Well no wonder. I am 45 and can barely stand to vote for most politicians. Most elections in the last 14 years have been votes for the lesser of evils as I saw it. If I struggle to relate with them on any level, how much success is an 18 year old going to have. They haven't gained a sufficent level of cynicism at that age. Although God knows our society is trying to beat them down until they do.
I completely feel the same way. The real problem, IMHO, is that "most politicians" are considered a separate class of people. It's no longer a system By the People, Of the People. No one running actually represents those under 40, and thus most of those under 40 don't see anyone worth casting their vote. A tricky catch-22. Add to this the costs involved in running a typical campaign, and it should be obvious why we don't have a lot of 30-something gamers running for local office.
Getting more gamers to vote would certainly help, but candidates they could actually believe in would help even more.
You can have the greatest detection tech in the world, but if people don't use it properly, it won't help one bit.
I used to work in retail security. And while your comment is correct, I think you misunderstand how the tech is being used. The audible tag alarms at the exits are neither a theft prevention or deterrent device. It's purpose is exactly what it says, an alarm. It's used as part of the many excuses to stop suspected shoplifters.
In this case, it's used as an excuse to stop (suspected) shoplifters who aren't savvy enough to either remove or mask all the tags on their merchandise. It tends to carry more weight than merely having a store employee or plainclothes security officer stop them saying, "I need you to come with me, please."
In any case, the trick is always getting someone to stop. It most cases security staff does not want to chase and/or physically restrain a potential shoplifter as it opens up the problem of litigation.* If they're foolish enough to run into a vehicle the license number can be sent to the cops who may perform a stop if they feel you have enough evidence for probable cause. However, if a suspect were to leave on foot, security will typically merely fill out a police report with a description of the suspect which is mostly bureaucratic record keeping.
*I worked in retail security for a year, and during that time I was part of perhaps three dozen 'stops'. Before making a stop the store manager is typically alerted and they make the call as to if we should actually attempt to physically restrain the suspects if they tried to flee. In less than a quarter of the stops did we receive such authorization. In only one of the three dozen stop did anyone try to flee, and we were told not to give chase.
Isn't the point of HDMI to have the highest quality possible?
No, I believe the point of HDMI was to add content controls to the digital signal in an attempt to make copying it more difficult.
Re:So wait. You expect people to surpass the best?
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Can Anyone Beat WoW?
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· Score: 1
Let's look at this rationally, Wow isn't just a great game it's a phenomonial game.
WoW didn't really bring anything new to the table, it merely refined what others had already done. Sadly, WoW and most other MMO games still haven't taken to heart all the lessons learned from the more than a decade of previous experience in MUD design. The MMO universe still has huge room for improvement, and IMHO the most important change will be dynamic content.
The static worlds used by the vast majority of games take a vast amount of effort to build, making it tedious to bring new content online or change new content. Game worlds are huge static globs of data which need to match identically on all the clients for everyone to coexist in the same place. If rather than sharing this huge data glob the clients and servers could merely pass a much smaller key which could be used to build procedurally driven content things are going to start changing. As the process is refined to build more complex and interesting worlds this will lead to a very dynamic universe will can not only change rapidly and be more compelling, but also be far more resistant to web sites and strategy guides which reveal all the hidden secrets of the game.
My personal opinion is that the pro-DRM argument smells a lot like the pro-gun-control argument, in that both of them put restrictions on law-abiding people in order to modify the behavior of people who frequently just ignore the law anyway; when you ignore the difference between law-abiding people and those who just don't give a damn, it's quite easy to descend into a "feedback loop," where in response to your last restrictive law not working, you pass a more restrictive one... ad infinium. The net result is just a lot of collateral damage.
There is an argument from the gun lobby that says, if everyone had guns, the world would be a safer place. Such an idea is obviously highly debatable.
Compare that to an argument that says, if everyone had information, the world would be a more educated place. Then consider that DRM is about controlling who has access to information. The suggestion being that such access controls must make the world a less educated place. An argument I rather enjoy.
