"Someone *PLEASE* explain to me why the HELL people get all worked up over a nude body."
OK, I am NOT all that upset by my children seeing a picture of a naked body as such, but I AM upset by my children seeing one or more naked bodies engaged in activities that most parents (in most but certainly not all societies) agree they are simply not ready to see.
To make it really simple:
Naked body: no big deal
Naked body with farm animals and medical implements (and possible violent acts): NOT OK
Let's be honest; 'net porn is NOT just some pictures of naked bodies.
I really don't care what other adults do, but I would appreciate some mechanism by which I could *reliably* choose what my children have access to. Games, movies and TV have ratings that I can use. It would be nice if the 'net had something similar.
I have long favored the ideas of either a "red light district" with a.xxx designation (or even better.x.xx and.xxx -- maybe even a.xxx!) or a.kids. Either way I would have at least SOME semblance of a chance of choosing what my children can see.
When they become adults it will be their resposibility to choose what they want to see. Until then it is my responsibility. I just want better tools than the ones that have thus far emerged.
Geeze, guys I'm really sorry. It was me. I bought a new computer with XP (long-time critic, first time user) and actually liked the way IE rendered text. I SWEAR I'm planning to go back to using Firefox ANY DAY NOW. The numbers should be back up then...
" 32mb was NOT low in memory for Palm devices at the time. Only the T3 had more."
It was low for the price when compared to the 128 MB version. My point is that it was priced at what the non-existant 64MB product should have been priced at. The 32 MB version should have been $150, the 64 MB (had it existed) should have been $250 and the 128 MB should have been $350. As it was I didn't want to pay the price for the 128 MB version AND I didn't think the 32 MB was a good value compared to the 128...
That's all the armachair marketing I want to do today...:-)
"the only thing that killed the Zodiac was lack of marketing."
I respectfully disagree with this statement. There were many things that killed the Zodiac. A few of them are:
Lack of quality marketing
Tight lock with CodeWarrior (expensive, not open -- expensive as in imported beer...) to use Zodiac specific features (accelerated graphics, joystick, etc.) and native ARM code = Very few hobbyist developers
Insistance on "official" apps "signed" by Tapwave to use Zodiac specific features = More reason why hobbyists didn't play in their sandbox
Very bad product/price structure: two versions -- 32 MB or 128 MB -- nothing in between -- You could have good price/low memory or high price/good memory
Insistence on marketing it as a top tier handheld game that, oh yeah, was a palm PDA as well. Should have been marketed as the world's coolest Palm Device (which it was) that also rocks at games, music and video
Attempting to fight Nintendo AND Sony
Honestly, Doom (and many of the other really cool sounding games) were practically unplayable.
I wanted to love this thing. I tried. I lusted after it from day one until they got it into CompUSA. Once I tried it, I lost most of my interest. Once I tried to develop for it, I lost all my interest and bought a PocketPC from Dell for about half the price... Plus playing for more than two or three minutes made my hands hurt...
Disney of all people has something like this. I can't remember any of the details but I tried it out a couple months ago.
Only problem was that they have to be kid friendly and blacklist what feels like half the words in the English language. It wouldn't let me say the word "afternoon".
It was very frustrating, but it did allow graphical "spaces" you could walk around in with your customized avatar.
I've replayed some of those games in emulators and unfortunately most of them are best left to our rose-colored memories...
I can remember playing Karateka on the Apple IIs in high school. It was really exciting. The cut scenes were a new idea and the animation wickedly smooth (for the day). I loved punching the bird that attacked you.
There was another game we played that I can't remember the name of... Similar to the original Wolfenstein (2D...). Top down maze, little stick people. Kind of an Indiana Jones thing going on. You could use a machete, pistol, and dynamite at least, maybe a few other weapons. I remember alligators. Other than that it's all a blank.
On the older TRS/80s we played the heck out of a Hammurabi style game during lunch time.
You mentioned Mail Order Monsters and I think it was similar to one my favorites: Crush, Crumble and Chomp. Much goodness. Crush a building and grab the people as they run out, then eat them. Crazy control scheme. Each monster had totally different controls.
