I could see this being useful on game consoles, (or with a similar technology with DVD's) especially with online gaming. While games that are generally released for a game console platform are rigorously tested to be bug free, it may become necessary, especially in an online environment, to directly download and apply patches to the game media. Not to mention the ability to save your game on the game media itself...
Down the road, it could do away with the need for hard drives (cost) or memory cards (cost, speed and size) in game consoles. I'm not aware of this happening, but if a severe bug was found in a game that doesn't have any online connectivity, it would open up the possibility of going to a store (babbages, best buy, etc.) and having the game patched on the writable portion of the game media, as opposed to issuing a recall and having to re-produce the hundreds of thousands of copies. Who knows....
I can remember when playing with a iPaq store demo and playing around with the handwriting recognition settings (I can't remember what I selected), I was able to write in grafitti with great accuracy. How can Microsoft/Compaq get away with that?
As an activist and advocate for youth rights, nothing aggrevates me more than retailers/theaters barring the sale of entertainment, whether it be video games, movies or music.
Granted, voluntary enforcement leaves the retailers at liberty to decide whether to create such a policy without laws forcing them to, but barring sale based on an organization's rating system (ESRB, etc.) is shoving someone else's opinion (rating) down the consumer's throat, and barring the sale to individuals, based on the vague and discriminate class of age.
In Michigan, section 301 of the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1976 prohibits a place of public accommodation (defined: a business...of any kind...whose goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations are...made available to the public) "from denying an individual the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities...of a place of public accommodation because of religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, or marital status." It is undoubtedly arguable that any retailer in Michigan prohibiting a minor from buying a "Rated M" game is violating this act.
The responsibility lies in the hands of the parents, not the retailers, or the government. If parents want to make their purchasing decisions based on a rating system, whether it be the ESRB, or something like the Childcare Action Project, so be it. Retailers should either sell the product to everyone, or not carry it at all. The "One Rating System to Rule Them All" mindset is not the way to go about it.
TechTV runs their own live shows over and over and over already, and fills in the rest with content from british television, like techno games, tomorrow's world, titans of tech, the tech of.., thunderbirds, etc... all these are from british television. I don't know what ties techtv has, but the content is more boring and annoying than anything else, IMHO. I can only assume techtv is getting bargain deals on rights to broadcast these shows, probably because no one else wants them.
What if a credible source send out a mass-mail to ebay users, trying to get them to re-enter their information. When they hit the submit button, give them a huge, easy to understand lecture on how they could have been easily duped into giving up invaluable information. Yes, it's unsolicited, and probably will raise some eyebrows with the feds, but how many susceptible people would be taught a valuable lesson?
There is still a good number of people who play MajorMUD, and are addicted even though they have scripts to play for them 24/7.
Muds, IMO, are like those "choose your own adventure" books I used to read as a kid. It's pretty much an interactive, never-ending storybook, as opposed to graphical online RPG's.
One usage could be for christmas ornaments - even gluing the faces of two AOL cd's together, hanging off a christmas tree would make a cool looking reflective ornament. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the art departments in colleges/schools would take them. They could make very interesting pieces of artwork.
My biggest concern regarding SMS/text paging is how wireless carriers like Nexel make it trivial to send a massive payload of messages, just by knowing the area code/exchange and creating a program to hit every possible number combination.
Especially with a high propability rate of success, being that wireless providers can fill up exchanges pretty fast with subscribers. A more logical approach would be for each cellular subscriber to create a unique alias and/or number combination for sending messages, making brute force attacks much less propable (assuming you don't post your address on the web, only to be harvested by email-harvesting spam-spiders).
Or, disabling the option altogether. As a Nextel subscriber, there's nothing I could do to stop someone from costing me 10 cents a text message - it comes with every plan i've seen, so theoretically it would be easy to hit almost every subscriber within an NPA/exchange.
I'm glad someone brought this up...
Blue Linx Inc. has been working on this for quite some time now. The question is whether it will be adopted by the industry or not (be sure to read the FAQ on Blue Linx's site). There's also another article mentioning Quiet-Zones here.
Maybe Commander Keen has finally gone to John's Head....
Billy Blaze, eight year-old genius, working diligently in his backyard clubhouse has created an interstellar starship from old soup cans, rubber cement and plastic tubing. While his folks are out on the town and the babysitter has fallen asleep, Billy travels into his backyard workshop, dons his brother's football helmet, and transforms into...
COMMANDER KEEN--defender of Earth!
In his ship, the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket, Keen dispenses galactic justice with an iron hand!
