I haven't had a chance to read it myself, but retroactivity makes my hackles rise. If it's limited to things where a reasonable person would expect to get their butts kicked for doing it, e.g. taking down an FAA computer, fine. But telling a kid he's now up for life because he wrote "d00dz were here" across the whitehouse home page a couple of years ago when you would normally expect to get your hands slapped is something else again.
Now if they want to include SPAM in the definition of a virus, I'm all for making that a retroactive life term...
This is what "competition" is all about. Vote with your dollar. If amazon starts requiring a passport login, they'll lose my business and I'll tell them why. There are plenty of others that don't require it and aren't likely to (Powell's for one, at least for books).
When one company buys another, one certainly expects to get their customer database; this is no different in the online world than it is in the physical world.
The courts should show restraint because there's a lot of people who will falsely complain just to get someone they don't like into trouble. BUT, any judge who actually has an email account would just need to be shown one of the monsterhut messages to realize that the complaint is valid and deny the TRO.
The Niklaus Wirth book was the one that really explained things in a way I could understand as an undergrad. Fortunately I found it on my own because the books the classes I took used sucked. While it uses the dead language pascal, it's not so foreign to be unusable...
Even if it's well intentioned, the problem with vigilante justice is that there is rarely any justice in it. Just emotion. And thus it usually targets the wrong victim through ignorance.
Oh nonsense. Someone "steals" more from the company by spacing out for a few minutes a day. And its clear the whole lot of them were clueless if they're talking about "letting outsiders in" --- the data seti downloads isn't executable. The only real risk is if they downloaded a hacked binary in the first place. This is just a case of a clueless, dictatorial management. Unfortunately, the comment here that is legit so far is that they *are* the employers machines, and if they want to be clueless and dictatorial about how they're used, they have that right. But they don't have any justification.
The location of the "treasure chests" isn't necessarily public information, and he's definitely using a private database to get his information. While I think Jeremy's being a little over the top on the matter, the issue's been discussed there before and from what I recall (it's been a while since I've been there as I don't have time to go do the real world searches), he had acceptable reasons for trying to contain the data to one location. In any case, all this guy needs to do is start his own gps treasure hunt site and he can map those locations to his heart's content.
I'm sure this is it --- DVD-RAM was a waste of time to start with, being incompatible with DVD players. DVD-R is compatible, so why would anyone want DVD-RAM any more?
Here's the text of a response I sent to letters@forbes.net:
I just read the John C Dvorak article "Commercial free Conundrum" after
reading about it on slashdot. It's clear he never took the time to actually
use the device, and worse, his entire premise is wrong. The main point of
these devices is not to avoid commercials --- its that it makes time-shifting
easy. Tapes, recording at the barely watchable quality as it is, only hold
2 hours, and even if you put up with the 6 hour mode to get some barely
useful capacity, are still a royal pain to manage. With PVRs, you select
the program you want and say "record this". That's it. It's made it possible
to watch several shows I wouldn't otherwise be able to keep up with, as I
can watch them on my schedule and not bend my life to theirs.
As for the commercial free aspect, Tivo specifically left *out* the 30-second
skip feature for fear of ticking off the TV industry. While it's true that
that's one of many reasons I prefer the Replay unit over the Tivo, even on
the Replay you still get a glimpse of the commercials. And for the ones that
look entertaining, or have something of interest to me, I can back up and
watch them (and do). For the ones that don't, they've lost nothing except
my ill will, as I wouldn't buy their products anyway, having no interest in
them. And for the commercials for products that I am interested in, but the
commercials are so annoying I avoid the product anyway, it's likely a win for
the company. I only wish Replay had been around when the Tasters choice
commercial serial was airing --- I missed most of them because I rarely
watched the shows they advertised on, but I would have used the Replay to
catch them anyway (and I don't like coffee)...
I don't use the pause much, but thought it was still there, it just doesn't start until 10-15 seconds after you push pause. In any case, they've stated from the very beginning that ads were coming. How else do they pay for the program guide? That doesn't come free and anyone who expected otherwise is living in an ivory tower or should have bought a Tivo (which I think is a much inferior device) where they pay monthly for the program guide. The issue of forced updates is one worth discussing, but that's life with any product: just try to get support for an Edsel, DOS, Xenix-286 or Quicken 98. I loved DOS Quicken because it was fast and easy to use, with keyboard commands I was used to. When I ran into a problem with it however, I was forced to update to the Windoze version because that was the only way to get a fix. Fortunately Quicken's been improved since, but it's fundamentally the same problem.