My all time favorite game was Sid Meier's Pirates. I bought it for the Commodore 64 and for DOS. I got the new version this past Christmas, but my antiquated system won't run it. Too many other expenses in the queue ahead of a new video card... maybe this Christmas...
"Have you seen any of the newer systems (Playstation, Jaguar, Nintendo 64)?
I think someone needs to date this article - is it too much to add content date meta tags?"
I thought you were joking! Then I RTFA, and lo! and behold! It really was there.
I played the first game in the series when it came out and it was bizarre. I remember thinking the comic was good, but the game was not.
I recently bought the Atari classics CD for the PC and it had these games on it. I tried playing them and was amazed that anyone could have played them all the way through...
It's kind of like playing an abstract painting... lots of symbols on screen that don't mean squat to you and action you just don't understand.
I'm still trying to talk myself into seeing the film. I have seen all the others in the theater when they were released, so I feel I should see this one as well.
I saw the new TV trailer and nothing has put me off wanting to see the film more than the one line Christensen delivers that is something like "It is over for you, my master."
YUCK! That is an example of the worst of Lucas' inability to write dialog that sounds like something someone would actually say AND one of the WORST deliveries of a line in movie history.
I was in the other room when I heard that one. I physically winced.
A side note I find amusing is that the Jedi "freed" anakin from slavery. It went something like this:
"You are free, Anakin. Now you can become a Jedi."
"Oh, thank you Qui Gon!"
"Call me 'Master', padawan."
"I have the interesting circumstance of owning both a PocketPC device and two PalmOS devices and I have to say I do prefer the Palm devices more."
For what it's worth I've had the exact opposite experience. I found the Palm to be so limited in it's capabilities that I didn't get much use out of it. As a programmer I don't have all THAT many meetings and contacts to manage. About the only thing I really used my Palm (well actually Sony Clie) for was reading eBooks.
As for programming the Palm, I found that all the really interesting stuff I wanted to do was beyond the capabilities of the device.
I now use a Dell Axim Pocket PC and I do mean use it. I have a 1 GB SD card, so I can carry quite a bit of music. I have watched some videos on it, but I don't watch movies or TV very much anyway. I copied an episode of Stargate SG1 from DVD to the Axim and could watch it just fine. I just rarely find myself in a place where I have time to watch video, but don't have access to a TV, DVD, etc.
The real kicker for me was Wi-Fi. I have a really cool RSS feedreader (Egress) that can handle enlosures. That means I can subscribe to Podcasts directly from the Axim. No half-step download to PC then PDA. I like to listen to Podcasts while I commute since I drive an hour each way.
The one area where BOTH Palm and Pocket PC suck is gaming. There are a few notable exception on both platforms, but overall neither is a good as a gameboy...
But wait, you say. How about the Tapwave Zodiac? It's Palm based and is built from the ground up as a gaming device. I have to admit that the specs are damned sexy, and I spent a long time in geek lust for the Zod, but that all ended when I played with one at CompUSA... Tapwave did a fantastic job of getting the hardware right, but unfortunately either the OS or the games themselves were sorely lacking. Doom was a herky-jerky mess. Spyhunter was sadly boring. Both left me with sore hands after only a few minutes of play (OK, that was a hardware design issue...). Plus the bounty of new games never really materialized.
Splitting Palm into two units was just dumb. The OS division has had a really slick new OS available for a year and a half and not ONE single device uses it. Cobalt addresses many of the problems with the Palm OS, but who cares? You can't get a Cobalt device.
The new Lifedrive is interesting since it comes with a 4GB harddrive. Having now filled up my 1 GB card, I am envious of that storage space... BUT, it doesn't have Wi-Fi built in. Just Bluetooth. Why is Palm so averse to 802.11?
Granted Wi-Fi really drains the battery, but I'd much rather HAVE Wi-Fi and manage my usage myself to maximize battery life. I also have an adapter in my car so that I can power my Axim while driving. I much prefer that to longer battery life and NOT doing the wireless stuff I now depend upon.
