One problem I have with almost all of the massively multiplayer games out there is that there is defintely a point at which no new players can reasonably expect to join the game, because the long time players have gotten so many advantages over the newbies that the newbies can never expect to make up the difference.
Everquest's "solution" to this problem is the concept of death. If you are killed, you get thrown to be back of the bus with the newbies. Since nobody is immune, eventionally even the top players will die eventually so Joe Newbie should eventually have a chance to earn their way to the top.
But these kinds of "cheats", discovering that a misstep will lead to an encounter with a likely-to-be-fatal situation, lessens this possiblity and can make players practically immortal. This is damaging to the game, in that it leads to a situation where a newbie who starts today can never pass the leaders of today since those leaders will keep earning their way upward. EverQuest is practically closed to new admissions, and that's gotta be scary from the business office's view.
The comparison to TiVo is an interesting one. TiVo's policy is that they will gladly look the other way for some hacks, and in fact even make some of the hacks as easy as possible to pull off, in exchange for being able to declare certain hacks off-limits.
Specifically, they make it easy to upgrade a TiVo with a large hard disk by designing their single-disk designs to have a place where the second disk can fit nicely in the box. They also it possible for users who want to accomplish their "daily call" over the Internet rather than a phone line by just happening to leave the server that handles those sessions at an Internet-accessable location rather than requiring that the only way into their network is through their chosen dial-up providers. The company sponsors (but does not actually run) message boards at TivoCommunity.com where hacking discussion is encuraged, and people can compare notes and share experiences.
The tradeoff is that there are certain hacks that the company does not want to see made, and will not allow the TivoCommunity.com boards to discuss. There are the hacks that would either harm the company, like any hack that would provide another source of listings, which would eliminate the need to subscribe to TiVo's listing services, or any hack that would allow content to be extracted from the device which would surely bring down the wrath of the MPAA and friends.
By allowing wide open back doors into their system, TiVo has been able to direct hacking efforts into the areas the company wants to see them go. Yes, there are a few people trying to drill through the concrete and get the "forbidden hacks" to work, but their numbers are few and they operate in obscurity compared to the company-sponsored forums.
It's a total 180 from Everquest's "Thou shalt not hack us!" perspective. TiVo's offering carrots, Everquest is using rather ineffective sticks.
United's union is not asking for "more" money at this point, all of United's unions know that they must accept pay cuts in order for the company to survive. The debate is over how much of a cut each union is willing to take.
However, if they are in an adjacent industry, it becomes possible that the public might think that the Apple ISP is the same company that makes Apple Computers. The computer company doesn't need to ever intend to offer ISP services, they just need to be in a position where the public would believe that anybody who offered an Apple-branded ISP to be them. That's the whole point of trademark protection, that another entity cannot confuse the public into thinking that they are you.
Re:WHY so much of this lately?
on
The Apple Name Game
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The growth of the Internet also makes it possible to hear about stories that otherwise might not have been reported stateside. I mean, this was a rather minor case that happened half the world away from the USA, yet it's being reported on a USA-centric site.
Just like other news events, we seem to think that the frequency an event happening is the same as the frequency of the media reporting the event. Last year's "increase" in child abductions was such a case, actual cases did not increase, but the rollout of the Amber Alert system in many states gave police a process that notifed all of the local news outlets. Suddenly, child abductions went from a story in segment B of the newscast to a breaking story that disrupted programming. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News all have deals with groups of local stations take from their coverage, so a local special report can quickly go national on a slow news day. The public sees several reports on child abductions in a short time frame and thinks there's a crisis going on, when really the risk of the tradegy hasn't changed or is being driven down because a once ignored problem is getting so much attention.
There's the foul ball, however. It'd be one thing if Apple Communications were a pure phone company, but the moment they start offering a computer-based service, it's hard to argue that the average person will be able to keep the two companies straight.
Who are they trying to play off of?
on
The Apple Name Game
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
In Europe, there's also a telecomm company by the name of Orange. It appears their first selection of Apple Communications was the opposite of Orange, and now their second choice of Green is as well.
While we're at it... how did it route "Picard to Crusher", was that Dr. Crusher, or her son? Both with authorized to be on the bridge, and both had frequent contact with the man... yet the computer would never mis-route a communication to the wrong one.
