The partial abbreviation to 'Back Compat' actually made me think of the Newspeak in George Orwell's 1984. I'm sure the Slashdot crown is all too familiar with the lingo, as it gets dragged out for every YRO article.:)
I spent more of my time off of work with my wife than on the computer, counting what little we did together on our PCs, but she divorced me anyways. Anorexia is a bitch.
To be fair, Sony only promised perfect backwards compatibility with PlayStation and PS2 games that followed the Technical Requirements Checklist for their respective systems, although it seems that they weren't even able to deliver on that at launch.
You seem to imply that before this update, *all* PlayStation 2 games looked like crap, whereas the article only says "many" - and specifies Okami and Kingdom Hearts 2 as examples.
I don't own a console right now, besides a Magnavox Odyssey 500, but I'm considering a PlayStation 3 if the price drops in the States even more significantly than it did recently in Japan, AND the Linux community makes more significant breakthroughs (I don't want anybody's crappy DRM in a product I own). There haven't been any significant issues with PS3 hardware failure, have there? This seemed to have been a big deal with the Xbox 360 on release.
*Modern* nuclear power plants are the best solution to our coal and oil dependence.
I like how the summary states that geothermal energy generation is cost-competitive with straw men like solar power, and lumps nuclear power plant environmental impact with the other straw man, fossil fuels.
He's the other guy responsible for TCP/IP and, in my opinion, a bit more deserving of the title 'Father of the Internet' - although it really is more of a "founding fathers" situation.
Flaming rhetoric aside, I tend to agree with your sentiments, although I was very impressed with how the Wikipedia editors dealt with Jimbo on his article's talk page.
My favourite entries: "Co-founder" is simply false, and we have reliable sources which report that I have called it, on the record, in the press, "preposterous". That is definitive as to it being controversial, and therefore if you want Wikipedia to take a stand on it, you want Wikipedia to push a particular point of view.--Jimbo Wales 17:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
No, that is only definitive as to it being disputed by you. One person's view doesn't make something controversial in a general sense. So far you have not provided any reliable source explicitly agreeing with your position. Bramlet Abercrombie 16:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
If you can provide the links, please feel free to put them here, I will add them to the article. I would also ask you Mr. Wales, not to use Wikipedia to push a particular point of view (i.e: yours) when there is dispute over it, unless there is outside corroboration. Wikipedia is bigger than me, or even you. It's meant to be a source of all information from all POVs presented in a neutral way for all of mankind. That is what I will try to strive to, even if I have to disagree with you.Just H 17:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, MONGO is quite a character. I was going to contribute to the various articles on the September 11th World Trade Center attacks last year, and while reading the talk pages I realised that nothing productive was going to happen while MONGO was an admin. The articles are much better now (and no, I'm not one of those whacked 911truth guys either).
I didn't really see Seabhcan as an abusive administrator, but maybe that's just the Irish in me.
Encylopedia Dramatica, well, I'm not 100% sure that it needs to have an article dedicated to it (Google results are strikingly lacking), but I definitely see the Wikipedia policy of annihilating all links to the website even on *user pages* as excessively draconian. I can't remember how I happened into the website in the first place but I enjoyed reading its 'articles'.
I was about to agree with you, but then I remembered back when I made my first web page in 1998, and sure enough, I used a few meta tags:
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="dreddnott's amazingly awe-inspiring XvT editing resource has finally received an update!"> <META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Jacob Bartle"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="xvt,opt,editing,board,forum,discussion,ba ckup,opt editing,star wars,hacking,tweaking,hex-editing,xvt,opt,editing, opt editing,star wars,hacking,tweaking,hex-editing,dreddnott,esd,es d2,eclipse,star destroyer,eclipse-class star destroyer,eclipse class star destroyer,xwing,x-wing,tie fighter,xwcs,xwing,sovereign,ssd,sssd,xwcs opts,opts,xwa,x-wing,xwing,xwing alliance,x-wing alliance,tie,slicing,brl,dj,darkjedi,lighthawk,hay wire"> <META NAME="joke" CONTENT="Q: Why did dreddnott never make it in business? A: Because his work was undercapitalized!">
I think HotBot was the only search engine I "fooled" at the time.