I think users should push back the other way --- Javascript in particular is being seriously abused in enough really annoying ways that I keep it turned off, and few of the "legitimate" uses of it actually do anything a regular link wouldn't. I'd much rather see a stable browser than one with more unwanted bells and whistles.
If you care at all about quality, don't stream. Even over a 384K DSL line, I can't watch 300K streams without freeze frames and drops. If you just post quicktime fast start.mov's then it acts like its streaming by starting when it can, and if it has to stop and wait, the user can still watch it later, after the download is complete. I've completely given up on streaming because I have yet to see one that was watchable --- it was either too small and crappy or it wouldn't keep streaming (and even the best streaming is crappy compared to most downloads).
Given the rampant copying that goes on, I don't blame them, but quite frankly if I can't record a show and take it over to a friend's house to watch or loan it to them, I'm simply not going to use the technology at all, on principle. But if I can't time shift, the technology is completely useless, because my schedule is just never going to mesh with the broadcast schedule. Having had Replay for a year or so, I can't stand to watch live commercial TV anyway. They're just shooting themselves in the foot if they don't allow these capabilities because it will be DOA.
I only saw one reply that hinted at this, but sugarplum is basically doing a dictionary attack for the spammers. It's going to end up putting a lot of legitimate addresses in their databases.
I will be voting Libertarian primarily this year. I'm told "you're just wasting your vote", but that's the attitude that has kept this country limited to essentially a two party system. Granted, a better voting mechanism would help, but if you're always voting for the lesser of two evils, you're always going to get evil. If you vote your conscience, then your real opinion is known, and if a significant number agree with you, it will have influence. If you vote otherwise, you're supporting something that goes against how you truly feel, and then it's really hard to justify any complaints. As a quote I once saw said "don't complain how the ball bounces if you dropped it". If you don't vote at all, then you've really got no cause to complain because you're saying "I don't care what happens". Democracy is not a spectator sport. You only get out of it what you put into it.
Perhaps the shortest summary of this post is: GIGO
Please comment on fact that current marriage laws and agency rules (e.g. IRS & Social Security) are based on Christian principles of marriage and therefore a violation of separation of church and state. Also, please comment on the idea of returning marriage to the churches and replacing the legal marriage with a Civil Union that would
set rights and responsibilities for family members, however that family happened to define itself.
The memory stick is Yet Another Proprietary Technology designed to lock you into to a single manufacturer. Just as bad, it was completely unnecessary --- there's already Compact Flash and Smart Media that work just as well, if not better. The last thing we needed was Yet Another Memory Card Format. I will have nothing to do with it.
I don't think we really need fingernails that blink when your phone rings, Europe *is* way ahead in wireless and smartcards. They claim it's because there's a single standard, and I think the US did screw up in not going GSM, but the main reason for both of those is the continued monopoly of the wired telcos. Landlines are phenomenally expensive in Europe, but the cell carriers have to compete and as a result are a lot cheaper and people have switched in droves. I think the same thing has driven smart cards, as with those, you don't need the phone line to call in and verify the card.
7th Guest is the first game I recall in what I would call the "puzzle" category. And the only one I thought was any good. I liked the puzzles they had and each one solved advanced the story as a reward. Gabriel Knight II was similar in a Mystery category, and had such a great story I really wanted to see the movie all put together. I was really looking forward to GK3, but it crashes 5 minutes in and I gave up. Maybe there's a patch by now...
So, what do I want to see? Good, entertaining and challenging, but doable, puzzles with real clues (in a mystery) and a good story to work out.
What don't I want to see? Crap like Rama where your ability to proceed depends on seeing the right speck of dust in the right place after wandering the barren plain for a week. The other thing I hate is things that show up after you do something else for no reason. If I need the matches on the mantel to light a fire sometime, leave them there, or give them a reason to appear later, not just because I happened to notice the closet in a house across town or something silly like that. Make things progress logically so you can actually figure out what you need to do from the clues you're given and not just wander around repeatedly until you happen across something that's changed for no apparent reason.
Hmmm. Didn't realize that was such a hot button for me...but there you are...
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't had a chance to read it myself, but retroactivity makes my hackles rise. If it's limited to things where a reasonable person would expect to get their butts kicked for doing it, e.g. taking down an FAA computer, fine. But telling a kid he's now up for life because he wrote "d00dz were here" across the whitehouse home page a couple of years ago when you would normally expect to get your hands slapped is something else again.
