The biggest problem with this isn't that Microsoft's becoming the bigger better brother, it's all the strings attached to anything you buy. When you went out and bought doom2 you could play it versus other people directly: no middle man, no matchmaking service that requires logon, just a nice easy quick IPX connection.
Nowadays we're becoming so encumbered with little extras you rarely know what's what. The heck with just Microsoft, I just about threw out my Visa bill thinking it was junk mail (and believe me, the first 10 things I pulled from the thing were).
I'd personally be much happier keeping my online information private, sharing with only those I choose, matchmaking games directly with other users where available.
Though I can't disagree with Microsoft's policy. If I wanted to cash in on a huge community that everyone has to sign up to I'd do exactly the same thing... and I doubt anyone could honestly say they're innocent enough to never conceive such an idea.
At least the internet's not dominated by thinking machines our to control us. Or wait, maybe it is and we're all stuck in some kind of giant computer simulation.
Nah, but that'd make for a good movie, hope someone picks up on my idea.
Unfortunately this is likely always going to be the case. Thanks to the tencity of the united states we'll likely never see any other country receive near as much control over the internet; what couple possibly motivate them to stop looking out for their own interests?
To be fair though, I'm not really complaining about power the US has over the internet, provided the government doesn't start directly waiving its hand over matters (like we've seen in China) I'm not going to stand up to the working model.
Food for thought though: I'd rather have to deal with a domain dispute in a Circuit court than deal with corrupt systems like the former Milosevic era Yugoslavia: They found most major world leaders guilty of something or other in absence of them being there. At least I'd have the opportunity to state my case in the States- whether it falls on deaf ears or not is for the people to decide.
Or, worse comes to worse we could join onto the whole Illuminati idea and start a secret world government founded by/.'ers. The secret hand of nerds.... scary.
This also brings to light the dark side to drugs and video gaming, even though your high will help you play faster, you'll eventually burn out and have to run to the can.
That's assuming alot. I'm not sure which range your talking about? ie: the high-stress president who comes home each day after narrowly avoiding work-related heart attacks, or the bum delivery guy who never surmounted to much because he ruined his career to play games? either of these groups can get addicted to video games pretty easily, both because they need escape from this tough life.
What we need is better education and understanding of the technology. Controlling and banning video games destroys our rights; what we need is for parents to play and explain these games to kids rather than buy them and use the computer as a glorified - and cheap - babysitter. Otherwise if we don't know too many games are a bad thing we'll fall prey to the same idea Wired presented.
That's exactly what those educators were doing who commented near the end of the wired artice: "No way is gaming addictive". They had to pump something out for the reporter so they could get back to their online world.
What scares me most is that many are either ignoring the topic - brushing it off as just another step in the technology vs. humans debate -or so completely immersed in the technology that they don't see it themselves.
I used to have a serious liking to Starcraft, so much that in my youthful ignorance I created a *shudder* starcraft clan. It's not just exhilarating to kick someone's butt in the game, the instant acceptance from thousands of people online is like a hit of ecstacy right after your crack. You rock and everyone loves you:(
Best fix for this: dump your gaming system for a p300 with windows 98 and office XP. The system can't do anything but work applications now, even solitaire is chunky.
Though pesticides and the internet (McAffee?) didn't particularly grab my attention I really do see the influence of the programming behind an interface and how it can control people without us even having a say in the matter.
I think this is where the influence of open-source comes into play. If open-source technology is based on the people having their say in the code, and the code makes the laws, then I'd imagine once the online community gets large enough this would make for the only true online democracy:)
I always thought it was both actually. Die Fledermaus (sp?) is German, but Deflator mouse I figured worked alot better into what happened whenever a fight came around... he's always the first one to give an excuse to leave:)
The only significant change I'd make to any well-rounded education is removing that nasty full-year English course all freshmen take...
Though I'm sure death literature and the prof explaining how Shakespeare was gay gives me a great understanding in the field of computers I think I'd rather work through my sonnets in assembly.
Then again, not sure why I should even bother with ssh considering the OS it's used on is Windows:)... SSH programs here are nice enough to remember my passwords as plaintext in the system registry... yum.
I don't know about you guys, but I actually like a nice quick and easy telnet-into mail reader over and beyond outlook et al.. It's great being able to check my email from work/university/friend's house using what's normally pre-installed software (a telnet client) on every OS:)
My visor's chess engine could beat them anyday. So what there's computers the size of buildings trying to solve chess, try taking that on the road with you (and give it 6 hours of battery life - one hell of a UPS)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just waiting for technology to evolve so I can run around downtown with a HUD system embedded into my brain :).
-Wrexsoul
The biggest problem with this isn't that Microsoft's becoming the bigger better brother, it's all the strings attached to anything you buy. When you went out and bought doom2 you could play it versus other people directly: no middle man, no matchmaking service that requires logon, just a nice easy quick IPX connection.
Nowadays we're becoming so encumbered with little extras you rarely know what's what. The heck with just Microsoft, I just about threw out my Visa bill thinking it was junk mail (and believe me, the first 10 things I pulled from the thing were).
I'd personally be much happier keeping my online information private, sharing with only those I choose, matchmaking games directly with other users where available.