That is one problem Star Trek never fully explained away... how the ship's computer knew it was being addressed rather than the character asking the question of another person in the room. Frequenly, the character would address it as "Computer", but far too often that command was skipped and it still worked.
Even a flawed security method works better than broadcasting every bit in the clear. Missed patches mean nothing when we can't even convince people to turn it on in the first place.
It always seems to go that every new technology is designed to be a straightforward as possible at first, and we all realize that there's a need to encrypt for the sake of security.
Why doesn't anybody ever release the secure version in the first place?
Whenever any product ships with pre-set default passwords or settings, there is always a segment of the population who will plug it in, see that it's working, and walk away. When a user plugs in a WiFi router, it should require the user to either turn on WEP, or make the user very aware that using the router in its default mode allows any other WiFi device that comes within range to connect, and that includes people who you might not want to let in.
Some people actually want to provide free bandwidth to the community, and I can't blame them for that. However, users need to know when they set themselves up with no security, that will be interpreted by the world as an open invitation for the public to come on in. If you want to block that, enable some sort of security.
Actually, it's been established that Robert X. Cringley is not his real name. There was actually a lawsuit because after he left a magazine, both he and the magazine claimed the right to continue using the name.
The thing is, the "Browser wars" is just the best-known example of Microsoft attempting to sqaush a competitor by including a duplicate of its product in the latest operating system. DOS 6 contained DoubleSpace, which was so close to a disk-space doubler called Stacker it resulted in MS losing a patent case. Microsoft eventually bought the company, and the decendant DriveSpace feature still resides in Windows XP, it's just rarely used because it's so easy to get a big HD now.
Trumpet had a business selling Winsock software, which made TCP/IP possible on Windows 3.1. Microsoft included native support in the operating system. Operating systems are now considered unacceptable if they don't include TCP/IP support in the base package.
So there's the rub... what's the difference between advancing an operating system, and using it to undercut other people's businesses?
One point of interest. The AG job in MA is an elected rather than appointed job. That is to say, Tom Reilly has to behave not as a lawyer decding which cases are likely to produce a win and which cases are sure losers, but as a slave to politics who has to decide which cases will get him the best media attention. I'm sure he now has the Open Source geek's vote locked up now.
Re:Cringely and P2P
on
Cringely on P2P
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The fact that the Luddites of the world are still out there. Remember, a Luddite is not somebody who doesn't understand or doesn't want to use new technologies. It is somebody who has a vested interest in seeing that others don't use the new technology, because it threatens their way of doing things.
Whenever a new technology creates a better way to do things, there's somebody who owns the old way of things who would rather that tech go back into the bottle. It rarely works, but they sure can give up quite a fight in the process of going down.
Re:silly quotes from article..
on
Cringely on P2P
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The problem of physical distribution of all forms of media is effectively solved. We now live in a situation where media can hit the average home in multiple ways. What we need, is institutions to tell us what media is worth our attention, and what isn't. This is why/. is considered superior to other message boards, there's an innovative moderation system here, and even a meta-moderation system to keep the moderation system tuned right.
That's what the indie artists of all kinds need right now. A service such as MP3.com that advertises them to a following of people. The problem is, of course, that any such service usually gets bought up by "big media" and we're back in the hole we started in.
I think the music industry is headed for the "widget frosting" model of business. Giving the core product away cheap or free, then making it up on the accessories.
HP is legendary for doing this with printers. Anybody notice that the cheapest printers always need the most expensive forms of ink? If you can't get them coming, get them going.
So Britney Spears makes more money going on tour in skimpy outfits, and being photographed in skimpy outfits than she does for singing in the first place... what a second, isn't that the way the industry has been for years, at least from the artist's point of view?
And text, well, text is even worse because it is easiest of all to steal. My columns are published in newspapers and websites and handed-in as college essays all over the world and there is almost nothing I can do about it because tracking down the perps costs me more than does their crime. From the perspective of the established publishers, there is also the horrible possibility that people might actually come to prefer material they find for free on the Internet -- not just pirated material but even original material. This column, after all, is free, and my Mother claims to find some value in it from time to time.
But you can never filter port 80 outbound, and you can never filter high ports in return. Use the HTTP ports backwards, and you can't close those ports without blocking web browsers.