Now if they want to include SPAM in the definition of a virus, I'm all for making that a retroactive life term...
This is what "competition" is all about. Vote with your dollar. If amazon starts requiring a passport login, they'll lose my business and I'll tell them why. There are plenty of others that don't require it and aren't likely to (Powell's for one, at least for books).
When one company buys another, one certainly expects to get their customer database; this is no different in the online world than it is in the physical world.
The courts should show restraint because there's a lot of people who will falsely complain just to get someone they don't like into trouble. BUT, any judge who actually has an email account would just need to be shown one of the monsterhut messages to realize that the complaint is valid and deny the TRO.
The Niklaus Wirth book was the one that really explained things in a way I could understand as an undergrad. Fortunately I found it on my own because the books the classes I took used sucked. While it uses the dead language pascal, it's not so foreign to be unusable...
Does it have graffiti? If not, it's a big step down from PalmOS and what's the point?
Even if it's well intentioned, the problem with vigilante justice is that there is rarely any justice in it. Just emotion. And thus it usually targets the wrong victim through ignorance.
Oh nonsense. Someone "steals" more from the company by spacing out for a few minutes a day. And its clear the whole lot of them were clueless if they're talking about "letting outsiders in" --- the data seti downloads isn't executable. The only real risk is if they downloaded a hacked binary in the first place. This is just a case of a clueless, dictatorial management. Unfortunately, the comment here that is legit so far is that they *are* the employers machines, and if they want to be clueless and dictatorial about how they're used, they have that right. But they don't have any justification.
The location of the "treasure chests" isn't necessarily public information, and he's definitely using a private database to get his information. While I think Jeremy's being a little over the top on the matter, the issue's been discussed there before and from what I recall (it's been a while since I've been there as I don't have time to go do the real world searches), he had acceptable reasons for trying to contain the data to one location. In any case, all this guy needs to do is start his own gps treasure hunt site and he can map those locations to his heart's content.
Amen! It is really embarrassing to see NASA fighting tooth and nail to limit commercialization of space while the Russians embrace it.
I'm sure this is it --- DVD-RAM was a waste of time to start with, being incompatible with DVD players. DVD-R is compatible, so why would anyone want DVD-RAM any more?
Here's the text of a response I sent to letters@forbes.net:
I just read the John C Dvorak article "Commercial free Conundrum" after
reading about it on slashdot. It's clear he never took the time to actually
use the device, and worse, his entire premise is wrong. The main point of
these devices is not to avoid commercials --- its that it makes time-shifting
easy. Tapes, recording at the barely watchable quality as it is, only hold
2 hours, and even if you put up with the 6 hour mode to get some barely
useful capacity, are still a royal pain to manage. With PVRs, you select
the program you want and say "record this". That's it. It's made it possible
to watch several shows I wouldn't otherwise be able to keep up with, as I
can watch them on my schedule and not bend my life to theirs.
As for the commercial free aspect, Tivo specifically left *out* the 30-second
skip feature for fear of ticking off the TV industry. While it's true that
that's one of many reasons I prefer the Replay unit over the Tivo, even on
the Replay you still get a glimpse of the commercials. And for the ones that
look entertaining, or have something of interest to me, I can back up and
watch them (and do). For the ones that don't, they've lost nothing except
my ill will, as I wouldn't buy their products anyway, having no interest in
them. And for the commercials for products that I am interested in, but the
commercials are so annoying I avoid the product anyway, it's likely a win for
the company. I only wish Replay had been around when the Tasters choice
commercial serial was airing --- I missed most of them because I rarely
watched the shows they advertised on, but I would have used the Replay to
catch them anyway (and I don't like coffee)...
I don't use the pause much, but thought it was still there, it just doesn't start until 10-15 seconds after you push pause. In any case, they've stated from the very beginning that ads were coming. How else do they pay for the program guide? That doesn't come free and anyone who expected otherwise is living in an ivory tower or should have bought a Tivo (which I think is a much inferior device) where they pay monthly for the program guide. The issue of forced updates is one worth discussing, but that's life with any product: just try to get support for an Edsel, DOS, Xenix-286 or Quicken 98. I loved DOS Quicken because it was fast and easy to use, with keyboard commands I was used to. When I ran into a problem with it however, I was forced to update to the Windoze version because that was the only way to get a fix. Fortunately Quicken's been improved since, but it's fundamentally the same problem.
