American consumerism does NOT equal having a higher standard of living. With 20% of American children under the poverty line, average working weeks above 50 hours and vacations less than than 2 weeks a year, millions of working poor (you work hard but you still can't pay your bills), no national health care and a governmental/economic system where winner takes all and leaves nothing for the rest, the American standard for living DOES NOT COMPARE to the standard of living elsewhere. YOU STUPID CLOSE MINDED FUCK.
Get your head out of your goddamn ass. Being able to buy an XBox does not mean the American way of life is the best. Idiot.
Nice try, I'm an American living in Spain. So I'm with you, the English do smell, but you should try Southern Europe... A hot day, the Metro in Madrid and it's gas mask time.
US: 280 million, Spain: duhhh... 40? Not really sure... God, now THAT is sad. Okay, I just looked it up, I was right (whew! no editing, really), but the UK has like 60 million. California has about 34 million. Canada has..., ahh, who the hell cares about them? They cheat in Hockey.
That's three so far... How many more over-sensitive Australians are going to get their panties in a bunch because I didn't give the exact population of their cuntry? I don't know whether to appologize or to point out that I was being, like, facetious.
One guy even called me a "pom." What the hell is a pom? Do they even speak English in Australia? (I'm joking... Christ. Have another Fosters and get over it.)
The price drops in the UK and Europe are the most important... there's like 300 million people here and like what, 5 in Australia?
This announcement comes only a few days after news reports came out saying it was obvious that Microsoft wasn't going to make their sales targets. I don't know WHAT the hell they were thinking at first putting the price up so high in Europe, the economies here are much, much weaker than in the U.S. Almost no one can afford 450 for freakin' game machine.
There was no real reason for the prices to be that high, especially since they're making the XBox's in Hungary, not a place known for its high labor costs, hey?
I read that Microsoft wasn't probably going to lower prices in the U.S. until Sony does, but it seems that Microsoft is looking at the numbers and not the competition (at least in the rest of the world) so maybe they'll get a clue.
Has anyone hacked this bad boy with Linux yet? Then to me it would be worth the price of letting a Microsoft product into my home.
My Dell Lattitude IBM hard drive is so loud I hear it in my sleep... I don't have the money to replace it right now so I have to live with it. I thought it was the fan (and that the fan was broken) for quite a while, until one day I read Slashdot and realized that it was the HD...
My wife's got Fujitsu drive in her matching Dell and it's quiet as, well, nothing. You can't hear it.
No biggie... it just means that p2p clients will have to add in ports to their other forms of locating peers. For example, right now Gnutella queries well-known UltraPeers to prime the p2p pump and helps you locate peers around you (instead of spamming your network with random ping packages).
Well, obviously this "priming" will have to switch to use port 80 if others are blocked, then the response servers can give your client information about the "port of the day".
Personally, I think the P2P clients should use different ports for different uses. (And it's already enabled to change the port and client name in each Gnutella client). Music could have one port, eBooks on another, video another, and pr0n on another. This would be great so my quieries for "Bare Naked Ladies" brings up music instead of jpgs...
I think the next step is Web Services combined with some sort of presence protocol to provide the next generation IM or P2P apps.
I mean, if I have a web services "servent" on my machine it can do a lot, but no one knows where I am. A presence protocol (maybe the one in Jabber) would allow people to know I'm here and the services that I support. After that, SOAP messages can carry all the rest of the communication directly from peer to peer.
The question is, is there an advantage to having a Jabber server as a communications middleman (maybe caching XML messages like JMS or MQSeries) instead of just providing presence information and allowing the clients to talk among themselves...
I've seen this thing before on pr0n sites... once again they're leading the way on the web. I never thought that traditional advertisers would stoop this low, though. I wonder what's next?
-Russ
Ooh, wait. What I meant was my FRIENDS have seen stuff like this and told me about it. Wait, I don't have friends that look at pr0n either... umm. I read about this sort of thing, yeah. That's it...