AIMster was shut down by lawsuit, but nothing prevents another service piggy-backing a ride on AIM, or any other software that allows file sharing.
One of the most popular file sharing services at some colleges is simply the Windows Network Neighborhood. Some people are even sharing their whole hard drive without knowing it!
Fact is, whenever you have the ability to transmit files, you have the ability to transmit illegal files. IP is a P2P protocol by its nature. There's no way you can block illegal sharing without seriously reworking the 'net.
Re:Why the RIAA's P2P vendetta is crazy
on
Cringely on P2P
·
· Score: 2
Digital audio delivery is piggy-backing it's way into your home through a box sitting around most of your TV... DirecTV, Dish Network, and almost all digital cable systems have about 40 128kbps-quality audio streams coming in... streaming Internet Radio, you've been replaced.
The big difference? Music is always cheaper when somebody else is picking what track comes next. These digital music services aren't even allowed to release their playlists in advance... you will always have to pay for the right to hear the song you want to hear on your demand. In fact, newer versions of all of these services try to sell you CDs at higher prices than in the store.
This company isn't calling its visitors thieves, it's calling the visitors to the sites its customer runs theives.
They don't mind offending the people who block ads with software... that is not the target audience of their site anyway. They're speaking to the people who make money off of ads, people who would rather not see them blocked.
Slashdot Mirror
One problem I have with almost all of the massively multiplayer games out there is that there is defintely a point at which no new players can reasonably expect to join the game, because the long time players have gotten so many advantages over the newbies that the newbies can never expect to make up the difference. Everquest's "solution" to this problem is the concept of death. If you are killed, you get thrown to be back of the bus with the newbies. Since nobody is immune, eventionally even the top players will die eventually so Joe Newbie should eventually have a chance to earn their way to the top. But these kinds of "cheats", discovering that a misstep will lead to an encounter with a likely-to-be-fatal situation, lessens this possiblity and can make players practically immortal. This is damaging to the game, in that it leads to a situation where a newbie who starts today can never pass the leaders of today since those leaders will keep earning their way upward. EverQuest is practically closed to new admissions, and that's gotta be scary from the business office's view.
The comparison to TiVo is an interesting one. TiVo's policy is that they will gladly look the other way for some hacks, and in fact even make some of the hacks as easy as possible to pull off, in exchange for being able to declare certain hacks off-limits.
Specifically, they make it easy to upgrade a TiVo with a large hard disk by designing their single-disk designs to have a place where the second disk can fit nicely in the box. They also it possible for users who want to accomplish their "daily call" over the Internet rather than a phone line by just happening to leave the server that handles those sessions at an Internet-accessable location rather than requiring that the only way into their network is through their chosen dial-up providers. The company sponsors (but does not actually run) message boards at TivoCommunity.com where hacking discussion is encuraged, and people can compare notes and share experiences.
The tradeoff is that there are certain hacks that the company does not want to see made, and will not allow the TivoCommunity.com boards to discuss. There are the hacks that would either harm the company, like any hack that would provide another source of listings, which would eliminate the need to subscribe to TiVo's listing services, or any hack that would allow content to be extracted from the device which would surely bring down the wrath of the MPAA and friends.
By allowing wide open back doors into their system, TiVo has been able to direct hacking efforts into the areas the company wants to see them go. Yes, there are a few people trying to drill through the concrete and get the "forbidden hacks" to work, but their numbers are few and they operate in obscurity compared to the company-sponsored forums.
It's a total 180 from Everquest's "Thou shalt not hack us!" perspective. TiVo's offering carrots, Everquest is using rather ineffective sticks.
United's union is not asking for "more" money at this point, all of United's unions know that they must accept pay cuts in order for the company to survive. The debate is over how much of a cut each union is willing to take.
However, if they are in an adjacent industry, it becomes possible that the public might think that the Apple ISP is the same company that makes Apple Computers. The computer company doesn't need to ever intend to offer ISP services, they just need to be in a position where the public would believe that anybody who offered an Apple-branded ISP to be them. That's the whole point of trademark protection, that another entity cannot confuse the public into thinking that they are you.