While I don't necessarily disagree with the reinstatement of Wikipedia's nofollow policy, I do have to say one thing: Jimbo Wales is a tool.
Yesterday, after reading and noting glaring inconsistencies in the Wikipedia articles and talk pages for Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, and Jimbo Wales, as well as Jimbo Wales' user page, I have lost a bit of respect for Wikipedia and a lot more for one of its cofounders. I can't believe he's trying to manipulate his encyclopedia project this way!
Bad publicity for Tom Cruise, maybe, but probably good publicity for Scientology, compared to their past record - anything to cast doubt on conventional psychiatry. You might be surprised at how many more people respect the things that their favourite celebrities say about medicine than their own doctors' advice (we had a Slashdot article about this phenomenon recently).
Peter: You think that's bad? [FLASHBACK] Remember the time that Stan and Kenny and Cartman got caught up in the Chinpokomon fad, and Kyle felt really left out? Boy, talk about your fads coming and going! [/FLASHBACK]
Seriously, though, I think it's the whole concept of "cool" and self-promotion that's causing so many problems when we try to have this kind of dialogue. I try not to feel that my own tastes are particularly meritorious or cool or particularly important for anyone besides myself, but it's hard not to attach your ego to something you work hard at (like being an opera singer in my case).
No, I never have, until now, although I can definitely see how bad publicity lost the company millions and made them give him the boot.
I believe the "No such thing as bad publicity" saying originated in early Hollywood, and I believe it still applies today - Paris Hilton had a ludicrously bad sex tape released a few years ago and it seems like she is more popular than ever. No matter how she's thought of, she can move product with her name stamped on it.
Another interesting example is Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. I think most people would say it is the worst of the six Star Wars films, and even more would agree that it's the worst of the three prequels, yet it was the highest-grossing Star Wars film, the second-highest when adjusted for inflation. Part of this is probably due to the general appeal of the film, but as it had been 16 years since Return of the Jedi, the hype and publicity factor was so powerful that the film would have recouped its $115 million costs several times over if the characters had all been replaced by digital Ewoks armed with walkie-talkies at the last minute (or even at the outset).
I don't think Steve Jobs can go wrong in the context of the iPod's success - but if the iPhone crashes and burns, literally or commercially, I don't think he could get away with it twice, Reality Distortion Field or not.
You give 10 and 20 years in the past, btw. I only referred to 20 or 30 years ago, although 1997 did herald the release of OK Computer. Can you find something equally embarrassing for the UK in 1977?
Whenever I see inconsistencies like that in a Python work, I just attribute it to the surrealist aspect of the group's sense of humour. The scene starts off as a normal cafeteria, and then suddenly spam starts popping up in the ingredients list, more and more, and eventually a chorus starts singing louder and louder in direct analogy to the prevalence of spam. The spam and musical crescendoes are more amusing when you set the list up to start with two spam-free menu items, and then you realise that you've been sucked into an evil parallel universe
But we digress...sometimes I go through my bulk e-mail and read my spam's sender names and subjects for a good dose of surrealist humour. Let's see what I have from today that's especially funny:
Winston Beaver sent me "Hussy so agreeable and cultured!" Patti asked me "yoou wantt punctilious Cuties?" Freeman Childress wanted to talk to me "Re: Loan requets approved" Stockroom P. Groundwork and Unkinder R. Restudy sent me blank e-mails.:(
After Crazy Frog became a riotous hit in the UK, the former bastion of musical excellence and good taste as recently as 20 or 30 years ago (no offense, Radiohead fans!), I'll believe that anything is possible.
I believe that peoples' tastes in just about everything will become more sequestered and idiosyncratic as marketing demographics draw finer lines and become more precise in their targets. Remember the Calvin & Hobbes strips about chewing gum magazines?