I saw James Gosling speak here in Madrid not too long ago and I can say that I was completely disappointed. His answers to questions were blunt, uninteresting and usually condescending - sometimes even just repeating the question as an answer or just blowing it off entirely.
From what he himself said, he seems to have not paid much attention to what's going on with the Java language since helping create it... That is to say, he put all his eggs in the Jini basket, and when that tech failed to catch on, he was lost. J2EE, web services and J2ME? Nada. It was obvious from his speech and answers to questions that he doesn't have a clue.
The worst part was that he didn't seem very technical any more. He's into management and evangelism and all that and avoided specifics whenever possible. Thus, from now on I feel I can safely discount anything I read in the press from him because I know he's just bullshitting (which is obvious from this article too...)
I use Onebox.com as my voicemail box. I used to pay a yearly fee to get my own phone number (despite what it says below about a "free trial"), then they decided to cut the "premium" service altogether, but I got to keep the number. Here's a copy of the Onebox Plus page that's been up for the past year:
We have concluded our free trial of our Onebox Plus premium service and, due to the acquisition of Onebox.com, we have decided not to offer a paid premium service plan to users of our service. As a thank you for participating in our trial you may keep your Onebox Plus service for free. We have deleted your payment information from our system completely and you will never be charged for the Onebox Plus service.
If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us using the support form in our Help Center.
Thank you for your participation,
The Onebox.com Team
And HERE is the email I just received from OneBox:
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ONEBOX USERS
March 14, 2002
Dear Onebox customer,
Through the years, providing you with a reliable, high quality service has been our primary mission. In order to continue, Onebox will begin charging a nominal fee. If you would like to maintain your Onebox account, we require you choose a messaging package that best fits your needs no later than April 15, 2002. Unfortunately, if we do not receive your selection by this date we will discontinue your account.
If you have an account with Onebox, you will need to register for a paid subscription prior to this date. To subscribe, please click on the following link http://www.onebox.com/service/indexFounder.html . While registering, please update your profile information where necessary. To make the transition easier, your Onebox user name and password will remain the same and all your messages will stay in your account. However, you are required to change your phone number to a new, toll-free number.
Hmmmmm... What part of never didn't they understand? Bastards. I'd willingly pay them money to continue using my voicemail number, but they're not even giving me that option. Despite numerous emails asking about this, they haven't even responded. Bastards.
It's easy to dismiss "wireless" - yeah, yeah, what's the big deal - but any device that gets information without wires falls under this category. This is huge - it means changing how you interact with information. If you want to know about something, you have access to that information instantly from whereever you are.
Here's an analogy. You need to think BIG. Way out of the box. You know how in 1993, if you wanted to know about Scoobi-doo, you really didn't have many options. Seriously, follow me. There were the re-runs on TV and maybe a book or an article in the library in a periodical (where you had to search a static DB to find the record number and then order the magazine or whatnot via inter-library services...) but there wasn't much options available to you.
Now you can go to Google, do a look up on Scoobi-doo and find a history of cartoon, the names of the creators, a full listing of ALL the episodes and more. Instantly and easily. In 1993 you would never have thought that this level of information would ever been possible especially with an ease of use that your Mom could do it, but now you don't think twice about it.
The same transition is going to happen to today's geek-toys both in functionality and ease of use. With wireless devices you have access to any random bit of information (like Scoobi-doo) but WHERE EVER you are. No need to find some stationary connected device, you can now find that same info in the car, while walking, in the office, at home, etc.
More than that, you can start combining technologies and get even MORE info. Like WOZ you can combine wireless with GPS and find information about where you are (or your friends or children), or the building you're in or the street you're on, or you can combine the wireless device with voice technologies and now you can get a lot of that info while you're driving or doing some other hands-occupying activity.
So before you blow wireless off as just another bubble, do a leap of logic. Like those old AT&T commercials. What wouldn't you ever expect to be able to do on the beach or the side of a mountain? That's what's coming in the next 5 years.
