> We had to make a break even though we had one of the greatest trademarks in the history of the industry."
You know, as successful as the Game Boy was, I can't suspect it would have been taken more seriously by a wider segment of the target audience had it been called something a little less silly-sounding than "Game Boy". Does this only come off as juvenile and silly in English-speaking markets, or does it seem that way in other markets, too? Or perhaps it's just me? Nintendo seems to me to be pretty bad at coming up with trademark names, though I think the NES was a better trademark than Famicom, which sounded ridiculous.
This is something that Eric S. Raymond pushes with The Jargon File. He's the only source of this deliberate dodge, and the Jargon File doesn't suffer much because of this agenda, generally being an excellent resource.
There's this notion of 're-claiming' the word for geeks instead of the 'bad guys' that's ahistorical and revisionist at best. The word 'hacker' has long been used by people who are interested in doing interesting things with technology. It has also long been used by people who want to cause harm or find gain by their technological skills.
The English language is context-sensitive. The prescriptionist approach to language is about telling people how to use language 'correctly'. The descriptionist approach to language is about telling people how language is used in the real world. There is a role for both approaches, as they serve different uses, but prescriptive approaches can cause difficulty when the people involved aren't comfortable with where a new language trend is going. People who take it upon themselves to be knee-deep in issues of etymology really do themselves a disservice by not embracing a more descriptionist approach.
It's a strange bit of work when the Jargon File, usually fairly descriptionist, starts pushing a prescriptionist agenda with regards to 'hacker' versus 'cracker'. Given that so-called 'crackers' almost universally use the work 'hacker' to describe themselves, and given that most outsiders use 'hacker' in both the postive and perjorative senses, English language use has embraced the contextual weight that the word 'hacker' requires. The holdouts pushing 'cracker' are insisting that people who do label themselves 'hackers' and have a different point of view on IT ethics be called 'crackers'. To restate - it's a pejorative word created to describe others, not oneself, and there are a lot of unpleasant words that share this quality. It's akin to some of the semantic debates usually reserved for religious topics.
'Hacker', 'cracker', 'white-hat', 'black-hat' - it's all an oversimplification that really underestimates peoples' ability to use language contextually, the ability of the press to convey information, and the ability of the audience to understand that information without someone carrying the 'cracker' banner writing strident editorials to anyone who believes differently. That's probably the worst aspect of this: otherwise knowledgeable people taking it upon themselves to turn every use of 'hacker' into a language war instead of offering a more nuanced view of the situation.
I wish 'cracker' proponents would quit wasting peoples' time by 'correcting' people who seem to understand the necessary context of language.
...but "episode-based" game content just seems like yet another excuse for game developers to release incomplete products, except this time rather than hide that fact, they can tout it as a feature?
[episode 2 of this rant scheduled for release next week]
...to find out what way is the "best" way to buy published works that funnels the most money back into the content creator's pocket as opposed to the distributor.
Sometimes, it's fairly easy - I prefer to buy CDs at concerts, where a band I already know I like (hey, I did pay for a ticket after all) and possibly some new opening band(s) gets a substantially larger cut of the profit from the sale. Some music and books are also available at the creator's website, particularly if the group or author has a "vanity" label/publisher, and the price is usually comparable to the big-volume retailers.
I don't claim to be a total altruist in the matter, as I do and always will love truly great used book stores (John King's Books in Detroit, anyone?), but in the situation where the price is going to be fairly close (and it often is) from the cheapest method to the one which funnels the most money into the creator's pocket, I'll pay slightly more for the product.
The margin of return to the creator, though, is fairly difficult to pin down in most cases, and where the musicians/authors/etc. know, I appreciate it when they provide that information on their websites.
Re:Real geeks use distributed storage instead
on
Top Ten Geek Wallets
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· Score: 1
I'm pretty much the same way. I cringe when I see people whip out these fist-sized leather monstrosities out of the back pocket of their jeans, where it has worn a place to live in the very denim. No thanks, I actually like my pants to look nice and I seriously dislike having any more than necessary in my pockets, particularly my rear pockets.
The last wallet I bought was a largish black leather wallet (my objection was the 'fist sized', not the 'leather', animals are yummy) and had a separate mini card holder. Driver's license and a few bills folded in thirds on one side of the card holder, and debit card and phone card (to occlude the number of the debit card from casual observers who need to see the license) on the other side.
The "real" wallet that the mini card holder comes with has all of my store discount cards, frequent shopper cards, business cards, and various other items that I rarely need, and keep that in the glove box of my car. Headed toward the book store? Grab the discount card from the offloaded wallet and pop that in the mini card holder.
