*Mild* sleep deprivation seems to enhance creativity -- but there's a falloff rate there...
You know that if you stay up past the point that you "get sleepy" that eventually the sleepiness wears off, and you get what is commonly referred to as a "second wind". This process seems to continue (at least for me) in a cycle (get sleepy, get nth wind, get sleepy, get n+1th wind, etc...) where the lengths of time between periods of sleepiness (aka: the "winds") get shorter, and the periods of sleepiness get longer.
Now, I've noticed that at some point, (generally halfway through either the 2nd or 3rd wind) I seem to be a heck of a lot more creative. I also get a heck of a lot more work done.
But, it gets increasingly hard to concentrate on a single task - my mind tends to wander a lot as the condition wears on.
Coffee (and I'm assuming other stimulants as well) seems to have a lengthening effect on the "winds", but when it wears off, the "winds" shorten dramatically. (sort of like what we're all expecting to happen to Dick Clark - at some point he's going to age 60-100 years in a matter of minutes...I hope he's on camera...)
This is just personal observation, of course, and has absolutely no medical founding (IANAD)
(Sort of like the observastion that while I don't tend to eat red meat much, I crave it when I'm injured - almost like I'm looking for raw materials to rebuild the broken parts...)
And yes, I'm aware that this post tends to ramble a bit...I'm on my 4th wind and ready for bed;)
There WAS a Robinhood episode in the holodeck though - If I remember right, Barklay made the program (which involved a recreation of the bridge crew as subservients), and it was one of the first to show his "holo-addication"...
I remember Worf's quote: "I am *not* a merry man."
The problem with web-based forums is locality. With Usenet, as long as your ISP has a newsserver, chances are your access to newsgroup content is fairly quick, as it's local to you.
With web-based forums it's different. How often have you had to wait a couple/few minutes for a busy page or a page from a far-flung country to load? The longer the page, the longer the load-time. The page you're connecting to may have a REALLY slow link, or other slowdowns may occur.
Admittedly, some of these slowdowns would affect a "local" newsserver as well, but definitely not to the extent it affects foreign webpages, or those on slow/busy links.
(The drawback to the localized server approach is that posts sometimes take a great deal of time to propagate to other servers...whereas web-based forums are updated as soon as your post makes it there and is processed)
Anyone from overseas (non-North America) care to comment on/.'s speed compared to that of newsgroup access?
...not to mention the fact that these work the OPPOSITE from the way muscles work -- they EXPAND with electricity rather than contract.
The article mentions that they would be more akin to a rubber band-style than to a real muscle - ie: lots of give, but not much pull.
But...this does open the way for research into doing things the opposite way - or designing things to work on the expansion principle rather than the contraction one our muscles work off of.
Neat discovery, but the really cool stuff is yet to come.
I'd say the whole thing is a fairly moot point - it used to be (way back) that if you wanted to save some data, you threw it on a floppy. Floppys tend to degrade (depending on quality, conditions, treatment, etc...) after a few years. Of course, hard drives got bigger, so people didn't need to move so much off onto floppies...then programs got bigger (bloat) so hard disk space was once again at a premium. The Zip drive came along into the mainstream (I believe it was in use by graphics houses for a while before it became popular to the average joe) --- so now it was a larger (capacity-wise) storage medium, that didn't degrade quite so fast...but even Zip drives are being replaced by CDRs, as the drives become less expensive. I'd say that it isn't inconceivable that in the next 20 years we'll see a new, larger-capacity storage medium that will outlast CDRs by a LARGE factor come into play...and by the time THAT is starting to break down, we'll have something better.
Anything that's actually important enough to keep forever will survive by any means necessary (barring Murphy's Law taking hold). The rest can peacefully degrade.
If Mitnick isn't willing to demonstrate that the material on the drives is legit, then the assumption that it's illegit isn't too far off base.
There's a little thing called "Innocent until proven guilty" - Mitnick doesn't have to prove that he's innocent - the prosecution has to prove he's guilty. At least that's the way it's supposed to work. In Mitnick's case the whole thing evidently got thrown out the window.
You can FINALLY get rid of that dang sidebar (view menu, uncheck sidebar)
Properly coded pages actually look better (for the most part) than they do in IE5. Slick.
CSS is done well.
Crashes FAR less often than M12 on my P2-333 64megs, Win98 box. Haven't tried it under Linux yet.
Bad:
Font Prefs aren't done yet (I want sans-serif by default, dangit!)
"Theme" selector not done yet (Really, I just want to get some win-standard chrome rather than the "Mozilla" interface)
Still crashes more than NS 4.7 (but it's getting close!)
Back button intermittant (This just ain't right)
Overall - not too shabby for a 1st alpha. I would've liked to see all the prefs panels actually be functional, but this release does indeed show that Mozilla is "getting there".
I couldn't agree more - the whole air of hostility in online RPGs is a BIG turnoff to many people, myself included. (Note that online shooters are a whole other story - where hostility is the name of the game, as long as you don't teamkill)
Take another example - the games over on http://games.eesite.com - where in order to get anywhere in the rankings, you HAVE to cheat. In fact it's expected that you will cheat if you want to be ranked in the top slots. If you post to their message boards about it, you get flamed by the entrenched for having a problem with it.