I have to say it's probably a fallacy that Apple or any other single corporation truly dictates phases or fads in culture. Apple in particular just happens to have a superlative and highly recognisable advertising method. Most of the people out there with iPods probably think Family Guy is hilarious (and original!), and wouldn't get half the jokes on South Park, let alone watch C-SPAN for more than 5 minutes. I despise Myspace more than any other currently prevalent cultural phenomenon, though. Just about every idiot I know has a profile with six thousand images, videos, and embedded WAV files that is capable of crashing the majority of computers within five minutes.
What I see most in popular culture, and I hope this isn't just me - is a lack of originality: so many films are remakes or rethinks or sequels or prequels, and so many popular radio songs are remixes, or use borrowed hooks, vocal samples, or are simply covers of the old hits. When are we going to hear Captain Beefheart, Erik Satie, Robert Johnson, Bix Beiderbecke, or Charles Ives in the Top 40? Never, yet these are some of the most original composers I've ever heard.
I agree, Steve Jobs probably did what was best under the circumstances (especially with FCC approval in mind!).
I think the article's author forgot the old saw: There's no such thing as bad publicity! This is especially true for Apple, the perennial underdog, and a new entrant into the computerized cellular telephone market.
You didn't work for trueCycle, did you?
When I worked there we didn't do any international resale of salvaged/repaired electronics, but we did quite a bit of eBay sales in the United States. I can also confirm what you say about refuse defined by point of origin. We had that difficulty once or twice when differentiating California and out-of-state waste for state billing.
Slashdot Mirror
Why you hatin' on me, Antdude?
The partial abbreviation to 'Back Compat' actually made me think of the Newspeak in George Orwell's 1984. I'm sure the Slashdot crown is all too familiar with the lingo, as it gets dragged out for every YRO article. :)
More proof that cameras steal souls!
I spent more of my time off of work with my wife than on the computer, counting what little we did together on our PCs, but she divorced me anyways. Anorexia is a bitch.
Wikipedia claims that Mr. Lowenstein is now "heading up" the newly-formed Private Equity Council.
He seems like a nice guy, but I think he was just along for the ride, especially if what the article says about his non-interventionism is true.
So is the enemy of my enemy my friend, or what?
To be fair, Sony only promised perfect backwards compatibility with PlayStation and PS2 games that followed the Technical Requirements Checklist for their respective systems, although it seems that they weren't even able to deliver on that at launch.
You seem to imply that before this update, *all* PlayStation 2 games looked like crap, whereas the article only says "many" - and specifies Okami and Kingdom Hearts 2 as examples.
Yeah, Microsoft got a lot of FlaK for some of its initial backwards-compatibility decisions...
I don't own a console right now, besides a Magnavox Odyssey 500, but I'm considering a PlayStation 3 if the price drops in the States even more significantly than it did recently in Japan, AND the Linux community makes more significant breakthroughs (I don't want anybody's crappy DRM in a product I own). There haven't been any significant issues with PS3 hardware failure, have there? This seemed to have been a big deal with the Xbox 360 on release.
Anything is justified in the pursuit of humor, my good man.
Can't you see that if we use nuclear power, the terrorists have already won? *WHOOSH*
Make up your mind! Are you an environmentalist or a neoconservative? I can't tell by the rhetoric.
*Modern* nuclear power plants are the best solution to our coal and oil dependence.
I like how the summary states that geothermal energy generation is cost-competitive with straw men like solar power, and lumps nuclear power plant environmental impact with the other straw man, fossil fuels.
I feel comfortable with good ol' Vint on my side.
He's the other guy responsible for TCP/IP and, in my opinion, a bit more deserving of the title 'Father of the Internet' - although it really is more of a "founding fathers" situation.
Flaming rhetoric aside, I tend to agree with your sentiments, although I was very impressed with how the Wikipedia editors dealt with Jimbo on his article's talk page.