Ultra thin, no bulk, looks great, and gets a lot more favorable notice than I ever thought something that simple would get.
The limited opposition stems largely from the fact that there are no "hot spots" of game development anywhere in Oklahoma, and the fact that videogames aren't the point of a law like this. It's all about pandering to voters, and there are plenty of older voters who aren't exactly well-informed about videogame violence up for grabs in Oklahoma. This isn't about surviving a court challenge, which it probably won't. It's about "Protecting the Children" to seem more connected to the interests of average voters against the Evil Media Industry of the decadent east and west coasts than to the corporations which fund the legislators' campaigns, which clearly aren't the videogame companies.
Political statements are necessary.
on
Voteauction.com
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· Score: 2
Why did I put my vote for sale on ebay?
It was a statement. That statement being that I see a great deal of hypocrisy on the part of the Republican and Democratic parties as relates to vote fraud. Don't call the people who bid on my auction "bidders", call them "lobbyists".
If it's wrong for me to engage in the satire of acting as if I'm going to sell a vote on the internet, why is it not also wrong for our politicians to represent large corporations at the expense of their constituents?
I'm sick of the two-party system. They're both beholden to corporate interests, and they don't represent anyone but their big-money masters.
The Attorney General's office hasn't contacted me yet, but then again, the CNN story only broke last night.
Vote Nader!
You honestly thought I was flaming or trying to discredit you? If I gave you that impression, I apologize. I'm not discrediting you, I'm disagreeing with you and giving you an idea why. If you go quote McLuhan, however, I might not be able to maintain my composure for long;)
I'm not saying Tim is not disassociated from the web, but rather that the W3C followed Netscape and the other folks into a designed-web environment, rather than lead them to it.
As such, the importance of W3C has been diminished to a degree, but that's not really the issue for me. It seems to em no more relevant to ask Tim his opinion on the copyright and liability issues of deep linking as it does to ask the designer of the first skyscrapers his opinions on NYC zoning laws: certainly he has some, but that's not his field of authority or expertise.
I love the Jargon File, and I've contributed to it. To me, the "cracker vs hacker" is its primary weakness.
Rather than being language lawyers and trying to call a spade a club, we as geeks need to get used to the fact that English is a much looser language than C.
It's about context. "Hacker" is like any word that has different meanings in different contexts. Demanding we call people who call themselves hackers "crackers" doesn't make them look any worse, it makes us look uninformed and petty.
Hacker also means a (good?) golfer. When I saw a shop called "The Hacker's Hole", I didn't march into the store and demand they change the word "hacker" to "golfer".
If we were still using Tim Berners-Lee's web, we would still be clicking in an environment where content decided appearance rather than the author.
If you recall, the original incarnation of the web called for the tags to say what text was, not how it should be displayed. The idea was that a tag would define what the content was - a quotation, a mathematical formula, a definition, words to be emphasized, etc - and that a browser written for a college student might display this content quite differently than a web browser written for a grandmother or a scientist or a lawyer, etc.
Now, in the days where authors fight tooth and nail to get their pages to look the same in Netscape and Internet Explorer, the anti-design contingent has lost - for good or ill.
So given that we've moved away from the idea of a web where commerce wasn't kosher and design didn't exist, should we really look to the original design spect to address an issue that goes beyond the original scope?
Another interesting thing to consider was Nelson's Xanadu. In the Xanadu incarnation of internetworked hypertext, "deep linking" was part of the design - the idea is that text simply would not be repeated. If the Associated Press issued a news story and 100 sites quoted from it, in the Xanadu incarnation, that AP quote would be hard linked by design.
Maybe Nelson's views on copyright and linking might be more relevant than Tim Berners-Lee's. I'm not familiar with them, myself, maybe I should go do some research...
The web is great for the sorts of things that lots of people (particularly fellow geeks) are interested in: software, OS issues, MP3s, goat pornography, and Mahir Cagri.
But what if I'm looking for something specific? The web has been nearly useless to me when I wanted to find information on ancient illuminated Arabic text, or pictures of Microsoft Bob in action (for a parody).
So do "robust hyperlinks" help me or hurt me? Say I get a dog who has certain unsavory habits with regards to my cats, and I want to look up links about "interspecific coprophagia". Also assume for a moment that the next Korn clone band names themselves "coprophagia". Good search engines allow me to exclude entries that have certain words, but what happens when "robust hyperlinks"-based software assures me that http://www.coprophagiaonline.com/new_releases/ive_ got_the_word_yo.asp is a document on canine interspecific coprophagia based on the presence of several uncommon words...