I certainly accept and understand why copyright was originally created, but times have certainly changed. I really find it hard to understand how well it still continues to "Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." While the volume of total creative works has certainly vastly increased, it is now increasingly difficult to verify which are protected by copyright. How much effort must we expend assigning ownership to ideas, and at what point are we spending more effort in the task of securing the rights to 'intellectual property' rather than creating new works?
Space Quest 2 was the worst offender that I can recall. In the first scene of the game, if you don't notice a particular item and grab it, then at the end of the game you're screwed, with no idea why. You have to start over. From the beginning.
I also seem to recall the InfoCom H2G2 game, where at the very end of the game Floyd would ask you for a specific item to open the hatch so you could leave the Heart of Gold. The item was randomized each time you started the game, and could include a number of items from early areas to which you could not return. But consider the target audience for text based adventure games; If you didn't want to figure anything out, you could more easily just buy a book.
Also good modern games that include painfully complex and/or time-consuming content also tend to make it optional, such that you don't need it to finish the game, or it can only access it when replaying the game in 'God Mode' or something similar. This way the die-hard gamers can enjoy the extra content, and the more casual gamers can safely ignore it.
Whenever I'm asked if I 'would like to get a copy of the strategy guide at X% off?', I tell them, "No thanks, I have access to the Internet."
IIRC, the sales of strategy guides were also an early indicator of piracy when they sold better than the game itself. I used to know a guy who knew a guy on the old 8-bit Atari warez team, and this was eventually given to me as the reason they shut down their operations.
So let me get this straight. You are disappointed with the friend of yours because he doesn't want to give his music away for free? I just want to clarify this point.
Certainly not. I respect that he has the right to do as he wishes with his music. My disappointment is that my philosophical beliefs are unable to provide a compelling business model which we can both support. It would seem to make sense that musicians just want to play and their fans just want to listen, with neither giving much concern over how it happens. Which leads me to question why I do?
It used to require expensive equipment to record music, but now near professional recordings can be had with equipment in the sub thousands of dollars range. The price of booking time in professional grade studios has plummeted, so bands without the technical wherewithal to record their own tracks can pay near-reasonable fees to indy-band studios (shameless plug: http://www.joelwanasek.com/) and have it done professionally.
It's now been four years since I last purchased music from a RIAA label. Not only do I completely disagree with their business practices, but I consider them a legacy business model that has a greatly diminished role in a digital world. Unfortunately most musicians I know either disagree with me, or don't care enough to make a stand. Mostly they just want to play music rather than get into some philosophical debate over technology or copyright.
Despite my preaching, a friend of mine in a local band (shameless plug: http://www.rictusgrin.com/home) would still be willing to sign with a major label. They are currently still independent, but if given a set of terms they could live with, the desire to quit their day jobs and become 'professional musicians' is bigger than any self publishing model they've been able to cook up. And that means not giving away the music for free on the chance to sign it over to a 'real' label.
those communication technologies you've mentioned have served to homogenize and herd people even more
On this we completely agree. My point is that technology once forced societies to get information from a (very) limited number of sources, and I would purport that this merely fed into the herd mentality. However, the number of information sources has been increasing exponentially. Getting the word out is easier than ever, but getting everyone to hear your message is more difficult today than ever before.
and even though i think the internet will have no effect on herd like behavior, if it does, it will be to INCREASE herd like behavior, if anything: take jib jab for example, or "all your base are belong to us" or any other viral online meme... it allows for mass marketing of what would previously be disconnected subcultures, it allows for economic and efficient mass marketing of tiny groups, something that would be cost prohibitive before
I completely agree that our increasingly communication dependant society allows viral marketing to be explosively successful, yet such campaigns are vastly more complex and unpredictable when compared to other more conventional forms of advertising. And as new and more varied forms of communication spring up, this will become increasingly more complex. This allows us to have more control over our choice of content than ever before. I predict that this freedom could ultimately allow us to become more individualistic as we congregate into increasingly smaller and more niche specific groups.
it's not like the internet is going to come along and change simple human psychology:
1. the internet is not going to make less people behave in herds
2. the internet isn't going to make more people behave independently
I actually think you're completely wrong and the Internet (or something like it) could do exactly that. Now I'm certainly not denying the power of group think or the culture of cool, yet ultimately we're all individuals regardless of how homogenized our retail masters might wish us to be.