It's interesting that, at least in the music industry, the artists have appeased retail giants like Walmart and Kmart by offering versions of their CD's with alternate covers/lyrics. A common example is Nirvana's In Utero album, which the title listing for the track "Rape Me" was changed to "Waif Me". I guess only when it involves sales, it's an issue with the record companies.
Perhaps movie companies don't care as much about editing movies for retailers because they usually premiere and make the big money in theaters?
I just hope Sony takes their time with this and doesn't rush it. I can remember how many times the PS2's release date was pushed back, and perhaps that's partly why it was a success.
In a sense they are trying to race moore's law, and it could backlash. I can try to be as optimistic as I can with what little information has been revealed thus far about the PS3. But, like movie (s|pr)equels, if it isn't done right, it will lose appeal.
The nice thing about a red laser system is that the physical medium of the disc doesn't have the change, which means the hardware in existing DVD players can be mostly the same, with just a different decoder chip.
What angers me the most is how the perfectly good DVD players out now would become obsolete over a CODEC. I don't want to think what our landfills will look like in 40 years.
With optical media, we've seen CD players go from VCR-sized single disc machines, to carousels that can hold 300+ discs. Now when the DVD format was introduced, it's following a very similar course. Single disc DVD players, followed by 5-discs, and now carousels. It's absolutely ridiculous why a person should be forced to throw out a perfectly good 300-disc DVD carousel player just to support a new codec. I hope someone in the industry realizes this, and sees the potential of making a modular player that can be "expanded" to support new codecs. It could also make repairs more economical, too. Even if the company kept the modular-upgrade specifications proprietary (but keeping upgrades affordable), it would still be a dramatic improvement over having to replace a full unit.
Now that Mozilla has finally become stable, I recently begun to use it as a full-time replacement from MSIE. The only reason I switched from Netscape 4 to MSIE years ago was simple:
DHTML and CSS was high on my interest list, and was becoming more commonly used on the sites I visited, and MSIE's support for these standards (not to mention their own non-standard implementations) was far ahead of Netscape's. IE has some attractive features, and has maintained to keep itself not nearly as bloated and branded like Netscape had become.
Time and time again, my biggest grudge with IE was the tight shell integration with the OS. Recently i've been having problems with font sizes in the explorer shell/IE when displaying HTML (or folder.htt) files. I suspect, like most problems i've experienced with Windows, resulted from some third-party application (I suspect a font manager, I have hundreds upon hundreds of fonts for publishing/graphics apps) making a terrible mess in the registry.
After many attempts of trying to correct the slight annoyance, I came to a better solution: Fuck IE, start using Mozilla. I loved the slickness it had, and I didn't feel like commiting myself to the hours upon hours involved in doing a fresh install of Win2K and getting everything back to the way it was.
Now, the only thing I miss in Mozilla is the "suction cup" feature (activated by clicking the mouse wheel in IE). I've quickly gotten over it, and i'm sure someone will come up with an implementation soon (Mozilla already developed native support for wheel scroll features, and 4 and 5 button mice like the intellimouse explorer).
I'm enjoying Mozilla, and everything works the way it's supposed to. Now, I only use IE for Windows Update.
Being an owner of the PS2 Linux Kit, one drawback is the PS2's DVD-ROM drive won't recognize any media other than genuine PS2 (and possibly PSX) media. While the PS2 itself can play back DVD's and audio CD's, the closed-source driver doesn't permit it under Linux.
Many people have asked in the forums on Sony's PS2 Linux site regarding the possibility of modchipped PS2's being able to play back non-PS2 media. There hasn't been a clear answer to this, and it's pretty obvious Sony won't respond to the question.
If in fact a mod chip would allow PS2 Linux users to read other media types under Linux, I can see many legitimate purposes. It seems no one has tried (or wants to) mod their PS2 to see whether it works or not (I don't blame them). But, if it does in fact work, I might consider it, if the driver isn't reverse-engineered/written from scratch first:)
Even more ironic, under the "General Subscriber Responsibilities" of Charter Pipeline's Customer Agreement, they require you to adhere to MSN email's TOS.
That's being quite selective considering there's so many free e-mail sites out there. One has to wonder what (if any) TOS/Privacy agreements that will accompany this set-top box.
Try looking into Industrial. I particularly have taken a liking to bands who combine electronic music with guitar riffs, after being into modern rock/metal for many years.
These artists/albums remain my favorites:
Nine Inch Nails (Downward Spiral, Pretty Hate Machine, The Fragile)
KMFDM (XTORT, Nihil, Symbols)
Ministry (Psalm 69, The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste)
Slashdot Mirror
I could see this being useful on game consoles, (or with a similar technology with DVD's) especially with online gaming. While games that are generally released for a game console platform are rigorously tested to be bug free, it may become necessary, especially in an online environment, to directly download and apply patches to the game media. Not to mention the ability to save your game on the game media itself...
