Virtual Reality was overhyped back in the 90s and then faded from the public eye, but it became a reality anyway. And this certainly isn't something new but many people are having trouble making the connection. When you buy a movie or lottery ticket, what did you really buy? Value may be subjective, but is by definition a tangible thing. Web servers and bandwidth aren't really intangibles. Advertising space seen by hundred of thousands isn't an intangible.
Second Life was one of the first major financial movers in the virtual worlds department, which started as a simple 3D version of the text based MUSH/MOO style 'games' which have been around since the 80s. The major difference is they started as a purely commercial venture.
Such virtual worlds don't yet have the draw that a more accessible game such as Everquest or World of Warcraft does. MMORPGs have goals that seem much more self evident, which allows casual gamers to more quickly value the bits that make up their virtual characters. However, as the wired generation grows up we will eventually have a world full of people who can more easily make that connection and are more than willing to pay money so they can look good in the exclusive Black Sun. The term "Persistent World" will take on new meaning as the few major players who have fostered the largest communities will kick off the next major revolution when they establish and share protocols so players can freely move their Avatar and virtual objects from Matrix to Metaverse.
All I know is that there's still no contact with the colony and a xenomorph [microsoft.com] may be involved.:)
Sorry sir, a what?
Bug [microsoft.com] hunt.
Okay. It's important to understand this organism's life cycle. It's actually two creatures.
The first form [microsoft.com] hatches from a CD-ROM... a sort of large disk, and attaches itself to its victim. Then it injects an OS, ejects, and dies.
The embryo, the second form [microsoft.com], hosts on the victim's stage for several minutes. Gesticulating. Then it... then it... hoots. Sweats. Jumps around. Grunts rapidly.
If you doubt bundling is a problem, answer this question... How many people buy Opera on Linux when they have Firefox, Konqueror, Galeon, Mozilla and another 5 o 6 browsers all preinstalled ?
At least, on Windows, IE is so fu**ed up that someone will buy it anyway....
Talk about missing the point... yes, one does need to wonder what the market for proprietary and/or closed source software apps would be once there are numerous free/libre alternatives. How's the buggywhip market these days?
OK, this is obviously in jest, but don't you think it's a bit hypocritical to condem one group of people as being closed minded for putting forth an idea just because you disagree with it?
They're not being condemned, they're being included in a hypothesis to test a theory which they seem eager to participate in. Those who elect to remain a part of the control group will merely need to move to another state so as to not impede the progress of science.
Re:If I could hack IIS6 ..
on
Hack IIS6 Contest
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If I could hack IIS6... I sure as hell wouldn't give that knowledge away for a Xbox...
The point of these cute little contests with their cracker jack box prizes isn't to find out if there are exploits floating around in the wild. The point is to find out if any exploits have become so prevalent that someone would cash them in for a secret decoder ring. If not, they can hang their shingle saying, "Challenge still unhacked after foo months!" while those of us in the trenches scoff and continue our due diligence.
Security is a state of mind, not a state of being.
Speaking of mentions on Slashdot, has anyone else ever seen an article wherein someone was portrayed as such a complete shining genius? Anybody else find this even slightly suspicious?
I don't know... I found the last paragraph grated against his super-hero image:
That's right. Lyon is one of the good guys. Still, Lyon's heroics weren't possible without Mickey Richardson's resolve. It's easy to forget that as Lyon worked to save him, Richardson considered paying off the extortionists. Now Richardson has a better option. Pay Lyon $50,000 a year and he's protected. He doesn't have to worry about paying extortionist's protection fees.
I've always found there to be a rather fine line between insurance and extortion. If the story is true, he probably is one of the good guys, but he's merely tapped into the revenue stream the extortionists created.
I don't agree that the gaming industry is going to face a 'meltdown', but certainly it needs to continue innovating if it's going to continue growing.
While I agree with you in theory, until it has some serious competition I think the gaming industry can continue to wallow in it's own filth and the masses will happily dive in after it.
Gaming is merely a new aspect of the entertainment industry and it's interactive nature will forever change the idea of what entertainment is. Until a new form of entertainment springs up (interactive television? Or is that just The Sims3?) the interactive nature of gaming will be novel enough to hold the attention of the masses even without any serious innovation.
