With comments like those in the article, it's no wonder why our space program is in tatters. The leadership at NASA is unsuitable for the challenge that is pioneering.
Wake up guys, space exploration isn't about economics.
Like the copyright debate regarding whether or not it's kosher to copy music/movies/whatever, if it's an artificial resource scarcity - we're probably not going to see things eye to eye.
As far as traversing someone's paid-for internet pipe, that involves significant risk of detection. Passively monitoring that sort of thing, that I have no problem with.
I find it much easier to talk about property rights when an actual physical item is present; food, a house, car, toys, clothes. These things must be protected for the sake of civilization. These other things - noise, pictures, patterns, ideas - these things can be provided to every human alive without depriving any other from having their own.
In regards to the law, these IP laws are not the product of the common man, they're the product of a select few with great influence. Therefore, while they technically exist - they don't represent consent by the governed. Inaction and silence do not represent consent either.
So. From a practical stance, how about we discuss how these systems can be *protected* from a realistic technical perspective. Because in the end, I think you'll find that placing sufficiently annoying technical boundaries in front of a person will make the monetary cost of the service more attractive than the costs involve in subverting the access control.
This does not, however, take into account the desire for corporate executives to beat their genitals over the heads of individuals who "steal" their service, hence the constant costly litigation. If it were legal to physically beat someone instead of suing them, they'd probably do it personally.
One only has to take a look at the legal system today to see why litigation and legislation are socially poor ways to enforce scarcity.
Perhaps this "time shaving" business is one reason why the press portrays Americans as lazy workers.
The majority of individuals I know work very hard at their jobs. The truly sad part is how many of these folks don't work with an eye towards retiring early. The bottom line is, in this capitalist society of America, one has to view themselves as a free agent and plan finances accordingly. Then, when the time shaving occurs - you pick up and find somewhere else to go.
Fairness *IS* relative, but at this point in the game, the American legal system doesn't protect citizens rights quickly enough. The same held true during other civil disobedience exercises.
Fairness may be relative, but life has never been black and white.
It's none of Nintendo's business what I do with their software in my private home anyway.
In my opinion, Thurrott does nothing to hide his bias against all that is not Microsoft-made. He makes Slashdotters and Mac users look moderate. So view his article with the necessary skepticism of Microsoft propaganda. But hey, we're all entitled to our opinions - I just wish Paul's magazine was entitled "Connected Home Opinion" instead. Perhaps he should go to work for the mainstream media. Whether WMA is superior to AAC or not, it wasn't appropriate wording.
As far as the addition of WMA to the iPod - understand that Apple has a vested interest in selling iPods, not supporting AAC vs. WMA. With all that talk from a few months back about how iTunes makes Apple no money - those interested in Apple's success should be pleased that the iPod can enjoy a wider audience of music stores. As for myself, I agree that having a DRM-Free file format in the iPod other than MP3 is a win for all.
Why isn't OGG there? What costs would be involved in it's development?
Paul, please stop writing technical articles and stick to editorials.
Don't stop with MIT - there are a number of American corporations that are hoarding *HUGE* IP allocations. I know, I work for one. Still, IPV6 would make that irrelevant, and if I'm not mistaken - there are some progressively minded networking folk in my corp that are looking at IPV6 as something to happen in the nearer future.
So, lets move forward, it's easier than going back.
People are inequal with or without impaired free trade - the disadvantage shifts to the United States when Americans are forced to compete with countries where the costs of production are substantially lower than our own.
I don't equate our achievements with the inability for the rest of the planet to feed their people. But I believe we're going to have to set up artificial fences to level the playing field where countries are subsidizing production costs or fail to introduce comparable regulations which push up production costs as they do here in the States.
I say we freely trade with partners who uphold similar standards to our own and tariff those who do not.
I agree. Perhaps I'm getting Snow Crash and The Diamond Age mixed up in regards to corporatism. The question then is where did those folks who lived in the enclaves in Snow Crash work? In O&C, the enclaves encompassed work and home.
Your second paragraph - the optimistic outcome - I'll have to review that part of the book again, it's been long enough to forget. One issue I have with reading too many of the same genre at the same time - I forget who said what.
I loved the audiobook (O&C).
on
Oryx and Crake
·
· Score: 1
I listened to this audiobook earlier last year and loved it.