Consider how we get our information today. Ask people where they get their news today, and you'll likely get a wide variety of different answers. Compare that to the time when books were few and valuable, or the moveable type news print era, then radio, and now cable television. 57 channels (and nothings on) was 14 years ago and our choices continue to multiply. The cultural gelatin of the past, where everyone was subject to the same media sources, is being completely transformed. And while a handful of media companies might want to continue their strangle-hold, today our attention is a highly prized commodity and being assaulted by more sources today than ever before. Granted, a large number of those sources are still attempts by the handful of content cartels to continue their monopoly, but they still have piles of resources to continue the fight.
Yet if society awakens to the fact that the era of the content cartels is over, thanks both to vastly lower barriers of entry and distribution, it will be the content creators which will rise in their place. If that occurs, do you think society is still going to self select a handful of super stars? Viva la cultural revolution?
I accept your point that delays should be expected, and most are just bored with the hype engine trying to keep us interested rather than actually trying to say Vista is vaporware.
However, your history lesson reminded me that I barely noticed when DOS came out since I came into computing from the Atari/Commodore wagon. Even though 3.11 I considered it a bad joke, and the painful migration to Win95 wasn't because it finally came out, but because Amiga support had vanished. And even the touted features of Vista (before they starting cutting them to greet deadlines as they went whooshing by) makes me think this has been a giant step backwards for computers and we're barely back to where we were.
This just in -- competition doesn't exist. Those who compete either join up with other small companies to better compete with the large conglomerates or get absorbed by those conglomerates. See AT&T, Verizon, Bell South, etc. I would love to believe in the free market, but its a load of ____. Sometimes a competitor comes up who tries to stay independant, usually for personal pride reasons rather than monetary ones. If you study some historical economics, you'll realize this is actually how things work.
Worse yet, in most venues consumers don't WANT lots of choices. In order for competition to work consumers have to make intelligent and informed buying decisions. Caveat emptor makes sense until you realize how much research would be required to stay knowledgeable on the vast array of consumer choices available. How many different brands of soap have you tried? What's the dollar threshold under which you don't bother to do any research and just buy whatever looks good sitting on the shelf?
I'm not very confident in a group that's set to reform our copyright/patent system when they cannot even have enough common sense to realize that a name such as "The Pirate Party" is NOT going to be taken seriously here in the U.S. This time is investment is better spent on something that has somewhat of a chance in hell.
Only about half the eligible voters in the US actually cast a ballot. The 18-30 year olds represent about 25% of all eligible voters, with the 18-44 year olds represent nearly 40% of all eligible voters. Only about 60% of this age group are actually registered to vote. Do you think this age group is more or less likely to vote for a group named the Pirate Party?
In the end, it will be money and charisma which weigh far more heavily in the name. And in the short term, they get instant press coverage based merely on their name.
If legislation also made them accountable for data theft then you would see a lot less information collected. That would be a good thing.
While I completely agree you with, I think the problem of accountability by those who collect information is only one symptom of the larger problem. I believe the real problem is that lending institutions allow accounts to be open in our name with stolen data. At the moment there is little due diligence on their part to verify the identify of new credit lines because they have no finical incentive to do so. If the credit agencies who so freely send us and approve new credit card applications, free checking accounts, etc. were made accountable for any fraudulent charges made as a result of opening a line of credit to an identify thief, I think much of the problems of identify theft would magically vanish. Force them to be the ones responsible for cleaning up our credit record for any problems it causes, and most of the problem goes away. This will doubtless make it more difficult to open new lines of credit, but isn't that the way it should be?
Who is buying all of these movies? The rental model (netflix, blockbusters, etc) seems perfect for movies - the ending does not change the 10th time through.
The same group that buys the overpriced concert T-shirts. Your movie list is in the same social category as your song list or wardrobe. They define you as a commodity^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hperson. Ownership of the icon is required for worship, and is considered an important part of assimilating new converts.
More seriously, it's all part of supporting our chosen Content Creators. And until we can directly buy subscriptions to Content Creator Clubs, we're stuck with these outdated economic support models.
what the bill should be trying to do... is to keep minors from playing excessively violent or sexual games.