In addition, entertainment has long held an AOL "me too!" factor as it gets smeared into common culture. The culture of cool would ask if you heard the latest song or watched the latest show and now asks if you've played the latest game. Nominally you could assert that the latest and greatest is an improvement over the past, but for the most part gaming will continue to be like the rest of the entertainment industry: A sea of mediocrity with the occasional sparkling gem to catch the eye.
Calling it turn based strategy is pushing it, there's very little strategy involved. The gameplay is incredibly simplistic and boring, and the client is a bloated pile of crap. Freeciv at least involves strategy.
Wow. You and I must not be playing the same game. While I would completely agree that the game is rather simple (which is part of the developer's design plan), I've personally found it to be one of the best turn based strategy games I've ever played. While the overall design may be simple, I find the game has many layers (like an ogre) after you scratch the surface.
While FreeCiv certainly boasts more features I find the gameplay to be more simplistic than Wesnoth. At the very least, the two are different games, with Wesnoth focused entirely on combat aspects of building and moving units rather than the additional infrastructure of building a civilization.
For those who merely want to focus on the strategy of moving units, I would think Wesnoth would be superior in every way. The ability to move your leader and recruit at different keeps, the strategy involved in what units to recruit based on the terrain and your opponent's choices, and especially the decision each turn about which units to attack with first such that; you maximized the damage each unit deals, the experience gained from combat, and level up the units you want.
Now, don't get me wrong. I loved Civ2 and SMAC and find FreeCiv to be a great open source strategy game. And Wesnoth certainly still has a long ways to go to reach the greatness of Heroes of Might and Magic 3. However, I've found Wesnoth to be great both for playing epic single player campaigns or quick and dirty multiplayer battles.
Is a site that shares old Stevie Nicks, Frank Sinatra, and Ian Hunter live shows really that much of a threat to the music industry?
Of course. The threat is one of control. The RIAA is a music cartel who's entire business model exists around the premise of being the best way for aspiring artists to get their music out to the masses and make some money while doing so. This business model requires the perception that they control the market to the largest extent possible. Every nick in their armor is one more chance someone else might realize that the Internet has blown the doors off content distribution business models.
In my personal opinion, he isn't a freedom fighter. He's a guy whose making it harder to get the record labels to embrace online downloading as their business model.
The record labels want to embrace a business model where they have compete end to end control over their content. Some of us consider such a business model completely untenable. It would suggest complete control over their consumer base, and some of us want more freedom than that. Hopefully, if content control stays outside common culture long enough, a new business model will spring up that the rest of us can life with. If not, people will merely accept DRM with their content and never realize what they've lost.
Are you sure that the information published is correct? Are you sure that it is fair and unbiased?
I have a familiarity with the argument that truth could be subjective or objective. I accept that most people probably do not. It is my belief that a culture that is not interested in the pursuit of truth will find itself unable to generate fair and impartial judgments irregardless of the facts or fictions they possess. I propose that the key to this dilemma is education, not censorship.
we are all influenced in some way by the media , now people like you and me aparently can rise above this and seek a more unbiased view but not everyone is like this and can be influenced by story in the press more easily..
If you are correct, and the average citizen can be too easily swayed by misinformation, you have uncovered a problem that suggests a jury of peers is not the best way to dispense fair and impartial justice. This would also suggest a serious break down in the idea of an established democracy.
"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms." -- Aristotle
This is not about freedom of speach , this is about a fair trial
The suggestion here is that a jury of peers could not hold a fair opinion of court proceeding if they have been 'tainted' with outside information. Therefore I should accept the idea being that it is in the public's interest to suppress the flow of some information, as some small number of the public might be called on to make a fair and impartial decision, and they would be unable to make such decisions if they possess the wrong information.
I am of the belief that the solution to misinformation is education, not censorship. Personally, if I were to ever stand trial, I would want my peers to be as well educated and informed as possible. I fail to see how keeping people ignorant is going to produce a 'more' fair and impartial verdict.