My favourite entries:
"Co-founder" is simply false, and we have reliable sources which report that I have called it, on the record, in the press, "preposterous". That is definitive as to it being controversial, and therefore if you want Wikipedia to take a stand on it, you want Wikipedia to push a particular point of view.--Jimbo Wales 17:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
No, that is only definitive as to it being disputed by you. One person's view doesn't make something controversial in a general sense. So far you have not provided any reliable source explicitly agreeing with your position. Bramlet Abercrombie 16:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
If you can provide the links, please feel free to put them here, I will add them to the article. I would also ask you Mr. Wales, not to use Wikipedia to push a particular point of view (i.e: yours) when there is dispute over it, unless there is outside corroboration.
Wikipedia is bigger than me, or even you. It's meant to be a source of all information from all POVs presented in a neutral way for all of mankind. That is what I will try to strive to, even if I have to disagree with you.Just H 17:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, MONGO is quite a character. I was going to contribute to the various articles on the September 11th World Trade Center attacks last year, and while reading the talk pages I realised that nothing productive was going to happen while MONGO was an admin. The articles are much better now (and no, I'm not one of those whacked 911truth guys either).
I didn't really see Seabhcan as an abusive administrator, but maybe that's just the Irish in me.
Encylopedia Dramatica, well, I'm not 100% sure that it needs to have an article dedicated to it (Google results are strikingly lacking), but I definitely see the Wikipedia policy of annihilating all links to the website even on *user pages* as excessively draconian. I can't remember how I happened into the website in the first place but I enjoyed reading its 'articles'.
You can keep your precious italics. Wikipedia encourages me to be bold!
I was about to agree with you, but then I remembered back when I made my first web page in 1998, and sure enough, I used a few meta tags:
a ckup,opt editing,star wars,hacking,tweaking,hex-editing,xvt,opt,editing, opt editing,star wars,hacking,tweaking,hex-editing,dreddnott,esd,es d2,eclipse,star destroyer,eclipse-class star destroyer,eclipse class star destroyer,xwing,x-wing,tie fighter,xwcs,xwing,sovereign,ssd,sssd,xwcs opts,opts,xwa,x-wing,xwing,xwing alliance,x-wing alliance,tie,slicing,brl,dj,darkjedi,lighthawk,hay wire">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="dreddnott's amazingly awe-inspiring XvT editing resource has finally received an update!">
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Jacob Bartle">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="xvt,opt,editing,board,forum,discussion,b
<META NAME="joke" CONTENT="Q: Why did dreddnott never make it
in business? A: Because his work was undercapitalized!">
I think HotBot was the only search engine I "fooled" at the time.
While I don't necessarily disagree with the reinstatement of Wikipedia's nofollow policy, I do have to say one thing: Jimbo Wales is a tool.
Yesterday, after reading and noting glaring inconsistencies in the Wikipedia articles and talk pages for Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, and Jimbo Wales, as well as Jimbo Wales' user page, I have lost a bit of respect for Wikipedia and a lot more for one of its cofounders. I can't believe he's trying to manipulate his encyclopedia project this way!
Bad publicity for Tom Cruise, maybe, but probably good publicity for Scientology, compared to their past record - anything to cast doubt on conventional psychiatry. You might be surprised at how many more people respect the things that their favourite celebrities say about medicine than their own doctors' advice (we had a Slashdot article about this phenomenon recently).
Peter: You think that's bad? [FLASHBACK] Remember the time that Stan and Kenny and Cartman got caught up in the Chinpokomon fad, and Kyle felt really left out? Boy, talk about your fads coming and going! [/FLASHBACK]
Seriously, though, I think it's the whole concept of "cool" and self-promotion that's causing so many problems when we try to have this kind of dialogue. I try not to feel that my own tastes are particularly meritorious or cool or particularly important for anyone besides myself, but it's hard not to attach your ego to something you work hard at (like being an opera singer in my case).
No, I never have, until now, although I can definitely see how bad publicity lost the company millions and made them give him the boot.