If some teenagers want to go out on a bender, do you really think it's the retail clerk who sells them the abuse which is responsible? The retain chain at which he works? The cops, legislature, or judiciary?
While I agree that some things are probably not appropriate for children, I also believe that parents should be the ones primarily responsible for deciding what is appropriate for their children. I think society would be best better served by better parents, rather than more laws.
Well, if you're like me, there were no such things as cell phones when I was a kid. I didn't know one single person with a cell phone when I was in high school. I didn't have my first cell phone until after I graduated college. How is that any different than a kid leaving their cell phone behind so their parents can't track them? And how did I ever survive in those dark ages...
Certainly there was a time before cell phones or even phones of any kind and we managed to survive. However, a bit more than 10 years ago when I started doing a gig as a Deliverator, there was a pay phone near every major corner and gas station. By the last year I was still without a cell phone, but the number of pay phones had diminished to the point that I kept a list of the eight 'working' pay phones I knew of in a city of more than 100k peoples.
There most certainly where sexual discussion that occurred between people well over the age of majority and teenagers regarding sexual activities. For example there lesbian events where you 25 year olds and 15 year olds hooking up (not necc with each other but facilitating a minor having sex....). 20 years ago this would be "corrupting the morals of a minor" (a misdemeanor for treating a child like an adult) not pedophile. I'm not sure what they call it today.
An immersive environment where they have to fight with and try to understand an additional metaphorical level on top of that whose only purpose in the end is to flash more ads in their face by forcing them to spend more time at the site. It won't work because it breaks what people like about the Internet: information that's easily, quickly, plainly available.
I completely agree with you in the sense that I'm terrified of the unfortunate new user interfaces that are waiting in the wings to be unleased. However, just because you can't personally envision a functional 3D environment that would be much easier and/or quicker to use than the current text based one browsers provide doesn't mean they don't exist. Those who think they can, however, are currently rounding up their venture capital. Big sites have been playing around with 2D interfaces, such as the Graphical What's Hot section used by news.com. And while I'm certain we'll see many more bad ideas like MS Bob, I also believe the net is already an immersive world in its current state, and adding the creamy 3D filing is far too lucrative for it not to eventually find functional footing.
This will never fly. People don't want to 'walk' around a store to shop, thats Why they go online. My biggest beef with MMOGs is that I have to spend time going to and from missions. The market won't want to commute to and from stores in a virtual strip mall.
You're thinking like a troll rather than a futurist. People do, in fact, 'walk around' when shopping online, and the 'real estate' they tend to walk though is their search engine(s) of choice. Just because you're comfortable walking down isles of text doesn't mean that's what the average shopper (or future virtual land baron) prefers. If froogle (or any other online meta retail site) were to render itself as something of a mall with the online sites which offer the item(s) you are shopping for as shops inside... you have instantly created new real estate to place advertising within. Complete with an ATM machine to move funds to your paypal account and a cinema to watch the latest movie.
Hard to fathom. How, exactly, can a 3D Web be useful in any way? What benefits will it offer that we don't have currently? Sounds like more hype regarding a useless technology (read: VR).
In the same way that 2D icons can be used to represent intangibles that the more mundane computer users might have trouble comprehending, a 3D interface would take this a step further and allow you to not only render concepts and ideas as objects, but allow you to establish a 'distance' between them. As you can move to anywhere within a virtual landscape nigh-instantly this distance doesn't serve as an obstacle to travel so much as a spacial representation of virtual surroundings. Consider a google search in which the most 'relevant' search results are displayed near you, and as you 'move' in a given 'direction' you refine your search.
The more pedantic might decry this as a pointless effort to build abstraction where none is needed, but consider that our younger computer users are probably already moving towards thinking in this direction. (Or, at least, their corporate masters hope so.) For instance, the concept of MySpace might be thought of as a virtual 'room' which a user can decorate and furnish in whatever gaudy fashion they believe might render them hip and trendy to their peers. Currently these 'rooms' don't have any tangible distance between one another, and you might not see value in a the creation of a virtual landscape in which to place these rooms.