I keep telling people that Flash is evil, this just re-enforces my point.
Meh. I used to be you. Since Flash five I've come to accept that Flash is merely another tool, and not half bad at what it does. And like other tools, it can be used for good or evil. Even if Macromedia was directly working with the most vile of marketroid empires, I've yet to see evidence that they are trying to make Flash anything more than a multimedia presentation tool. Now, if I'm wrong, I'd be happy to know about it.
My first real brush with respect happened as a youngster when dropping off checks for my father at the bank. He waited in the car while I ran in and dropped off the bundle of paper work with a teller. After handing me the receipt I was surprised to be thanked as Mr. Saxerman. It took me a minute to realize I had been mistaken for my father, but that brief moment of courtesy opened by mind to the difference between being a nobody, and being addressed as Sir.
The second incident happened when I went shopping after spending the day in interviews. I was still in college and this was the first time I had really been out in public while wearing a suit. The level of respect from the sales staffed was an amazing difference from what I was used to. Even average citizens were happen to hold the door open for me.
The lesson I've learned is that while respect is something you can earn, it's also something you can steal by inference. If people infer that you are important, that will treat you that way.
I was a big fan of Wing Commander Privateer and to a lesser extent Tachyon: The Fringe and Privateer 2: The Darkening. I've been hopeful a Massively Multiplayer style game would come along that would capture of the magic of the classics.
Vendetta Online is one of the MMORPG space games with more of a focus on the ship to ship combat than the level grinds. And as an added bonus they support Linux out of the box. As a smaller independent development team it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of some of the major league players, but I've been impressed with the direction they're taking the game.
>>It was called Firefly. They cancelled it.
>Because it sucked. This is honest opinion, not a troll or flamebait.
>Every episode looked like a Mad TV or SNL spoof. It wasn't so bad that it was fit for an MST3K treatment, but it was close.
Wow. We must not have been watching the same show. At first blush I disliked Firefly due to the "Space Western" theme as I thought it sounded rather contrived. Why would we unlock tech in space flight and colonization and yet regress technologically?
Fortunately my friends convinced me to watch the show, and I was hooked. After I understood the story, it made perfect sense. I enjoyed how they accepted the advanced technologies of space travel but did not let them dominate the story. I enjoyed how the story stayed focused on the characters, and I especially enjoyed watching the characters and their relationships develop.
I'm not sure why you felt Firefly seemed like a space comedy. There were certainly some very funny moments but the thrust of the series seemed to focus on the serious morale issues of working within the grey areas of the law and surviving between those groups that considered the laws absolute and the criminal elements that would rather ignore the laws completely. If anything I would think you would take exception of the melodrama, considering how you cite that grievance against the Star Trek franchise. I also agree that Star Trek was too melodramatic for my tastes, which is why I considered Firefly a welcome change. I didn't feel like the script was talking down to me and appreciate how they directly tackled hard issues like religion ("You don't 'fix' the Bible, River.") and didn't make me feel like I was being preached too.
This is very simple: accessing the iTunes Music Store with any software other than iTunes violates the license agreement. Even if this software did nothing to skirt the DRM, and downloaded a DRMed file identical to what you'd get using iTunes, it is still violating the license agreement.
I agree. My point is merely that while the legal definition might seem cut and dry, it might not be as clear cut to those who 'accepted' the license to begin with. As such, the legal argument could be raised that the license is not valid as the 'common man' would not be aware of its existence. While ignorance of the law is no excuse, you legally can't accept contracts you're unaware of.
There's a big difference between being forced into a license and choosing to accept a license.
I actually think the line is pretty fine. Considering the wide audience that uses software, music CDs, and movie DVDs, I imagine many of them are largely unaware of the implicit contract they've agreed to by using them.
If nothing else, you would think that the number of fan films and stories being created would be a testament to the fertile playground available to create new works in. Why would you want to continue to rehash the same 30 year old story rather than expanding on it?
Unfortunately it's not the content holders that are the problem, it's the consumers that continue to buy it.
I've long been saying that the content cartels will eventually be overthrown by a mass of free content. The cost and availability of the tools required for 'high quality' special effects has been rapidly declining, and we're beginning to see more and more content from , flash sites, and .