The siteadmins can't do anything about it - it seems the more holes they patch, the more dilligent the cheaters become, and they get to cheat anyway.
So, legitimate players looking for a good game get pissed off with the system, and go elsewhere.
The other problem, which is more prevalent in games such as UO and EverQuest - is that once the game has started and gotten a decent following, that it is INSANELY tough for a new player who doesn't want to quit their job and spend horrendous ammounts of cash to play all the time, to get anywhere - sure, you might find a few other people in the same situation, and have a decent time until some L25 PK'er comes and mops the floor with your L2 party because they had a rough day.
Cheating, PKing, and pay-for-play are the three big problems with online gaming communities right now. Cheating isn't going to go away. The more they try to stop it, the more vigilant the cheaters will become. PKing can be removed from such online RPGs, but many players (myself included) would feel that it does remove some of the depth of those games (although some sort of limiter on high-level PK'ers attacking newbies should be made). Pay-for-play will remain until it's no longer profitable for the game companies to do things that way. As long as people are willing to rack up $100 a month in UO charges (I know 5 people for whom this is a LOW figure), Origin will be more than willing to take their cash. (You'd think with all that cash they could've spent a bit more time debugging Ascension though...)
With email and anonymous posts, it's much more common for people to be "loose" with language - rude, crude, vulgar, etc... and it's much easier to fire off a quick, rude post to someone whom you disagree with. Is it possible that the popularity of email has made some of this mindset rub off on people's day-to-day personalities?
Just doing my part to fuel the fire =)
Personally I think that the 'net is responsible for really opening up "free speech" - to the point that the freedom on the 'net to be rude or obnoxious has, to varying extent, rubbed off on many people - especially the ones who do most of their communicating by email and other "faceless" mediums. But that's just my view - flame if necessary =)
The difference between sound waves and text (I apologize if you're one of our blind readers using a program to read the posts - that crosses the barrier I'm using for contrast here) is that if you start to get offended by text, you can *gasp* stop reading it. Hit the back button. Hell, hit PgDwn to scroll it off the screen. Noone is forcing you to read (much of) anything you don't want to. If someone's yelling stuff at you that you are offended by, you don't have a choice - you hear it because your ears work. You can, however, walk away. If we censor everything, we give up our rights to say what we believe. The 'net has brought freedom of speech to many people who didn't have it before, to whom the 'net is their only outlet. Don't stifle the good just to rid yourselves of the few bad eggs.
Basically MS, by "integrating" their browser into their OS, is trying to stop there from being a browser market in and of itself, by making the browser a commodity.
Because you have to install Windows (for whatever reason - compatibility with coworkers, games, etc...), you get IE. You don't have a choice in the matter - it's part of the OS.
Now, as far as browsers go, IE isn't that bad - it has it's quirks (but so do Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, and the various others) but it does a decent job of rendering most stuff on the web.
You have IE. It does what you need. Why would you (generic end-user) pay money to get another program that does the same thing? Chances are you wouldn't.
Because of this, there's little money to be made in the browser "market". The browser has been/is transformed from a product to a commodity (look at Konqueror, KDE's native browser...). So now there really *isn't* a browser market.
Fortunately, the DOJ case deals more with Win95 and IE3 than it does with the more recent developments, so hopefully that won't be taken into account.
NS was making a boatload of cash off of their browser - the best choice for a graphical browser at that time.
MS wanted in on the business, but their product wasn't good enough (yet) to compete on it's own merit. So they made a *business decision* to integrate the browser into their next OS (Win98 at that time), and so released their not-quite-so-nice-as-NS browser for free, in order to eat away at NS's market share before they dropped the bombshell that EVERYONE running Win98 would have the browser on their system whether they wanted it or not.
Because they released it for free, many people gave it a shot, and figured "Yeah, it's not as good as Netscape, but it's free, and does enough for me to not NEED Netscape"...so it gained some legitimate followers there.
But remember, this is Microsoft. They never do anything based on cost or merit. They included their browser with just about every product they sold, as well as many, many other company's products. Many times, IE was installed with the other products, without informing the user.
A new icon appeared on Win95 desktops: The Internet. Most clueless users started using IE, simply because it was labeled "The Internet" -- and they didn't know any better. This, of course was Microsoft's plan.
Netscape was losing money on the browser now, but at the same time they were starting to rake in BIG money from their server products...so they had a paradigm shift...and the browser we now know as Netscape became free.
It had nothing to do with people realizing the money was elsewhere. It had everything to do with Microsoft devaluing the browser as a commodity by putting their browser, for "free", on desktops all over the world, by any means necessary...then nailing the coffin with the integration into Win98.
For MS as a company, this was a VERY good move - they would have forced NS out of business if they were solely reliant on their browser for income, and they *have* become the dominant force in the browser market.
