As someone whose mobile was canceled by my telco because I did not use it often enough, I should perhaps have had at least one look into current cell phone technology... once again, +1 for ignorance:)
Bah, classic. Now it's time for the original Doom theme.
Is there a phone available which selects an appropriate ringtone for each caller?
Mother-in-law: Funeral March Lawyer: I shot the sheriff or Liar (Queen) Landlord: Hotel California (Eagles) or Rent (PetShopBoys) Evil HR [Catbert]: Demon's Whip (Manowar) your bank/broker: Money
I'm among those who doesn't want strangers flipping through any data about me without a convincing reason
I agree with you on this point, but then I sit back and think about it: Am I really that interesting?
Almost everything you talk about will interest someone...
The health insurance might want to know all about your occasional stomach problems you discussed with your mom yesterday
Your employer might want to know which bars you frequent in order to know if you hang around known places of vice, gambling and drug abuse.
Your bank and the IRS might want to know if you plan to go shopping for a new car while owing someone money etc.
Your wife may want to check on you, so she may call your friend if you are with him or with a woman.
Spammers want to know the size of your penis. (Granted, few people talk about that in public.)
All information can be misused. And at one point, twenty years from now, Joe Doe, a reformed christian and good father to his children, will most certainly not want someone to post his teenage pr0n habits on the net. Even if it is old stuff, you would wonder if he is still into it...
Same goes for other MMOGs. Eg, in Dark Age of Camelot, if you join a Plaver-vs-Player Server, you better get into large, old guild with lots of power. Those control the game relevant castles and hunting grounds.
From what I read about it [on/., the universal source of knowledge], I think that TSO flopped because of - bad implementation (training on skills for hours) - lack of game depth (chatting with others may be fun, but isn't a game about winning or having fun? Watching my avatar having a hell-of-a-time is not the same as me having one...) - pricing (many Sims-fans do not want to pay a monthly charge)
But, for some things there are obivous ways to do things. A patent forces you to reinvent the wheel, a copyright does not. Ten different programers can all have identical code in their program because it's just the way a skilled programer implements such a thing, and they can all have copyright on their own identical code.
I like the idea of 10 people producing the same code, each one under his own copyright. Perhaps it leads to a possible solution to the question "How to implement the obvious without violating another's copyright":
Coding the standard solution in your own way will perhaps result in a binary which - due to compiler optimisation etc - will look exactly like someone else's work. But you can still claim it as your work.
There is obviously a grey area between "copying" and "doing it myself", but to continue the book-analogy: if it is written in your words, eventually your description of a the same scene will differ from the one another author uses.
So solving a problem the standard way will almost always result in identical code. But if the problem is large enough, every programmer's code will become a unique text at point. Much like the Bible (Gospel::Mc/Lk/Mt), where you have *almost* identical passages but often there are some words / phrases which characterize the writer.
So a normal programmer may solve the problem the same way, but along this way he will eventually use his own words. If he does not and uses code which is 100% identical and goes on for hundreds of lines, he probably steals.
The ugly truth is: "It depends." - if the amount of code used is more than a single element, it will probably be under copyright. You can copy a sentence from Hemingway, but not a whole page. No matter if an author uses only obvious words every literate person knows, you cannot simply use his work as yours.
- using common sense in creating a solution will not free you from the burden of doing so yourself instead of copying it. Of course, a car will need wheels and an engine. But that does not mean that a Mercedes is the "obvious" choice. You will have to create a solution on your own, which may resemble all the other solutions, but is somehow unique.
- in software, there is usually "more than one way to do it" [Perl slogan], so copying some one else's source code may be easy but not legal. To take your example, a date conversion could be done by regex, by a clever algorithm or by using a huge table with all the existing dates you are interested in.
- also note that some ideas may be patented, which extends beyond the mere copying of source code - you can be punished for creating a GIF no matter how you do it, unless you pay for a license to do so.
That said, a person who disassembles 3 million lines of code to catch you using his 3 lines of copyrighted stuff will probably do *anything* to get you.
Aside from advertisement and user comments, this could be an opportunity for some fun outdoor-games.