The narration was excellent. The book was like a fine candy to enjoy. When I was done, I was both satisfied and saddened to leave the characters behind. I would *not* like to see the book extended to a sequel; I think the enjoyable flavor of the book is dependent on being brief and ambiguous at the end.
This is absolutely one of my favorite titles. If you dig apocalyptic tales, ever played Wasteland on your computer, enjoyed the Mad Max movie series or read Snow Crash - you'll likely enjoy this book.
Don't get the link between Snow Crash and O&C? Consider the way that the enclaves transcend traditional government "social balance" to bring dangerous corporatism to the forefront. Another book that I would link in this area is Beggars and Choosers by Nancy Kress. Probably more for the focus on an era where humanity is more or less done and something else has taken over than for the "corporatism" angle.
I obtained my copy of the book from Audible. I've been a customer there for a very long time and have enjoyed so many audiobooks that if I can find an unabridged audio title, i'm more likely to select it than a text edition. I would invite you to check out Oryx & Crake as an audiobook, I think you'll find that audiobooks with this quality of narration are *more* enjoyable than the text-only editions. The measured delivery has a different and desirable effect on the imagination. It also tends to shorten roadtrips.
Currently I'm listening to the Dark Tower series from Stephen King, and reading eBook editions of the Heritage of Shannara series from Terry Brooks on the commuter train. Both audiobook and eBook reside in my Dell Axim PDA - one of the most useful functions of my PDA so far.
I have the inCase backpack listed here at the Apple store online. The sling pack has a clean design with the laptop riding against your back and the accessories riding on the other side. It doesn't have a lot of room for other items, but will store the power pack, cables, some jewel-cased CDs and sports a mobile-phone pocket on the front strap. The way the cover is designed appears to be suited for protection against falling. -B
What did you types do before the invention of the mobile phone?
It's a convenience, nothing more.
The doctor-on-call thing is a wash, if you depend on a mobile phone, subject to dead zones simply due to coverage issues and you don't have a backup plan - you're not doing your on-call job. Voicemail will take care of missed calls. Don't sweat it.
Last week I purchased a Sony Ericsson T610 and naturally bought adapters for my Mac desktop and Pocket PC.
I'm very pleased with the setup, using my PDA with T-Mobile's flat rate GPRS service, I can sit here on my morning commute and catch up on the latest flamebait. (I'm on the train presently.)
The phone is in my belt holster, so I need only keep up with the PDA. Could get a "smartphone" and lose even that.
My phoneline failed Wednesday taking my DSL with it, so I used the phone with my desktop despite being on opposite ends of the house. Slower than DSL, but good for ~2K/sec.
Naturaly I sync the phone with my PC, but BT also enables exchanging contacts with other BT equipped PDAs and phones. Infrared is also available.
As with pen computers, I believe the value of BT isn't obvious until one experiences the application.
Drive one for awhile and you'd know why the Apple Powerbook is worth the asking price. That price is also what keeps the rest of us from disassembling our own new laptops, and why this is an interesting article.
I don't think the Native Americans had a choice in the matter. For better or worse, people came who saw things they wanted and had the connections to take those things.
The comparison doesn't work here. Whether you believe the conquest of the Americas was just or not, the issue is whether a free market society can exist without some sort of handicap process to keep the citizenry employed despite severely unbalanced costs.
As you obviously know nothing of satellite communication and it's limitations, kindly step OFF the technology ship, avoid participating in politics, and give up your computer - a shiny webTV is waiting for you at your local retailer.
For the record, satellite communications suffer from a number of problems making them a convenience: Heavy cloud cover obstructs communication, many satellite phones can only speak to a small number of services, and satellites involve using another infrastructure subject to outages or few points-of-failure.
HF involves no infrastructure, only a radio, a radiator, a power supply and someone on the other end to receive and act upon the transmission.
Thus, this basic form of radio offers distributed, redundant communications subject only to the whim of the atmosphere.
How does organizing help we IT workers from losing our jobs to countries that have substantially fewer employment protections and wages far below the minimum we need to live without government assitance? This isn't simply a problem in the US, but perhaps the EU and other affluent countries have more effective trade limits.
Ah yes, that sucking sound you hear is "free trade!" Great in a world where economies are less diferentiated from one another, not good on this one.
Look at the bright side, they could be offshoring your roles to India!