For the consumer, this (frankly) sucked. The consumer wasn't just offered a free hand-out...it was forcefed, much the same way as Netscape users are forcefed AOL Instant Messenger. With Win98, this became even worse - there was no choice, you had IE whether you wanted it or not (yes, I know about 98 Lite, but they're relatively recent).
Okay, rant's over. I'm probably wrong on a lot of stuff, so feel free to flame as you see fit =)
The application kept breaking because AOL would not address the bugs its browser had - yes, I contacted them directly to give them bug reports
Well, this part at least I can say that I *think* AOL actually has a reason for it...Netscape. As soon as NS5/Mozilla is finished, they'll have a standards-compliant embeddable browser they can just swap with the VERY crappy one they have now. Their view on the browser situation is probably "We don't have time to worry about bugs in a browser that is just gonna get ditched in a year or so anyway". Sad but true.
...sequestering their subscribers in a contained and antiseptic environment...
Ahh...but now you've hit on the TRUE reason to hate AOL.
AOL, like most large corporations, views the populace as sheep. Dumb animals that are quick to panic in large numbers when they get scared, but are docile as long as they are happy.
What better way to keep the populace happy than to shield them from everything that is "bad"? If they never see/hear/read anything they might find remotely offensive, they will stay happy and keep spending money. And where will they spend the money?
Wherever the people keeping them happy tell them to. Which is, of course, what AOL wants.
So, AOL takes it upon itself to decide what is "good" and what is "bad". AOL being the judge, they get to define what constitutes "bad" - be it pornography, vulgarity, or simply opposing viewpoints.
And of course the Internet being a big, scary place, full of "bad" things, AOL must take it upon itself to shield it's subscribers from all of the nasty things that might be "bad" -- free thought, free expression, competition -- all of these things that would cause their docile little sheep to get excited.
As far as acquiring Time Warner goes...now AOL owns the pipes that information gets sent down. Like it or not, many people, including some very intelligent ones, take what CNN says as being the complete and total truth. Now that AOL has control, CNN can, and probably will become a forum for AOL's worldview to be touted to the masses.
Expect a rise in "feel good" news stories, as well as the typical stories designed to scare the populace -- murder, terrorism, school shootings, etc -- as these are the kinds of stories that pimp the media, government, and law enforcement as being the shining hope for humanity, when in fact they are as corrupt as the corporate profiteers.
All (media, government, law enforcement, corporations) are motivated by one thing: greed. There are more officers sitting in speed traps to punish Joe Q. Motorist for going 10 miles above the speed limit than there are rooting out the drug dealers, terrorists, and serial killers that are causing REAL problems.
I would be suprised if this is the last of the large corporations buying media companies. Now that AOL has Time Warner (outdoing Microsoft's MSNBC that noone takes really seriously anyway), expect many other corporations to follow suit.
I, for one, am hoping the FTC gets involved in this one, stopping what will be a HUGE problem down the line before it starts.
What about the company who paid for THEIR ad to be on that billboard? Companies pay big money for high-profile adspace. Now, that adspace can be hijacked by whomever has the most $$ to throw at the networks/cable companies.
This WILL devalue adspace. Of course, it also will bring into being the ability of companies to throw ads onto EVERYTHING, regardless of content.
Okay, I can see blocking something objectionable -- but who's to say what's objectionable? What's the limit to this? "Live" TV used to be one of the few ways the populace could be sure they were seeing what was going on.
Now, a "live" shot of a war could be doctored to not show any of "our" troops dying - hell they could edit the footage to change the outcome of things...and it would all be done in the name of "protecting the people" - Bullsh**. It's lying, plain and simple.
And "blocking a competitor's logo" is *not* ethical, at least in my opinion. Blocking ALL logos and ads would be OK if it was a consumer decision, but we don't need TimeWar^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAOL deciding that every ad on cable TV is an AOL ad, and brainwashing people that way.
This isn't to say that this technology doesn't have good, legitimate uses. It's just that in our society the way it is today, the power of this WILL be misused, and it's the people who will get the short end of the stick, not the companies, corporations and media.
"Maximum promotion of our combined products" This means AOL/TW will have ads for their crap on everything, everywhere. Turn on your TV, see ads for AOL, RR, etc... Turn on your comp. that's hooked up to RR, get massive ammounts of spam and banner ads about AOL, RR, and various Cable offerings (PayPerView, Pay stations, etc...).
Ick.
"multiple revenue streams from every household" This means that they're going to charge up the @$$ for everything, and probably raise prices on everything as it stands now. AOL is already more expensive than most ISPs - now RR is probably going to jump up by $5-$10 (making it more expensive than a dedicated phone line and regular ISP account) to make it's price point around the same as AOLs in relation to other cable ISPs.
Basically - the gist is that AOL is going to gouge the consumer on everything from cable access to television, spam you in multiple streams, both online and on the TV, continue to have the WORST customer service in the business, and probably take the relatively good service that was TW's RR, and ruin it.
When's DSL gonna get down to $40 a month TOTAL COST? We NEED it there to combat this sort of crap.
