Low quality articles created by content farms with hit grabbing headlines and every political discussion turning into libs versus nuts ? Going to my desktop won't solve that problem:P
Earlier this week twitter advised people who had used a certain app to change their passwords because the app may have been insecure. Then I went to the update password page and noticed that the new password is passed to twitter using http, not https like they do for the regular login.
In the late 1990s Pacific Bell was laying fiber-optic cable in my neighborhood in San Jose, California in order to deploy high speed internet. After AT&T bought them the project was canceled and the fiber was dug up and removed to prevent it from being ever used.
It's hard not to remember this every time I read about the multi-billion dollar tax breaks AT&T has been enjoying since I think 1996 that were supposed to help them provide high speed internet.:-(
If anybody wants to double check this you can search old issues of the San Jose Mercury News in the library, or online if you want to pay a charge.
When I got started in programming in the late 1970's I used to hear similar things about the health risks. A programmer who worked across the street had to be hospitalized for a nervous breakdown after many months of 100 hour (no paid overtime) work weeks. I went to a party with my coworkers where their wives cornered me in the kitchen and told me to "get out now".
Since it looks like computer related jobs haven't changed a bit in 30 years, I'll bet the next New York Times article on the subject concerns blogging ruining marriages.
Note that one of the people who respond to this blog entry claim that neighboring countries who *don't* collaborate with the BSA get huge discounts from Microsoft.
While this was going on, the big complaint from my friends over there who use internet cafes wasn't that linux was bad or hard to use. The complaint was that the linux version of yahoo chat didn't allow the use of webcams.
"The boom appeared to have been fueled by a development having nothing to do with culture or novels but by cellphone companies' decision to offer unlimited transmission of packet data, like text-messaging, as part of flat monthly rates."
I wish the companies involved would get reasonable and do that in the US. I have a good Yahoo! chat client on my phone and I never use it due to the ridiculous charges.
All I hope for now is that OpenMoko finally takes off and I'm actually allowed to use it for it's intended purpose.
The reason I'm not more gadget-oriented is because of telco behavior amoung other things. I'd really like to stop lugging the laptop around everywhere, I just feel all the current product and service offerings here in San Jose are rip-offs.
After following the Ginko story over at Benjamin Duranskes blog I've started to think that Ginko wasn't an intentional fraud and Nicholas Portocarrero actually believed everything he said.
Have you ever watched a young person buy their first cel phone thinking 30 cents a minute it cheap ? Then when the first bill comes due for four or five hundred dollars the person is totally shocked ? Although Nicholas eventually gave his real name the last thing I recall him admitting about his real age was "In my 20s". So here's my speculation:
A 16 or 17 year old Brazilian kid who can't do math sneaked into SL a few years ago, started a bank, and all the avatars fell for it because they really wanted to believe.
Big dumb corporations are in the process of learning that an MMO world is not the same as a billboard or a television channel. The other thing they need to learn is that if they don't have a product that an avatar can use directly (virtual trees, etc) there is nothing there for them and they need to move on.
If you saw some of the SL blog threads you'd laugh. Avatars try to explain they're in Second Life in the first place to get AWAY from advertising and mass media. Their voices are then drowned out by all the wannabee consultants and professional marketing tards.
If you want to see a good depiction of what this is like, check out this video:
unfortunately the non-disclosure agreement I clicked through prevents me from discussing it. All I can say is that I'm generally happy with it but won't be giving up anime fansubs anytime soon, especially the faux-720p h264 ones....
asm ??? notepad ??? I heard the same silly story in the late 70s when I was coding assembly on an IBM 360 mainframe and using punched cards. Some things never change, it might have been Gartner making those predictions too.:-)
Actually I'd try to use something like Voipbuster or Skype to get around the monthly fees vonage charges. I might be willing to pay extra too if I could get enough bandwidth for sip/Skype/wigiwigi video.
Another thing I wonder about it whether widespread BitTorrent usage would kill off the response time.
The best I could do to document this would be to get San Jose Mercury News stories from 1998. That's right, San Jose was about to get world class fiberoptic broadband in 1998, well ahead of Korea and Japan. Too bad SBC took over.
Also, if anyone outside North America is wondering why SBC is getting mentioned here, Cingular is the cellular division of SBC.
If I go for an $80 a month plan that doesn't let me use Skype, YouTube, or BitTorrent they might let me get rid of my landline ($21/mo) and just use their dsl. LINK
And my favorite story. Before SBC bought them out Pacific Bell was actually laying fiberoptic cable in my neighborhood (downtown San Jose, CA) so we could have *real* broadband. After SBC bought them the first thing they did was cancel the project and dig the fiber out so no one could use it.