Unionizing will only serve to give management the mistaken impression they should find cheaper labor in countries that can compete with lower salaries and fewer employment protections.
Look for another job while you're working this one, as best you can.
This is great, I find an artist on a buddy's shared playlist, but I flip over to the iTunes Store, and that artist isn't in their selection. Foiled! Guess I'll have to fire up Kazaa.
I think this streaming thing is pretty good for music proliferation, but it would help if Herr Jobs would kick up the Store's encoding crew a notch or two. Many of the artists I'm interested in aren't there, but the feedback function gets used frequently.
Also note that it has been said the streaming feature has a maximum of 5 connections. I don't think this was an overlooked loophole in the DRM plan.
Back in the day when I was a Commodore 64 user, I picked up this game at the local Electronics Boutique in the old plastic clamshell case that software of that era was commonly sold in. I think the company was called "Firebird," but i haven't seen the packaging in a very long time.
The game was called "Cholo" and consisted of a small monochrome wireframe graphics window surrounded by a bitmapped user interface. The game background described you as a lone computer hack trapped in an underground post-nuclear bunker along with the remaining survivors who've been stuck there for centuries.
Your only way out is to blow up the bunker entry using the help of robots on the surface. Unfortunately, most of the robots have malfunctioned (must have been running WindowsCE at the time, heh) and you have but one small droid to run about and repair them with. The hitch is, you have to obtain passwords to get into the robots, and the robots aren't always friendly. Some are equipped with weapons, and some just run away from you. Different machines have different attributes - and once you hack a machine you can control it. Passwords are often left as text files inside the robot's memory, so you're essentially putting together a puzzle.
What made this game so enjoyable? At the time, I was still fairly new to computers, and while the Commodore had a few games out there with superior graphics - the wireframe gave this particular title a great atmosphere. Distinguishing between the landscape and actual robots was tricky, and the background was black conveying a sense of night. Cracking the various robots was an enjoyable feature, and adding new ones to your arsenal of machines (you could switch between each unit you'd touched previously,) added the always desirable element of gaining something.
I suppose this changed me more than recent games because it was early in my computer gaming experience, and it had such a dark atmosphere. In addition, each robot was in itself a challenge beyond simply shooting something to death, so it gives one an appreciation for the complexity within functional machines.
Bah. What do I know? I really enjoyed it.
Other games that have been very memorable to me include Half-Life, Duke Nukem 3D (for creepiest enemies,) Doom (for the first networked 3D experience with a fairly dark atmosphere and good soundtrack,) Wolfenstein 3D (same folk, same deal as Doom,) Neuromancer on the old Commodore (for many of the same reasons as Cholo, cracking computers and an interesting atmosphere.)
Come to think of it, Neuromancer probably had as much an impact as Cholo. Probably because they both shared elements of multi-layer puzzles. Further, I often think of Neuromancer (the game, not the book) when I think of large networks of computers!
You know, to be a country founded by outlaws and other cast-offs from Britain, you Australian folk are sure taking a lot of crap off your government and corporations. Censorship, the recording industry's attempts at levying taxes. Be careful, you'll end up like we Americans, equally rebellious at birth, eager to submit so soon after.
The Internet has done one thing exceptionally well in it's brief existence in the public conscious; it has revealed that civilized Humanity, as a whole, is in dire need of rebuilding.
First: Building a business model on top of intangibles is foolish. Anyone who believes they should be entitled to making money for singing is a fool.
Second: The fact that the populous of America and Canada has allowed itself to be bullied and ruled by a group of individuals who have no sense of social responsibility is a testament to the fact that humanity loves dictators.
Third: That we sit here debating the right and wrong of paying for music (or a tax on media that could be used for storing music) and rebroadcasting signals that are transmitted in the free air around us is a testament to how feeble minded we've become.
Eventually we'll be faced with something important as a species that threatens our continued existence in this world, universe or general state of matter. We're wasting precious time dickering over things that have no consequence and eventually you will die of old age or disease and have so little to show for your time spent.
If this is our future, to bind humanity over intellectual property rights, I for one, welcome our destruction. What have we done to deserve more?
Here, you'll need this - KY Personal Lubricant. It makes the hiney reaming much, much more bearable.