Imagine a Matrix-like life action roleplaying game with 3 groups - agents, informants, freedom fighters. Whom to trust, whom to talk to? Look at the messages other players left before. But can you trust them? Maybe they just manipulate you to buy their freedom or favors. Or it could be a trap for the agents...
You could play in a big city, using real places and all the time connecting to other players or at least their messages. A complex web of (mis-)information could make a very interesting "story matrix".
I would like to think that the user comments could be about something else than the quality of the food of a given restaurant - for example, you could have a story channel, where at certain places you read what (may have) happened there. Now add a node for those who actually enter a place and another for those who walk by - you get a multiple choice story. Each street, each place changes the story you walk through...
It was Shockwave-Flash. Somehow. rm'ed the flashlibs and the page loads ok.
BTW, I searched for a way to remove the annoying plugin-question when the flashlibs are not found by mozilla. My solution: rename the null-plugin to [*.]bak. At the next run, mozilla informs you that this lib is missing and no further plugins will be downloaded.:)
At last! Now I can browse the page about the disturbing Crap Circles!
Disabled everything in JavaScript except cookies. => crash (both Phoenix & Mozilla). Have looked at the HTML-Source - whoever wrote this is sure able to believe in cropcircles...
Mozilla is great... until it crashes at the attempt to load
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2002/2002.html
how strange. Maybe the Aliens out there are enemies of Free Software. Or are they specifically after me, beaming random bits of destruction into my computer's RAM? Or maybe they change my perceptions capabilities so I perceive Mozilla as failing.
If a site publishes an article which it does not want to be shared via linking with the whole world, they simply have to restrict access to it (login / dynamically served pages). Creating a "hard link" and then wondering why people start to go directly to your content instead of viewing your chain of ad-infested pages is simply stupid.
Of course, ripping of other peoples content and then making money of it is wrong. We had this discussion about pages which used frames to display other's content as their own. Deep Links are just more of the same - if your service or content has a real valuable, protect it. If someone publishes your creation without giving you the due credit, sue him.
But telling people to stop linking to a site is like forbidding someone to tell other people if the sky is blue. The information about where a specific kind data is stored should be free. The data itself should be free to those who have (bought) a legitimiate interest to view it.
But you would need sites which are all about the same, ie dilbert.com etc, where mostly the daily strip and the ads change.
With/., you get pages which are very different from each other. Compare two articles & their comments - you have only a tiny amount of menu vs. hundreds of lines of slashdotters offering their opinions.
Also, rendering page 2 with the same layout as page 1 will save almost no time as the download is what takes so long [on a 56k modem], not the rendering speed of your browser. (unless you view one of my ugly 1MB-tables:))
If page 2 is different from page 1, you will have a strange effect of seeing badly formatted text and suddenly: a redraw with the correct layout.
On the other side, Progressive Rendering of Text will look like a matrix-screensaver, won't it? Hm... imagine a browser with l33t effects while it changes from one page to another
If this is implemented properly, it might take only a few hundred processor cycles to test each prime. That means you could test 10^8 primes per second on a 2ghz athlon.
Not sure about the floating stuff, but 10^8 / second is not enough. If only 10% of the 2^1024 numbers were to be tested, you would still need a computer of the type which can answer the question of the universe, the meaning of life and anything else.
I knew I shouldn't have made fun of DoubleClick's name - bad jokes have a way of turning on me occasionally:)
You are right, cookies could be used for ad-tracking in a way that protects my anonymity. But they aren't - If amazon.com has my cookie, they know exactly who I am. Now, amazon is not a big evil empire (I hope). Other sites which require login are perhaps less honest about the data they amass about me.
The problem is, most advertisers want to sell junk. Junk, by definition, is something you do not want to buy, use or hear about. So even a perfect anonymous tracking system would soon start to bug your screen with commercials about things you do not want to see, just because you did not buy any one of the things you are interested in but somehow did not buy at once via click-through.
So a good tracking system would improve on the diversity of junk ads, but it cannot improve the content they offer.
I do not think a perfect tracking system would be the answer... would you really like BubbleChick to know what pages you have surfed, what interests you have and how long you spent looking at banner X (and page X)?
Web Ads are not effective because I can consume more of them than of any other type of advertising and still buy nothing they offer. They are no less annoying if they speak of things I would like to have. If I were to buy new hardware, I would not click on a banner "Buy Palladium PC for $1" but rather read a good article with detailed tests and then go shopping where I will get the stuff for reasonable prices.