...are we just using new technology to make search engines even more frustratingly inaccurate?
Yes, perhaps it was a poor analogy, and your comments about using the term ourselves are quite valid. I didn't intend for the PKK thing to be an analogy, more of a demonstration: Most "crackers" refer to themselves as "hackers", so putting a separate name on them confuses the issue so that we end up talking about semantics instead of what constitutes "bad" hacks vs "good" hacks.
What I'm referring to here is when we try to force the usage on the media, or engage in a semantics debate of hacker vs cracker in forums where our time is precious (like syndicated NPR programs, magazine articles, television shows, etc).
Personally, I have a name I'd like to apply to most destructive hackers: convicted felon.
I love the English language, and I love the Jargon File. Both are quite humorous.
Clifford Stoll: To make an end-run around the digital community, then become the darling of conservative, religious, and neo-Luddite media circles by being the one geek who's willing to go on record as hating the whole stinking lot of it.
As much as it pains me to say it, AOL is not evil. Not as a company, anway - their online service is of course pure evil. But even so, I recommend people use AOL if they're REALLY REALLY clueless and I don't want them hitting me up for internet advice every week.
I use three different programs created by companies that are now under the AOL umbrella - Netscape, ICQ, and now Winamp. Based on what's happened with Netscape and ICQ, I'm not worried about them screwing up Winamp. AOL has a habit of buying good companies and not breathing down their necks.
Microsoft, however, is another story. I purchased Nevod's NAT1000, a network address translator/proxy/firewall, etc. When Microsoft bought Nevod, NAT1000 was no longer available for purchase, and current customers like myself are left with no official upgrade path, though we may feel free to buy a bloated copy of Win2000 server which will have many NAT1000 features incorporated into it. Currently, my proxy is a 133 running NT4 and NAT1000, which while no powerhouse, is perfectly suited for the task. God forbid I have to "upgrade" to Win2000.
All in all, I wish AOL had bought Nevod rather than Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
Because it's freakin LEOPARD, man. LEOPARD!
> We had to make a break even though we had one of the greatest trademarks in the history of the industry."
You know, as successful as the Game Boy was, I can't suspect it would have been taken more seriously by a wider segment of the target audience had it been called something a little less silly-sounding than "Game Boy". Does this only come off as juvenile and silly in English-speaking markets, or does it seem that way in other markets, too? Or perhaps it's just me? Nintendo seems to me to be pretty bad at coming up with trademark names, though I think the NES was a better trademark than Famicom, which sounded ridiculous.
> He's the only source of this deliberate dodge
was supposed to read:
> He's NOT the only source of this deliberate dodge
Clearly I'm having some language problems today, too.
This is something that Eric S. Raymond pushes with The Jargon File. He's the only source of this deliberate dodge, and the Jargon File doesn't suffer much because of this agenda, generally being an excellent resource.
There's this notion of 're-claiming' the word for geeks instead of the 'bad guys' that's ahistorical and revisionist at best. The word 'hacker' has long been used by people who are interested in doing interesting things with technology. It has also long been used by people who want to cause harm or find gain by their technological skills.
The English language is context-sensitive. The prescriptionist approach to language is about telling people how to use language 'correctly'. The descriptionist approach to language is about telling people how language is used in the real world. There is a role for both approaches, as they serve different uses, but prescriptive approaches can cause difficulty when the people involved aren't comfortable with where a new language trend is going. People who take it upon themselves to be knee-deep in issues of etymology really do themselves a disservice by not embracing a more descriptionist approach.
It's a strange bit of work when the Jargon File, usually fairly descriptionist, starts pushing a prescriptionist agenda with regards to 'hacker' versus 'cracker'. Given that so-called 'crackers' almost universally use the work 'hacker' to describe themselves, and given that most outsiders use 'hacker' in both the postive and perjorative senses, English language use has embraced the contextual weight that the word 'hacker' requires. The holdouts pushing 'cracker' are insisting that people who do label themselves 'hackers' and have a different point of view on IT ethics be called 'crackers'. To restate - it's a pejorative word created to describe others, not oneself, and there are a lot of unpleasant words that share this quality. It's akin to some of the semantic debates usually reserved for religious topics.