Stop complaining and PUT THEM OUT OF BUSINESS. RoadRunner has systematically cut back on features you found reason to pay high prices for, fast file transfers, full time servers, VPN. There's really no point to fast WWW browsing or e-mail retrieval.
As distasteful as it may be to dunk bossy broadband, its a real treat to select a nice, small ISP and not worry that they're going to block next. If you have ISDN as an alternative, pick that up. 128K isn't anything to sneeze at, especially with an upstream provider that doesn't believe in their right to get in your way.
Its really disappointing to see the readers of Slashdot (and indeed most of society,) so easily moved by the "popular discontent" of the moment. Its "popular" to bash cell phone users, but the majority of those bashing phones have and use them, and often use them in situations they complain about (driving being the primary offence.)
So while you're so concerned about "glaring LCD backlighting" or "buzzing" or indeed even the rudeness of having a conversation in a public cinema, your ignoring the real problems. Your apathy towards your neighbors and community, your lack of involvement in government affairs and your complete support for the corporatism that is going to ultimately bind you to more of this sort of muck in the future.
You (general) need to get up and start caring about something more important than whether or not some guys phone is beeping, because there are a hell of a lot things worse to concern yourself in life than some trivial noisemaker.
I applaud the inventor of this particular solution for his ingenuity in providing a solution that people can use to control their own homes or businesses as they see fit, but I do not think it is acceptable for you people to get so up in arms about something so meaningless as a cellular telephone ringer.
And if you run into someone so absolutely offensive in their loudness or inability to operate a mobile phone (such as engaging the vibrate feature,) than either A> Politely comment that their phone is bothersome and suggest the vibrate feature, escalate to screaming fits if they respond rudely; or B> speak to the manager of the business you're in, since they can evict; or C> go away and avoid being that way yourself. And if you're in a movie theater, maybe you should consider whether or not the real problem is your support of the movie industry who does far more to damage your "freedom to enjoy" media than a guy who can't part with his phone.
Slashdot Mirror
With comments like those in the article, it's no wonder why our space program is in tatters. The leadership at NASA is unsuitable for the challenge that is pioneering.
Wake up guys, space exploration isn't about economics.
Bill
I'm one of those people.
Like the copyright debate regarding whether or not it's kosher to copy music/movies/whatever, if it's an artificial resource scarcity - we're probably not going to see things eye to eye.
As far as traversing someone's paid-for internet pipe, that involves significant risk of detection. Passively monitoring that sort of thing, that I have no problem with.
I find it much easier to talk about property rights when an actual physical item is present; food, a house, car, toys, clothes. These things must be protected for the sake of civilization. These other things - noise, pictures, patterns, ideas - these things can be provided to every human alive without depriving any other from having their own.
In regards to the law, these IP laws are not the product of the common man, they're the product of a select few with great influence. Therefore, while they technically exist - they don't represent consent by the governed. Inaction and silence do not represent consent either.
So. From a practical stance, how about we discuss how these systems can be *protected* from a realistic technical perspective. Because in the end, I think you'll find that placing sufficiently annoying technical boundaries in front of a person will make the monetary cost of the service more attractive than the costs involve in subverting the access control.
This does not, however, take into account the desire for corporate executives to beat their genitals over the heads of individuals who "steal" their service, hence the constant costly litigation. If it were legal to physically beat someone instead of suing them, they'd probably do it personally.
One only has to take a look at the legal system today to see why litigation and legislation are socially poor ways to enforce scarcity.
Bill
Hear hear!
Perhaps this "time shaving" business is one reason why the press portrays Americans as lazy workers.
The majority of individuals I know work very hard at their jobs. The truly sad part is how many of these folks don't work with an eye towards retiring early. The bottom line is, in this capitalist society of America, one has to view themselves as a free agent and plan finances accordingly. Then, when the time shaving occurs - you pick up and find somewhere else to go.
Bill
Hear hear!
Fairness *IS* relative, but at this point in the game, the American legal system doesn't protect citizens rights quickly enough. The same held true during other civil disobedience exercises.
Fairness may be relative, but life has never been black and white.
It's none of Nintendo's business what I do with their software in my private home anyway.