I have mixed feelings about.Net Compact Framework. On the one hand it is very easy to get applications up and running. On the other hand you have limitations over writing native code. Overall the.Net apps perform well. I haven't done enough yet to offer any great insights, however. I will say that I have managed to do more interesting things in much, much less time than on the Palm... YMMV.
In conclusion, I have used and programmed both Palm and Pocket PC devices and overall like both environments, but I do have to give a nod to Pocket PC as my current favorite. The newer Palms are definitely slick, but I think they still have a ways to go and they definitely need to embrace Wi-Fi!
The best part of this is that the article is JUST interesting enough to make you click "Next" then "Stop" and swear you aren't going to do it again. Then you do. Then you are ashamed.
I second the motion that this is a true atrocity of web design.
"Set A: Given video games to play for X hours a day."... "Results: Set A children angered more easily and were more prone to hitting each other in play."
Oh dear. You have forgotten that virtually all slashdot readers fall into the Set A category... Now you have angered them and they would hit you if they could, but they can't so they will flame you.
"That is sort-of my view, except that I don't want to have to look at all of the crap and make my own whitelist/blacklist (kind of defeats the point)."
I totally agree. I just meant that *I* get to pick which lists are used and not some governmental agency.
" What we really need is a standard whitelist/blacklist/ratinglist propogation protocol."
How about some sort of domain naming based on something other than whether you are a business (.com), non-profit (.org more or less), US government entity (.gov, unless you are miliatry, then.mil) or from a specific country (.au for instance). What if the library were indexed in that manner? All the books published in France are in one section with no further subdivision. Yikes.
In another post I mentioned the concept of a.xxx domain. You could have a.christian or.hindu domain as well. That way filtering would work.
Of course you run into problems if you have something like the illustrated Kama Sutra....hindu,.xxx or both?
The use of newer suffixes like.biz and.tv are a tiny step in the right direction, but it quickly becomes unmanageble...
The W3C is working on the semantic web which would help in categorizing information. Should be much more elegant than the simplistic example I just gave (which I admit is not my own, but came from PCWeek sometime around '96-'97). Of course their aim is to make information available, not specifically make it easy to AVOID certain information...
I agree with you that as a consumer of information on the web, I should be able to set up accurate filters. I for one do not want to see graphic violence for example.
I do NOT believe the government should ever, ever, ever enforce any form of censorship, BUT I also believe I as an individual should be able to accurately filter out crap I do not want to see. The KEY is that I, myself, get to define "crap".
Why is it a religious issue to not want your children to see something like that old slashdot favorite image with "goat" in the name?
I'm sure there are plenty of athiests with children who would like to protect them from seeing a wide variety of images on the internet. Boobies? Come on. If the internet had nothing more extreme than Playboy Magazine, I seriously doubt you'd have legislation like this.
Also this does not infringe anyone's first amendment rights, because it is voluntary. If you want to continue to see everything, you do nothing. If you want to block the sites on the list, you have to request that they be blocked.
To summarize why I reject your logic:
This bill is not to protect children from basic images of the human body
Assuming that only religious people want to protect their children from graphic images/videos/stories/etc. of extreme acts (many of which are only marginally related to sex) is very unfair to parents who are NOT religious
Most mainstream religions are pretty clear in their prohibitions on the issue of killing babies and murdering people
Blaming religion for evil acts of people who prefess religious beliefs is the same as blaming science because nuclear weapons can kill lots of people
Now, unfortunately, comes my reason why this bill won't do much good... It is amazingly easy to set up a new domain name. It is impossible for ANY group to keep an adequate list of sites to block. As soon as owners of a site find it blocked, they can spend about 15 minutes at most to get a new name that ISN'T blocked.
The best solution I ever heard was from one of the columnists in eWeek (back when it was PCWeek) circa 1996-7. Can't remember which one. His suggestion was a separate domain designator for porn. Something like.xxx
This way anyone could publish anything, but people who choose to avoid such things could simply block the.xxx domains.
"Go out onto a street, accost an average-looking housewife, and try to tell her about Jesus. Now accost another one and try to tell her about string theory. Dollars to donuts you'll get the same reaction from both."