I believe the "No such thing as bad publicity" saying originated in early Hollywood, and I believe it still applies today - Paris Hilton had a ludicrously bad sex tape released a few years ago and it seems like she is more popular than ever. No matter how she's thought of, she can move product with her name stamped on it.
Another interesting example is Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. I think most people would say it is the worst of the six Star Wars films, and even more would agree that it's the worst of the three prequels, yet it was the highest-grossing Star Wars film, the second-highest when adjusted for inflation. Part of this is probably due to the general appeal of the film, but as it had been 16 years since Return of the Jedi, the hype and publicity factor was so powerful that the film would have recouped its $115 million costs several times over if the characters had all been replaced by digital Ewoks armed with walkie-talkies at the last minute (or even at the outset).
I don't think Steve Jobs can go wrong in the context of the iPod's success - but if the iPhone crashes and burns, literally or commercially, I don't think he could get away with it twice, Reality Distortion Field or not.
Hey, Star Trekkin' was an awesome song.
You give 10 and 20 years in the past, btw. I only referred to 20 or 30 years ago, although 1997 did herald the release of OK Computer. Can you find something equally embarrassing for the UK in 1977?
Whenever I see inconsistencies like that in a Python work, I just attribute it to the surrealist aspect of the group's sense of humour. The scene starts off as a normal cafeteria, and then suddenly spam starts popping up in the ingredients list, more and more, and eventually a chorus starts singing louder and louder in direct analogy to the prevalence of spam. The spam and musical crescendoes are more amusing when you set the list up to start with two spam-free menu items, and then you realise that you've been sucked into an evil parallel universe
:(
But we digress...sometimes I go through my bulk e-mail and read my spam's sender names and subjects for a good dose of surrealist humour. Let's see what I have from today that's especially funny:
Winston Beaver sent me "Hussy so agreeable and cultured!"
Patti asked me "yoou wantt punctilious Cuties?"
Freeman Childress wanted to talk to me "Re: Loan requets approved"
Stockroom P. Groundwork and Unkinder R. Restudy sent me blank e-mails.
After Crazy Frog became a riotous hit in the UK, the former bastion of musical excellence and good taste as recently as 20 or 30 years ago (no offense, Radiohead fans!), I'll believe that anything is possible.
I believe that peoples' tastes in just about everything will become more sequestered and idiosyncratic as marketing demographics draw finer lines and become more precise in their targets. Remember the Calvin & Hobbes strips about chewing gum magazines?
I have to say it's probably a fallacy that Apple or any other single corporation truly dictates phases or fads in culture. Apple in particular just happens to have a superlative and highly recognisable advertising method. Most of the people out there with iPods probably think Family Guy is hilarious (and original!), and wouldn't get half the jokes on South Park, let alone watch C-SPAN for more than 5 minutes. I despise Myspace more than any other currently prevalent cultural phenomenon, though. Just about every idiot I know has a profile with six thousand images, videos, and embedded WAV files that is capable of crashing the majority of computers within five minutes.
What I see most in popular culture, and I hope this isn't just me - is a lack of originality: so many films are remakes or rethinks or sequels or prequels, and so many popular radio songs are remixes, or use borrowed hooks, vocal samples, or are simply covers of the old hits. When are we going to hear Captain Beefheart, Erik Satie, Robert Johnson, Bix Beiderbecke, or Charles Ives in the Top 40? Never, yet these are some of the most original composers I've ever heard.
I agree, Steve Jobs probably did what was best under the circumstances (especially with FCC approval in mind!).
I think the article's author forgot the old saw: There's no such thing as bad publicity! This is especially true for Apple, the perennial underdog, and a new entrant into the computerized cellular telephone market.
You didn't work for trueCycle, did you?
When I worked there we didn't do any international resale of salvaged/repaired electronics, but we did quite a bit of eBay sales in the United States. I can also confirm what you say about refuse defined by point of origin. We had that difficulty once or twice when differentiating California and out-of-state waste for state billing.