
Oh well
Most of this will never happen
I just think there is way too much stink over banner ads, go bug TV commercials or Coming Attractions Reels why dont you?
--
I actually thought of this once myself... mainly because I still, unfortunately, use Windows as my primary operating system (convincing a computer illiterate family that prompts are better is tough)... After mudding and zorking way way way too much, I went to use DOS for some reason or another, and kept subconsciously typing "look" for "dir" and "save" at random points for no apparent reason ("Always remember: SAVE OFTEN")... I was extremely close to blowing the dust of my DOS Batch file book, when my laziness got the better of me.
--
I think the slashdot shirt says it all. Code Poet. Code is as much an art as poetry. Granted, alot of programmers think they can replicate Michelangelo with crayons on paper bag, hence the development of crap code. However, a great piece of coding is akin to a living organism or, in this case, a piece of art.
--
I had a website up to do with a movie myself and some friends were making as an english assignment. Naturally, we wanted to be able to access it from school. Unfortunately, I found out that Bess blocks all free hosting programs (this one was on Free2Surf) by default. I thought this was stupid. Although, in Bess's defence, they were very prompt to allow access to the site when I send them a Review Request through their online form.
--
I think its just stupid. In all of the reccomended domains, I thought that 2 were really intelligent and good suggestions:
.xxx
.xxx, that would just sort things out a bit. As far as reducing .com congestion, .web would be perfect. Sure, alot of bigger companies would register .web equivalents of their .com's, its not a permanent solution, but it would definately help. Alot of the other ones that just havent worked have a reason...
.web and
If all newly registered adult oriented sites were forced to use
.ws, even though it was a ccTLD, was advertised by register.com as standing for WebSite. It would be good, but think about it phonetically:
"Oh, im at kickassdomain.double-you ess" or "Im at kickassdomain.com"
Some poeple done think so, but being able to say a domain easily (without having to spell or indicate hyphens) is a big thing. Thats why sites that have done things like www.ita.ly (i think thats one) are annoying, because you have to explain that one for about 5 minutes before someone gets it right...
Oh well, ICANN is stupid, i guess we have to accept that.
--
No but I'd throw a party.
--
I am 15... As far as I recall, I saw my first snippet of code at 9. It was done in qBasic, and was a screen saver that made random dots on the screen until it was full. Now I know that it was extremely messy code, which was why I couldn't decipher it. My parents bought me a qBasic book at 10, and I was making programs in no time. I kept at it, until I discovered Visual Basic around 12, and just last year I started working with my first non-microsoft language, Delphi... but still for the windows platform. It was about the same time that I discovered the Unix platform, and I still can't really program for it because I have to teach myself... I have taught myself 90% of what I know about computers, and its really a frigging pain. I mean, with all the computer courses in my school, only ONE covers C++, and even thats only for about the last 1/4 of the year. Now I'm looking at the new curriculum for years that come after me (im in Ontario, fellow ontarionians will know what I mean) and I gag. Grade 9: VB, Grade 10: Delphi, Grade 11: Delphi/C++. Not to mention the teachers dont know a thing and if you code based on their suggestions for "clean code" you will be lynched by any open source community in the world. I've found a couple online resources for teen programmers, but they are terrible. Webmonkey is great for web-programming, but nothing for app programming. I've lately been doing a website for my company, its an article site, slightly similar to Slashdot, based around the "typical teenage guy" topics: music, cars, movies, sports, dating. Im thinking I will take my engine and set up a resource for teen programmers. But before I can convince my colleauges to agree to this project, I need to see some support. If you would be interested in, and USE such a site, send an e-mail to me at intervention@home.com
--
If this interests you at all, i suggest reading Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer (my personal second favourite Sci-Fi author, next to Douglas Adams and Isaac Asimov)
Its a piece of fiction about the discovery of the higgs boson.
--
As I first read this, I almost immediately brushed it off as another annoying gamer habit, but once i looked at it I was very impressed. He has done a good job of capturing some of the scenes! I am particularly impressed by the Saigon and Rodney King images. I would like to see what he would do with the Kent State photo.
I am inclined to agree. There is the possibility that W3 is going somewhere with this, or that in the future as handhelds progress this will become more useful. But for now, its not. Still, if people do implement it, its better they do it to standards than fuck up like the browser companies did. I guess its just something to keep in mind if you are making wireless software with the J2ME
This patent applies to all world wide web content that falls under the category of WebShit. WebShit is defined as:
a) Sites with no practical purpose beyond moronic jokes and vulgar humour directed at 4 year olds that somehow make millions of dollars in advertising (examples include www.stickdeath.com and www.newgrounds.com)
b) Sites made by someone who has no concept of design and hence incorporate elements such as Starry Background Images, stock animated gifs with backgrounds that dont match the page, ugly text colours and links to similar bad sites. (examples include anything hosted on Angelfire)
c) www.microsoft.com
All corporations/individuals that are the proprieters of category B sites will pay me an arbitrary rate monthly, or be sued for infringement upon my patent. All corporations/individuals that maintain/visit category A sites will be killed immediately. All corporations/individuals that maintain category C sites will hopefully die anyway.
Everything has just reached a new low... Once more my faith in the human race is gone.
--
It should be brought to your attention that by offering ThinkGeek related prizes you are infringing upon several laws which I have recently made up. Many of us are addicted to ThinkGeek merchandise, and I would like to suggest that taunting us with it is similar to getting children addicted to crack, and then selling it to them for money they steal from their parents. Now excuse me while I rob a bank to get more Bawls and Penguin Mints...
We live in an age where lemonade has artificial flavouring and cleaning fluid is made with real lemon. Perhaps we can live in an age where lemonade is made with real cleaning fluid, and cleaning fluid with artificial lemonade. Good, I've gone and confused myself again.
...
The new top-level domain name dedicated to linux geek sites is now owned 100% by myself. NOBODY may use this nonexistent top-level domain without me.
Visit www.register.tux for an uninformative DSN error page.
A patent on those annoying conversations over IM services where you can't establish a direct TCP/IP connection, so your message gets there 5 minutes late and you end up holding 8 different conversations with a person at the same time, all of them backwards.