Sadly, some pages do not work without Flash and some anims and games are nice. Sites like http://www.camelot-europe.com are almost unusable without Macromedias plugin.
But how can I (using Mozilla / Opera) stop a Flash ad from loading / displaying? Blocking images is no use, nor turning javascript off.
Well, M$ would like to tattoo their EULA and your personal, eternal Windows license number on your beautiful behind. -- of course, every Version would include an EULA-Update;)
"Please show your number to the Palladium-PC, Mr. Beast"
You could use Povray as renderer. Then add some GUI to zoom / fly around your char...:)
btw, don't forget http://www.Zangband.org:) as another good roguelike.
Have you read the EULA of PunkBuster? They reserve the right to snoop inside your system in any way they want AND transfer screenshots made while you are online as well as other data. This is spyware on a disturbing level - I declined to "install this software" when I updated Q3.
I also do not think MAC addresses or anything like it will work as long as "the client is in the hands of the enemy". Perhaps a Palladium-DRM-PC by M$ will offer the security server admins want... but will it offer the privacy the user needs?
Watching games that play themselves is perhaps a kind of visual meditation - something happens which is per se without meaning or sense and sets the viewer free to mentally detach himself from the game induced stress and frustration.
Since Nethack was mentioned before, I would like to point to the AngbandBorg by Dr. Andrew White which plays the rogue-like game of Angband {http://itctel.com/~apwhite/andrew.html}
Dr. Weasolito, the self-proclaimed world's only lawyer able to speak with cockroaches has sued McDonald's for Genocide. "The massacre has been going on since 2003 when the Supreme Court decided that cockroaches could be included in 'Cow-free-Hamburgers'. It has to stop now." says the 'roachy lawyer who is also the CEO of Vermin Inc. which will distribute the money among the critters if he wins against the evil Empire.
Of course, an evil telemarketer will get this list asap - he gets your real world, phone and email address etc, not having to bother with fake a.-remove_spam-@whatever.dot mail accounts...
Re:Superheroes are not suitable for MMORPGs
on
Marvel Goes MMPORG
·
· Score: 1
It depends on how clever this Capture-the-City is implemented. My post referred to MMORPGs as they are today. A refreshing alternative would be to remove the first M - let the game be Multi- but without armies. A fight 20 heroes vs 20 villians or so can be fun. If a Player Character dies, he is declared "defeated" and cannot re-enter this specific combat ground for some time. He has to set up shop elsewhere.
But after seeing absolutely chaotic and unfunny battles of about 100 vs 100 in Dark Age of Camelot, I shudder to think of a 100 blue clad men who wear their red panties over their trousers trying to defend a city.
And as to "roleplaying" - don't get me started... I think Superheroes have a great potential for a fast action game in a super-realistic city. So forget about 'Massive' and 'Roleplaying', add a dose of equipment and ability shoping, fire up the UT/Q3 engine and let's have fun.
Superheroes are not suitable for MMORPGs
on
Marvel Goes MMPORG
·
· Score: 1
Mosts MORPGs seem to lack real content - a fact that is hidden by a grueling leveling thread mill and a hundred colorful cape-designs.
To keep players and collect the monthly fee, the games make character advancement slow and painful for the casual gamer. In a fantasy game, your character advances by killing monsters and doing quests. He starts as a lv 1 rat basher and eventually becomes a lv50 nut crasher. But a super-hero who starts at lv 1 is about as much fun as Clark Kent with a stick of kryptonite stuck up his ###. You need to start as the real Superman, otherwise it just sucks.
In a superhero-game you would want to be -- a Hero! And this entails being better than someone else or at least being able to do something that is remarkable and exciting. If 1000 players do rescue Ms Nobrains from stepping into doggy poo, there is very little heroic about this, even if they burn the offending substance with laser eyes or push it out of the way by their flatulent power move.
You could play a superhero RPG with a couple of players, but having a Massive Multiplayer environment of hundreds or thousands of would-be-heroes? A Hero is something unique. Make a 1000 of them, and you have... Munchkinland.
What is next? A MMORPG chess game?
