There have always been a lot of creative people doing projects on the Web. Ideally, the Web is the province of Creative People, delivering their creative goodness directly to the consumer and bypassing the middlemen, and the tech stuff is transparent, in the background. Nobody goes to a show to see the stage crew, although we know they are there -- somewhere -- and respect their contribution.
Of course, the geeks built the Web, and were the first to know it was there and what it was capable of. As a result, the content of the early Web tended to be content of interest to geeks. That changed, happily, until the geeks developed streamlined means to manage and post new content, giving birth to 'blogs,' which are again dominated by geek topics. This too, is leveling.
Now, an awful lot of creative people like to call themselves "geeks" cuz it's (still) trendy, and an awful lot of geeks like to call themselves "creative" cuz they believe it will get them laid. But the hardcore shakers and shamen in each camp know enough not to dilute their efforts by dabbling; they just count on each other to work their respective money-attracting mojo.
Corporations that treat employers like disposable supplies, OTOH, are at least as numerous as they were in the heyday of unions in the early-to-mid 20th c.
That's a fascinating statistic.
It's completely made-up, of course, but I'm still staring at it in fascination.
You may laugh at labor unions now but when the corporations say your software engineering/coding/sys admin/systems integration/hardware design job is worth 8 dollars an hour on the world market and you have NO ONE to back you up when you renegotiate your job contract perhaps you won't be laughing so loud?
Without labor unions we wouldn't have ever gained a 40 hour work week or an end to child labor.
You're absolutely right. And without the stagecoach and the carbine rifle we'd never have won The West, either. But -- funny, ennit? -- every time I see a covered wagon in Manhattan with some guy on the buckboard picking off Indians on the corner of Spring and Broadway, I am overcome with a great feeling of "WTF?"
Unionized tech workers? Wow. Do they have to wear powdered wigs, too?
Imagine what the world would be like if everyone on this planet could not watch TV/movies/internet for a year.
Well, for one thing, it would mean I would go for 12 months without having to be exposed to snide, supercilious and off-topic holier-than-thou commentary like yours on topics you clearly do not understand.
The more I read about the emasculation of various service plans and firmware pieces in the PVR space, the more my lifetime subscription to SonicBlue and my commercial-crushing early-model RTV4504 begin to look like Sacred Lost Crystal Technology from Ancient Atlantis.
Eventually something will break that I can't fix, or some double-A agency will wise up to the fact that I haven't seen a spot break in seven or eight years, and I'll have to bite the MythTV bullet, but until then, *I* control the Vertical and the Horizontal...
Whassa matter? All you "citizen journalists" who relish tearing down the walls between 'old' and 'new' media, 'fan' and non-copyright-infringement fiction, and who enjoy 'empowering' 'musicians' and 'artists' with [your] software get kinda touchy when the job security seachange is on the other foot, eh?
"Art" is easy, of course, if you have the right software. But programming is "rigorous" and non-programmers need not apply. But... but... wait! I thought "code is poetry?"
This is all quite amusing; thanks for the chuckle.
This practice of stories opening with a "X has an article up about such-and-such" without explaining, in the story summary, who the hell "X" is, is really becoming trite and cheesy. Who or what is "Ferrago?" Am I supposed to know? It sounds like an expensive foreign sports car, but I'm pretty sure they don't have any opinions regarding XBox Live... I think.
If it's a guy's blog, fine, say so: "'Ferrago,' the blog of hardcore gamer-pundit Joe Smith, has just posted an interesting article..." OK, got it, great. If "Ferrago" is a company, or some "online community," whatever, say so. It just -- really, truly -- makes no sense otherwise.
Maybe I'm still recovering from that whole "travelling carnival" -thing, or it's just part of some blogger-credibility-don't-ask-don't-tell-wink-wink culture that I'm not privy to, I don't know, but it's damn screwy.
