What's really sad is that this kind of 30 second 'news spot' does it for the majority of people. Most could care less what the details are these days. And not just on tech related news, I'm talkin' 'bout all sorts of news: political, social, worldwide, etc. Needless to say, here's just one more reason why I'm changing all my really confidential and important stuff to Linux, and I don't give my allegiance to any one large, bloated, political party.
The move promises to increase the number of pop-unders consumers see online--a figure that has already climbed into the billions, according to Dave Gross, a partner with Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Fastclick.com, which sells and serves the ad format for a growing roster of marketers.
Why are we referred to as consumers? I'm on the net usually to play games (the free ones, not the ones charging monthly fees), research info on Linux, my car (Club DSM), discussion boards about tech and computers, Online Banking and Payments, and many other websites that I'm not paying squat for. As soon as sites start charging for content (be it thru annoying pop-under ads, or actual monthly fees) I'm quite likely to leave and find a better free site. That's what got everyone online so quickly in the first place. It was absolutely free! Do I buy stuff online? Sure, but it's definitely a VERY small percentage of my total yearly monetary expenses. Online businesses had better realize this fast if they want to stay in business.
It's not that charging for services is bad. In fact, more power to them. But unless your service is absolutely necessary to a web surfer, you'd better kiss your profits goodbye. And no, showing more banner ads and pop-unders will not increase revenues if no one is willing to visit your site in the first place. Plus, with all the free software out there that allows everyone to filter out the 'noise', businesses had better find a better way to attract and keep customers than just flashy ads.
A whole new way to for annoying pop-up ads to advertise themselves. Before you even surf to the luzer website, BAM! there it is in front of your Lycos search!
I guess the point I was trying to make is that depending on the way in which you classify a video based game may vary, and as such, you could possibly construe Mr. Higginbottom's game the very first 'arcade' game, since nothing prior to that game could be classified as 'video' or 'electronic only' based. If we're basing the 'arcade' classification as coin-op, then spacewar wins, if 'purchase required', then Pong wins.
Pong Was the first, making it's debut in 1958 according to this article. I also saw the little History Channel's Lost and Found episode over the weekend, and while the guy that invented Pong, as a previous poster mentioned, didn't intend to do anything more than amuse the public, it does stand as the first publicly playable electronic game. Of course, no one charged money to play it, which may mean it doesn't count as the first 'arcade' game per se.
Cute, but I don't think I'd buy one. Tore up my ACL while taking a Tae Kwan Do class several years back. Two ACL surgeries later, I'm happy enough to stick with mad button pressing to perform that Jackie Chan style flying throat kick, thank you very much.
Check this out. The guy received 80% of his campaign contributions from commercial contributers. Even my Republican Congressman (DeWine - R - OH) didn't receive that level of commercial contributions!
Hey moron, I was an A+ student in my history classes, so I should have some idea about past ideas that failed. Hitler stifled freedom of speech big time, and made it popular for people to rat out their neighbors for unfounded 'evils' that they were performing by sicking his secret police on those who didn't tow the Nazi party line. He also was against private gun ownership as he knew bands of citizens with guns could oppose his secret police effectively. I think the freedom to have effective tools (like guns and the encryption breaking software Dmitri wrote) and freedom of speech go hand in hand. That's why the Constitution of the USA says we have the freedom (with responsibility) to both bear arms, and freedom (with responsibility) to have free speech. It's you who has no concept of history.
* Wastes half of its length on a boring anti-gun-control rant utterly unrelated to the topic, and
So you're saying that the proven fact that gun crime in Britain jumped 40% in one year after enacting laws to ban regular citizens from owning guns is not relevant? The fact that enforcing a law that is fundamentally foolish and flawed (DMCA kills fair use copyright law already in place) is therefore a good thing, just because it is now law? That's ridiculous! The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. The British didn't remember that, and today they've got a 40% increase in gun crime (not just crime overall, specifically crimes involving guns). I find that quite relavant considering the DMCA flies in the face of our own Constitutionally granted freedoms.
There has been a lot of discussion about circumvention and free speech," Adler said. "But I wonder if those same advocates would be as protective of a piece of technology that helps people obtain their personal information online."
What a load of bull! We all know that our personal info was hardly kept secretive at all prior to the DMCA as our untouchable credit reporting agencies have taught us through an innummerable amount of junk snail (and now electronic) mail, and screwed up profiles of some of us. The DMCA just makes it harder for us to break through their poor existing encryption and 'protection' of our privacy to edit our personal profiles the way they should read.;)
Anyways, my personal info isn't copyrighted, so what use in protecting it is the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act)?! If anything, it protects the company that has the system to collect my personal info for credit reporting from letting me break through their 'copyrighted' software to make sure they're not screwing with my personal info.