The majority of free content created is, of course, subpar. The tools still need to be wielded by skilled artisans to created above average content. Regardless, as the bar continues to be lowered for entry into the field, more and more people with some degree of talent will find new outlets for their creativity.
I don't see there being any sort of mass uprising anytime soon, as the content cartels still have a lot on the distribution outlets, but the rise of the Internet has changed the playing field dramatically. The major counter-argument has been that the content cartels can merely buy up the few quality titles to maintain their advantage, but my theory is that there is enough latent creativity waiting in the wings they won't be able to stem the tide.
But if they are user-oriented as they have publicly stated, they should be interested in some form of user participation you would think.
I accept that 'user-oriented' suggests some level of dedication towards the desires of their user base, but this doesn't mean they'll open up the direction of the project to a web poll of features. In OSS it's the wheel that the engineers feel like working on that gets the grease.
Perhaps one of them could have said "Fine, you implement THIS, Eugenia."
Certainly they could have said it, but why? The key here is that OSS projects don't move in any direction without someone pushing. The crowds chanting and jeering along for the ride only have as much effect as the programmers want. And we could argue that they should spend more time listening to the crowd... but why? It's their time, and they're free to do with it as they wish.
Developers want to appear as putting out products that focus on usability, but don't want to deal with the users who are working with their products. Sorry, if you don't want to hear any complaints about your product, keep it on your private network and never release it.
You might be suggesting that by releasing something into the public domain, the owner should continue to support it. And you're right, but seem to ignore one important distinction. Once in the public domain, it's owned by everyone.
She did offer to get her hands dirty and did offer a solution. Read the thread where she offers to write a PHP solution to the problem.
Yes, but her solution wasn't addressing the real problem. Eugenia sees the problem being that the gnome devel team is only working on the features they want, not the features their users want. But this isn't a 'problem' with OSS, it's a feature.:P
Slashdot Mirror
Second Life was one of the first major financial movers in the virtual worlds department, which started as a simple 3D version of the text based MUSH/MOO style 'games' which have been around since the 80s. The major difference is they started as a purely commercial venture.
Such virtual worlds don't yet have the draw that a more accessible game such as Everquest or World of Warcraft does. MMORPGs have goals that seem much more self evident, which allows casual gamers to more quickly value the bits that make up their virtual characters. However, as the wired generation grows up we will eventually have a world full of people who can more easily make that connection and are more than willing to pay money so they can look good in the exclusive Black Sun. The term "Persistent World" will take on new meaning as the few major players who have fostered the largest communities will kick off the next major revolution when they establish and share protocols so players can freely move their Avatar and virtual objects from Matrix to Metaverse.
Game over, man. Game over.
I say we dust off and nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Talk about missing the point... yes, one does need to wonder what the market for proprietary and/or closed source software apps would be once there are numerous free/libre alternatives. How's the buggywhip market these days?
They're not being condemned, they're being included in a hypothesis to test a theory which they seem eager to participate in. Those who elect to remain a part of the control group will merely need to move to another state so as to not impede the progress of science.
The point of these cute little contests with their cracker jack box prizes isn't to find out if there are exploits floating around in the wild. The point is to find out if any exploits have become so prevalent that someone would cash them in for a secret decoder ring. If not, they can hang their shingle saying, "Challenge still unhacked after foo months!" while those of us in the trenches scoff and continue our due diligence.
Security is a state of mind, not a state of being.
I don't know... I found the last paragraph grated against his super-hero image:
That's right. Lyon is one of the good guys. Still, Lyon's heroics weren't possible without Mickey Richardson's resolve. It's easy to forget that as Lyon worked to save him, Richardson considered paying off the extortionists. Now Richardson has a better option. Pay Lyon $50,000 a year and he's protected. He doesn't have to worry about paying extortionist's protection fees.
I've always found there to be a rather fine line between insurance and extortion. If the story is true, he probably is one of the good guys, but he's merely tapped into the revenue stream the extortionists created.
While I agree with you in theory, until it has some serious competition I think the gaming industry can continue to wallow in it's own filth and the masses will happily dive in after it.