Bill
In my opinion, Thurrott does nothing to hide his bias against all that is not Microsoft-made. He makes Slashdotters and Mac users look moderate. So view his article with the necessary skepticism of Microsoft propaganda. But hey, we're all entitled to our opinions - I just wish Paul's magazine was entitled "Connected Home Opinion" instead. Perhaps he should go to work for the mainstream media. Whether WMA is superior to AAC or not, it wasn't appropriate wording.
As far as the addition of WMA to the iPod - understand that Apple has a vested interest in selling iPods, not supporting AAC vs. WMA. With all that talk from a few months back about how iTunes makes Apple no money - those interested in Apple's success should be pleased that the iPod can enjoy a wider audience of music stores. As for myself, I agree that having a DRM-Free file format in the iPod other than MP3 is a win for all.
Why isn't OGG there? What costs would be involved in it's development?
Paul, please stop writing technical articles and stick to editorials.
Bill
Don't stop with MIT - there are a number of American corporations that are hoarding *HUGE* IP allocations. I know, I work for one. Still, IPV6 would make that irrelevant, and if I'm not mistaken - there are some progressively minded networking folk in my corp that are looking at IPV6 as something to happen in the nearer future.
So, lets move forward, it's easier than going back.
Bill
People are inequal with or without impaired free trade - the disadvantage shifts to the United States when Americans are forced to compete with countries where the costs of production are substantially lower than our own.
I don't equate our achievements with the inability for the rest of the planet to feed their people. But I believe we're going to have to set up artificial fences to level the playing field where countries are subsidizing production costs or fail to introduce comparable regulations which push up production costs as they do here in the States.
I say we freely trade with partners who uphold similar standards to our own and tariff those who do not.
- Bill
I agree. Perhaps I'm getting Snow Crash and The Diamond Age mixed up in regards to corporatism. The question then is where did those folks who lived in the enclaves in Snow Crash work? In O&C, the enclaves encompassed work and home.
Your second paragraph - the optimistic outcome - I'll have to review that part of the book again, it's been long enough to forget. One issue I have with reading too many of the same genre at the same time - I forget who said what.
I listened to this audiobook earlier last year and loved it.
The narration was excellent. The book was like a fine candy to enjoy. When I was done, I was both satisfied and saddened to leave the characters behind. I would *not* like to see the book extended to a sequel; I think the enjoyable flavor of the book is dependent on being brief and ambiguous at the end.
This is absolutely one of my favorite titles. If you dig apocalyptic tales, ever played Wasteland on your computer, enjoyed the Mad Max movie series or read Snow Crash - you'll likely enjoy this book.
Don't get the link between Snow Crash and O&C? Consider the way that the enclaves transcend traditional government "social balance" to bring dangerous corporatism to the forefront. Another book that I would link in this area is Beggars and Choosers by Nancy Kress. Probably more for the focus on an era where humanity is more or less done and something else has taken over than for the "corporatism" angle.
I obtained my copy of the book from Audible. I've been a customer there for a very long time and have enjoyed so many audiobooks that if I can find an unabridged audio title, i'm more likely to select it than a text edition. I would invite you to check out Oryx & Crake as an audiobook, I think you'll find that audiobooks with this quality of narration are *more* enjoyable than the text-only editions. The measured delivery has a different and desirable effect on the imagination. It also tends to shorten roadtrips.
Currently I'm listening to the Dark Tower series from Stephen King, and reading eBook editions of the Heritage of Shannara series from Terry Brooks on the commuter train. Both audiobook and eBook reside in my Dell Axim PDA - one of the most useful functions of my PDA so far.
- Bill
I have the inCase backpack listed here at the Apple store online. The sling pack has a clean design with the laptop riding against your back and the accessories riding on the other side. It doesn't have a lot of room for other items, but will store the power pack, cables, some jewel-cased CDs and sports a mobile-phone pocket on the front strap. The way the cover is designed appears to be suited for protection against falling.
-B
What did you types do before the invention of the mobile phone?
It's a convenience, nothing more.
The doctor-on-call thing is a wash, if you depend on a mobile phone, subject to dead zones simply due to coverage issues and you don't have a backup plan - you're not doing your on-call job. Voicemail will take care of missed calls. Don't sweat it.
Bill
Last week I purchased a Sony Ericsson T610 and naturally bought adapters for my Mac desktop and Pocket PC.
I'm very pleased with the setup, using my PDA with T-Mobile's flat rate GPRS service, I can sit here on my morning commute and catch up on the latest flamebait.