My stock broker friend had to work out of his home for a while whilst they built his office. During that time in his house, he had to dial-up to his firm to place orders, check stock quotes, etc. Whenever he attempted to dial-up, he had a little pocket sized calculator looking thing that picked 'random' keys for him, that he then had to input within 30 seconds of dialing up, or else (I think the dial-up and key card worked by creating keys based on the time of day). If after 3 tries he failed to authenticate, the computer basically shut off his ability to dial-up his firm, which at that point he would be in big trouble for the inevitable need to ship the laptop back to the home office to get reimaged. Needless to say, he never let this happen.
If they could sell a version of Linux with web, email, IM, etc....
Personally, I get all of the options you list on my Mandrake8 machine at home. What I really need is video game console that *could* be flexible with current console AND PC games. The only reason my Windows box is still around is because of games like CounterStrike, Alpha Centauri, Need For Speed, Black&White, etc. I am already planning on getting a PS2, it's just a matter of when, but if I could get a Linux compatible version of it, and one that could run Linux ported PC games (such as FPS games), I would be a complete convert to no longer being a Windows user.
I'm with you on this one. I wasn't going to any protest, but I have written my Congressman as of last night urging him to 'make a stink in Congress' about this injustice. I'm also not donating dollars to the EFF, as I don't support any 'orginization' apart from my local church or people I know personally that are involved in an orginization, but that's my personal choice. Telling your Congressman/woman that your pissed is always a good route to take, because if they don't work for their constituents, then they're out of a job come next election.
Well, that's my point exactly. If the companies aren't responsive to their users, the users can easily recode the software to their liking, or they can go looking for a company that does it better, but similarly. i.e. - if you don't like Red Hat and Caldera, switch to Suse - it's still Linux, but they care about their customers. (Just an example - I have no real good idea of which companies are better, yet)
You know, this is exactly the thing I see about OpenSoftware companies. They are open to new ideas, want to please their users, and have the home-town feel. Even their CEO's and President's will make a concerted effort to talk with you one-on-one if need be. Now when OpenSource becomes the next 'big thing', I realize people like Mr. Gordon will be so busy hacking code and walking down the male super-model runway, that they won't have time to talk to everyone. But it's the way they want to run their business that makes the difference. Making Open software forces this attitude, because if someone doesn't like the crappy program you put out, they can change it, move to a different program, etc. quite freely and easily. It's sort of like an additional check and balance leveraged against the elite shareholder who would seek to control the company.
In other words: Serve the customer first, and the rest will follow. The services industry is huge right now, probably the fastest growing too. Open Source software is all about service first, which is why I'm liking it more everyday. Keep up the good work on KDE guys. After reading the above comments from Mr. Gordon, I'm already konsidering buying some of their software strictly for the support aspect of it all.
G8 Protestor Dies - apparently those protestors are kooky enough to warrant killing them. Of course, he could have been a crazed psycho endangering others at the time. I don't know....
I've already emailed my congressman about this. The link to find your congressman is on the BoycottAdobe website listed in the above posting. I urge everyone to do the same. Let's get out of our cube's and get proactive about something for once. Change won't occur if no one goes ballistic on this one.
Thanks for the tip! My coworker is trying to get his wife to let him buy one, so maybe he'll let me 'check it out' at his new house once he gets it. But he did say the PS2 he saw playing DVD's was outstanding, and considering he had never seen a DVD movie before, I take it that the PS2 DVD is therefore on par with most other low-mid level DVD players.
I think the reason the old-skool graphics and text-based adventure games appeal to us so much is because they're the MOST like an interactive story. Your imagination kicks in and you involve yourself more than if you were just watching a movie. Ever notice how the book is ALWAYS better than the movie? Same thing applies in video games I think. That's why SquareSoft does have to be given credit for pulling off quality games that are graphically intensive. It gets exponentially harder to really involve the player the better the graphics and 'eye-candy' get.
I remember the part you're talking about, as that was my first FF game I ever played! I spent probably a hundred hours playing that game with friends. Not because we couldn't figure it out, but just because it was fun.