Skype can have better or worse voice quality depending on a number of factors, usually the quality of the internet connection on both ends. When everything is working well, which is very often for me, the sound quality can be ALOT better than POTS.
You might want to just try it to see if it works well for you.
One bit of bad news for you, looking at your web page, is that the linux skype client is an old version that doesnt include video. For many people, myself included, the linux client doesnt work as well as the windows client.
It was mentioned when ebay bought Skype that if Skype could achieve certain performance goals that the deal would be worth an extra 1.5 billion dollars. It looks like the number of users in North America may be one of these performance goals.
Also this is a good way to compete with Yahoo! Messenger, which was recently upgraded to use the same voice codec as skype.
a japanese tv show called "Maid in Akihabara". The main character, a former bar girl working in a maid cafe, can't afford a place to live so she checks into an internet cafe each night. I was wondering if people in Japan actually did this, but the article makes it look very possible.
I still have another question, totally outside the scope of the article. In the movie Koi no Mon (aka Otakus in Love), there is a cosplay brothel. Anybody know if these exist or did the movie make that up ?
I vaguely recall reading about a service called lovegetty than does that. There is Japanese movie called Vibrator (a very good indy prod art film by the way) where a woman in a convience store meets a truck driver after her cel buzzes and spends the next 3 days with him.
I have the windows beta installed now and it looks like it just has the same old video. Skype as well as wigiwigi seem to be way ahead as far as video is concerned. It's going to be interesting to compare voice quality because yahoo now uses the global ip sound voice codec, which is what Skype uses.
Hopefully they add call forwarding too. With Skype I can get calls forwarded to my cel phone even when the computer if off.
The Y! linux client is a real bummer, it looks like they haven't done anything to it for years. The reason I started using windows again was because my Y! chat friends kept wanting to see me on a webcam.
I can even think of a wholecountry where the internet users would like to see a linux client as good as a windows client. After the raids last year many internet cafes in the Philippines took down their illegal copies of Windows and installed Linux. I heard alot of complaints for a while.
My favorite is actually wigiwigi, I use it whenever I can find someone computer literate enough to use it on the other end.
Slashdot Mirror
Low quality articles created by content farms with hit grabbing headlines and every political discussion turning into libs versus nuts ? Going to my desktop won't solve that problem :P
- sent from my iPhone -
Actually it's more BSD and Mach with a little MkLinux thrown in than a pure UNIX.
And when I do uname -sr on my iPhone it says "Darwin".
since 1999. I've still got Debian on the desktop and Mandriva on the laptop. I do almost no searching because I don't need to.
Earlier this week twitter advised people who had used a certain app to change their passwords because the app may have been insecure. Then I went to the update password page and noticed that the new password is passed to twitter using http, not https like they do for the regular login.
10 Gs ? I'd pay that.
Heck, I run virtual world servers (opensim and realxtend) on my dsl.
Maybe not coincidentally, webcam applications like Skype and Sightspeed could be seen as competing with much higher priced video-conferencing systems.
In the late 1990s Pacific Bell was laying fiber-optic cable in my neighborhood in San Jose, California in order to deploy high speed internet. After AT&T bought them the project was canceled and the fiber was dug up and removed to prevent it from being ever used.
:-(
It's hard not to remember this every time I read about the multi-billion dollar tax breaks AT&T has been enjoying since I think 1996 that were supposed to help them provide high speed internet.
If anybody wants to double check this you can search old issues of the San Jose Mercury News in the library, or online if you want to pay a charge.
"They work long hours, often to exhaustion."
When I got started in programming in the late 1970's I used to hear similar things about the health risks. A programmer who worked across the street had to be hospitalized for a nervous breakdown after many months of 100 hour (no paid overtime) work weeks. I went to a party with my coworkers where their wives cornered me in the kitchen and told me to "get out now".
Since it looks like computer related jobs haven't changed a bit in 30 years, I'll bet the next New York Times article on the subject concerns blogging ruining marriages.
Here's some background on what the parent poster is talking about:
http://digitalfilipino.21publish.com/janette2/archive/2005/09/01/1ib3vbfqkvzhv.htm
Note that one of the people who respond to this blog entry claim that neighboring countries who *don't* collaborate with the BSA get huge discounts from Microsoft.
While this was going on, the big complaint from my friends over there who use internet cafes wasn't that linux was bad or hard to use. The complaint was that the linux version of yahoo chat didn't allow the use of webcams.
