Spam is a waste of bandwidth and storage. But most annoyingly, it's a burglary of my time.
Everyone who has been on the receiving end of the convicted spammer should get a full 8 hour day to waste THEIR time. I'm sure they'd *love* to sit in a cell while I take them on a leisurely tour of my vacation photos or my high school annuals.
Why can't someone just make a small form-factor (iPod-ish) player based on decent off-the-shelf hardware? We could install whatever OS we wanted and then add whatever player software wanted. The geekier amongst us could write their own. Come on... just give us a well-implemented hardware with a small LCD and we can opensource it from there.
I want control over how this thing plays my music. I want to be able to set up the OS myself. And yes, I want eggs in my beer, too.
Or at least it'll be forced to evolve into something more restrictive. When only adventuresome geeks were using the net, it was like we were the earliest settlers in a vast ancient forest. I remember getting maybe two or three messages a month and being elated at each. It was like meeting a fellow pioneer and being mutually pleased at having anyone else to talk to. Eventually the web was born and even my mom got an email account (ZOINKS!). And then the first annoying ads starting showing up in my inbox. And now... well, we already know what happened. Seems like there won't be any real solution to filtering spam and the internet will have to go from being a wide-open crosslinked universe to a collection of private nodes/networks. Commercial interests supported the explosive growth of the internet/web, and a lot of us got neato jobs in the process. But now that same commercialism (and human greed/stupidity) have clearcut that beautiful old forest and built up sleazy strip malls.
I know I'm at risk of sounding like one of those "I was here before it sucked" types. Lamenting the loss of the good old days won't bring 'em back.
So, what do we do? The idea of charging a token fee for email delivery, which could be rejected by the recepient (thus resulting in a charge for spam, but not for mail we really want) is a good idea. But it might already be too late for that kind of solution. Make spam illegal? Sounds like yet another unwinnable "war-on-a-concept". Many usenet groups already require approval for membership, and even that doesn't guarantee that new accounts won't become a source of spam.
I predict that more and more organizations and individuals will simply build fences around their cyber-outposts, only allowing recognized friends past the gate. At my house we NEVER answer the phone unless the caller ID displays a name we recognize. Ditto for email. Ditto for newgroups as well. I guess my mom was right... I don't talk to strangers any more.
Tis a lovely notion, and as one whose inbox swells with daily e-flotsam, I'm all for some kind of action. But who will enforce this law and how? Let's say the whole country adopts this law... spammers will just set up shop outside the 12-mile limit and we'll just get virility-enlargement adverts from some other time zone ("would you like a 28 cm penis?" CLICK HERE!").
Hoping for the best (but glumly accepting the status quo)...
Great Zeus! Can't you see that we're killing the industry?! Instead of making billions and billions, Hollywood is only making billions. And it's all our fault. Personally, I can't imagine living in a world without "Scooby Doo 2" or the next SNL skit spinoff.
In order to save Hollywood, I am going to organize a bake sale immediately.
As a developer, I would say that my CS degree program was helpful in learning programming theory; and it certainly helped me get a job. But gaming is a specialized application of programming skills. You need to understand how to optimize every instruction you write. It means having a deep understanding of how to manage memory, object behaviors, and how your rendering engine communicates with the graphics hardware on a very low level. Plan on becoming a high priest of C++. Game programming is a very competitive field... but if that's where your muse leads you, then start with baby steps and MASTER them... learn how to write game mods/levels and ASK a lot of questions. As you master the gaming object-behavior models, learn how the gaming and rendering engines work. You can find the source code for some games and it's worth dissecting them to see what makes them tick.
The knowledge base moves very fast so you might learn more from discussion lists than from published books. For what it's worth, keep your sense of humor in overdrive and your ego in neutral because gamers are a tough (talking) crowd. You will spend a year toiling on your amazing new game with its secret new gaming engine and somebody will gripe that your shrapnel dispersion algorithm doesn't obey pure Newtonian physics. The good news is that gamers can also be fiercely loyal and willing to offer mods/levels if the game is cool.