I have 'rediscovered' Civ2 recently and have enjoyed playing it even more than some of the more advanced games like Alpha Centauri. KISS definitely applies to epic games like FF and Civ. The stories are just told better without the graphical fluff to get in the way. Needless to say, I'm in awe of how well SquareSoft manages to tell an involving story, while supplying outstanding graphics. That, is not easy to do.
Well, I've made my decision. After reading the Gamespot review, I'm officially hooked on getting a PS2. Both for it's DVD features, and for it's quality games being produced for it. Now if only they'll build a really good team, online multiplayer FPS like CounterStrike for it... I'll be able to ditch Winbloze entirely! I've already converted most all of my operations to my Linux Mandrake8 box, all that's left is getting a good gaming machine that doesn't rely on Winbloze exclusively, and I'll be set.
Now doesn't this mean that if you do write a software based CD player that gracefully does error correction you will then be in violation of DMCA?
I think that the DMCA requires that for a circumvention device to be illegal its primary purpose must be circumvention. There already exists a lot of software out there, such as cdparanoia , which was written to interpolate out the errors on CDs and I believe that their primary use has been to do this on normal (i.e., not brain-damaged) CDs. I doubt that the DMCA would make such software illegal as it serves a legitimate purpose in its primary use.
True enough, but we must remain vigilant in our resistance to ridiculous laws that attempt an end-run around The Constitution. Guns are not bad things when used properly (hunting, killing rabid animals in a rural or suburban setting, protection from violent thieves and crack addicts, etc.), and yet some people claim that the commoner shouldn't have them because they *could* do harm with them. The same thing would apply to CDParanoia eventually, which I find to be ridiculous.
Misuse of a tool (hitting someone on the head with a hammer) does not provide license to ban said tool because of someone's irresponsibility in using the tool.
Well, I was born and raised on Microsoft OS's. First it was DOS and BASIC programming, then I moved to Win3.1, Win95, and now Win98. (I've used NT and 2k before, but don't have them at home). However, I will not be purchasing any new computer containing WinXP. Why? Too constricting. Everything I read is that XP will be basically 'dumbed-down' or restricted to the user because it's easier for MS to make a profit off of, easier to protect from software piracy, etc. Look, if MS doesn't think I'm a responsible individual and will use their products responsibly, then I don't want to give them my business.
So I've begun using Linux Mandrake at home. Is it the best at any one thing? Probably not. Does it do lots of things pretty well. Yes. Is it hard to learn? Yes, I think so. I don't want to have to switch, because Linux is a niche market. But I also don't want to be treated like a moron by the 'other' company selling the most popular OS right now, so see ya later MS! Maybe if they can win back my support by once again showing me some respect, as well as respect for everyone out there, then maybe I'll switch back. But going forward, I'll take difficult over disrespected.
P.S. Disrespect for what your users want will make a big difference in the end. Smith & Wesson paid attention to what some politicians and special interests groups wanted, gun locks on all new guns, but their actual customers didn't want such a thing. Guess which gun manufacturer is having the worst time selling their products now, despite their long-standing reputation for quality products for the 'masses'...
What is scary is that the media and the majority of Americans see absolutely nothing wrong in Adobe's actions.
The majority of Americans don't even know this has happened. I haven't seen anything in the news papers or TV newscasts (even the investigative ones like Fox's cable news channel) that have reported on this incident. Sad, really.
Slashdot Mirror
What's really sad is that this kind of 30 second 'news spot' does it for the majority of people. Most could care less what the details are these days. And not just on tech related news, I'm talkin' 'bout all sorts of news: political, social, worldwide, etc. Needless to say, here's just one more reason why I'm changing all my really confidential and important stuff to Linux, and I don't give my allegiance to any one large, bloated, political party.
Why are we referred to as consumers? I'm on the net usually to play games (the free ones, not the ones charging monthly fees), research info on Linux, my car (Club DSM), discussion boards about tech and computers, Online Banking and Payments, and many other websites that I'm not paying squat for. As soon as sites start charging for content (be it thru annoying pop-under ads, or actual monthly fees) I'm quite likely to leave and find a better free site. That's what got everyone online so quickly in the first place. It was absolutely free! Do I buy stuff online? Sure, but it's definitely a VERY small percentage of my total yearly monetary expenses. Online businesses had better realize this fast if they want to stay in business.
It's not that charging for services is bad. In fact, more power to them. But unless your service is absolutely necessary to a web surfer, you'd better kiss your profits goodbye. And no, showing more banner ads and pop-unders will not increase revenues if no one is willing to visit your site in the first place. Plus, with all the free software out there that allows everyone to filter out the 'noise', businesses had better find a better way to attract and keep customers than just flashy ads.