The sad part, and I know nothing for sure, is that probably "switching back" means using Microsoft Exchange and Outlook again. Maybe Lotus, but I doubt it...
Everyone's bashing, but I think it was a great idea for AOL to switch to using Netscape stuff. If only AOL had TRULY eaten their own dogfood and gotten their Netscape Communicator stuff working well, this would have been a great way to cut off some Microsoft revenue and develop a better product for corporate email or at least a true competitor.
As it is, it's a major step backwards and more money in Microsoft's bank account...
IMHO it's too bad the open source community doesn't realize that Exchange is a vital link in corporate systems and that most corporations won't switch to Linux or whatever other OS on the desktop until there's a real competitor with it.
I completely agree with this. The responses to SPAM are still coming from people who are relatively new to the Internet (say my Mom). Once Mom gets the idea that SPAM is crap she'll stop paying attention to it (she already has really... it doesn't take long). So it won't be long before the click rates fall through the floor... right now it's just the suckers (and there are a lot of 'em... but the number isn't infinite.)
And the ISPs are going to start lobbying congress soon because of all the zillions they're spending on bandwidth. Spamming is a 2002 problem at best, by 2004 I think it'll be taken care of. Seriously. Lawmakers get as much SPAM or more then we do and they're sick of it too.
As an aside, I feel like the parent when I have to say to Mom things like, "HOW many times have I told you not to respond to emails from strangers?!? Don't come running to me when you get a virus on your computer that erases everything and drains your bank account dry."
I've often wondered what would've happened if Microsoft had thought of this several years ago - or decided to do something similar tomorrow.
Imagine if every WindowsXP that was sold had browsers that resolved Microsoft Name Service ( MSNS or simply ".NET") addresses? Imagine if Microsoft had thought about this in 1997 and every Microsoft browser (forget any other internet app - since that's obviously what New.net is doing) since then checked Microsoft.com's MSNS service for it's own custom domain names BEFORE your local DNS?
If they marketed it enough, my Mom wouldn't know the difference between.com and.shopping (a Microsoft-only domain).
It's an interesting thought... they could've controlled A LOT more of the internet than they do already. Maybe Microsoft isn't as smart and vicious as we all think...
But you know, all the ICANN haters always point out that the DNS system we use today is strictly voluntary and they have a point.
Not only THAT, but Real the company is a really slimy organization. (Their proximity to Microsoft seems to be rubbing off.)
I recently signed up for the 14 day trial of "Real One" their new streaming service with supposedly special access to radio and video. Well the special programs are so limited as to be useless. So deciding it wasn't worth 10 bucks a month I went to cancel my account before the trial came up.
Though you can sign up quite easily, you have to call to cancel the service. And of course their 1-800 number 1) Doesn't work from Spain where I'm living now and 2) is constantly busy - or puts you on hold for seemingly forever. Thus it cost me at least $20 in long distance to TRY to cancel my account - I haven't been able to do it yet.
That's a REALLY slimy thing to do. Enticing users to sign up and then making it really difficult to quit the service. AOL pulls the same shit. Assholes.
I'll NEVER ever recommend a Real product to anyone ever again.
Slashdot Mirror
YOU STUPID FUCKING ANONYMOUS ASSHOLE.
American consumerism does NOT equal having a higher standard of living. With 20% of American children under the poverty line, average working weeks above 50 hours and vacations less than than 2 weeks a year, millions of working poor (you work hard but you still can't pay your bills), no national health care and a governmental/economic system where winner takes all and leaves nothing for the rest, the American standard for living DOES NOT COMPARE to the standard of living elsewhere. YOU STUPID CLOSE MINDED FUCK.
Get your head out of your goddamn ass. Being able to buy an XBox does not mean the American way of life is the best. Idiot.
-Russ
Nice try, I'm an American living in Spain. So I'm with you, the English do smell, but you should try Southern Europe... A hot day, the Metro in Madrid and it's gas mask time.