However, the important thing to remember, is that this virtual landscape instantly becomes a semi-limited commodity. While it could extend to virtual infinity in all directions, the important thing to the hip and trendy users (travelers, inhabitants) of this user space, is their virtual relation to the rooms of their friends, and whatever cultural icons they seek to identify with. And suddenly the plot of virtual real estate in the shadow of the latest boy band's corporate sponsored virtual shrine shoots up in 'value' as the teeny boppers pledge the credit card numbers of their parents to establish their virtual 'room' there.
I suffered through Daggerfall and managed to enjoy it despite the bugs. One of the things I really enjoyed with the random quest generator which I found sorely lacking in Morrowind. Back when my friends and I were all playing Daggerfall, I found it highly enjoyable to trade stories about what our characters were doing. We could all come up with unique encounters that made for entertaining stories, even if it might have been little more than an exercise in adlib. I was on a quest to go into a dungeon and get (mummy wrap) when I encountered a (lich)! I (ran like hell back to town) and (bought a scroll of Spell Immunity) only to find (my weapon was useless against it!) So I reloaded and then (went back into town at night) to (steal an ebony blade) only to make it back and find the (lich) was stuck inside a wall which made it pretty easy to finish it off.
Morrowind, of course, had entirely static quests and dungeons, and once you cleared them out, they stayed empty. While this made for more of a believable world, I found it detracted from the uniqueness of the encounters. We were all basically stuck in the same cookie cutter world, and while we might use different spells and equipment to accomplish it, we all basically ended up in the same place. Not to mention I found the main story line in Morrowind to be teh complete suck, and the 'ending' was even worse.
How does Oblivion stack up in terms of random quests?
People seem skeptical of this article's prediction--and I have to admit there wasn't much attempt to outline how such a "metaverse" would work, or counter obvious objections. Still, I think something like Neal Stephenson's metaverse would be fun--and maybe even useful and possible.
While I agree the article itself is so much fart gas, I also agree the core concept is sound. It's certainly not going to happen tomorrow, and the winner will likely be the last one standing, but the metaverse concept will eventually take hold. People are just confused about what it means. The metaverse will be the world between worlds, similar to that super deformed lobby area in the new Dead or Alive. It has no real effect on what happens when you cross into the live game, but is merely how you represent yourself while you're waiting to play.
Certainly there will be those who won't understand why we need a virtual minigame to represent the placeholder realm, but such people didn't understand Tron and can't grok what's going on in Second Life. When everything is nothing, the Culture of Cool will be all that remains. (If scarcity defines value, and in a virtual world everything can be copied, a new currency will arise. See: Wuffie.)
I'm extremely annoyed that the fed. gov. doesn't just set up a website for e-filing itself.
I completely agree and find it rather disturbing that the federal government is the only organization I do business with that expects me to calculate and write up my own invoices, and then sends me to prison if I get it wrong.
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I completely feel the same way. The real problem, IMHO, is that "most politicians" are considered a separate class of people. It's no longer a system By the People, Of the People. No one running actually represents those under 40, and thus most of those under 40 don't see anyone worth casting their vote. A tricky catch-22. Add to this the costs involved in running a typical campaign, and it should be obvious why we don't have a lot of 30-something gamers running for local office.
Getting more gamers to vote would certainly help, but candidates they could actually believe in would help even more.
I used to work in retail security. And while your comment is correct, I think you misunderstand how the tech is being used. The audible tag alarms at the exits are neither a theft prevention or deterrent device. It's purpose is exactly what it says, an alarm. It's used as part of the many excuses to stop suspected shoplifters.
In this case, it's used as an excuse to stop (suspected) shoplifters who aren't savvy enough to either remove or mask all the tags on their merchandise. It tends to carry more weight than merely having a store employee or plainclothes security officer stop them saying, "I need you to come with me, please."
In any case, the trick is always getting someone to stop. It most cases security staff does not want to chase and/or physically restrain a potential shoplifter as it opens up the problem of litigation.* If they're foolish enough to run into a vehicle the license number can be sent to the cops who may perform a stop if they feel you have enough evidence for probable cause. However, if a suspect were to leave on foot, security will typically merely fill out a police report with a description of the suspect which is mostly bureaucratic record keeping.