Of course, a Slapstick MMORPG with weekly replays of the most funny things the players did...*g*
I have also put my favorite booksmarks on my homepage and made them the start-page. And I think it is much faster to click on these links when the browser starts than to go by the bookmarks. Normal bookmarks in browsers take more time to navigate than my link-pages:)
I like to use a variety of browser along with Win98 & Linux, so it comes really handy to have all my links as soon as any browser starts. The problem is, many sites use cookies for login-information. And these cookies are of course stored in the individual browser. So I have to use Mozilla to view/. or enter my passwords everywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone whose mobile was canceled by my telco because I did not use it often enough, I should perhaps have had at least one look into current cell phone technology... once again, +1 for ignorance :)
Bah, classic. Now it's time for the original Doom theme.
Is there a phone available which selects an appropriate ringtone for each caller?
Mother-in-law: Funeral March
Lawyer: I shot the sheriff or Liar (Queen)
Landlord: Hotel California (Eagles) or Rent (PetShopBoys)
Evil HR [Catbert]: Demon's Whip (Manowar)
your bank/broker: Money
PHB: ?
- The health insurance might want to know all about your occasional stomach problems you discussed with your mom yesterday
- Your employer might want to know which bars you frequent in order to know if you hang around known places of vice, gambling and drug abuse.
- Your bank and the IRS might want to know if you plan to go shopping for a new car while owing someone money etc.
- Your wife may want to check on you, so she may call your friend if you are with him or with a woman.
- Spammers want to know the size of your penis. (Granted, few people talk about that in public.)
All information can be misused. And at one point, twenty years from now, Joe Doe, a reformed christian and good father to his children, will most certainly not want someone to post his teenage pr0n habits on the net. Even if it is old stuff, you would wonder if he is still into it...Same goes for other MMOGs. Eg, in Dark Age of Camelot, if you join a Plaver-vs-Player Server, you better get into large, old guild with lots of power. Those control the game relevant castles and hunting grounds.
/., the universal source of knowledge], I think that TSO flopped because of
From what I read about it [on
- bad implementation (training on skills for hours)
- lack of game depth (chatting with others may be fun, but isn't a game about winning or having fun? Watching my avatar having a hell-of-a-time is not the same as me having one...)
- pricing (many Sims-fans do not want to pay a monthly charge)
I like the idea of 10 people producing the same code, each one under his own copyright. Perhaps it leads to a possible solution to the question "How to implement the obvious without violating another's copyright":
Coding the standard solution in your own way will perhaps result in a binary which - due to compiler optimisation etc - will look exactly like someone else's work. But you can still claim it as your work.There is obviously a grey area between "copying" and "doing it myself", but to continue the book-analogy: if it is written in your words, eventually your description of a the same scene will differ from the one another author uses.
So solving a problem the standard way will almost always result in identical code. But if the problem is large enough, every programmer's code will become a unique text at point. Much like the Bible (Gospel::Mc/Lk/Mt), where you have *almost* identical passages but often there are some words / phrases which characterize the writer.
So a normal programmer may solve the problem the same way, but along this way he will eventually use his own words. If he does not and uses code which is 100% identical and goes on for hundreds of lines, he probably steals.
The ugly truth is: "It depends."
- if the amount of code used is more than a single element, it will probably be under copyright. You can copy a sentence from Hemingway, but not a whole page. No matter if an author uses only obvious words every literate person knows, you cannot simply use his work as yours.
- using common sense in creating a solution will not free you from the burden of doing so yourself instead of copying it. Of course, a car will need wheels and an engine. But that does not mean that a Mercedes is the "obvious" choice. You will have to create a solution on your own, which may resemble all the other solutions, but is somehow unique.
- in software, there is usually "more than one way to do it" [Perl slogan], so copying some one else's source code may be easy but not legal. To take your example, a date conversion could be done by regex, by a clever algorithm or by using a huge table with all the existing dates you are interested in.
- also note that some ideas may be patented, which extends beyond the mere copying of source code - you can be punished for creating a GIF no matter how you do it, unless you pay for a license to do so.
That said, a person who disassembles 3 million lines of code to catch you using his 3 lines of copyrighted stuff will probably do *anything* to get you.
Aside from advertisement and user comments, this could be an opportunity for some fun outdoor-games.