OK. I tried this experiment. You were absolutely correct! I got the EXACT same reaction from both!
As a result I'm setting up a paypal account for all you slashdotters to poney up the dough for my bail. Who'd have guessed accosting a couple average-looking housewives would have stirred up so much trouble?
BTW, NEVER, EVER tell a woman she is average looking...
"You could do all that manually, but I would recommend getting Sirius instead. You get NPR Talk, NPR Now, PRI, BBC, etc... etc... etc... Really great unbiased intelligent talk."
Sirius and XM are both good. Both have NPR and other talk. I like XM, but you should check out both before buying.
HA! Is that the best you can come up with? Me, I'm working on the world's FIRST MMOP. That's Massively Multiplayer Online Pong. ONE ball, 20,000 paddles. I've already said too much! Patent Pending you thieving no goodniks! I'll make MILLIONS. NO! BILLIONS! Ha ha ha ha! Now I just need to figure out what this GPL thing is all about...
Slashdot Mirror
It's called "Humor" my friend...
Sometimes it works, and sometimes it just plops on the ground and stinks up the place...
And "Hello!" to the nice folks at the unemployment office!
OK, I am NOT all that upset by my children seeing a picture of a naked body as such, but I AM upset by my children seeing one or more naked bodies engaged in activities that most parents (in most but certainly not all societies) agree they are simply not ready to see.
To make it really simple:
Naked body: no big deal
Naked body with farm animals and medical implements (and possible violent acts): NOT OK
Let's be honest; 'net porn is NOT just some pictures of naked bodies.
I really don't care what other adults do, but I would appreciate some mechanism by which I could *reliably* choose what my children have access to. Games, movies and TV have ratings that I can use. It would be nice if the 'net had something similar.
I have long favored the ideas of either a "red light district" with a .xxx designation (or even better .x .xx and .xxx -- maybe even a .xxx!) or a .kids. Either way I would have at least SOME semblance of a chance of choosing what my children can see.
When they become adults it will be their resposibility to choose what they want to see. Until then it is my responsibility. I just want better tools than the ones that have thus far emerged.
Geeze, guys I'm really sorry. It was me. I bought a new computer with XP (long-time critic, first time user) and actually liked the way IE rendered text. I SWEAR I'm planning to go back to using Firefox ANY DAY NOW. The numbers should be back up then...
It was low for the price when compared to the 128 MB version. My point is that it was priced at what the non-existant 64MB product should have been priced at. The 32 MB version should have been $150, the 64 MB (had it existed) should have been $250 and the 128 MB should have been $350. As it was I didn't want to pay the price for the 128 MB version AND I didn't think the 32 MB was a good value compared to the 128...
That's all the armachair marketing I want to do today... :-)
I respectfully disagree with this statement. There were many things that killed the Zodiac. A few of them are:
I wanted to love this thing. I tried. I lusted after it from day one until they got it into CompUSA. Once I tried it, I lost most of my interest. Once I tried to develop for it, I lost all my interest and bought a PocketPC from Dell for about half the price... Plus playing for more than two or three minutes made my hands hurt...
Only problem was that they have to be kid friendly and blacklist what feels like half the words in the English language. It wouldn't let me say the word "afternoon".
It was very frustrating, but it did allow graphical "spaces" you could walk around in with your customized avatar.
Done right, I can see some potential here.
I can remember playing Karateka on the Apple IIs in high school. It was really exciting. The cut scenes were a new idea and the animation wickedly smooth (for the day). I loved punching the bird that attacked you.
There was another game we played that I can't remember the name of... Similar to the original Wolfenstein (2D...). Top down maze, little stick people. Kind of an Indiana Jones thing going on. You could use a machete, pistol, and dynamite at least, maybe a few other weapons. I remember alligators. Other than that it's all a blank.
On the older TRS/80s we played the heck out of a Hammurabi style game during lunch time.
You mentioned Mail Order Monsters and I think it was similar to one my favorites: Crush, Crumble and Chomp. Much goodness. Crush a building and grab the people as they run out, then eat them. Crazy control scheme. Each monster had totally different controls.