(and before you ask, yes, I'm a RR customer - and this REALLY bothers me)
I've tried a couple of these "free" ad-supported ISPs (admittedly, they were dial-ups, but the principle is the same) - and while they DO give you access to the 'net, they do so rather poorly in comparison to other ISPs.
Generally, there is little or no support. This alone is a good reason for many to stay away. Especially those who are new to the internet, and need a bit of help to do things you or I would think are pretty simple. So, they generally aren't very good for newbies - that leaves experienced users...who generally go a few steps further when something seems to be wrong.
Send their "support" address a series of traceroutes, showing them that there seems to be a problem with their equipment - and get no response for a few days - then a form letter asking you to make sure your username and password are typed correctly, and that you're dialing the right number (Hello? If I wasn't logging in, how'd I do the traceroute?)
Support aside, you generally have to put up with some sort of "ad panel" on your screen. Invariably these are set to be "always on top" (which generally relates to "always in the way"). When these services first started, the ad panels were relatively small - but they're growing - soon, you'll have 60% ads, 40% other. You can't even move the panel out of the way, as most use some sort of scripting that doesn't allow you to move ANY part of the panel off-screen. And of course, most of these services think that everyone runs at 800x600 - so you'll get constant warning messages (which you can't turn off) if you run at 1280x1024 and want to put the panel anywhere but the upper right hand corner of the screen.
I'm not even going to go into the spam...although my advice there is to make sure you never remove anything from their mail server - and when they complain, show them the spam. Of course, this may get you nowhere...
Apologies for the bit of a rant here, but these places are generally REALLY low on the quality scale. I can't imagine that going broadband is going to make them any better. In fact, I can see them getting MUCH worse (with that kind of bandwidth, they'll want to force-feed you streaming video...)
Disclaimer: I've worked for a dial-up ISP for 2 years, and have had a cable modem for one. My views are based on my own experiences, and I do try to keep my ISP bias in check most of the time;)
It's a well-known fact that the insect species popularly known as "Wytookay" imbibes immense ammounts of alcohol in order to keep itself free of disease. This also has the known side-effect of causing the insect to make noises that sound much like "Buy another round on me!" - thus this particular species of insect is often used by certain members of the population to garner free drinks at the local pub.
Unfortunately with NASA's budget cuts, this probably isn't going to happen for a while.
I for one would love to see a revamped shuttle design - one that is not only cheaper to get up into space, but that doesn't need such excessive maintenance to keep it in top shape. It just doesn't fit into the "Faster, Better, Cheaper" philosophy that NASA has had to undertake due to budget cuts.
NASA no longer can "look to the future" - they're stuck in the NOW. Maybe it's a symptom of our Corporatist society that we as a society don't seem to value research and discovery as much as we used to - instead, what gets the high marks is "results". (note that the generic Slashdot reader probably differs from this greatly - but we're talking about society as a whole, not an enlightened few)
The have the shuttles NOW - all the time and research they would need to do to revamp the design will instead be spent on getting "results" (IE: putting commercial and military sattelites into orbit, and repairing faulty equipment like the Hubble).
Not that "results" are a bad thing - just that the over-focus on them, and the lack of funding, seem to have stymied the research and discovery arm of NASA that would give us improvements such as a new shuttle design.
Of course, I could be completely off base here. (yes, I realize I'm ranting - probably due to lack of sleep)
I have to agree with you there - the lawsuit situ would be as follows --
Buyer sues Seller for non-receipt of goods paid for (I believe he does have the right to do this, as the Seller "owned" the domain (which was in NSI's hands), and sold it to the Buyer, whom, due to NSI's incompetence, never received it)
Seller in turn sues NSI for court costs and damages from the Buyer suit (as the Seller gave notice to NSI to do these things, and NSI screwed it up, thus harming the Seller's reputation, as well as opening him to the lawsuit from the Buyer)
NSI can (and should) fight to get the domain back -- they obviously have proof that the domain was "in transit" and not "available" -- and as such, they should (conceivably) be able to sue the other domain registrar for the domain. Of course, the registrant could sue the other registrar, who could in turn sue NSI...
In any case, it would seem to me (and I don't claim to be educated in the way these laws actually work, this is just common sense, which I realize our legal system has very little of) that NSI should take the fall for this one.
Or does Canadian TV *seem* to have even more commercials than the 35-min-show-that-lasts-an-hour US?
Just an observation;)
Seriously, though, I tried this out, and it's pretty cool. Low-quality video, but what do you expect from RealVideo? Obviously it's no competition for "real" TV yet, but it's kinda nice to be able to run on a machine that doesn't have a TV card, but does have a cable modem.
I've been connected for about 20 min now without a hiccup - then again, it's not 8am EST yet either...the real test will be to see how it runs from the flaky LAN at work.
I'd much rather have a TV card, or even better a TV within viewing distance of the comp - but this is pretty cool nonetheless.
Slashdot Mirror
*Mild* sleep deprivation seems to enhance creativity -- but there's a falloff rate there...