Down the road, it could do away with the need for hard drives (cost) or memory cards (cost, speed and size) in game consoles. I'm not aware of this happening, but if a severe bug was found in a game that doesn't have any online connectivity, it would open up the possibility of going to a store (babbages, best buy, etc.) and having the game patched on the writable portion of the game media, as opposed to issuing a recall and having to re-produce the hundreds of thousands of copies.
Who knows....
Don't brag to anyone when you get the administrative password to your school.
Sound like the Quantum Bigfoot version of the microdrive, IMHO.
I can remember when playing with a iPaq store demo and playing around with the handwriting recognition settings (I can't remember what I selected), I was able to write in grafitti with great accuracy. How can Microsoft/Compaq get away with that?
As an activist and advocate for youth rights, nothing aggrevates me more than retailers/theaters barring the sale of entertainment, whether it be video games, movies or music.
Granted, voluntary enforcement leaves the retailers at liberty to decide whether to create such a policy without laws forcing them to, but barring sale based on an organization's rating system (ESRB, etc.) is shoving someone else's opinion (rating) down the consumer's throat, and barring the sale to individuals, based on the vague and discriminate class of age.
In Michigan, section 301 of the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1976 prohibits a place of public accommodation (defined: a business...of any kind...whose goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations are...made available to the public) "from denying an individual the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities...of a place of public accommodation because of religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, or marital status." It is undoubtedly arguable that any retailer in Michigan prohibiting a minor from buying a "Rated M" game is violating this act.
The responsibility lies in the hands of the parents, not the retailers, or the government. If parents want to make their purchasing decisions based on a rating system, whether it be the ESRB, or something like the Childcare Action Project, so be it. Retailers should either sell the product to everyone, or not carry it at all. The "One Rating System to Rule Them All" mindset is not the way to go about it.
Just my two cents...
TechTV runs their own live shows over and over and over already, and fills in the rest with content from british television, like techno games, tomorrow's world, titans of tech, the tech of.., thunderbirds, etc... all these are from british television. I don't know what ties techtv has, but the content is more boring and annoying than anything else, IMHO. I can only assume techtv is getting bargain deals on rights to broadcast these shows, probably because no one else wants them.
No, they'll probably save that for the 3 prequels to follow.
Oh, and a spoiler for the new Rocky movie, Rocky wins the fight.
What if a credible source send out a mass-mail to ebay users, trying to get them to re-enter their information. When they hit the submit button, give them a huge, easy to understand lecture on how they could have been easily duped into giving up invaluable information. Yes, it's unsolicited, and probably will raise some eyebrows with the feds, but how many susceptible people would be taught a valuable lesson?
There is still a good number of people who play MajorMUD, and are addicted even though they have scripts to play for them 24/7.
Muds, IMO, are like those "choose your own adventure" books I used to read as a kid. It's pretty much an interactive, never-ending storybook, as opposed to graphical online RPG's.
So long they don't have singing fruit or vegtables in mind.
- always
something!One usage could be for christmas ornaments - even gluing the faces of two AOL cd's together, hanging off a christmas tree would make a cool looking reflective ornament.
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the art departments in colleges/schools would take them. They could make very interesting pieces of artwork.
Ditto. (Another redhead).
My biggest concern regarding SMS/text paging is how wireless carriers like Nexel make it trivial to send a massive payload of messages, just by knowing the area code/exchange and creating a program to hit every possible number combination.
Especially with a high propability rate of success, being that wireless providers can fill up exchanges pretty fast with subscribers. A more logical approach would be for each cellular subscriber to create a unique alias and/or number combination for sending messages, making brute force attacks much less propable (assuming you don't post your address on the web, only to be harvested by email-harvesting spam-spiders).
Or, disabling the option altogether. As a Nextel subscriber, there's nothing I could do to stop someone from costing me 10 cents a text message - it comes with every plan i've seen, so theoretically it would be easy to hit almost every subscriber within an NPA/exchange.
I'm glad someone brought this up... Blue Linx Inc. has been working on this for quite some time now. The question is whether it will be adopted by the industry or not (be sure to read the FAQ on Blue Linx's site). There's also another article mentioning Quiet-Zones here.
Maybe Commander Keen has finally gone to John's Head....
Billy Blaze, eight year-old genius, working diligently in his backyard clubhouse has created an interstellar starship from old soup cans, rubber cement and plastic tubing. While his folks are out on the town and the babysitter has fallen asleep, Billy travels into his backyard workshop, dons his brother's football helmet, and transforms into...
COMMANDER KEEN--defender of Earth!