Gaming is merely a new aspect of the entertainment industry and it's interactive nature will forever change the idea of what entertainment is. Until a new form of entertainment springs up (interactive television? Or is that just The Sims3?) the interactive nature of gaming will be novel enough to hold the attention of the masses even without any serious innovation.
In addition, entertainment has long held an AOL "me too!" factor as it gets smeared into common culture. The culture of cool would ask if you heard the latest song or watched the latest show and now asks if you've played the latest game. Nominally you could assert that the latest and greatest is an improvement over the past, but for the most part gaming will continue to be like the rest of the entertainment industry: A sea of mediocrity with the occasional sparkling gem to catch the eye.
Wow. You and I must not be playing the same game. While I would completely agree that the game is rather simple (which is part of the developer's design plan), I've personally found it to be one of the best turn based strategy games I've ever played. While the overall design may be simple, I find the game has many layers (like an ogre) after you scratch the surface.
While FreeCiv certainly boasts more features I find the gameplay to be more simplistic than Wesnoth. At the very least, the two are different games, with Wesnoth focused entirely on combat aspects of building and moving units rather than the additional infrastructure of building a civilization.
For those who merely want to focus on the strategy of moving units, I would think Wesnoth would be superior in every way. The ability to move your leader and recruit at different keeps, the strategy involved in what units to recruit based on the terrain and your opponent's choices, and especially the decision each turn about which units to attack with first such that; you maximized the damage each unit deals, the experience gained from combat, and level up the units you want.
Now, don't get me wrong. I loved Civ2 and SMAC and find FreeCiv to be a great open source strategy game. And Wesnoth certainly still has a long ways to go to reach the greatness of Heroes of Might and Magic 3. However, I've found Wesnoth to be great both for playing epic single player campaigns or quick and dirty multiplayer battles.
Of course. The threat is one of control. The RIAA is a music cartel who's entire business model exists around the premise of being the best way for aspiring artists to get their music out to the masses and make some money while doing so. This business model requires the perception that they control the market to the largest extent possible. Every nick in their armor is one more chance someone else might realize that the Internet has blown the doors off content distribution business models.
The record labels want to embrace a business model where they have compete end to end control over their content. Some of us consider such a business model completely untenable. It would suggest complete control over their consumer base, and some of us want more freedom than that. Hopefully, if content control stays outside common culture long enough, a new business model will spring up that the rest of us can life with. If not, people will merely accept DRM with their content and never realize what they've lost.
I have a familiarity with the argument that truth could be subjective or objective. I accept that most people probably do not. It is my belief that a culture that is not interested in the pursuit of truth will find itself unable to generate fair and impartial judgments irregardless of the facts or fictions they possess. I propose that the key to this dilemma is education, not censorship.
If you are correct, and the average citizen can be too easily swayed by misinformation, you have uncovered a problem that suggests a jury of peers is not the best way to dispense fair and impartial justice. This would also suggest a serious break down in the idea of an established democracy.
"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms." -- Aristotle
The suggestion here is that a jury of peers could not hold a fair opinion of court proceeding if they have been 'tainted' with outside information. Therefore I should accept the idea being that it is in the public's interest to suppress the flow of some information, as some small number of the public might be called on to make a fair and impartial decision, and they would be unable to make such decisions if they possess the wrong information.
I am of the belief that the solution to misinformation is education, not censorship. Personally, if I were to ever stand trial, I would want my peers to be as well educated and informed as possible. I fail to see how keeping people ignorant is going to produce a 'more' fair and impartial verdict.
Meh. I used to be you. Since Flash five I've come to accept that Flash is merely another tool, and not half bad at what it does. And like other tools, it can be used for good or evil. Even if Macromedia was directly working with the most vile of marketroid empires, I've yet to see evidence that they are trying to make Flash anything more than a multimedia presentation tool. Now, if I'm wrong, I'd be happy to know about it.
The second incident happened when I went shopping after spending the day in interviews. I was still in college and this was the first time I had really been out in public while wearing a suit. The level of respect from the sales staffed was an amazing difference from what I was used to. Even average citizens were happen to hold the door open for me.