"The boom appeared to have been fueled by a development having nothing to do with culture or novels but by cellphone companies' decision to offer unlimited transmission of packet data, like text-messaging, as part of flat monthly rates."
I wish the companies involved would get reasonable and do that in the US. I have a good Yahoo! chat client on my phone and I never use it due to the ridiculous charges.
All I hope for now is that OpenMoko finally takes off and I'm actually allowed to use it for it's intended purpose.
The reason I'm not more gadget-oriented is because of telco behavior amoung other things. I'd really like to stop lugging the laptop around everywhere, I just feel all the current product and service offerings here in San Jose are rip-offs.
Have you ever watched a young person buy their first cel phone thinking 30 cents a minute it cheap ? Then when the first bill comes due for four or five hundred dollars the person is totally shocked ? Although Nicholas eventually gave his real name the last thing I recall him admitting about his real age was "In my 20s". So here's my speculation:
A 16 or 17 year old Brazilian kid who can't do math sneaked into SL a few years ago, started a bank, and all the avatars fell for it because they really wanted to believe.
Big dumb corporations are in the process of learning that an MMO world is not the same as a billboard or a television channel. The other thing they need to learn is that if they don't have a product that an avatar can use directly (virtual trees, etc) there is nothing there for them and they need to move on.
- up
If you saw some of the SL blog threads you'd laugh. Avatars try to explain they're in Second Life in the first place to get AWAY from advertising and mass media. Their voices are then drowned out by all the wannabee consultants and professional marketing tards.
If you want to see a good depiction of what this is like, check out this video:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1zv6w_the-break
unfortunately the non-disclosure agreement I clicked through prevents me from discussing it. All I can say is that I'm generally happy with it but won't be giving up anime fansubs anytime soon, especially the faux-720p h264 ones....
;-)
Sorry wish I could say more.
asm ??? notepad ??? I heard the same silly story in the late 70s when I was coding assembly on an IBM 360 mainframe and using punched cards. Some things never change, it might have been Gartner making those predictions too. :-)
Actually I'd try to use something like Voipbuster or Skype to get around the monthly fees vonage charges. I might be willing to pay extra too if I could get enough bandwidth for sip/Skype/wigiwigi video.
Another thing I wonder about it whether widespread BitTorrent usage would kill off the response time.
Also, if anyone outside North America is wondering why SBC is getting mentioned here, Cingular is the cellular division of SBC.
And my favorite story. Before SBC bought them out Pacific Bell was actually laying fiberoptic cable in my neighborhood (downtown San Jose, CA) so we could have *real* broadband. After SBC bought them the first thing they did was cancel the project and dig the fiber out so no one could use it.
He could try sending sms messages to foreign countries using the beta also. The rates to some countries are lower than rates to the usa.
Skype can have better or worse voice quality depending on a number of factors, usually the quality of the internet connection on both ends. When everything is working well, which is very often for me, the sound quality can be ALOT better than POTS.
You might want to just try it to see if it works well for you.
One bit of bad news for you, looking at your web page, is that the linux skype client is an old version that doesnt include video. For many people, myself included, the linux client doesnt work as well as the windows client.
Also this is a good way to compete with Yahoo! Messenger, which was recently upgraded to use the same voice codec as skype.
I tend to use Barnes and Noble for this purpose. Kind of a combination manga/o'reilly books cafe. Sometimes I even pay for coffee.
a japanese tv show called "Maid in Akihabara". The main character, a former bar girl working in a maid cafe, can't afford a place to live so she checks into an internet cafe each night. I was wondering if people in Japan actually did this, but the article makes it look very possible.
I still have another question, totally outside the scope of the article. In the movie Koi no Mon (aka Otakus in Love), there is a cosplay brothel. Anybody know if these exist or did the movie make that up ?
I vaguely recall reading about a service called lovegetty than does that. There is Japanese movie called Vibrator (a very good indy prod art film by the way) where a woman in a convience store meets a truck driver after her cel buzzes and spends the next 3 days with him.
Hopefully they add call forwarding too. With Skype I can get calls forwarded to my cel phone even when the computer if off.
The Y! linux client is a real bummer, it looks like they haven't done anything to it for years. The reason I started using windows again was because my Y! chat friends kept wanting to see me on a webcam.
I can even think of a whole country where the internet users would like to see a linux client as good as a windows client. After the raids last year many internet cafes in the Philippines took down their illegal copies of Windows and installed Linux. I heard alot of complaints for a while.
My favorite is actually wigiwigi, I use it whenever I can find someone computer literate enough to use it on the other end.