;)
You know that if you stay up past the point that you "get sleepy" that eventually the sleepiness wears off, and you get what is commonly referred to as a "second wind". This process seems to continue (at least for me) in a cycle (get sleepy, get nth wind, get sleepy, get n+1th wind, etc...) where the lengths of time between periods of sleepiness (aka: the "winds") get shorter, and the periods of sleepiness get longer.
Now, I've noticed that at some point, (generally halfway through either the 2nd or 3rd wind) I seem to be a heck of a lot more creative. I also get a heck of a lot more work done.
But, it gets increasingly hard to concentrate on a single task - my mind tends to wander a lot as the condition wears on.
Coffee (and I'm assuming other stimulants as well) seems to have a lengthening effect on the "winds", but when it wears off, the "winds" shorten dramatically. (sort of like what we're all expecting to happen to Dick Clark - at some point he's going to age 60-100 years in a matter of minutes...I hope he's on camera...)
This is just personal observation, of course, and has absolutely no medical founding (IANAD)
(Sort of like the observastion that while I don't tend to eat red meat much, I crave it when I'm injured - almost like I'm looking for raw materials to rebuild the broken parts...)
And yes, I'm aware that this post tends to ramble a bit...I'm on my 4th wind and ready for bed
There WAS a Robinhood episode in the holodeck though - If I remember right, Barklay made the program (which involved a recreation of the bridge crew as subservients), and it was one of the first to show his "holo-addication"...
I remember Worf's quote:
"I am *not* a merry man."
I think it was before the Q-Robinhood one...
I could be wrong though...
The problem with web-based forums is locality. With Usenet, as long as your ISP has a newsserver, chances are your access to newsgroup content is fairly quick, as it's local to you.
/.'s speed compared to that of newsgroup access?
With web-based forums it's different. How often have you had to wait a couple/few minutes for a busy page or a page from a far-flung country to load? The longer the page, the longer the load-time. The page you're connecting to may have a REALLY slow link, or other slowdowns may occur.
Admittedly, some of these slowdowns would affect a "local" newsserver as well, but definitely not to the extent it affects foreign webpages, or those on slow/busy links.
(The drawback to the localized server approach is that posts sometimes take a great deal of time to propagate to other servers...whereas web-based forums are updated as soon as your post makes it there and is processed)
Anyone from overseas (non-North America) care to comment on
...not to mention the fact that these work the OPPOSITE from the way muscles work -- they EXPAND with electricity rather than contract.
The article mentions that they would be more akin to a rubber band-style than to a real muscle - ie: lots of give, but not much pull.
But...this does open the way for research into doing things the opposite way - or designing things to work on the expansion principle rather than the contraction one our muscles work off of.
Neat discovery, but the really cool stuff is yet to come.
I'd say the whole thing is a fairly moot point - it used to be (way back) that if you wanted to save some data, you threw it on a floppy. Floppys tend to degrade (depending on quality, conditions, treatment, etc...) after a few years. Of course, hard drives got bigger, so people didn't need to move so much off onto floppies...then programs got bigger (bloat) so hard disk space was once again at a premium. The Zip drive came along into the mainstream (I believe it was in use by graphics houses for a while before it became popular to the average joe) --- so now it was a larger (capacity-wise) storage medium, that didn't degrade quite so fast...but even Zip drives are being replaced by CDRs, as the drives become less expensive. I'd say that it isn't inconceivable that in the next 20 years we'll see a new, larger-capacity storage medium that will outlast CDRs by a LARGE factor come into play...and by the time THAT is starting to break down, we'll have something better.
Anything that's actually important enough to keep forever will survive by any means necessary (barring Murphy's Law taking hold). The rest can peacefully degrade.
There's a little thing called "Innocent until proven guilty" - Mitnick doesn't have to prove that he's innocent - the prosecution has to prove he's guilty. At least that's the way it's supposed to work. In Mitnick's case the whole thing evidently got thrown out the window.
LOL
;P
It's good to know someone outranks CMDR Taco
You can FINALLY get rid of that dang sidebar (view menu, uncheck sidebar)
Properly coded pages actually look better (for the most part) than they do in IE5. Slick.
CSS is done well.
Crashes FAR less often than M12 on my P2-333 64megs, Win98 box. Haven't tried it under Linux yet.
Bad:
Font Prefs aren't done yet (I want sans-serif by default, dangit!)
"Theme" selector not done yet (Really, I just want to get some win-standard chrome rather than the "Mozilla" interface)
Still crashes more than NS 4.7 (but it's getting close!)
Back button intermittant (This just ain't right)
Overall - not too shabby for a 1st alpha. I would've liked to see all the prefs panels actually be functional, but this release does indeed show that Mozilla is "getting there".
Nice job to all involved.
I couldn't agree more - the whole air of hostility in online RPGs is a BIG turnoff to many people, myself included. (Note that online shooters are a whole other story - where hostility is the name of the game, as long as you don't teamkill)
Take another example - the games over on http://games.eesite.com - where in order to get anywhere in the rankings, you HAVE to cheat. In fact it's expected that you will cheat if you want to be ranked in the top slots. If you post to their message boards about it, you get flamed by the entrenched for having a problem with it.