A whole new way to for annoying pop-up ads to advertise themselves. Before you even surf to the luzer website, BAM! there it is in front of your Lycos search!
I guess the point I was trying to make is that depending on the way in which you classify a video based game may vary, and as such, you could possibly construe Mr. Higginbottom's game the very first 'arcade' game, since nothing prior to that game could be classified as 'video' or 'electronic only' based. If we're basing the 'arcade' classification as coin-op, then spacewar wins, if 'purchase required', then Pong wins.
Pong Was the first, making it's debut in 1958 according to this article. I also saw the little History Channel's Lost and Found episode over the weekend, and while the guy that invented Pong, as a previous poster mentioned, didn't intend to do anything more than amuse the public, it does stand as the first publicly playable electronic game. Of course, no one charged money to play it, which may mean it doesn't count as the first 'arcade' game per se.
Cute, but I don't think I'd buy one. Tore up my ACL while taking a Tae Kwan Do class several years back. Two ACL surgeries later, I'm happy enough to stick with mad button pressing to perform that Jackie Chan style flying throat kick, thank you very much.
HAHAHA! That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of! I guess they'll have to confiscate my fingers then when I make a handgun gesture!
Check this out. The guy received 80% of his campaign contributions from commercial contributers. Even my Republican Congressman (DeWine - R - OH) didn't receive that level of commercial contributions!
Hey moron, I was an A+ student in my history classes, so I should have some idea about past ideas that failed. Hitler stifled freedom of speech big time, and made it popular for people to rat out their neighbors for unfounded 'evils' that they were performing by sicking his secret police on those who didn't tow the Nazi party line. He also was against private gun ownership as he knew bands of citizens with guns could oppose his secret police effectively. I think the freedom to have effective tools (like guns and the encryption breaking software Dmitri wrote) and freedom of speech go hand in hand. That's why the Constitution of the USA says we have the freedom (with responsibility) to both bear arms, and freedom (with responsibility) to have free speech. It's you who has no concept of history.
Hell no! Don't do this. We would then have to ban the copying of corn, pigs, and hog bellies under the DMCA!
So you're saying that the proven fact that gun crime in Britain jumped 40% in one year after enacting laws to ban regular citizens from owning guns is not relevant? The fact that enforcing a law that is fundamentally foolish and flawed (DMCA kills fair use copyright law already in place) is therefore a good thing, just because it is now law? That's ridiculous! The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. The British didn't remember that, and today they've got a 40% increase in gun crime (not just crime overall, specifically crimes involving guns). I find that quite relavant considering the DMCA flies in the face of our own Constitutionally granted freedoms.
What a load of bull! We all know that our personal info was hardly kept secretive at all prior to the DMCA as our untouchable credit reporting agencies have taught us through an innummerable amount of junk snail (and now electronic) mail, and screwed up profiles of some of us. The DMCA just makes it harder for us to break through their poor existing encryption and 'protection' of our privacy to edit our personal profiles the way they should read. ;)
Anyways, my personal info isn't copyrighted, so what use in protecting it is the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act)?! If anything, it protects the company that has the system to collect my personal info for credit reporting from letting me break through their 'copyrighted' software to make sure they're not screwing with my personal info.
My stock broker friend had to work out of his home for a while whilst they built his office. During that time in his house, he had to dial-up to his firm to place orders, check stock quotes, etc. Whenever he attempted to dial-up, he had a little pocket sized calculator looking thing that picked 'random' keys for him, that he then had to input within 30 seconds of dialing up, or else (I think the dial-up and key card worked by creating keys based on the time of day). If after 3 tries he failed to authenticate, the computer basically shut off his ability to dial-up his firm, which at that point he would be in big trouble for the inevitable need to ship the laptop back to the home office to get reimaged. Needless to say, he never let this happen.
Personally, I get all of the options you list on my Mandrake8 machine at home. What I really need is video game console that *could* be flexible with current console AND PC games. The only reason my Windows box is still around is because of games like CounterStrike, Alpha Centauri, Need For Speed, Black&White, etc. I am already planning on getting a PS2, it's just a matter of when, but if I could get a Linux compatible version of it, and one that could run Linux ported PC games (such as FPS games), I would be a complete convert to no longer being a Windows user.