(I'm on the train presently.)
The phone is in my belt holster, so I need only keep up with the PDA. Could get a "smartphone" and lose even that.
My phoneline failed Wednesday taking my DSL with it, so I used the phone with my desktop despite being on opposite ends of the house. Slower than DSL, but good for ~2K/sec.
Naturaly I sync the phone with my PC, but BT also enables exchanging contacts with other BT equipped PDAs and phones. Infrared is also available.
As with pen computers, I believe the value of BT isn't obvious until one experiences the application.
Bill
Drive one for awhile and you'd know why the Apple Powerbook is worth the asking price. That price is also what keeps the rest of us from disassembling our own new laptops, and why this is an interesting article.
Bill
I don't think the Native Americans had a choice in the matter. For better or worse, people came who saw things they wanted and had the connections to take those things.
The comparison doesn't work here. Whether you believe the conquest of the Americas was just or not, the issue is whether a free market society can exist without some sort of handicap process to keep the citizenry employed despite severely unbalanced costs.
Bill
As you obviously know nothing of satellite communication and it's limitations, kindly step OFF the technology ship, avoid participating in politics, and give up your computer - a shiny webTV is waiting for you at your local retailer.
For the record, satellite communications suffer from a number of problems making them a convenience: Heavy cloud cover obstructs communication, many satellite phones can only speak to a small number of services, and satellites involve using another infrastructure subject to outages or few points-of-failure.
HF involves no infrastructure, only a radio, a radiator, a power supply and someone on the other end to receive and act upon the transmission.
Thus, this basic form of radio offers distributed, redundant communications subject only to the whim of the atmosphere.
Bill
How does organizing help we IT workers from losing our jobs to countries that have substantially fewer employment protections and wages far below the minimum we need to live without government assitance? This isn't simply a problem in the US, but perhaps the EU and other affluent countries have more effective trade limits.
Ah yes, that sucking sound you hear is "free trade!" Great in a world where economies are less diferentiated from one another, not good on this one.
Bill
Look at the bright side, they could be offshoring your roles to India!
Unionizing will only serve to give management the mistaken impression they should find cheaper labor in countries that can compete with lower salaries and fewer employment protections.
Look for another job while you're working this one, as best you can.
- Bill
This is great, I find an artist on a buddy's shared playlist, but I flip over to the iTunes Store, and that artist isn't in their selection. Foiled! Guess I'll have to fire up Kazaa.
I think this streaming thing is pretty good for music proliferation, but it would help if Herr Jobs would kick up the Store's encoding crew a notch or two. Many of the artists I'm interested in aren't there, but the feedback function gets used frequently.
Also note that it has been said the streaming feature has a maximum of 5 connections. I don't think this was an overlooked loophole in the DRM plan.
Back in the day when I was a Commodore 64 user, I picked up this game at the local Electronics Boutique in the old plastic clamshell case that software of that era was commonly sold in. I think the company was called "Firebird," but i haven't seen the packaging in a very long time.
The game was called "Cholo" and consisted of a small monochrome wireframe graphics window surrounded by a bitmapped user interface. The game background described you as a lone computer hack trapped in an underground post-nuclear bunker along with the remaining survivors who've been stuck there for centuries.
Your only way out is to blow up the bunker entry using the help of robots on the surface. Unfortunately, most of the robots have malfunctioned (must have been running WindowsCE at the time, heh) and you have but one small droid to run about and repair them with. The hitch is, you have to obtain passwords to get into the robots, and the robots aren't always friendly. Some are equipped with weapons, and some just run away from you. Different machines have different attributes - and once you hack a machine you can control it. Passwords are often left as text files inside the robot's memory, so you're essentially putting together a puzzle.
What made this game so enjoyable? At the time, I was still fairly new to computers, and while the Commodore had a few games out there with superior graphics - the wireframe gave this particular title a great atmosphere. Distinguishing between the landscape and actual robots was tricky, and the background was black conveying a sense of night. Cracking the various robots was an enjoyable feature, and adding new ones to your arsenal of machines (you could switch between each unit you'd touched previously,) added the always desirable element of gaining something.
I suppose this changed me more than recent games because it was early in my computer gaming experience, and it had such a dark atmosphere. In addition, each robot was in itself a challenge beyond simply shooting something to death, so it gives one an appreciation for the complexity within functional machines.