'Hacker', 'cracker', 'white-hat', 'black-hat' - it's all an oversimplification that really underestimates peoples' ability to use language contextually, the ability of the press to convey information, and the ability of the audience to understand that information without someone carrying the 'cracker' banner writing strident editorials to anyone who believes differently. That's probably the worst aspect of this: otherwise knowledgeable people taking it upon themselves to turn every use of 'hacker' into a language war instead of offering a more nuanced view of the situation.
I wish 'cracker' proponents would quit wasting peoples' time by 'correcting' people who seem to understand the necessary context of language.
...but "episode-based" game content just seems like yet another excuse for game developers to release incomplete products, except this time rather than hide that fact, they can tout it as a feature?
[episode 2 of this rant scheduled for release next week]
...to find out what way is the "best" way to buy published works that funnels the most money back into the content creator's pocket as opposed to the distributor.
Sometimes, it's fairly easy - I prefer to buy CDs at concerts, where a band I already know I like (hey, I did pay for a ticket after all) and possibly some new opening band(s) gets a substantially larger cut of the profit from the sale. Some music and books are also available at the creator's website, particularly if the group or author has a "vanity" label/publisher, and the price is usually comparable to the big-volume retailers.
I don't claim to be a total altruist in the matter, as I do and always will love truly great used book stores (John King's Books in Detroit, anyone?), but in the situation where the price is going to be fairly close (and it often is) from the cheapest method to the one which funnels the most money into the creator's pocket, I'll pay slightly more for the product.
The margin of return to the creator, though, is fairly difficult to pin down in most cases, and where the musicians/authors/etc. know, I appreciate it when they provide that information on their websites.
I'm pretty much the same way. I cringe when I see people whip out these fist-sized leather monstrosities out of the back pocket of their jeans, where it has worn a place to live in the very denim. No thanks, I actually like my pants to look nice and I seriously dislike having any more than necessary in my pockets, particularly my rear pockets.
The last wallet I bought was a largish black leather wallet (my objection was the 'fist sized', not the 'leather', animals are yummy) and had a separate mini card holder. Driver's license and a few bills folded in thirds on one side of the card holder, and debit card and phone card (to occlude the number of the debit card from casual observers who need to see the license) on the other side.
The "real" wallet that the mini card holder comes with has all of my store discount cards, frequent shopper cards, business cards, and various other items that I rarely need, and keep that in the glove box of my car. Headed toward the book store? Grab the discount card from the offloaded wallet and pop that in the mini card holder.
Ultra thin, no bulk, looks great, and gets a lot more favorable notice than I ever thought something that simple would get.
Spin and Flavor.
...will the game launch with an RPG called "Dark Crystal"?
The limited opposition stems largely from the fact that there are no "hot spots" of game development anywhere in Oklahoma, and the fact that videogames aren't the point of a law like this. It's all about pandering to voters, and there are plenty of older voters who aren't exactly well-informed about videogame violence up for grabs in Oklahoma. This isn't about surviving a court challenge, which it probably won't. It's about "Protecting the Children" to seem more connected to the interests of average voters against the Evil Media Industry of the decadent east and west coasts than to the corporations which fund the legislators' campaigns, which clearly aren't the videogame companies.
Why did I put my vote for sale on ebay? It was a statement. That statement being that I see a great deal of hypocrisy on the part of the Republican and Democratic parties as relates to vote fraud. Don't call the people who bid on my auction "bidders", call them "lobbyists". If it's wrong for me to engage in the satire of acting as if I'm going to sell a vote on the internet, why is it not also wrong for our politicians to represent large corporations at the expense of their constituents? I'm sick of the two-party system. They're both beholden to corporate interests, and they don't represent anyone but their big-money masters. The Attorney General's office hasn't contacted me yet, but then again, the CNN story only broke last night. Vote Nader!
You honestly thought I was flaming or trying to discredit you? If I gave you that impression, I apologize. I'm not discrediting you, I'm disagreeing with you and giving you an idea why. If you go quote McLuhan, however, I might not be able to maintain my composure for long ;)
I'm not saying Tim is not disassociated from the web, but rather that the W3C followed Netscape and the other folks into a designed-web environment, rather than lead them to it.
As such, the importance of W3C has been diminished to a degree, but that's not really the issue for me. It seems to em no more relevant to ask Tim his opinion on the copyright and liability issues of deep linking as it does to ask the designer of the first skyscrapers his opinions on NYC zoning laws: certainly he has some, but that's not his field of authority or expertise.
I love the Jargon File, and I've contributed to it. To me, the "cracker vs hacker" is its primary weakness.