US: 280 million, Spain: duhhh... 40? Not really sure... God, now THAT is sad. Okay, I just looked it up, I was right (whew! no editing, really), but the UK has like 60 million. California has about 34 million. Canada has..., ahh, who the hell cares about them? They cheat in Hockey.
This is so ridiculously off topic it's scary.
-Russ
That's three so far... How many more over-sensitive Australians are going to get their panties in a bunch because I didn't give the exact population of their cuntry? I don't know whether to appologize or to point out that I was being, like, facetious.
One guy even called me a "pom." What the hell is a pom? Do they even speak English in Australia? (I'm joking... Christ. Have another Fosters and get over it.)
-Russ
The price drops in the UK and Europe are the most important... there's like 300 million people here and like what, 5 in Australia?
This announcement comes only a few days after news reports came out saying it was obvious that Microsoft wasn't going to make their sales targets. I don't know WHAT the hell they were thinking at first putting the price up so high in Europe, the economies here are much, much weaker than in the U.S. Almost no one can afford 450 for freakin' game machine.
There was no real reason for the prices to be that high, especially since they're making the XBox's in Hungary, not a place known for its high labor costs, hey?
I read that Microsoft wasn't probably going to lower prices in the U.S. until Sony does, but it seems that Microsoft is looking at the numbers and not the competition (at least in the rest of the world) so maybe they'll get a clue.
Has anyone hacked this bad boy with Linux yet? Then to me it would be worth the price of letting a Microsoft product into my home.
-Russ
My Dell Lattitude IBM hard drive is so loud I hear it in my sleep... I don't have the money to replace it right now so I have to live with it. I thought it was the fan (and that the fan was broken) for quite a while, until one day I read Slashdot and realized that it was the HD...
My wife's got Fujitsu drive in her matching Dell and it's quiet as, well, nothing. You can't hear it.
I HATE THIS NOISE.
-Russ
I'm reading the article and I get to the part where the German says "... and we don't want that."
And I say out loud, "Yeah, well fuck you."
My wife, who was sitting next to me, got a little upset. Gotta stop talking to my computer...
-Russ
No biggie... it just means that p2p clients will have to add in ports to their other forms of locating peers. For example, right now Gnutella queries well-known UltraPeers to prime the p2p pump and helps you locate peers around you (instead of spamming your network with random ping packages).
Well, obviously this "priming" will have to switch to use port 80 if others are blocked, then the response servers can give your client information about the "port of the day".
Personally, I think the P2P clients should use different ports for different uses. (And it's already enabled to change the port and client name in each Gnutella client). Music could have one port, eBooks on another, video another, and pr0n on another. This would be great so my quieries for "Bare Naked Ladies" brings up music instead of jpgs...
-Russ
Someone moderated the parent post as Redundant.
Nonono. this is Redundant... THAT post was funny.
-Russ
I was going to moderate you down, but decided to just respond to you bluntly instead.
You're a fucking idiot.
-Russ
I think the next step is Web Services combined with some sort of presence protocol to provide the next generation IM or P2P apps.
I mean, if I have a web services "servent" on my machine it can do a lot, but no one knows where I am. A presence protocol (maybe the one in Jabber) would allow people to know I'm here and the services that I support. After that, SOAP messages can carry all the rest of the communication directly from peer to peer.
The question is, is there an advantage to having a Jabber server as a communications middleman (maybe caching XML messages like JMS or MQSeries) instead of just providing presence information and allowing the clients to talk among themselves...
-Russ
I've seen this thing before on pr0n sites... once again they're leading the way on the web. I never thought that traditional advertisers would stoop this low, though. I wonder what's next?
-Russ
Ooh, wait. What I meant was my FRIENDS have seen stuff like this and told me about it. Wait, I don't have friends that look at pr0n either... umm. I read about this sort of thing, yeah. That's it...
Disappointing is definitely the word.
I saw James Gosling speak here in Madrid not too long ago and I can say that I was completely disappointed. His answers to questions were blunt, uninteresting and usually condescending - sometimes even just repeating the question as an answer or just blowing it off entirely.