*I worked in retail security for a year, and during that time I was part of perhaps three dozen 'stops'. Before making a stop the store manager is typically alerted and they make the call as to if we should actually attempt to physically restrain the suspects if they tried to flee. In less than a quarter of the stops did we receive such authorization. In only one of the three dozen stop did anyone try to flee, and we were told not to give chase.
No, I believe the point of HDMI was to add content controls to the digital signal in an attempt to make copying it more difficult.
WoW didn't really bring anything new to the table, it merely refined what others had already done. Sadly, WoW and most other MMO games still haven't taken to heart all the lessons learned from the more than a decade of previous experience in MUD design. The MMO universe still has huge room for improvement, and IMHO the most important change will be dynamic content.
The static worlds used by the vast majority of games take a vast amount of effort to build, making it tedious to bring new content online or change new content. Game worlds are huge static globs of data which need to match identically on all the clients for everyone to coexist in the same place. If rather than sharing this huge data glob the clients and servers could merely pass a much smaller key which could be used to build procedurally driven content things are going to start changing. As the process is refined to build more complex and interesting worlds this will lead to a very dynamic universe will can not only change rapidly and be more compelling, but also be far more resistant to web sites and strategy guides which reveal all the hidden secrets of the game.
There is an argument from the gun lobby that says, if everyone had guns, the world would be a safer place. Such an idea is obviously highly debatable.
Compare that to an argument that says, if everyone had information, the world would be a more educated place. Then consider that DRM is about controlling who has access to information. The suggestion being that such access controls must make the world a less educated place. An argument I rather enjoy.
I certainly accept and understand why copyright was originally created, but times have certainly changed. I really find it hard to understand how well it still continues to "Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." While the volume of total creative works has certainly vastly increased, it is now increasingly difficult to verify which are protected by copyright. How much effort must we expend assigning ownership to ideas, and at what point are we spending more effort in the task of securing the rights to 'intellectual property' rather than creating new works?
I also seem to recall the InfoCom H2G2 game, where at the very end of the game Floyd would ask you for a specific item to open the hatch so you could leave the Heart of Gold. The item was randomized each time you started the game, and could include a number of items from early areas to which you could not return. But consider the target audience for text based adventure games; If you didn't want to figure anything out, you could more easily just buy a book.
Also good modern games that include painfully complex and/or time-consuming content also tend to make it optional, such that you don't need it to finish the game, or it can only access it when replaying the game in 'God Mode' or something similar. This way the die-hard gamers can enjoy the extra content, and the more casual gamers can safely ignore it.
Whenever I'm asked if I 'would like to get a copy of the strategy guide at X% off?', I tell them, "No thanks, I have access to the Internet."
IIRC, the sales of strategy guides were also an early indicator of piracy when they sold better than the game itself. I used to know a guy who knew a guy on the old 8-bit Atari warez team, and this was eventually given to me as the reason they shut down their operations.
I have long said that security is a state of mind, not a state of being.
Certainly not. I respect that he has the right to do as he wishes with his music. My disappointment is that my philosophical beliefs are unable to provide a compelling business model which we can both support. It would seem to make sense that musicians just want to play and their fans just want to listen, with neither giving much concern over how it happens. Which leads me to question why I do?
It's now been four years since I last purchased music from a RIAA label. Not only do I completely disagree with their business practices, but I consider them a legacy business model that has a greatly diminished role in a digital world. Unfortunately most musicians I know either disagree with me, or don't care enough to make a stand. Mostly they just want to play music rather than get into some philosophical debate over technology or copyright.
Despite my preaching, a friend of mine in a local band (shameless plug: http://www.rictusgrin.com/home) would still be willing to sign with a major label. They are currently still independent, but if given a set of terms they could live with, the desire to quit their day jobs and become 'professional musicians' is bigger than any self publishing model they've been able to cook up. And that means not giving away the music for free on the chance to sign it over to a 'real' label.
On this we completely agree. My point is that technology once forced societies to get information from a (very) limited number of sources, and I would purport that this merely fed into the herd mentality. However, the number of information sources has been increasing exponentially. Getting the word out is easier than ever, but getting everyone to hear your message is more difficult today than ever before.