Though I can't disagree with Microsoft's policy. If I wanted to cash in on a huge community that everyone has to sign up to I'd do exactly the same thing... and I doubt anyone could honestly say they're innocent enough to never conceive such an idea.
-Wrexsoul
Little do we know microsoft will soon be providing:
POOL ex-pee
To try and convince users there's no more pee in the pool. Once new hotel guests jump in, they'll realize why the water's still yellow.
-Wrexsoul
The matrix has you.
At least the internet's not dominated by thinking machines our to control us. Or wait, maybe it is and we're all stuck in some kind of giant computer simulation.
Nah, but that'd make for a good movie, hope someone picks up on my idea.
-Wrexsoul
Unfortunately this is likely always going to be the case. Thanks to the tencity of the united states we'll likely never see any other country receive near as much control over the internet; what couple possibly motivate them to stop looking out for their own interests?
/.'ers. The secret hand of nerds.... scary.
To be fair though, I'm not really complaining about power the US has over the internet, provided the government doesn't start directly waiving its hand over matters (like we've seen in China) I'm not going to stand up to the working model.
Food for thought though: I'd rather have to deal with a domain dispute in a Circuit court than deal with corrupt systems like the former Milosevic era Yugoslavia: They found most major world leaders guilty of something or other in absence of them being there. At least I'd have the opportunity to state my case in the States- whether it falls on deaf ears or not is for the people to decide.
Or, worse comes to worse we could join onto the whole Illuminati idea and start a secret world government founded by
-Wrexsoul
No more than 6 litres of coca-cola before a game.
This also brings to light the dark side to drugs and video gaming, even though your high will help you play faster, you'll eventually burn out and have to run to the can.
-Wrexsoul
So if I were addicted to a video game, and I put in cheat codes...
:)
Is this like light cigarettes?
-Wrexsoul
That's assuming alot. I'm not sure which range your talking about? ie: the high-stress president who comes home each day after narrowly avoiding work-related heart attacks, or the bum delivery guy who never surmounted to much because he ruined his career to play games? either of these groups can get addicted to video games pretty easily, both because they need escape from this tough life.
What we need is better education and understanding of the technology. Controlling and banning video games destroys our rights; what we need is for parents to play and explain these games to kids rather than buy them and use the computer as a glorified - and cheap - babysitter. Otherwise if we don't know too many games are a bad thing we'll fall prey to the same idea Wired presented.
-Wrexsoul
That's exactly what those educators were doing who commented near the end of the wired artice: "No way is gaming addictive". They had to pump something out for the reporter so they could get back to their online world.
:(
What scares me most is that many are either ignoring the topic - brushing it off as just another step in the technology vs. humans debate -or so completely immersed in the technology that they don't see it themselves.
I used to have a serious liking to Starcraft, so much that in my youthful ignorance I created a *shudder* starcraft clan. It's not just exhilarating to kick someone's butt in the game, the instant acceptance from thousands of people online is like a hit of ecstacy right after your crack. You rock and everyone loves you
Best fix for this: dump your gaming system for a p300 with windows 98 and office XP. The system can't do anything but work applications now, even solitaire is chunky.
-Wrexsoul
Though pesticides and the internet (McAffee?) didn't particularly grab my attention I really do see the influence of the programming behind an interface and how it can control people without us even having a say in the matter.
:)
I think this is where the influence of open-source comes into play. If open-source technology is based on the people having their say in the code, and the code makes the laws, then I'd imagine once the online community gets large enough this would make for the only true online democracy
cool.
I always thought it was both actually. Die Fledermaus (sp?) is German, but Deflator mouse I figured worked alot better into what happened whenever a fight came around... he's always the first one to give an excuse to leave :)
-Wrexsoul
How will the powerpuff girls survive this one? Stay tuned next week to find out!
:)
Note: The powerpuff Girls special edition antivirus dvd available soon
The only significant change I'd make to any well-rounded education is removing that nasty full-year English course all freshmen take...
Though I'm sure death literature and the prof explaining how Shakespeare was gay gives me a great understanding in the field of computers I think I'd rather work through my sonnets in assembly.
This was discussed at some point before, offering TLD's instead of .com's would be a huge burden on nameservers.
.com's were $35(us)/yr from network solutions; man those were the days!
On another point, I still remember the old days when
Heck with superman, they'll bring back airwolf now with a new flapping plane to take out communism!
Yep, it's the XBox through and through :)
Sorry, meant ssh, my bad.
:)... SSH programs here are nice enough to remember my passwords as plaintext in the system registry... yum.
Then again, not sure why I should even bother with ssh considering the OS it's used on is Windows
Oh where oh where has my little pine gone?
:)
I don't know about you guys, but I actually like a nice quick and easy telnet-into mail reader over and beyond outlook et al.. It's great being able to check my email from work/university/friend's house using what's normally pre-installed software (a telnet client) on every OS
-Guy Incognito
My visor's chess engine could beat them anyday. So what there's computers the size of buildings trying to solve chess, try taking that on the road with you (and give it 6 hours of battery life - one hell of a UPS)
-Wrexsoul