Bah. What do I know? I really enjoyed it.
Other games that have been very memorable to me include Half-Life, Duke Nukem 3D (for creepiest enemies,) Doom (for the first networked 3D experience with a fairly dark atmosphere and good soundtrack,) Wolfenstein 3D (same folk, same deal as Doom,) Neuromancer on the old Commodore (for many of the same reasons as Cholo, cracking computers and an interesting atmosphere.)
Come to think of it, Neuromancer probably had as much an impact as Cholo. Probably because they both shared elements of multi-layer puzzles. Further, I often think of Neuromancer (the game, not the book) when I think of large networks of computers!
That's all for now.
You know, to be a country founded by outlaws and other cast-offs from Britain, you Australian folk are sure taking a lot of crap off your government and corporations. Censorship, the recording industry's attempts at levying taxes. Be careful, you'll end up like we Americans, equally rebellious at birth, eager to submit so soon after.
Where's the heritage?
Bill
The Internet has done one thing exceptionally well in it's brief existence in the public conscious; it has revealed that civilized Humanity, as a whole, is in dire need of rebuilding.
First: Building a business model on top of intangibles is foolish. Anyone who believes they should be entitled to making money for singing is a fool.
Second: The fact that the populous of America and Canada has allowed itself to be bullied and ruled by a group of individuals who have no sense of social responsibility is a testament to the fact that humanity loves dictators.
Third: That we sit here debating the right and wrong of paying for music (or a tax on media that could be used for storing music) and rebroadcasting signals that are transmitted in the free air around us is a testament to how feeble minded we've become.
Eventually we'll be faced with something important as a species that threatens our continued existence in this world, universe or general state of matter. We're wasting precious time dickering over things that have no consequence and eventually you will die of old age or disease and have so little to show for your time spent.
If this is our future, to bind humanity over intellectual property rights, I for one, welcome our destruction. What have we done to deserve more?
Bill
Here, you'll need this - KY Personal Lubricant.
It makes the hiney reaming much, much more bearable.
Stop complaining and PUT THEM OUT OF BUSINESS. RoadRunner has systematically cut back on features you found reason to pay high prices for, fast file transfers, full time servers, VPN. There's really no point to fast WWW browsing or e-mail retrieval.
As distasteful as it may be to dunk bossy broadband, its a real treat to select a nice, small ISP and not worry that they're going to block next. If you have ISDN as an alternative, pick that up. 128K isn't anything to sneeze at, especially with an upstream provider that doesn't believe in their right to get in your way.
-b-
They would've gotten less time for murder. Next time, pick a less severe crime. Armed robbery maybe? I love my corporate state.
-b-
Question - What happens if one simply ignores the judgement of this arbitration panel?
I assume the domain registration authority simply changes the domain behind your back. But what really happens?
Its really disappointing to see the readers of Slashdot (and indeed most of society,) so easily moved by the "popular discontent" of the moment. Its "popular" to bash cell phone users, but the majority of those bashing phones have and use them, and often use them in situations they complain about (driving being the primary offence.)
So while you're so concerned about "glaring LCD backlighting" or "buzzing" or indeed even the rudeness of having a conversation in a public cinema, your ignoring the real problems. Your apathy towards your neighbors and community, your lack of involvement in government affairs and your complete support for the corporatism that is going to ultimately bind you to more of this sort of muck in the future.
You (general) need to get up and start caring about something more important than whether or not some guys phone is beeping, because there are a hell of a lot things worse to concern yourself in life than some trivial noisemaker.
I applaud the inventor of this particular solution for his ingenuity in providing a solution that people can use to control their own homes or businesses as they see fit, but I do not think it is acceptable for you people to get so up in arms about something so meaningless as a cellular telephone ringer.
And if you run into someone so absolutely offensive in their loudness or inability to operate a mobile phone (such as engaging the vibrate feature,) than either A> Politely comment that their phone is bothersome and suggest the vibrate feature, escalate to screaming fits if they respond rudely; or B> speak to the manager of the business you're in, since they can evict; or C> go away and avoid being that way yourself. And if you're in a movie theater, maybe you should consider whether or not the real problem is your support of the movie industry who does far more to damage your "freedom to enjoy" media than a guy who can't part with his phone.
Dammit.
-b-