My all time favorite game was Sid Meier's Pirates. I bought it for the Commodore 64 and for DOS. I got the new version this past Christmas, but my antiquated system won't run it. Too many other expenses in the queue ahead of a new video card... maybe this Christmas...
I think someone needs to date this article - is it too much to add content date meta tags?"
I thought you were joking! Then I RTFA, and lo! and behold! It really was there.
I played the first game in the series when it came out and it was bizarre. I remember thinking the comic was good, but the game was not.
I recently bought the Atari classics CD for the PC and it had these games on it. I tried playing them and was amazed that anyone could have played them all the way through...
It's kind of like playing an abstract painting... lots of symbols on screen that don't mean squat to you and action you just don't understand.
Ah, the "good old days".
I saw the new TV trailer and nothing has put me off wanting to see the film more than the one line Christensen delivers that is something like "It is over for you, my master."
YUCK! That is an example of the worst of Lucas' inability to write dialog that sounds like something someone would actually say AND one of the WORST deliveries of a line in movie history.
I was in the other room when I heard that one. I physically winced.
A side note I find amusing is that the Jedi "freed" anakin from slavery. It went something like this:
"You are free, Anakin. Now you can become a Jedi."
"Oh, thank you Qui Gon!"
"Call me 'Master', padawan."
You and I are probably the only people here who remember that one... If only they'd had Don Knotts! :-)
Looks like I was mistaken about the Lifedrive. The website says it DOES have Wi-Fi built in. My mistake.
For what it's worth I've had the exact opposite experience. I found the Palm to be so limited in it's capabilities that I didn't get much use out of it. As a programmer I don't have all THAT many meetings and contacts to manage. About the only thing I really used my Palm (well actually Sony Clie) for was reading eBooks.
As for programming the Palm, I found that all the really interesting stuff I wanted to do was beyond the capabilities of the device.
I now use a Dell Axim Pocket PC and I do mean use it. I have a 1 GB SD card, so I can carry quite a bit of music. I have watched some videos on it, but I don't watch movies or TV very much anyway. I copied an episode of Stargate SG1 from DVD to the Axim and could watch it just fine. I just rarely find myself in a place where I have time to watch video, but don't have access to a TV, DVD, etc.
The real kicker for me was Wi-Fi. I have a really cool RSS feedreader (Egress) that can handle enlosures. That means I can subscribe to Podcasts directly from the Axim. No half-step download to PC then PDA. I like to listen to Podcasts while I commute since I drive an hour each way.
The one area where BOTH Palm and Pocket PC suck is gaming. There are a few notable exception on both platforms, but overall neither is a good as a gameboy...
But wait, you say. How about the Tapwave Zodiac? It's Palm based and is built from the ground up as a gaming device. I have to admit that the specs are damned sexy, and I spent a long time in geek lust for the Zod, but that all ended when I played with one at CompUSA... Tapwave did a fantastic job of getting the hardware right, but unfortunately either the OS or the games themselves were sorely lacking. Doom was a herky-jerky mess. Spyhunter was sadly boring. Both left me with sore hands after only a few minutes of play (OK, that was a hardware design issue...). Plus the bounty of new games never really materialized.
Splitting Palm into two units was just dumb. The OS division has had a really slick new OS available for a year and a half and not ONE single device uses it. Cobalt addresses many of the problems with the Palm OS, but who cares? You can't get a Cobalt device.
The new Lifedrive is interesting since it comes with a 4GB harddrive. Having now filled up my 1 GB card, I am envious of that storage space... BUT, it doesn't have Wi-Fi built in. Just Bluetooth. Why is Palm so averse to 802.11?
Granted Wi-Fi really drains the battery, but I'd much rather HAVE Wi-Fi and manage my usage myself to maximize battery life. I also have an adapter in my car so that I can power my Axim while driving. I much prefer that to longer battery life and NOT doing the wireless stuff I now depend upon.