Rather than being language lawyers and trying to call a spade a club, we as geeks need to get used to the fact that English is a much looser language than C.
It's about context. "Hacker" is like any word that has different meanings in different contexts. Demanding we call people who call themselves hackers "crackers" doesn't make them look any worse, it makes us look uninformed and petty.
Hacker also means a (good?) golfer. When I saw a shop called "The Hacker's Hole", I didn't march into the store and demand they change the word "hacker" to "golfer".
If we were still using Tim Berners-Lee's web, we would still be clicking in an environment where content decided appearance rather than the author.
If you recall, the original incarnation of the web called for the tags to say what text was, not how it should be displayed. The idea was that a tag would define what the content was - a quotation, a mathematical formula, a definition, words to be emphasized, etc - and that a browser written for a college student might display this content quite differently than a web browser written for a grandmother or a scientist or a lawyer, etc.
Now, in the days where authors fight tooth and nail to get their pages to look the same in Netscape and Internet Explorer, the anti-design contingent has lost - for good or ill.
So given that we've moved away from the idea of a web where commerce wasn't kosher and design didn't exist, should we really look to the original design spect to address an issue that goes beyond the original scope?
Another interesting thing to consider was Nelson's Xanadu. In the Xanadu incarnation of internetworked hypertext, "deep linking" was part of the design - the idea is that text simply would not be repeated. If the Associated Press issued a news story and 100 sites quoted from it, in the Xanadu incarnation, that AP quote would be hard linked by design.
Maybe Nelson's views on copyright and linking might be more relevant than Tim Berners-Lee's. I'm not familiar with them, myself, maybe I should go do some research...
It's a crime that one of them wasn't named IPO. Especially given the financial model.
The web is great for the sorts of things that lots of people (particularly fellow geeks) are interested in: software, OS issues, MP3s, goat pornography, and Mahir Cagri.
_ got_the_word_yo.asp is a document on canine interspecific coprophagia based on the presence of several uncommon words...
% 20christ+coprophagia+free%20pics+online% 20investing
But what if I'm looking for something specific? The web has been nearly useless to me when I wanted to find information on ancient illuminated Arabic text, or pictures of Microsoft Bob in action (for a parody).
So do "robust hyperlinks" help me or hurt me? Say I get a dog who has certain unsavory habits with regards to my cats, and I want to look up links about "interspecific coprophagia". Also assume for a moment that the next Korn clone band names themselves "coprophagia". Good search engines allow me to exclude entries that have certain words, but what happens when "robust hyperlinks"-based software assures me that http://www.coprophagiaonline.com/new_releases/ive
...are we just using new technology to make search engines even more frustratingly inaccurate?
lexical-signature= "sex+mp3+porn+alissa%20milano+beanie%20baby+jesus
(woo hoo, found my Slashdot ID)
Yes, perhaps it was a poor analogy, and your comments about using the term ourselves are quite valid. I didn't intend for the PKK thing to be an analogy, more of a demonstration: Most "crackers" refer to themselves as "hackers", so putting a separate name on them confuses the issue so that we end up talking about semantics instead of what constitutes "bad" hacks vs "good" hacks.
What I'm referring to here is when we try to force the usage on the media, or engage in a semantics debate of hacker vs cracker in forums where our time is precious (like syndicated NPR programs, magazine articles, television shows, etc).
Personally, I have a name I'd like to apply to most destructive hackers: convicted felon.
I love the English language, and I love the Jargon File. Both are quite humorous.
Please don't forget this one:
Clifford Stoll: To make an end-run around the digital community, then become the darling of conservative, religious, and neo-Luddite media circles by being the one geek who's willing to go on record as hating the whole stinking lot of it.
I use three different programs created by companies that are now under the AOL umbrella - Netscape, ICQ, and now Winamp. Based on what's happened with Netscape and ICQ, I'm not worried about them screwing up Winamp. AOL has a habit of buying good companies and not breathing down their necks.
Microsoft, however, is another story. I purchased Nevod's NAT1000, a network address translator/proxy/firewall, etc. When Microsoft bought Nevod, NAT1000 was no longer available for purchase, and current customers like myself are left with no official upgrade path, though we may feel free to buy a bloated copy of Win2000 server which will have many NAT1000 features incorporated into it. Currently, my proxy is a 133 running NT4 and NAT1000, which while no powerhouse, is perfectly suited for the task. God forbid I have to "upgrade" to Win2000.
All in all, I wish AOL had bought Nevod rather than Microsoft.
Delusion http://www.r33t.org/