From what he himself said, he seems to have not paid much attention to what's going on with the Java language since helping create it... That is to say, he put all his eggs in the Jini basket, and when that tech failed to catch on, he was lost. J2EE, web services and J2ME? Nada. It was obvious from his speech and answers to questions that he doesn't have a clue.
The worst part was that he didn't seem very technical any more. He's into management and evangelism and all that and avoided specifics whenever possible. Thus, from now on I feel I can safely discount anything I read in the press from him because I know he's just bullshitting (which is obvious from this article too...)
-Russ
Or worse, "vacuum".
Try it in front of a mirror...
-Russ
Who has the patent for the Word Processing feature that let you define abbreviations for long words and phrases?
-Russ
I think the appropriate metaphor would be "slap on the bottom..." *harharharsnort*
-Russ
I'm 15 and have been an avid Mac evangelist since 1993...
It seems he's been going around making speeches about the great qualities of Apple products since he was 6. Heehee.
I better shut up now, since he's still a better programmer than I am...
-Russ
I use Onebox.com as my voicemail box. I used to pay a yearly fee to get my own phone number (despite what it says below about a "free trial"), then they decided to cut the "premium" service altogether, but I got to keep the number. Here's a copy of the Onebox Plus page that's been up for the past year:
We have concluded our free trial of our Onebox Plus premium service and, due to the acquisition of Onebox.com, we have decided not to offer a paid premium service plan to users of our service. As a thank you for participating in our trial you may keep your Onebox Plus service for free. We have deleted your payment information from our system completely and you will never be charged for the Onebox Plus service.
If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us using the support form in our Help Center.
Thank you for your participation,
The Onebox.com Team
And HERE is the email I just received from OneBox:
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ONEBOX USERS
March 14, 2002
Dear Onebox customer,
Through the years, providing you with a reliable, high quality service has been our primary mission. In order to continue, Onebox will begin charging a nominal fee. If you would like to maintain your Onebox account, we require you choose a messaging package that best fits your needs no later than April 15, 2002. Unfortunately, if we do not receive your selection by this date we will discontinue your account.
If you have an account with Onebox, you will need to register for a paid subscription prior to this date. To subscribe, please click on the following link http://www.onebox.com/service/indexFounder.html . While registering, please update your profile information where necessary. To make the transition easier, your Onebox user name and password will remain the same and all your messages will stay in your account. However, you are required to change your phone number to a new, toll-free number.
Hmmmmm... What part of never didn't they understand? Bastards. I'd willingly pay them money to continue using my voicemail number, but they're not even giving me that option. Despite numerous emails asking about this, they haven't even responded. Bastards.
-Russ
IMHO, this is the best feature of Notes
Yep, and they're getting rid of it... I'm too lazy to look for the link right now, but it's true.
-Russ
I disagree.
It's easy to dismiss "wireless" - yeah, yeah, what's the big deal - but any device that gets information without wires falls under this category. This is huge - it means changing how you interact with information. If you want to know about something, you have access to that information instantly from whereever you are.
Here's an analogy. You need to think BIG. Way out of the box. You know how in 1993, if you wanted to know about Scoobi-doo, you really didn't have many options. Seriously, follow me. There were the re-runs on TV and maybe a book or an article in the library in a periodical (where you had to search a static DB to find the record number and then order the magazine or whatnot via inter-library services...) but there wasn't much options available to you.
Now you can go to Google, do a look up on Scoobi-doo and find a history of cartoon, the names of the creators, a full listing of ALL the episodes and more. Instantly and easily. In 1993 you would never have thought that this level of information would ever been possible especially with an ease of use that your Mom could do it, but now you don't think twice about it.
The same transition is going to happen to today's geek-toys both in functionality and ease of use. With wireless devices you have access to any random bit of information (like Scoobi-doo) but WHERE EVER you are. No need to find some stationary connected device, you can now find that same info in the car, while walking, in the office, at home, etc.