I completely agree that our increasingly communication dependant society allows viral marketing to be explosively successful, yet such campaigns are vastly more complex and unpredictable when compared to other more conventional forms of advertising. And as new and more varied forms of communication spring up, this will become increasingly more complex. This allows us to have more control over our choice of content than ever before. I predict that this freedom could ultimately allow us to become more individualistic as we congregate into increasingly smaller and more niche specific groups.
I actually think you're completely wrong and the Internet (or something like it) could do exactly that. Now I'm certainly not denying the power of group think or the culture of cool, yet ultimately we're all individuals regardless of how homogenized our retail masters might wish us to be.
Consider how we get our information today. Ask people where they get their news today, and you'll likely get a wide variety of different answers. Compare that to the time when books were few and valuable, or the moveable type news print era, then radio, and now cable television. 57 channels (and nothings on) was 14 years ago and our choices continue to multiply. The cultural gelatin of the past, where everyone was subject to the same media sources, is being completely transformed. And while a handful of media companies might want to continue their strangle-hold, today our attention is a highly prized commodity and being assaulted by more sources today than ever before. Granted, a large number of those sources are still attempts by the handful of content cartels to continue their monopoly, but they still have piles of resources to continue the fight.
Yet if society awakens to the fact that the era of the content cartels is over, thanks both to vastly lower barriers of entry and distribution, it will be the content creators which will rise in their place. If that occurs, do you think society is still going to self select a handful of super stars? Viva la cultural revolution?
However, your history lesson reminded me that I barely noticed when DOS came out since I came into computing from the Atari/Commodore wagon. Even though 3.11 I considered it a bad joke, and the painful migration to Win95 wasn't because it finally came out, but because Amiga support had vanished. And even the touted features of Vista (before they starting cutting them to greet deadlines as they went whooshing by) makes me think this has been a giant step backwards for computers and we're barely back to where we were.
Worse yet, in most venues consumers don't WANT lots of choices. In order for competition to work consumers have to make intelligent and informed buying decisions. Caveat emptor makes sense until you realize how much research would be required to stay knowledgeable on the vast array of consumer choices available. How many different brands of soap have you tried? What's the dollar threshold under which you don't bother to do any research and just buy whatever looks good sitting on the shelf?
Only about half the eligible voters in the US actually cast a ballot. The 18-30 year olds represent about 25% of all eligible voters, with the 18-44 year olds represent nearly 40% of all eligible voters. Only about 60% of this age group are actually registered to vote. Do you think this age group is more or less likely to vote for a group named the Pirate Party?
In the end, it will be money and charisma which weigh far more heavily in the name. And in the short term, they get instant press coverage based merely on their name.
While I completely agree you with, I think the problem of accountability by those who collect information is only one symptom of the larger problem. I believe the real problem is that lending institutions allow accounts to be open in our name with stolen data. At the moment there is little due diligence on their part to verify the identify of new credit lines because they have no finical incentive to do so. If the credit agencies who so freely send us and approve new credit card applications, free checking accounts, etc. were made accountable for any fraudulent charges made as a result of opening a line of credit to an identify thief, I think much of the problems of identify theft would magically vanish. Force them to be the ones responsible for cleaning up our credit record for any problems it causes, and most of the problem goes away. This will doubtless make it more difficult to open new lines of credit, but isn't that the way it should be?
The same group that buys the overpriced concert T-shirts. Your movie list is in the same social category as your song list or wardrobe. They define you as a commodity^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hperson. Ownership of the icon is required for worship, and is considered an important part of assimilating new converts.
More seriously, it's all part of supporting our chosen Content Creators. And until we can directly buy subscriptions to Content Creator Clubs, we're stuck with these outdated economic support models.
If some teenagers want to go out on a bender, do you really think it's the retail clerk who sells them the abuse which is responsible? The retain chain at which he works? The cops, legislature, or judiciary?
While I agree that some things are probably not appropriate for children, I also believe that parents should be the ones primarily responsible for deciding what is appropriate for their children. I think society would be best better served by better parents, rather than more laws.