*ping* Hi. what u doin? *ping* workin on my blog *ping* me 2 *ping* i was jus gonna IM maurice *ping* maurice sez he's workin on his blog tooo *ping* kewl *ping* whaddya wanna do later??? *ping* gonna download the new Wordpress *ping* cool. Im gonna write in my blog some more. Mind if I mention in my blog how i was IMing you today? I could even link to YOUR blog. *ping* That would be sooo kewl! *ping* kk *ping* kay. c u *ping* bye *ping* kay bye
...which is to say that as long as Cory Doctorow keeps buying a round at the quarterly new media circle jerk conferences he'll continue to get headline press-on-demand in the 'blogosphere.' Remember, it doesn't matter whether your 'art' is DRM'd up the yin-yang or a plaintext file, if a non-story with a link to your site doesn't periodically make it to the front page of slashdot, ain't nobody gonna know about it anyhow.
Marketing sells. Always has. Cory has carefully nurtured a successful 'edgy-cyber-iconoclast' niche, and more power to him, but let's not get all noble and philosophical about it...
Look at what a local search pulls up for this 'reviewer.' Whole bunch of buzz-happy reviews of books on 'podcasting' and 'garage' web design and what not. Are we supposed to believe he's performing these tiresome exercises cuz he likes to see his name in print and he's just a book-reviewing kind o' guy? No user comments at all, just these too-slick-for-their-own-good 1996-vintage new-tech-feel-good book reviews.
C'mon, Mr. Suda, share with us: Whaddya make, penny a word? Two cents a word? Flat rate? We're dying to know...
If the existing deluge of boring, pointless, and inane blogs are made up by those who are non-mainstream, I shudder to think of what the web will look like once every other Average Joe is blogging.
The average joes are blogging now. Average and sub-average. They are the young, hi-tech, uber-cool, early-adopter geek-no-rati who know the difference between CSS and XHTML (and give two sh*ts) and believe that because they suddenly find themselves in possession of a printing press they have somehow magically transformed from students and engineers into writers and journalists.
Perhaps if, as they article suggests, the time is coming when these tools will actually become accessible to people who know how to write and have something to say, I may start viewing the term 'blog' with a smidge more respect than I had for the term 'blink tag' a dozen years back. Lord knows we survived geocities, I suppose we can move forward here as well...
Follow the trends: MMOs are the new golf. Sure, there are people who will log in and actually want to play, and in time they'll be viewed with the same cocked eyebrows and muttered, gentle admonishment about 'some people having too much time on their hands.' The majority of the people will log in because the course is well-groomed and the clubhouse is nicely appointed, er, the screen-candy is choice and the sounds make the most of the user's tricked-out dolby 7.1.
Why Star Trek? It's the Old School of SF/Fantasy Universes. The guys who followed along with TOS -- and even TNG -- are the captains of industry now. It's a natural.
How long before all those empty inn rooms in EQ start filling up with virtual conventioneers? Hmmm?
Not to mention the boxes of vinyl I continue to tote from new house to new house, forever promising the missus that, yes, I WILL get around to ripping them onto the server REAL SOON NOW.
Audiophile geeks are clearly the people to ask about The Next Big Trend, but maybe -- just maybe -- we're not the best people to check in on to determine when that trend has passed...
I believe that all this race to protect every single idea that can be selled to the point that people can't replay a "buffy episode" in the comunity theather or Joseph Doe can't create a fan fiction featuring batman or maybe "batguy" is bad for the culture in general.
What would be bad for the culture in general would be if Joe Doe can make a living from stealing Bob Kane's or Joss Whedon's ideas without any kind of repercussion, because then there would be no incentive to create something original. The "culture" would die.
That said, the laws still remain loose enough for Marvel to create a "Moon Knight" and for every animation house the world over to field their own Sailor Moon riff, so I wouldn't worry too much about the "little" (less creative) guy getting squeezed out from the pop culture trough anytime soon.
It's as if we spend more time worrying about the human rights of the Chinese than our own.
There is no comparison between the sleights against human rights in the U.S. compared to the egregious affronts against human rights in China. And there's many more Chinese than Americans.