I searched on both Amazon and Powell's with no luck...
The liquor laws are just a minor symptom; as a gay man, their religious bigotry would be intolerable.
I think users should push back the other way --- Javascript in particular is being seriously abused in enough really annoying ways that I keep it turned off, and few of the "legitimate" uses of it actually do anything a regular link wouldn't. I'd much rather see a stable browser than one with more unwanted bells and whistles.
If you care at all about quality, don't stream. Even over a 384K DSL line, I can't watch 300K streams without freeze frames and drops. If you just post quicktime fast start .mov's then it acts like its streaming by starting when it can, and if it has to stop and wait, the user can still watch it later, after the download is complete. I've completely given up on streaming because I have yet to see one that was watchable --- it was either too small and crappy or it wouldn't keep streaming (and even the best streaming is crappy compared to most downloads).
Given the rampant copying that goes on, I don't blame them, but quite frankly if I can't record a show and take it over to a friend's house to watch or loan it to them, I'm simply not going to use the technology at all, on principle. But if I can't time shift, the technology is completely useless, because my schedule is just never going to mesh with the broadcast schedule. Having had Replay for a year or so, I can't stand to watch live commercial TV anyway. They're just shooting themselves in the foot if they don't allow these capabilities because it will be DOA.
I only saw one reply that hinted at this, but sugarplum is basically doing a dictionary attack for the spammers. It's going to end up putting a lot of legitimate addresses in their databases.
I will be voting Libertarian primarily this year. I'm told "you're just wasting your vote", but that's the attitude that has kept this country limited to essentially a two party system. Granted, a better voting mechanism would help, but if you're always voting for the lesser of two evils, you're always going to get evil. If you vote your conscience, then your real opinion is known, and if a significant number agree with you, it will have influence. If you vote otherwise, you're supporting something that goes against how you truly feel, and then it's really hard to justify any complaints. As a quote I once saw said "don't complain how the ball bounces if you dropped it". If you don't vote at all, then you've really got no cause to complain because you're saying "I don't care what happens". Democracy is not a spectator sport. You only get out of it what you put into it.
Perhaps the shortest summary of this post is: GIGO
Please comment on fact that current marriage laws and agency rules (e.g. IRS & Social Security) are based on Christian principles of marriage and therefore a violation of separation of church and state. Also, please comment on the idea of returning marriage to the churches and replacing the legal marriage with a Civil Union that would set rights and responsibilities for family members, however that family happened to define itself.
5 years ago, NCSA on a 486 and FreeBSD 1.1.5 did 117K hits/*hour*; Dell should get better drugs.
The memory stick is Yet Another Proprietary Technology designed to lock you into to a single manufacturer. Just as bad, it was completely unnecessary --- there's already Compact Flash and Smart Media that work just as well, if not better. The last thing we needed was Yet Another Memory Card Format. I will have nothing to do with it.
I don't think we really need fingernails that blink when your phone rings, Europe *is* way ahead in wireless and smartcards. They claim it's because there's a single standard, and I think the US did screw up in not going GSM, but the main reason for both of those is the continued monopoly of the wired telcos. Landlines are phenomenally expensive in Europe, but the cell carriers have to compete and as a result are a lot cheaper and people have switched in droves. I think the same thing has driven smart cards, as with those, you don't need the phone line to call in and verify the card.
7th Guest is the first game I recall in what I would call the "puzzle" category. And the only one I thought was any good. I liked the puzzles they had and each one solved advanced the story as a reward. Gabriel Knight II was similar in a Mystery category, and had such a great story I really wanted to see the movie all put together. I was really looking forward to GK3, but it crashes 5 minutes in and I gave up. Maybe there's a patch by now...
So, what do I want to see? Good, entertaining and challenging, but doable, puzzles with real clues (in a mystery) and a good story to work out.
What don't I want to see? Crap like Rama where your ability to proceed depends on seeing the right speck of dust in the right place after wandering the barren plain for a week. The other thing I hate is things that show up after you do something else for no reason. If I need the matches on the mantel to light a fire sometime, leave them there, or give them a reason to appear later, not just because I happened to notice the closet in a house across town or something silly like that. Make things progress logically so you can actually figure out what you need to do from the clues you're given and not just wander around repeatedly until you happen across something that's changed for no apparent reason.
Hmmm. Didn't realize that was such a hot button for me...but there you are...