The siteadmins can't do anything about it - it seems the more holes they patch, the more dilligent the cheaters become, and they get to cheat anyway.
So, legitimate players looking for a good game get pissed off with the system, and go elsewhere.
The other problem, which is more prevalent in games such as UO and EverQuest - is that once the game has started and gotten a decent following, that it is INSANELY tough for a new player who doesn't want to quit their job and spend horrendous ammounts of cash to play all the time, to get anywhere - sure, you might find a few other people in the same situation, and have a decent time until some L25 PK'er comes and mops the floor with your L2 party because they had a rough day.
Cheating, PKing, and pay-for-play are the three big problems with online gaming communities right now. Cheating isn't going to go away. The more they try to stop it, the more vigilant the cheaters will become. PKing can be removed from such online RPGs, but many players (myself included) would feel that it does remove some of the depth of those games (although some sort of limiter on high-level PK'ers attacking newbies should be made). Pay-for-play will remain until it's no longer profitable for the game companies to do things that way. As long as people are willing to rack up $100 a month in UO charges (I know 5 people for whom this is a LOW figure), Origin will be more than willing to take their cash. (You'd think with all that cash they could've spent a bit more time debugging Ascension though...)
/rant
Isn't that like redefining "Shellshock" as "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder"? =)
(with apologies to George Carlin)
Another little thought for discussion...
With email and anonymous posts, it's much more common for people to be "loose" with language - rude, crude, vulgar, etc... and it's much easier to fire off a quick, rude post to someone whom you disagree with. Is it possible that the popularity of email has made some of this mindset rub off on people's day-to-day personalities?
Just doing my part to fuel the fire =)
Personally I think that the 'net is responsible for really opening up "free speech" - to the point that the freedom on the 'net to be rude or obnoxious has, to varying extent, rubbed off on many people - especially the ones who do most of their communicating by email and other "faceless" mediums. But that's just my view - flame if necessary =)
The difference between sound waves and text (I apologize if you're one of our blind readers using a program to read the posts - that crosses the barrier I'm using for contrast here) is that if you start to get offended by text, you can *gasp* stop reading it. Hit the back button. Hell, hit PgDwn to scroll it off the screen. Noone is forcing you to read (much of) anything you don't want to. If someone's yelling stuff at you that you are offended by, you don't have a choice - you hear it because your ears work. You can, however, walk away. If we censor everything, we give up our rights to say what we believe. The 'net has brought freedom of speech to many people who didn't have it before, to whom the 'net is their only outlet. Don't stifle the good just to rid yourselves of the few bad eggs.
Nope, not at all.
Basically MS, by "integrating" their browser into their OS, is trying to stop there from being a browser market in and of itself, by making the browser a commodity.
Because you have to install Windows (for whatever reason - compatibility with coworkers, games, etc...), you get IE. You don't have a choice in the matter - it's part of the OS.
Now, as far as browsers go, IE isn't that bad - it has it's quirks (but so do Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, and the various others) but it does a decent job of rendering most stuff on the web.
You have IE. It does what you need. Why would you (generic end-user) pay money to get another program that does the same thing? Chances are you wouldn't.
Because of this, there's little money to be made in the browser "market". The browser has been/is transformed from a product to a commodity (look at Konqueror, KDE's native browser...). So now there really *isn't* a browser market.
Fortunately, the DOJ case deals more with Win95 and IE3 than it does with the more recent developments, so hopefully that won't be taken into account.
Actually...
NS was making a boatload of cash off of their browser - the best choice for a graphical browser at that time.
MS wanted in on the business, but their product wasn't good enough (yet) to compete on it's own merit. So they made a *business decision* to integrate the browser into their next OS (Win98 at that time), and so released their not-quite-so-nice-as-NS browser for free, in order to eat away at NS's market share before they dropped the bombshell that EVERYONE running Win98 would have the browser on their system whether they wanted it or not.
Because they released it for free, many people gave it a shot, and figured "Yeah, it's not as good as Netscape, but it's free, and does enough for me to not NEED Netscape"...so it gained some legitimate followers there.
But remember, this is Microsoft. They never do anything based on cost or merit. They included their browser with just about every product they sold, as well as many, many other company's products. Many times, IE was installed with the other products, without informing the user.
A new icon appeared on Win95 desktops: The Internet. Most clueless users started using IE, simply because it was labeled "The Internet" -- and they didn't know any better. This, of course was Microsoft's plan.
Netscape was losing money on the browser now, but at the same time they were starting to rake in BIG money from their server products...so they had a paradigm shift...and the browser we now know as Netscape became free.
It had nothing to do with people realizing the money was elsewhere. It had everything to do with Microsoft devaluing the browser as a commodity by putting their browser, for "free", on desktops all over the world, by any means necessary...then nailing the coffin with the integration into Win98.
For MS as a company, this was a VERY good move - they would have forced NS out of business if they were solely reliant on their browser for income, and they *have* become the dominant force in the browser market.
For the consumer, this (frankly) sucked. The consumer wasn't just offered a free hand-out...it was forcefed, much the same way as Netscape users are forcefed AOL Instant Messenger. With Win98, this became even worse - there was no choice, you had IE whether you wanted it or not (yes, I know about 98 Lite, but they're relatively recent).