It's as if we spend more time worrying about the human rights of the Chinese than our own.
It seems to me that young Americans make a far louder noise over the rights violation they perceive in the U.S. (Ooooh!! RIAA takes my downloads away!! Scary!! Mommy!!!) than the Real Deal going on in places like China. My hat is off to the Students For A Free Tibet for keeping their eye on the global ball while so many of their peers get distracted by their local bread-and-circuses and fret about what they can't put on their iPods.
And as for Google... Stupid dumb-ass sanctimonious Marketing slogan comes back to bite them in the butt. They deserve every ounce of attention they are getting on this matter. Smug, self-righteous, holier-than-thou prigs...
Obscenity is defined at the local level, and that's fine. And those in many Alabama counties are the most clearly defined and stringent on the books. This degree of state- and local intregity in the make-up of quality-of-life legislation was everything that the Founding Fathers were about. Today, the fine folks of West Hollywood don't have to play by Salt Lake City's mores, and vice-versa. My bet is that the people of Montgomery don't want what they have defined locally as obscene being viewed within the locally run and funded Public Library. The fact that the enforcement is via local DHS dudes muddies the waters, unfortunately, but it doesn't change the fact the locals don't want teh pr0n in the public facilities. The satellite distributors use zipcode masking in their signal encryption to prevent distribution where it's illegal -- they 'get' it. The Internet distributors are about 15 years behind the times, unfortunately.
I'm always amused by how many people who clamor for a local principality's 'right' to perform gay marriages get their panties in a bunch when another local principality flexes its muscles to enforce their 'right' to ban what they consider obscene. Two sides of the same coin: suck it up.
The first Mac virus hidden cleverly inside a picture of desktop eyecandy. No doubt it will spread like wildfire. Insidious.
What wrapper will the first Linux widespread virus take? "Hey, download this PDF -- it's a transcript of a big IRC shouting match about which is better, emacs or vi! You gotta read this!"
I've been bored recently, but for some reason I'm too lazy to take the effort to do anything entertaining, like getting my PS2 plugged into my TV again. I'm really pathetic.
I guess Mr. Howard -- and Messrs. Blair and Bush, for that matter -- is fortunate that they don't make Angry Young Men like they used to.
Uh uh. Computers were for work. Spreadsheets, databases, programming. Well, OK, word processing for the character sheets for the home-brew dice-and-pencil RPG we played. Consoles? Fuggeditaboutit. Kid stuff, right?
Until my buddy asked me to advise him on the purchase of a new PC. When I asked him what he was looking to use it for, he named all the regular Office stuff, and then added, "And of course, games. I want to be able to play games."
So I studied up on graphics cards -- in the computer magazine articles I had always skipped prior to then -- and made my recommendations. When his box arrived, naturally he invited me over to configure it, for a few beers. In the course of my new research, I learned that the "Game of the Year" in everybody's graphics categories was something called "Mechwarrior II," so on my way over I picked up a copy for him to christen the new box with. He had a state-of-the-art graphics card and monitor, so I wanted to see what a state-of-the-art game looked like running on it.
When the opening cinema played, "I Am Jade Falcon," and that unbelievable by anybody's musical standards score hit, our jaws hit the ground and we did this kind of Beavis-and-Butthead-Watching-NIN-Video take to each other. It was nothing like anything we old dice-throwers had expected in the least.
So, um, yeah, about 400 BattleTech miniatures, countless PC games, and several dozen console games later, I guess I'd have to say that "MechWarrior II" was the most memorable, if not the most, influential, in my experience.
Slashdot Mirror
There have always been a lot of creative people doing projects on the Web. Ideally, the Web is the province of Creative People, delivering their creative goodness directly to the consumer and bypassing the middlemen, and the tech stuff is transparent, in the background. Nobody goes to a show to see the stage crew, although we know they are there -- somewhere -- and respect their contribution.