I have mixed feelings about .Net Compact Framework. On the one hand it is very easy to get applications up and running. On the other hand you have limitations over writing native code. Overall the .Net apps perform well. I haven't done enough yet to offer any great insights, however. I will say that I have managed to do more interesting things in much, much less time than on the Palm... YMMV.
In conclusion, I have used and programmed both Palm and Pocket PC devices and overall like both environments, but I do have to give a nod to Pocket PC as my current favorite. The newer Palms are definitely slick, but I think they still have a ways to go and they definitely need to embrace Wi-Fi!
I second the motion that this is a true atrocity of web design.
Oh dear. You have forgotten that virtually all slashdot readers fall into the Set A category... Now you have angered them and they would hit you if they could, but they can't so they will flame you.
Kind of proves your point...
I totally agree. I just meant that *I* get to pick which lists are used and not some governmental agency.
How about some sort of domain naming based on something other than whether you are a business (.com), non-profit (.org more or less), US government entity (.gov, unless you are miliatry, then .mil) or from a specific country (.au for instance). What if the library were indexed in that manner? All the books published in France are in one section with no further subdivision. Yikes.
In another post I mentioned the concept of a .xxx domain. You could have a .christian or .hindu domain as well. That way filtering would work.
Of course you run into problems if you have something like the illustrated Kama Sutra... .hindu, .xxx or both?
The use of newer suffixes like .biz and .tv are a tiny step in the right direction, but it quickly becomes unmanageble...
The W3C is working on the semantic web which would help in categorizing information. Should be much more elegant than the simplistic example I just gave (which I admit is not my own, but came from PCWeek sometime around '96-'97). Of course their aim is to make information available, not specifically make it easy to AVOID certain information...
I agree with you that as a consumer of information on the web, I should be able to set up accurate filters. I for one do not want to see graphic violence for example.
I do NOT believe the government should ever, ever, ever enforce any form of censorship, BUT I also believe I as an individual should be able to accurately filter out crap I do not want to see. The KEY is that I, myself, get to define "crap".
As long as they don't have those stupid flying motorcycles...
Why is it a religious issue to not want your children to see something like that old slashdot favorite image with "goat" in the name?
I'm sure there are plenty of athiests with children who would like to protect them from seeing a wide variety of images on the internet. Boobies? Come on. If the internet had nothing more extreme than Playboy Magazine, I seriously doubt you'd have legislation like this.
Also this does not infringe anyone's first amendment rights, because it is voluntary. If you want to continue to see everything, you do nothing. If you want to block the sites on the list, you have to request that they be blocked.
To summarize why I reject your logic:
Now, unfortunately, comes my reason why this bill won't do much good... It is amazingly easy to set up a new domain name. It is impossible for ANY group to keep an adequate list of sites to block. As soon as owners of a site find it blocked, they can spend about 15 minutes at most to get a new name that ISN'T blocked.
The best solution I ever heard was from one of the columnists in eWeek (back when it was PCWeek) circa 1996-7. Can't remember which one. His suggestion was a separate domain designator for porn. Something like .xxx
This way anyone could publish anything, but people who choose to avoid such things could simply block the .xxx domains.
OK. I tried this experiment. You were absolutely correct! I got the EXACT same reaction from both!
As a result I'm setting up a paypal account for all you slashdotters to poney up the dough for my bail. Who'd have guessed accosting a couple average-looking housewives would have stirred up so much trouble? BTW, NEVER, EVER tell a woman she is average looking...
GREAT! Now I can listen to that debate between Stephen Hawking and a Speak'n'Spell! I've been wanted to sit through that one for YEARS.
Sirius and XM are both good. Both have NPR and other talk. I like XM, but you should check out both before buying.
You, sir, need to discover a woman with +5 Ta-tas.
Brother, I don't believe I'd have told that. You know the Army's rule: don't ask, don't tell.
HA! Is that the best you can come up with? Me, I'm working on the world's FIRST MMOP. That's Massively Multiplayer Online Pong. ONE ball, 20,000 paddles. I've already said too much! Patent Pending you thieving no goodniks! I'll make MILLIONS. NO! BILLIONS! Ha ha ha ha! Now I just need to figure out what this GPL thing is all about...