Slashdot Mirror
read the mirrored thread. it's well worth the time to examine it.
Spam is a waste of bandwidth and storage. But most annoyingly, it's a burglary of my time.
Everyone who has been on the receiving end of the convicted spammer should get a full 8 hour day to waste THEIR time. I'm sure they'd *love* to sit in a cell while I take them on a leisurely tour of my vacation photos or my high school annuals.
Why can't someone just make a small form-factor (iPod-ish) player based on decent off-the-shelf hardware? We could install whatever OS we wanted and then add whatever player software wanted. The geekier amongst us could write their own. Come on... just give us a well-implemented hardware with a small LCD and we can opensource it from there.
I want control over how this thing plays my music. I want to be able to set up the OS myself. And yes, I want eggs in my beer, too.
Just like everybody's basements being full of old copies of national geographic, these things will someday sink the continent...
Or at least it'll be forced to evolve into something more restrictive. When only adventuresome geeks were using the net, it was like we were the earliest settlers in a vast ancient forest. I remember getting maybe two or three messages a month and being elated at each. It was like meeting a fellow pioneer and being mutually pleased at having anyone else to talk to. Eventually the web was born and even my mom got an email account (ZOINKS!). And then the first annoying ads starting showing up in my inbox. And now... well, we already know what happened.
Seems like there won't be any real solution to filtering spam and the internet will have to go from being a wide-open crosslinked universe to a collection of private nodes/networks. Commercial interests supported the explosive growth of the internet/web, and a lot of us got neato jobs in the process. But now that same commercialism (and human greed/stupidity) have clearcut that beautiful old forest and built up sleazy strip malls.
I know I'm at risk of sounding like one of those "I was here before it sucked" types. Lamenting the loss of the good old days won't bring 'em back.
So, what do we do? The idea of charging a token fee for email delivery, which could be rejected by the recepient (thus resulting in a charge for spam, but not for mail we really want) is a good idea. But it might already be too late for that kind of solution. Make spam illegal? Sounds like yet another unwinnable "war-on-a-concept".
Many usenet groups already require approval for membership, and even that doesn't guarantee that new accounts won't become a source of spam.
I predict that more and more organizations and individuals will simply build fences around their cyber-outposts, only allowing recognized friends past the gate. At my house we NEVER answer the phone unless the caller ID displays a name we recognize. Ditto for email. Ditto for newgroups as well. I guess my mom was right... I don't talk to strangers any more.
Tis a lovely notion, and as one whose inbox swells with daily e-flotsam, I'm all for some kind of action. But who will enforce this law and how? Let's say the whole country adopts this law... spammers will just set up shop outside the 12-mile limit and we'll just get virility-enlargement adverts from some other time zone ("would you like a 28 cm penis?" CLICK HERE!").
Hoping for the best (but glumly accepting the status quo)...
But if we get rid of the lightbulb what will appear over my head next time of think of something?
In order to save Hollywood, I am going to organize a bake sale immediately.
As a developer, I would say that my CS degree program was helpful in learning programming theory; and it certainly helped me get a job. But gaming is a specialized application of programming skills. You need to understand how to optimize every instruction you write. It means having a deep understanding of how to manage memory, object behaviors, and how your rendering engine communicates with the graphics hardware on a very low level. Plan on becoming a high priest of C++. Game programming is a very competitive field... but if that's where your muse leads you, then start with baby steps and MASTER them... learn how to write game mods/levels and ASK a lot of questions. As you master the gaming object-behavior models, learn how the gaming and rendering engines work. You can find the source code for some games and it's worth dissecting them to see what makes them tick.
The knowledge base moves very fast so you might learn more from discussion lists than from published books. For what it's worth, keep your sense of humor in overdrive and your ego in neutral because gamers are a tough (talking) crowd. You will spend a year toiling on your amazing new game with its secret new gaming engine and somebody will gripe that your shrapnel dispersion algorithm doesn't obey pure Newtonian physics. The good news is that gamers can also be fiercely loyal and willing to offer mods/levels if the game is cool.