Of course, the geeks built the Web, and were the first to know it was there and what it was capable of. As a result, the content of the early Web tended to be content of interest to geeks. That changed, happily, until the geeks developed streamlined means to manage and post new content, giving birth to 'blogs,' which are again dominated by geek topics. This too, is leveling.
Now, an awful lot of creative people like to call themselves "geeks" cuz it's (still) trendy, and an awful lot of geeks like to call themselves "creative" cuz they believe it will get them laid. But the hardcore shakers and shamen in each camp know enough not to dilute their efforts by dabbling; they just count on each other to work their respective money-attracting mojo.
Corporations that treat employers like disposable supplies, OTOH, are at least as numerous as they were in the heyday of unions in the early-to-mid 20th c.
That's a fascinating statistic.
It's completely made-up, of course, but I'm still staring at it in fascination.
You may laugh at labor unions now but when the corporations say your software engineering/coding/sys admin/systems integration/hardware design job is worth 8 dollars an hour on the world market and you have NO ONE to back you up when you renegotiate your job contract perhaps you won't be laughing so loud?
Uh.... who's dispensing the FUD now?
Without labor unions we wouldn't have ever gained a 40 hour work week or an end to child labor.
You're absolutely right. And without the stagecoach and the carbine rifle we'd never have won The West, either. But -- funny, ennit? -- every time I see a covered wagon in Manhattan with some guy on the buckboard picking off Indians on the corner of Spring and Broadway, I am overcome with a great feeling of "WTF?"
Unionized tech workers? Wow. Do they have to wear powdered wigs, too?
Imagine what the world would be like if everyone on this planet could not watch TV/movies/internet for a year.
Well, for one thing, it would mean I would go for 12 months without having to be exposed to snide, supercilious and off-topic holier-than-thou commentary like yours on topics you clearly do not understand.
Where do I sign up?
The more I read about the emasculation of various service plans and firmware pieces in the PVR space, the more my lifetime subscription to SonicBlue and my commercial-crushing early-model RTV4504 begin to look like Sacred Lost Crystal Technology from Ancient Atlantis.
Eventually something will break that I can't fix, or some double-A agency will wise up to the fact that I haven't seen a spot break in seven or eight years, and I'll have to bite the MythTV bullet, but until then, *I* control the Vertical and the Horizontal...
I can't wait to see what powers come to the artists willing to give up control of their work once it leaves their hands.
I'm hoping for invisibility and x-ray vision.
C'mon, C'mon, it's not often I feed yuse guys the straight lines, and even more rare that I go for the 'obligatories,' so let's do it: "220?"
I said, "220?"
Whassa matter? All you "citizen journalists" who relish tearing down the walls between 'old' and 'new' media, 'fan' and non-copyright-infringement fiction, and who enjoy 'empowering' 'musicians' and 'artists' with [your] software get kinda touchy when the job security seachange is on the other foot, eh?
"Art" is easy, of course, if you have the right software. But programming is "rigorous" and non-programmers need not apply. But... but... wait! I thought "code is poetry?"
This is all quite amusing; thanks for the chuckle.
This practice of stories opening with a "X has an article up about such-and-such" without explaining, in the story summary, who the hell "X" is, is really becoming trite and cheesy. Who or what is "Ferrago?" Am I supposed to know? It sounds like an expensive foreign sports car, but I'm pretty sure they don't have any opinions regarding XBox Live... I think.
k culture that I'm not privy to, I don't know, but it's damn screwy.
If it's a guy's blog, fine, say so: "'Ferrago,' the blog of hardcore gamer-pundit Joe Smith, has just posted an interesting article..." OK, got it, great. If "Ferrago" is a company, or some "online community," whatever, say so. It just -- really, truly -- makes no sense otherwise.
Maybe I'm still recovering from that whole "travelling carnival" -thing, or it's just part of some blogger-credibility-don't-ask-don't-tell-wink-win
If the ONLY Instant Messaging was among bloggers:
*ping*
Hi. what u doin?