The lesson I've learned is that while respect is something you can earn, it's also something you can steal by inference. If people infer that you are important, that will treat you that way.
Vendetta Online is one of the MMORPG space games with more of a focus on the ship to ship combat than the level grinds. And as an added bonus they support Linux out of the box. As a smaller independent development team it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of some of the major league players, but I've been impressed with the direction they're taking the game.
It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.
- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Ethics for Tomorrow" (Houlin Meier, Alpha Centaureality)
Ah, much better. See how well compromise works?
Yes, but then Tuesday is Soylent Green day. Everyone loves the Green Soylent!
Wow. We must not have been watching the same show. At first blush I disliked Firefly due to the "Space Western" theme as I thought it sounded rather contrived. Why would we unlock tech in space flight and colonization and yet regress technologically?
Fortunately my friends convinced me to watch the show, and I was hooked. After I understood the story, it made perfect sense. I enjoyed how they accepted the advanced technologies of space travel but did not let them dominate the story. I enjoyed how the story stayed focused on the characters, and I especially enjoyed watching the characters and their relationships develop.
I'm not sure why you felt Firefly seemed like a space comedy. There were certainly some very funny moments but the thrust of the series seemed to focus on the serious morale issues of working within the grey areas of the law and surviving between those groups that considered the laws absolute and the criminal elements that would rather ignore the laws completely. If anything I would think you would take exception of the melodrama, considering how you cite that grievance against the Star Trek franchise. I also agree that Star Trek was too melodramatic for my tastes, which is why I considered Firefly a welcome change. I didn't feel like the script was talking down to me and appreciate how they directly tackled hard issues like religion ("You don't 'fix' the Bible, River.") and didn't make me feel like I was being preached too.
Nor am I.
This is very simple: accessing the iTunes Music Store with any software other than iTunes violates the license agreement. Even if this software did nothing to skirt the DRM, and downloaded a DRMed file identical to what you'd get using iTunes, it is still violating the license agreement.
I agree. My point is merely that while the legal definition might seem cut and dry, it might not be as clear cut to those who 'accepted' the license to begin with. As such, the legal argument could be raised that the license is not valid as the 'common man' would not be aware of its existence. While ignorance of the law is no excuse, you legally can't accept contracts you're unaware of.
I actually think the line is pretty fine. Considering the wide audience that uses software, music CDs, and movie DVDs, I imagine many of them are largely unaware of the implicit contract they've agreed to by using them.
Unfortunately it's not the content holders that are the problem, it's the consumers that continue to buy it.
The majority of free content created is, of course, subpar. The tools still need to be wielded by skilled artisans to created above average content. Regardless, as the bar continues to be lowered for entry into the field, more and more people with some degree of talent will find new outlets for their creativity.
I don't see there being any sort of mass uprising anytime soon, as the content cartels still have a lot on the distribution outlets, but the rise of the Internet has changed the playing field dramatically. The major counter-argument has been that the content cartels can merely buy up the few quality titles to maintain their advantage, but my theory is that there is enough latent creativity waiting in the wings they won't be able to stem the tide.
Well... I can dream, can't I?
I accept that 'user-oriented' suggests some level of dedication towards the desires of their user base, but this doesn't mean they'll open up the direction of the project to a web poll of features. In OSS it's the wheel that the engineers feel like working on that gets the grease.
Perhaps one of them could have said "Fine, you implement THIS, Eugenia."
Certainly they could have said it, but why? The key here is that OSS projects don't move in any direction without someone pushing. The crowds chanting and jeering along for the ride only have as much effect as the programmers want. And we could argue that they should spend more time listening to the crowd... but why? It's their time, and they're free to do with it as they wish.
You might be suggesting that by releasing something into the public domain, the owner should continue to support it. And you're right, but seem to ignore one important distinction. Once in the public domain, it's owned by everyone.
Yes, but her solution wasn't addressing the real problem. Eugenia sees the problem being that the gnome devel team is only working on the features they want, not the features their users want. But this isn't a 'problem' with OSS, it's a feature. :P