More than that, you can start combining technologies and get even MORE info. Like WOZ you can combine wireless with GPS and find information about where you are (or your friends or children), or the building you're in or the street you're on, or you can combine the wireless device with voice technologies and now you can get a lot of that info while you're driving or doing some other hands-occupying activity.
So before you blow wireless off as just another bubble, do a leap of logic. Like those old AT&T commercials. What wouldn't you ever expect to be able to do on the beach or the side of a mountain? That's what's coming in the next 5 years.
-Russ
The sad part, and I know nothing for sure, is that probably "switching back" means using Microsoft Exchange and Outlook again. Maybe Lotus, but I doubt it...
Everyone's bashing, but I think it was a great idea for AOL to switch to using Netscape stuff. If only AOL had TRULY eaten their own dogfood and gotten their Netscape Communicator stuff working well, this would have been a great way to cut off some Microsoft revenue and develop a better product for corporate email or at least a true competitor.
As it is, it's a major step backwards and more money in Microsoft's bank account...
IMHO it's too bad the open source community doesn't realize that Exchange is a vital link in corporate systems and that most corporations won't switch to Linux or whatever other OS on the desktop until there's a real competitor with it.
-Russ
I completely agree with this. The responses to SPAM are still coming from people who are relatively new to the Internet (say my Mom). Once Mom gets the idea that SPAM is crap she'll stop paying attention to it (she already has really... it doesn't take long). So it won't be long before the click rates fall through the floor... right now it's just the suckers (and there are a lot of 'em... but the number isn't infinite.)
And the ISPs are going to start lobbying congress soon because of all the zillions they're spending on bandwidth. Spamming is a 2002 problem at best, by 2004 I think it'll be taken care of. Seriously. Lawmakers get as much SPAM or more then we do and they're sick of it too.
As an aside, I feel like the parent when I have to say to Mom things like, "HOW many times have I told you not to respond to emails from strangers?!? Don't come running to me when you get a virus on your computer that erases everything and drains your bank account dry."
-Russ
I really don't give a flying fuck about any of those topics. If you don't like the stories posted on Slashdot, don't read them. That's simple enough.
-Russ
Something sounded like "auf inderschleiden umf POSITRONIC BRAIN bis hin zum fertigen..."
Whhaaaaattt???? These things are cooler than I thought!
-Russ
I've often wondered what would've happened if Microsoft had thought of this several years ago - or decided to do something similar tomorrow.
.com and .shopping (a Microsoft-only domain).
Imagine if every WindowsXP that was sold had browsers that resolved Microsoft Name Service ( MSNS or simply ".NET") addresses? Imagine if Microsoft had thought about this in 1997 and every Microsoft browser (forget any other internet app - since that's obviously what New.net is doing) since then checked Microsoft.com's MSNS service for it's own custom domain names BEFORE your local DNS?
If they marketed it enough, my Mom wouldn't know the difference between
It's an interesting thought... they could've controlled A LOT more of the internet than they do already. Maybe Microsoft isn't as smart and vicious as we all think...
But you know, all the ICANN haters always point out that the DNS system we use today is strictly voluntary and they have a point.
-Russ
Not only THAT, but Real the company is a really slimy organization. (Their proximity to Microsoft seems to be rubbing off.)
I recently signed up for the 14 day trial of "Real One" their new streaming service with supposedly special access to radio and video. Well the special programs are so limited as to be useless. So deciding it wasn't worth 10 bucks a month I went to cancel my account before the trial came up.
Though you can sign up quite easily, you have to call to cancel the service. And of course their 1-800 number 1) Doesn't work from Spain where I'm living now and 2) is constantly busy - or puts you on hold for seemingly forever. Thus it cost me at least $20 in long distance to TRY to cancel my account - I haven't been able to do it yet.
That's a REALLY slimy thing to do. Enticing users to sign up and then making it really difficult to quit the service. AOL pulls the same shit. Assholes.
I'll NEVER ever recommend a Real product to anyone ever again.
-Russ