The next regular report will, no doubt, assert with full statistical rigour that "Twitter is for twits". It's been manifestly evident to many of us since its very inception.
People don't "tweet", they mostly be-twit themselves - sometimes quite impressively in only 140 characters. Others merely follow the twaddle produced by their twit-idols (a motley collection of vacuous celebrities, sports stars, self-serving shills, and the like). Still, pumping the hype on the way up was good for fleecing investors. Presumably Morgan Stanley can now fleece them again on the way down.
The majority of blogs are a) abandoned and b) exercises in narcissism. Why would you expect microblogs (aka Twitter) to be any different?
Woohoo! The time is finally ripe to patent my auto-engaging steel straps/La-Z Boy enhancement.
I've already planned several upgrades too! The straps will engage when the commercials start and a pleasant jolt of electricity will be administered via the anal probe at the start of each commercial to ensure wakefulness and attention to the importance of the message.
The traffic from/. was a drop in the bucket. They logged over a million unique visitors over just a couple of months. IIRC, that poor little website was running on a cluster of load balanced servers with static content coming off of mirrors in akamai's server network.
Escalation is a joke. My last paid call to Hell (paid as in the customer was paying me because the phone support they bought wasn't getting the job done) resulted in me walking through 30 minutes of basic troubleshooting procedures that couldn't be avoided without blowing the guy's script out of the water.
Despite at least six requests to escalate, the best I could get out of the guy was lengthy hold times while he consulted some unknown guru who knew slightly more than he did.
From where I sit, there is no accountability for results. My follow up calls on the same issue required opening new trouble tickets every time because the previous ticket was closed as a 'successful call.'
I guess they measure success by counting the hangups.
This is exactly why our society is increasingly dependent on service jobs rather than manufacturing or agriculture.
The question you have to ask though, is are you replacing the old jobs with better paying new jobs or are you devaluing human capital and reducing real incomes. I think that remains to be seen.
I had a minor 'incident' last week with a group calling themselves "Hackers Against War." They managed to replace the most recent story on my php-nuke based website with a juvenile little message.
After posting a request for help in a couple of PHP-nuke support forums, I was complete underwhelmed by the response.
My site is obscure enough that they probably only found me by googling for some nuke signature and then running an exploit script./me is glad he backs up regularly!
I see lots of comparisons between MMORPGs and ARG and fail to see how spending hours mindlessly leveling up is compelling.
One of the biggest attractions for me to the ARG genre is the group effort and community involvement. The community is certainly small, but don't equate size with the entertainment value.
A well written ARG is like a good novel. You identify with the characters and can a little bit closer to the story than any passive medium offers. A great ARG truly blurs the lines between the fictional game world and your own reality. It certainly involves the suspension of disbelieve to accomplish this, but so does any other game.
How much fun would GTA be without all the little things that pull you in? The radio, the interactions with NPCs and everything else lets you lose yourself for a while.
Bill Admin http://deaddrop.us Dedicated to Alternate Reality Gaming
Slashdot Mirror
The next regular report will, no doubt, assert with full statistical rigour that "Twitter is for twits". It's been manifestly evident to many of us since its very inception.
People don't "tweet", they mostly be-twit themselves - sometimes quite impressively in only 140 characters. Others merely follow the twaddle produced by their twit-idols (a motley collection of vacuous celebrities, sports stars, self-serving shills, and the like). Still, pumping the hype on the way up was good for fleecing investors. Presumably Morgan Stanley can now fleece them again on the way down.
The majority of blogs are a) abandoned and b) exercises in narcissism. Why would you expect microblogs (aka Twitter) to be any different?
A summary judgement means that the judge rules without a trial. No waiting 5-10 years for the legal system to churn.
Of course, asking for one and getting it are two entirely different beasts.
Woohoo! The time is finally ripe to patent my auto-engaging steel straps/La-Z Boy enhancement.
I've already planned several upgrades too! The straps will engage when the commercials start and a pleasant jolt of electricity will be administered via the anal probe at the start of each commercial to ensure wakefulness and attention to the importance of the message.
I'll be rich!
The article states the critical mark is 400 ppm. Doesn't that seem like a PFA (plucked from air - what were you thinking?) number? Why not 401 or 399?
The traffic from /. was a drop in the bucket. They logged over a million unique visitors over just a couple of months. IIRC, that poor little website was running on a cluster of load balanced servers with static content coming off of mirrors in akamai's server network.
If your know enough to ask, you surely know the answer (or lack thereof)
http://www.publiusenigma.com/history.html
Escalation is a joke. My last paid call to Hell (paid as in the customer was paying me because the phone support they bought wasn't getting the job done) resulted in me walking through 30 minutes of basic troubleshooting procedures that couldn't be avoided without blowing the guy's script out of the water.
Despite at least six requests to escalate, the best I could get out of the guy was lengthy hold times while he consulted some unknown guru who knew slightly more than he did.
From where I sit, there is no accountability for results. My follow up calls on the same issue required opening new trouble tickets every time because the previous ticket was closed as a 'successful call.'
I guess they measure success by counting the hangups.
This is exactly why our society is increasingly dependent on service jobs rather than manufacturing or agriculture.
The question you have to ask though, is are you replacing the old jobs with better paying new jobs or are you devaluing human capital and reducing real incomes. I think that remains to be seen.
I had a minor 'incident' last week with a group calling themselves "Hackers Against War." They managed to replace the most recent story on my php-nuke based website with a juvenile little message.
/me is glad he backs up regularly!
After posting a request for help in a couple of PHP-nuke support forums, I was complete underwhelmed by the response.
My site is obscure enough that they probably only found me by googling for some nuke signature and then running an exploit script.
That is exactly why I'm not playing TSO.
I see lots of comparisons between MMORPGs and ARG and fail to see how spending hours mindlessly leveling up is compelling.
One of the biggest attractions for me to the ARG genre is the group effort and community involvement. The community is certainly small, but don't equate size with the entertainment value.
A well written ARG is like a good novel. You identify with the characters and can a little bit closer to the story than any passive medium offers. A great ARG truly blurs the lines between the fictional game world and your own reality. It certainly involves the suspension of disbelieve to accomplish this, but so does any other game.
How much fun would GTA be without all the little things that pull you in? The radio, the interactions with NPCs and everything else lets you lose yourself for a while.
Bill
Admin
http://deaddrop.us
Dedicated to Alternate Reality Gaming