*ping*
workin on my blog
*ping*
me 2
*ping*
i was jus gonna IM maurice
*ping*
maurice sez he's workin on his blog tooo
*ping*
kewl
*ping*
whaddya wanna do later???
*ping*
gonna download the new Wordpress
*ping*
cool. Im gonna write in my blog some more. Mind if I mention in my blog how i was IMing you today? I could even link to YOUR blog.
*ping*
That would be sooo kewl!
*ping*
kk
*ping*
kay. c u
*ping*
bye
*ping*
kay bye
...which is to say that as long as Cory Doctorow keeps buying a round at the quarterly new media circle jerk conferences he'll continue to get headline press-on-demand in the 'blogosphere.' Remember, it doesn't matter whether your 'art' is DRM'd up the yin-yang or a plaintext file, if a non-story with a link to your site doesn't periodically make it to the front page of slashdot, ain't nobody gonna know about it anyhow.
Marketing sells. Always has. Cory has carefully nurtured a successful 'edgy-cyber-iconoclast' niche, and more power to him, but let's not get all noble and philosophical about it...
Look at what a local search pulls up for this 'reviewer.' Whole bunch of buzz-happy reviews of books on 'podcasting' and 'garage' web design and what not. Are we supposed to believe he's performing these tiresome exercises cuz he likes to see his name in print and he's just a book-reviewing kind o' guy? No user comments at all, just these too-slick-for-their-own-good 1996-vintage new-tech-feel-good book reviews.
C'mon, Mr. Suda, share with us: Whaddya make, penny a word? Two cents a word? Flat rate? We're dying to know...
If the existing deluge of boring, pointless, and inane blogs are made up by those who are non-mainstream, I shudder to think of what the web will look like once every other Average Joe is blogging.
The average joes are blogging now. Average and sub-average. They are the young, hi-tech, uber-cool, early-adopter geek-no-rati who know the difference between CSS and XHTML (and give two sh*ts) and believe that because they suddenly find themselves in possession of a printing press they have somehow magically transformed from students and engineers into writers and journalists.
Perhaps if, as they article suggests, the time is coming when these tools will actually become accessible to people who know how to write and have something to say, I may start viewing the term 'blog' with a smidge more respect than I had for the term 'blink tag' a dozen years back. Lord knows we survived geocities, I suppose we can move forward here as well...
...and all I got was a friggin' Freaks List.
A night at the Four Seasons sounds pretty good by comparison. Sign Me Up!
Follow the trends: MMOs are the new golf. Sure, there are people who will log in and actually want to play, and in time they'll be viewed with the same cocked eyebrows and muttered, gentle admonishment about 'some people having too much time on their hands.' The majority of the people will log in because the course is well-groomed and the clubhouse is nicely appointed, er, the screen-candy is choice and the sounds make the most of the user's tricked-out dolby 7.1.
Why Star Trek? It's the Old School of SF/Fantasy Universes. The guys who followed along with TOS -- and even TNG -- are the captains of industry now. It's a natural.
How long before all those empty inn rooms in EQ start filling up with virtual conventioneers? Hmmm?
Not to mention the boxes of vinyl I continue to tote from new house to new house, forever promising the missus that, yes, I WILL get around to ripping them onto the server REAL SOON NOW.
Audiophile geeks are clearly the people to ask about The Next Big Trend, but maybe -- just maybe -- we're not the best people to check in on to determine when that trend has passed...
Ecological environmentalism hasn't exactly been a success story.
New religions traditionally have trouble getting started. Give it some more time. Keep the Faith.
I believe that all this race to protect every single idea that can be selled to the point that people can't replay a "buffy episode" in the comunity theather or Joseph Doe can't create a fan fiction featuring batman or maybe "batguy" is bad for the culture in general.
What would be bad for the culture in general would be if Joe Doe can make a living from stealing Bob Kane's or Joss Whedon's ideas without any kind of repercussion, because then there would be no incentive to create something original. The "culture" would die.