I'm with you on this one. I wasn't going to any protest, but I have written my Congressman as of last night urging him to 'make a stink in Congress' about this injustice. I'm also not donating dollars to the EFF, as I don't support any 'orginization' apart from my local church or people I know personally that are involved in an orginization, but that's my personal choice. Telling your Congressman/woman that your pissed is always a good route to take, because if they don't work for their constituents, then they're out of a job come next election.
Well, that's my point exactly. If the companies aren't responsive to their users, the users can easily recode the software to their liking, or they can go looking for a company that does it better, but similarly. i.e. - if you don't like Red Hat and Caldera, switch to Suse - it's still Linux, but they care about their customers. (Just an example - I have no real good idea of which companies are better, yet)
In other words: Serve the customer first, and the rest will follow. The services industry is huge right now, probably the fastest growing too. Open Source software is all about service first, which is why I'm liking it more everyday. Keep up the good work on KDE guys. After reading the above comments from Mr. Gordon, I'm already konsidering buying some of their software strictly for the support aspect of it all.
G8 Protestor Dies - apparently those protestors are kooky enough to warrant killing them. Of course, he could have been a crazed psycho endangering others at the time. I don't know....
I've already emailed my congressman about this. The link to find your congressman is on the BoycottAdobe website listed in the above posting. I urge everyone to do the same. Let's get out of our cube's and get proactive about something for once. Change won't occur if no one goes ballistic on this one.
Thanks for the tip! My coworker is trying to get his wife to let him buy one, so maybe he'll let me 'check it out' at his new house once he gets it. But he did say the PS2 he saw playing DVD's was outstanding, and considering he had never seen a DVD movie before, I take it that the PS2 DVD is therefore on par with most other low-mid level DVD players.
I remember the part you're talking about, as that was my first FF game I ever played! I spent probably a hundred hours playing that game with friends. Not because we couldn't figure it out, but just because it was fun.
I have 'rediscovered' Civ2 recently and have enjoyed playing it even more than some of the more advanced games like Alpha Centauri. KISS definitely applies to epic games like FF and Civ. The stories are just told better without the graphical fluff to get in the way. Needless to say, I'm in awe of how well SquareSoft manages to tell an involving story, while supplying outstanding graphics. That, is not easy to do.
Well, I've made my decision. After reading the Gamespot review, I'm officially hooked on getting a PS2. Both for it's DVD features, and for it's quality games being produced for it. Now if only they'll build a really good team, online multiplayer FPS like CounterStrike for it... I'll be able to ditch Winbloze entirely! I've already converted most all of my operations to my Linux Mandrake8 box, all that's left is getting a good gaming machine that doesn't rely on Winbloze exclusively, and I'll be set.
I think that the DMCA requires that for a circumvention device to be illegal its primary purpose must be circumvention. There already exists a lot of software out there, such as cdparanoia , which was written to interpolate out the errors on CDs and I believe that their primary use has been to do this on normal (i.e., not brain-damaged) CDs. I doubt that the DMCA would make such software illegal as it serves a legitimate purpose in its primary use.
True enough, but we must remain vigilant in our resistance to ridiculous laws that attempt an end-run around The Constitution. Guns are not bad things when used properly (hunting, killing rabid animals in a rural or suburban setting, protection from violent thieves and crack addicts, etc.), and yet some people claim that the commoner shouldn't have them because they *could* do harm with them. The same thing would apply to CDParanoia eventually, which I find to be ridiculous.
Misuse of a tool (hitting someone on the head with a hammer) does not provide license to ban said tool because of someone's irresponsibility in using the tool.
So I've begun using Linux Mandrake at home. Is it the best at any one thing? Probably not. Does it do lots of things pretty well. Yes. Is it hard to learn? Yes, I think so. I don't want to have to switch, because Linux is a niche market. But I also don't want to be treated like a moron by the 'other' company selling the most popular OS right now, so see ya later MS! Maybe if they can win back my support by once again showing me some respect, as well as respect for everyone out there, then maybe I'll switch back. But going forward, I'll take difficult over disrespected.
P.S. Disrespect for what your users want will make a big difference in the end. Smith & Wesson paid attention to what some politicians and special interests groups wanted, gun locks on all new guns, but their actual customers didn't want such a thing. Guess which gun manufacturer is having the worst time selling their products now, despite their long-standing reputation for quality products for the 'masses'...
The majority of Americans don't even know this has happened. I haven't seen anything in the news papers or TV newscasts (even the investigative ones like Fox's cable news channel) that have reported on this incident. Sad, really.