Imagine a Matrix-like life action roleplaying game with 3 groups - agents, informants, freedom fighters.
Whom to trust, whom to talk to? Look at the messages other players left before. But can you trust them? Maybe they just manipulate you to buy their freedom or favors. Or it could be a trap for the agents...
You could play in a big city, using real places and all the time connecting to other players or at least their messages. A complex web of (mis-)information could make a very interesting "story matrix".
I would like to think that the user comments could be about something else than the quality of the food of a given restaurant - for example, you could have a story channel, where at certain places you read what (may have) happened there. Now add a node for those who actually enter a place and another for those who walk by - you get a multiple choice story. Each street, each place changes the story you walk through...
It was Shockwave-Flash. Somehow.
:)
rm'ed the flashlibs and the page loads ok.
BTW, I searched for a way to remove the annoying plugin-question when the flashlibs are not found by mozilla. My solution: rename the null-plugin to [*.]bak. At the next run, mozilla informs you that this lib is missing and no further plugins will be downloaded.
At last! Now I can browse the page about the disturbing Crap Circles!
Disabled everything in JavaScript except cookies. => crash (both Phoenix & Mozilla). Have looked at the HTML-Source - whoever wrote this is sure able to believe in cropcircles...
Mozilla is great... until it crashes at the attempt to load
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2002/2002.html
how strange. Maybe the Aliens out there are enemies of Free Software. Or are they specifically after me, beaming random bits of destruction into my computer's RAM? Or maybe they change my perceptions capabilities so I perceive Mozilla as failing.
SYS: Mandrake 9.0 / Mozilla 1.2.1
If a site publishes an article which it does not want to be shared via linking with the whole world, they simply have to restrict access to it (login / dynamically served pages). Creating a "hard link" and then wondering why people start to go directly to your content instead of viewing your chain of ad-infested pages is simply stupid.
Of course, ripping of other peoples content and then making money of it is wrong. We had this discussion about pages which used frames to display other's content as their own. Deep Links are just more of the same - if your service or content has a real valuable, protect it. If someone publishes your creation without giving you the due credit, sue him.
But telling people to stop linking to a site is like forbidding someone to tell other people if the sky is blue. The information about where a specific kind data is stored should be free. The data itself should be free to those who have (bought) a legitimiate interest to view it.
But you would need sites which are all about the same, ie dilbert.com etc, where mostly the daily strip and the ads change.
With /., you get pages which are very different from each other. Compare two articles & their comments - you have only a tiny amount of menu vs. hundreds of lines of slashdotters offering their opinions.
Also, rendering page 2 with the same layout as page 1 will save almost no time as the download is what takes so long [on a 56k modem], not the rendering speed of your browser. (unless you view one of my ugly 1MB-tables :))
If page 2 is different from page 1, you will have a strange effect of seeing badly formatted text and suddenly: a redraw with the correct layout.
On the other side, Progressive Rendering of Text will look like a matrix-screensaver, won't it? Hm... imagine a browser with l33t effects while it changes from one page to another
If this is implemented properly, it might take only a few hundred processor cycles to test each prime. That means you could test 10^8 primes per second on a 2ghz athlon.
Not sure about the floating stuff, but 10^8 / second is not enough. If only 10% of the 2^1024 numbers were to be tested, you would still need a computer of the type which can answer the question of the universe, the meaning of life and anything else.
I knew I shouldn't have made fun of DoubleClick's name - bad jokes have a way of turning on me occasionally :)
You are right, cookies could be used for ad-tracking in a way that protects my anonymity. But they aren't - If amazon.com has my cookie, they know exactly who I am. Now, amazon is not a big evil empire (I hope). Other sites which require login are perhaps less honest about the data they amass about me.
The problem is, most advertisers want to sell junk. Junk, by definition, is something you do not want to buy, use or hear about. So even a perfect anonymous tracking system would soon start to bug your screen with commercials about things you do not want to see, just because you did not buy any one of the things you are interested in but somehow did not buy at once via click-through.
So a good tracking system would improve on the diversity of junk ads, but it cannot improve the content they offer.
I do not think a perfect tracking system would be the answer... would you really like BubbleChick to know what pages you have surfed, what interests you have and how long you spent looking at banner X (and page X)?