That said, the laws still remain loose enough for Marvel to create a "Moon Knight" and for every animation house the world over to field their own Sailor Moon riff, so I wouldn't worry too much about the "little" (less creative) guy getting squeezed out from the pop culture trough anytime soon.
It's as if we spend more time worrying about the human rights of the Chinese than our own.
There is no comparison between the sleights against human rights in the U.S. compared to the egregious affronts against human rights in China. And there's many more Chinese than Americans.
It's as if we spend more time worrying about the human rights of the Chinese than our own.
It seems to me that young Americans make a far louder noise over the rights violation they perceive in the U.S. (Ooooh!! RIAA takes my downloads away!! Scary!! Mommy!!!) than the Real Deal going on in places like China. My hat is off to the Students For A Free Tibet for keeping their eye on the global ball while so many of their peers get distracted by their local bread-and-circuses and fret about what they can't put on their iPods.
And as for Google... Stupid dumb-ass sanctimonious Marketing slogan comes back to bite them in the butt. They deserve every ounce of attention they are getting on this matter. Smug, self-righteous, holier-than-thou prigs...
Obscenity is defined at the local level, and that's fine. And those in many Alabama counties are the most clearly defined and stringent on the books. This degree of state- and local intregity in the make-up of quality-of-life legislation was everything that the Founding Fathers were about. Today, the fine folks of West Hollywood don't have to play by Salt Lake City's mores, and vice-versa. My bet is that the people of Montgomery don't want what they have defined locally as obscene being viewed within the locally run and funded Public Library. The fact that the enforcement is via local DHS dudes muddies the waters, unfortunately, but it doesn't change the fact the locals don't want teh pr0n in the public facilities. The satellite distributors use zipcode masking in their signal encryption to prevent distribution where it's illegal -- they 'get' it. The Internet distributors are about 15 years behind the times, unfortunately.
I'm always amused by how many people who clamor for a local principality's 'right' to perform gay marriages get their panties in a bunch when another local principality flexes its muscles to enforce their 'right' to ban what they consider obscene. Two sides of the same coin: suck it up.
The first Mac virus hidden cleverly inside a picture of desktop eyecandy. No doubt it will spread like wildfire. Insidious.
What wrapper will the first Linux widespread virus take? "Hey, download this PDF -- it's a transcript of a big IRC shouting match about which is better, emacs or vi! You gotta read this!"
We won't know what hit us...
And from your "blog:"
I guess Mr. Howard -- and Messrs. Blair and Bush, for that matter -- is fortunate that they don't make Angry Young Men like they used to.
Tell him to post a new slashdot poll for old times sake.
Hell, just tell ANYONE to post a new slashdot poll; that most-used-key-combo thing has been up there since LAST Valentine's Day...
Uh uh. Computers were for work. Spreadsheets, databases, programming. Well, OK, word processing for the character sheets for the home-brew dice-and-pencil RPG we played. Consoles? Fuggeditaboutit. Kid stuff, right?
Until my buddy asked me to advise him on the purchase of a new PC. When I asked him what he was looking to use it for, he named all the regular Office stuff, and then added, "And of course, games. I want to be able to play games."
So I studied up on graphics cards -- in the computer magazine articles I had always skipped prior to then -- and made my recommendations. When his box arrived, naturally he invited me over to configure it, for a few beers. In the course of my new research, I learned that the "Game of the Year" in everybody's graphics categories was something called "Mechwarrior II," so on my way over I picked up a copy for him to christen the new box with. He had a state-of-the-art graphics card and monitor, so I wanted to see what a state-of-the-art game looked like running on it.
When the opening cinema played, "I Am Jade Falcon," and that unbelievable by anybody's musical standards score hit, our jaws hit the ground and we did this kind of Beavis-and-Butthead-Watching-NIN-Video take to each other. It was nothing like anything we old dice-throwers had expected in the least.
So, um, yeah, about 400 BattleTech miniatures, countless PC games, and several dozen console games later, I guess I'd have to say that "MechWarrior II" was the most memorable, if not the most, influential, in my experience.