Certainly there was a time before cell phones or even phones of any kind and we managed to survive. However, a bit more than 10 years ago when I started doing a gig as a Deliverator, there was a pay phone near every major corner and gas station. By the last year I was still without a cell phone, but the number of pay phones had diminished to the point that I kept a list of the eight 'working' pay phones I knew of in a city of more than 100k peoples.
Pay-Per-View?
I completely agree with you in the sense that I'm terrified of the unfortunate new user interfaces that are waiting in the wings to be unleased. However, just because you can't personally envision a functional 3D environment that would be much easier and/or quicker to use than the current text based one browsers provide doesn't mean they don't exist. Those who think they can, however, are currently rounding up their venture capital. Big sites have been playing around with 2D interfaces, such as the Graphical What's Hot section used by news.com. And while I'm certain we'll see many more bad ideas like MS Bob, I also believe the net is already an immersive world in its current state, and adding the creamy 3D filing is far too lucrative for it not to eventually find functional footing.
You're thinking like a troll rather than a futurist. People do, in fact, 'walk around' when shopping online, and the 'real estate' they tend to walk though is their search engine(s) of choice. Just because you're comfortable walking down isles of text doesn't mean that's what the average shopper (or future virtual land baron) prefers. If froogle (or any other online meta retail site) were to render itself as something of a mall with the online sites which offer the item(s) you are shopping for as shops inside... you have instantly created new real estate to place advertising within. Complete with an ATM machine to move funds to your paypal account and a cinema to watch the latest movie.
In the same way that 2D icons can be used to represent intangibles that the more mundane computer users might have trouble comprehending, a 3D interface would take this a step further and allow you to not only render concepts and ideas as objects, but allow you to establish a 'distance' between them. As you can move to anywhere within a virtual landscape nigh-instantly this distance doesn't serve as an obstacle to travel so much as a spacial representation of virtual surroundings. Consider a google search in which the most 'relevant' search results are displayed near you, and as you 'move' in a given 'direction' you refine your search.
The more pedantic might decry this as a pointless effort to build abstraction where none is needed, but consider that our younger computer users are probably already moving towards thinking in this direction. (Or, at least, their corporate masters hope so.) For instance, the concept of MySpace might be thought of as a virtual 'room' which a user can decorate and furnish in whatever gaudy fashion they believe might render them hip and trendy to their peers. Currently these 'rooms' don't have any tangible distance between one another, and you might not see value in a the creation of a virtual landscape in which to place these rooms.
However, the important thing to remember, is that this virtual landscape instantly becomes a semi-limited commodity. While it could extend to virtual infinity in all directions, the important thing to the hip and trendy users (travelers, inhabitants) of this user space, is their virtual relation to the rooms of their friends, and whatever cultural icons they seek to identify with. And suddenly the plot of virtual real estate in the shadow of the latest boy band's corporate sponsored virtual shrine shoots up in 'value' as the teeny boppers pledge the credit card numbers of their parents to establish their virtual 'room' there.
Morrowind, of course, had entirely static quests and dungeons, and once you cleared them out, they stayed empty. While this made for more of a believable world, I found it detracted from the uniqueness of the encounters. We were all basically stuck in the same cookie cutter world, and while we might use different spells and equipment to accomplish it, we all basically ended up in the same place. Not to mention I found the main story line in Morrowind to be teh complete suck, and the 'ending' was even worse.
How does Oblivion stack up in terms of random quests?
While I agree the article itself is so much fart gas, I also agree the core concept is sound. It's certainly not going to happen tomorrow, and the winner will likely be the last one standing, but the metaverse concept will eventually take hold. People are just confused about what it means. The metaverse will be the world between worlds, similar to that super deformed lobby area in the new Dead or Alive. It has no real effect on what happens when you cross into the live game, but is merely how you represent yourself while you're waiting to play.
Certainly there will be those who won't understand why we need a virtual minigame to represent the placeholder realm, but such people didn't understand Tron and can't grok what's going on in Second Life. When everything is nothing, the Culture of Cool will be all that remains. (If scarcity defines value, and in a virtual world everything can be copied, a new currency will arise. See: Wuffie.)
I completely agree and find it rather disturbing that the federal government is the only organization I do business with that expects me to calculate and write up my own invoices, and then sends me to prison if I get it wrong.