Web Ads are not effective because I can consume more of them than of any other type of advertising and still buy nothing they offer. They are no less annoying if they speak of things I would like to have. If I were to buy new hardware, I would not click on a banner "Buy Palladium PC for $1" but rather read a good article with detailed tests and then go shopping where I will get the stuff for reasonable prices.
Sadly, some pages do not work without Flash and some anims and games are nice. Sites like http://www.camelot-europe.com are almost unusable without Macromedias plugin.
But how can I (using Mozilla / Opera) stop a Flash ad from loading / displaying? Blocking images is no use, nor turning javascript off.
"Please show your number to the Palladium-PC, Mr. Beast"
You could use Povray as renderer. Then add some GUI to zoom / fly around your char... :)
btw, don't forget http://www.Zangband.org :) as another good roguelike.
Have you read the EULA of PunkBuster? They reserve the right to snoop inside your system in any way they want AND transfer screenshots made while you are online as well as other data. This is spyware on a disturbing level - I declined to "install this software" when I updated Q3.
I also do not think MAC addresses or anything like it will work as long as "the client is in the hands of the enemy". Perhaps a Palladium-DRM-PC by M$ will offer the security server admins want... but will it offer the privacy the user needs?
Watching games that play themselves is perhaps a kind of visual meditation - something happens which is per se without meaning or sense and sets the viewer free to mentally detach himself from the game induced stress and frustration.
Since Nethack was mentioned before, I would like to point to the AngbandBorg by Dr. Andrew White which plays the rogue-like game of Angband {http://itctel.com/~apwhite/andrew.html}
Dr. Weasolito, the self-proclaimed world's only lawyer able to speak with cockroaches has sued McDonald's for Genocide. "The massacre has been going on since 2003 when the Supreme Court decided that cockroaches could be included in 'Cow-free-Hamburgers'. It has to stop now." says the 'roachy lawyer who is also the CEO of Vermin Inc. which will distribute the money among the critters if he wins against the evil Empire.
Of course, an evil telemarketer will get this list asap - he gets your real world, phone and email address etc, not having to bother with fake a.-remove_spam-@whatever.dot mail accounts...
But after seeing absolutely chaotic and unfunny battles of about 100 vs 100 in Dark Age of Camelot, I shudder to think of a 100 blue clad men who wear their red panties over their trousers trying to defend a city.
And as to "roleplaying" - don't get me started... I think Superheroes have a great potential for a fast action game in a super-realistic city. So forget about 'Massive' and 'Roleplaying', add a dose of equipment and ability shoping, fire up the UT/Q3 engine and let's have fun.
Mosts MORPGs seem to lack real content - a fact that is hidden by a grueling leveling thread mill and a hundred colorful cape-designs.
To keep players and collect the monthly fee, the games make character advancement slow and painful for the casual gamer. In a fantasy game, your character advances by killing monsters and doing quests. He starts as a lv 1 rat basher and eventually becomes a lv50 nut crasher. But a super-hero who starts at lv 1 is about as much fun as Clark Kent with a stick of kryptonite stuck up his ###. You need to start as the real Superman, otherwise it just sucks.
In a superhero-game you would want to be -- a Hero! And this entails being better than someone else or at least being able to do something that is remarkable and exciting. If 1000 players do rescue Ms Nobrains from stepping into doggy poo, there is very little heroic about this, even if they burn the offending substance with laser eyes or push it out of the way by their flatulent power move.
You could play a superhero RPG with a couple of players, but having a Massive Multiplayer environment of hundreds or thousands of would-be-heroes? A Hero is something unique. Make a 1000 of them, and you have... Munchkinland.
What is next? A MMORPG chess game?
Of course, a Slapstick MMORPG with weekly replays of the most funny things the players did...*g*
I have also put my favorite booksmarks on my homepage and made them the start-page. And I think it is much faster to click on these links when the browser starts than to go by the bookmarks. Normal bookmarks in browsers take more time to navigate than my link-pages :)
/. or enter my passwords everywhere.
I like to use a variety of browser along with Win98 & Linux, so it comes really handy to have all my links as soon as any browser starts.
The problem is, many sites use cookies for login-information. And these cookies are of course stored in the individual browser. So I have to use Mozilla to view