In his ship, the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket, Keen dispenses galactic justice with an iron hand!
It's interesting that, at least in the music industry, the artists have appeased retail giants like Walmart and Kmart by offering versions of their CD's with alternate covers/lyrics. A common example is Nirvana's In Utero album, which the title listing for the track "Rape Me" was changed to "Waif Me".
I guess only when it involves sales, it's an issue with the record companies.
Perhaps movie companies don't care as much about editing movies for retailers because they usually premiere and make the big money in theaters?
I just hope Sony takes their time with this and doesn't rush it. I can remember how many times the PS2's release date was pushed back, and perhaps that's partly why it was a success.
In a sense they are trying to race moore's law, and it could backlash. I can try to be as optimistic as I can with what little information has been revealed thus far about the PS3. But, like movie (s|pr)equels, if it isn't done right, it will lose appeal.
The nice thing about a red laser system is that the physical medium of the disc doesn't have the change, which means the hardware in existing DVD players can be mostly the same, with just a different decoder chip.
What angers me the most is how the perfectly good DVD players out now would become obsolete over a CODEC. I don't want to think what our landfills will look like in 40 years.
With optical media, we've seen CD players go from VCR-sized single disc machines, to carousels that can hold 300+ discs. Now when the DVD format was introduced, it's following a very similar course. Single disc DVD players, followed by 5-discs, and now carousels. It's absolutely ridiculous why a person should be forced to throw out a perfectly good 300-disc DVD carousel player just to support a new codec. I hope someone in the industry realizes this, and sees the potential of making a modular player that can be "expanded" to support new codecs. It could also make repairs more economical, too. Even if the company kept the modular-upgrade specifications proprietary (but keeping upgrades affordable), it would still be a dramatic improvement over having to replace a full unit.
Now that Mozilla has finally become stable, I recently begun to use it as a full-time replacement from MSIE. The only reason I switched from Netscape 4 to MSIE years ago was simple:
.htt) files. I suspect, like most problems i've experienced with Windows, resulted from some third-party application (I suspect a font manager, I have hundreds upon hundreds of fonts for publishing/graphics apps) making a terrible mess in the registry.
DHTML and CSS was high on my interest list, and was becoming more commonly used on the sites I visited, and MSIE's support for these standards (not to mention their own non-standard implementations) was far ahead of Netscape's. IE has some attractive features, and has maintained to keep itself not nearly as bloated and branded like Netscape had become.
Time and time again, my biggest grudge with IE was the tight shell integration with the OS. Recently i've been having problems with font sizes in the explorer shell/IE when displaying HTML (or folder
After many attempts of trying to correct the slight annoyance, I came to a better solution: Fuck IE, start using Mozilla. I loved the slickness it had, and I didn't feel like commiting myself to the hours upon hours involved in doing a fresh install of Win2K and getting everything back to the way it was.
Now, the only thing I miss in Mozilla is the "suction cup" feature (activated by clicking the mouse wheel in IE). I've quickly gotten over it, and i'm sure someone will come up with an implementation soon (Mozilla already developed native support for wheel scroll features, and 4 and 5 button mice like the intellimouse explorer).
I'm enjoying Mozilla, and everything works the way it's supposed to. Now, I only use IE for Windows Update.
Many people have asked in the forums on Sony's PS2 Linux site regarding the possibility of modchipped PS2's being able to play back non-PS2 media. There hasn't been a clear answer to this, and it's pretty obvious Sony won't respond to the question.
If in fact a mod chip would allow PS2 Linux users to read other media types under Linux, I can see many legitimate purposes. It seems no one has tried (or wants to) mod their PS2 to see whether it works or not (I don't blame them). But, if it does in fact work, I might consider it, if the driver isn't reverse-engineered/written from scratch first :)
I'm a subscriber as well and never used the startpage once. So, I guess i'm still bound by the TOS ;) Thanks for clarifying that, though.
Even more ironic, under the "General Subscriber Responsibilities" of Charter Pipeline's Customer Agreement, they require you to adhere to MSN email's TOS. That's being quite selective considering there's so many free e-mail sites out there. One has to wonder what (if any) TOS/Privacy agreements that will accompany this set-top box.
Try looking into Industrial. I particularly have taken a liking to bands who combine electronic music with guitar riffs, after being into modern rock/metal for many years.
These artists/albums remain my favorites:
Nine Inch Nails (Downward Spiral, Pretty Hate Machine, The Fragile)
KMFDM (XTORT, Nihil, Symbols)
Ministry (Psalm 69, The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste)
Front Line Assembly (Implode, Epitaph)
Rammstein (Herzeleid, Sehnsucht, Mutter)
Hope that helps!