Okay, rant's over. I'm probably wrong on a lot of stuff, so feel free to flame as you see fit =)
I can see it now...
In the first non-experimental implantation, blind guy Joe Smith gets a successful cybernetic eye implant.
The test of his eye was a copy of Playboy, opened to the centerfold, and placed directly in front of his face.
Upon opening his "eye" for the first time, Joe suffered a major coronary...the cause, say doctors, was "sensory overload".
Well, this part at least I can say that I *think* AOL actually has a reason for it...Netscape. As soon as NS5/Mozilla is finished, they'll have a standards-compliant embeddable browser they can just swap with the VERY crappy one they have now. Their view on the browser situation is probably "We don't have time to worry about bugs in a browser that is just gonna get ditched in a year or so anyway". Sad but true.
Ahh...but now you've hit on the TRUE reason to hate AOL.
AOL, like most large corporations, views the populace as sheep. Dumb animals that are quick to panic in large numbers when they get scared, but are docile as long as they are happy.
What better way to keep the populace happy than to shield them from everything that is "bad"? If they never see/hear/read anything they might find remotely offensive, they will stay happy and keep spending money. And where will they spend the money?
Wherever the people keeping them happy tell them to. Which is, of course, what AOL wants.
So, AOL takes it upon itself to decide what is "good" and what is "bad". AOL being the judge, they get to define what constitutes "bad" - be it pornography, vulgarity, or simply opposing viewpoints.
And of course the Internet being a big, scary place, full of "bad" things, AOL must take it upon itself to shield it's subscribers from all of the nasty things that might be "bad" -- free thought, free expression, competition -- all of these things that would cause their docile little sheep to get excited.
As far as acquiring Time Warner goes...now AOL owns the pipes that information gets sent down. Like it or not, many people, including some very intelligent ones, take what CNN says as being the complete and total truth. Now that AOL has control, CNN can, and probably will become a forum for AOL's worldview to be touted to the masses.
Expect a rise in "feel good" news stories, as well as the typical stories designed to scare the populace -- murder, terrorism, school shootings, etc -- as these are the kinds of stories that pimp the media, government, and law enforcement as being the shining hope for humanity, when in fact they are as corrupt as the corporate profiteers.
All (media, government, law enforcement, corporations) are motivated by one thing: greed. There are more officers sitting in speed traps to punish Joe Q. Motorist for going 10 miles above the speed limit than there are rooting out the drug dealers, terrorists, and serial killers that are causing REAL problems.
I would be suprised if this is the last of the large corporations buying media companies. Now that AOL has Time Warner (outdoing Microsoft's MSNBC that noone takes really seriously anyway), expect many other corporations to follow suit.
I, for one, am hoping the FTC gets involved in this one, stopping what will be a HUGE problem down the line before it starts.
Okay, I've ranted enough for now =)
What about the company who paid for THEIR ad to be on that billboard? Companies pay big money for high-profile adspace. Now, that adspace can be hijacked by whomever has the most $$ to throw at the networks/cable companies.
This WILL devalue adspace. Of course, it also will bring into being the ability of companies to throw ads onto EVERYTHING, regardless of content.
Okay, I can see blocking something objectionable -- but who's to say what's objectionable? What's the limit to this? "Live" TV used to be one of the few ways the populace could be sure they were seeing what was going on.
Now, a "live" shot of a war could be doctored to not show any of "our" troops dying - hell they could edit the footage to change the outcome of things...and it would all be done in the name of "protecting the people" - Bullsh**. It's lying, plain and simple.
And "blocking a competitor's logo" is *not* ethical, at least in my opinion. Blocking ALL logos and ads would be OK if it was a consumer decision, but we don't need TimeWar^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAOL deciding that every ad on cable TV is an AOL ad, and brainwashing people that way.
This isn't to say that this technology doesn't have good, legitimate uses. It's just that in our society the way it is today, the power of this WILL be misused, and it's the people who will get the short end of the stick, not the companies, corporations and media.
"Maximum promotion of our combined products"
This means AOL/TW will have ads for their crap on everything, everywhere. Turn on your TV, see ads for AOL, RR, etc... Turn on your comp. that's hooked up to RR, get massive ammounts of spam and banner ads about AOL, RR, and various Cable offerings (PayPerView, Pay stations, etc...).
Ick.
"multiple revenue streams from every household"
This means that they're going to charge up the @$$ for everything, and probably raise prices on everything as it stands now. AOL is already more expensive than most ISPs - now RR is probably going to jump up by $5-$10 (making it more expensive than a dedicated phone line and regular ISP account) to make it's price point around the same as AOLs in relation to other cable ISPs.
Basically - the gist is that AOL is going to gouge the consumer on everything from cable access to television, spam you in multiple streams, both online and on the TV, continue to have the WORST customer service in the business, and probably take the relatively good service that was TW's RR, and ruin it.
When's DSL gonna get down to $40 a month TOTAL COST? We NEED it there to combat this sort of crap.
(and before you ask, yes, I'm a RR customer - and this REALLY bothers me)
Gotta rant a bit on this one...
;)
I've tried a couple of these "free" ad-supported ISPs (admittedly, they were dial-ups, but the principle is the same) - and while they DO give you access to the 'net, they do so rather poorly in comparison to other ISPs.
Generally, there is little or no support. This alone is a good reason for many to stay away. Especially those who are new to the internet, and need a bit of help to do things you or I would think are pretty simple. So, they generally aren't very good for newbies - that leaves experienced users...who generally go a few steps further when something seems to be wrong.
Send their "support" address a series of traceroutes, showing them that there seems to be a problem with their equipment - and get no response for a few days - then a form letter asking you to make sure your username and password are typed correctly, and that you're dialing the right number (Hello? If I wasn't logging in, how'd I do the traceroute?)
Support aside, you generally have to put up with some sort of "ad panel" on your screen. Invariably these are set to be "always on top" (which generally relates to "always in the way"). When these services first started, the ad panels were relatively small - but they're growing - soon, you'll have 60% ads, 40% other.
You can't even move the panel out of the way, as most use some sort of scripting that doesn't allow you to move ANY part of the panel off-screen. And of course, most of these services think that everyone runs at 800x600 - so you'll get constant warning messages (which you can't turn off) if you run at 1280x1024 and want to put the panel anywhere but the upper right hand corner of the screen.
I'm not even going to go into the spam...although my advice there is to make sure you never remove anything from their mail server - and when they complain, show them the spam. Of course, this may get you nowhere...
Apologies for the bit of a rant here, but these places are generally REALLY low on the quality scale. I can't imagine that going broadband is going to make them any better. In fact, I can see them getting MUCH worse (with that kind of bandwidth, they'll want to force-feed you streaming video...)
Disclaimer: I've worked for a dial-up ISP for 2 years, and have had a cable modem for one. My views are based on my own experiences, and I do try to keep my ISP bias in check most of the time
It's a well-known fact that the insect species popularly known as "Wytookay" imbibes immense ammounts of alcohol in order to keep itself free of disease. This also has the known side-effect of causing the insect to make noises that sound much like "Buy another round on me!" - thus this particular species of insect is often used by certain members of the population to garner free drinks at the local pub.
Anyone willing to bootleg the bootleg? I for one would LOVE to have a copy (even an 8th generation copy with sucky video)
Unfortunately with NASA's budget cuts, this probably isn't going to happen for a while.
I for one would love to see a revamped shuttle design - one that is not only cheaper to get up into space, but that doesn't need such excessive maintenance to keep it in top shape. It just doesn't fit into the "Faster, Better, Cheaper" philosophy that NASA has had to undertake due to budget cuts.
NASA no longer can "look to the future" - they're stuck in the NOW. Maybe it's a symptom of our Corporatist society that we as a society don't seem to value research and discovery as much as we used to - instead, what gets the high marks is "results". (note that the generic Slashdot reader probably differs from this greatly - but we're talking about society as a whole, not an enlightened few)
The have the shuttles NOW - all the time and research they would need to do to revamp the design will instead be spent on getting "results" (IE: putting commercial and military sattelites into orbit, and repairing faulty equipment like the Hubble).
Not that "results" are a bad thing - just that the over-focus on them, and the lack of funding, seem to have stymied the research and discovery arm of NASA that would give us improvements such as a new shuttle design.
Of course, I could be completely off base here.
(yes, I realize I'm ranting - probably due to lack of sleep)
I have to agree with you there - the lawsuit situ would be as follows --
Buyer sues Seller for non-receipt of goods paid for (I believe he does have the right to do this, as the Seller "owned" the domain (which was in NSI's hands), and sold it to the Buyer, whom, due to NSI's incompetence, never received it)
Seller in turn sues NSI for court costs and damages from the Buyer suit (as the Seller gave notice to NSI to do these things, and NSI screwed it up, thus harming the Seller's reputation, as well as opening him to the lawsuit from the Buyer)
NSI can (and should) fight to get the domain back -- they obviously have proof that the domain was "in transit" and not "available" -- and as such, they should (conceivably) be able to sue the other domain registrar for the domain. Of course, the registrant could sue the other registrar, who could in turn sue NSI...
In any case, it would seem to me (and I don't claim to be educated in the way these laws actually work, this is just common sense, which I realize our legal system has very little of) that NSI should take the fall for this one.
Or does Canadian TV *seem* to have even more commercials than the 35-min-show-that-lasts-an-hour US?
;)
Just an observation
Seriously, though, I tried this out, and it's pretty cool. Low-quality video, but what do you expect from RealVideo? Obviously it's no competition for "real" TV yet, but it's kinda nice to be able to run on a machine that doesn't have a TV card, but does have a cable modem.
I've been connected for about 20 min now without a hiccup - then again, it's not 8am EST yet either...the real test will be to see how it runs from the flaky LAN at work.
I'd much rather have a TV card, or even better a TV within viewing distance of the comp - but this is pretty cool nonetheless.