The growth of the Internet also makes it possible to hear about stories that otherwise might not have been reported stateside. I mean, this was a rather minor case that happened half the world away from the USA, yet it's being reported on a USA-centric site. Just like other news events, we seem to think that the frequency an event happening is the same as the frequency of the media reporting the event. Last year's "increase" in child abductions was such a case, actual cases did not increase, but the rollout of the Amber Alert system in many states gave police a process that notifed all of the local news outlets. Suddenly, child abductions went from a story in segment B of the newscast to a breaking story that disrupted programming. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News all have deals with groups of local stations take from their coverage, so a local special report can quickly go national on a slow news day. The public sees several reports on child abductions in a short time frame and thinks there's a crisis going on, when really the risk of the tradegy hasn't changed or is being driven down because a once ignored problem is getting so much attention.
Yes, but just because you're trying to make a trademark that's far away from Company A, that doesn't clear you from infringing Company B's namespace.
There's the foul ball, however. It'd be one thing if Apple Communications were a pure phone company, but the moment they start offering a computer-based service, it's hard to argue that the average person will be able to keep the two companies straight.
In Europe, there's also a telecomm company by the name of Orange. It appears their first selection of Apple Communications was the opposite of Orange, and now their second choice of Green is as well.
While we're at it... how did it route "Picard to Crusher", was that Dr. Crusher, or her son? Both with authorized to be on the bridge, and both had frequent contact with the man... yet the computer would never mis-route a communication to the wrong one.
That is one problem Star Trek never fully explained away... how the ship's computer knew it was being addressed rather than the character asking the question of another person in the room. Frequenly, the character would address it as "Computer", but far too often that command was skipped and it still worked.
Even a flawed security method works better than broadcasting every bit in the clear. Missed patches mean nothing when we can't even convince people to turn it on in the first place.
It always seems to go that every new technology is designed to be a straightforward as possible at first, and we all realize that there's a need to encrypt for the sake of security.
Why doesn't anybody ever release the secure version in the first place?
Whenever any product ships with pre-set default passwords or settings, there is always a segment of the population who will plug it in, see that it's working, and walk away. When a user plugs in a WiFi router, it should require the user to either turn on WEP, or make the user very aware that using the router in its default mode allows any other WiFi device that comes within range to connect, and that includes people who you might not want to let in.
Some people actually want to provide free bandwidth to the community, and I can't blame them for that. However, users need to know when they set themselves up with no security, that will be interpreted by the world as an open invitation for the public to come on in. If you want to block that, enable some sort of security.
Actually, it's been established that Robert X. Cringley is not his real name. There was actually a lawsuit because after he left a magazine, both he and the magazine claimed the right to continue using the name.
The thing is, the "Browser wars" is just the best-known example of Microsoft attempting to sqaush a competitor by including a duplicate of its product in the latest operating system. DOS 6 contained DoubleSpace, which was so close to a disk-space doubler called Stacker it resulted in MS losing a patent case. Microsoft eventually bought the company, and the decendant DriveSpace feature still resides in Windows XP, it's just rarely used because it's so easy to get a big HD now.
Trumpet had a business selling Winsock software, which made TCP/IP possible on Windows 3.1. Microsoft included native support in the operating system. Operating systems are now considered unacceptable if they don't include TCP/IP support in the base package.
So there's the rub... what's the difference between advancing an operating system, and using it to undercut other people's businesses?
One point of interest. The AG job in MA is an elected rather than appointed job. That is to say, Tom Reilly has to behave not as a lawyer decding which cases are likely to produce a win and which cases are sure losers, but as a slave to politics who has to decide which cases will get him the best media attention. I'm sure he now has the Open Source geek's vote locked up now.
The fact that the Luddites of the world are still out there. Remember, a Luddite is not somebody who doesn't understand or doesn't want to use new technologies. It is somebody who has a vested interest in seeing that others don't use the new technology, because it threatens their way of doing things. Whenever a new technology creates a better way to do things, there's somebody who owns the old way of things who would rather that tech go back into the bottle. It rarely works, but they sure can give up quite a fight in the process of going down.
The problem of physical distribution of all forms of media is effectively solved. We now live in a situation where media can hit the average home in multiple ways. What we need, is institutions to tell us what media is worth our attention, and what isn't. This is why /. is considered superior to other message boards, there's an innovative moderation system here, and even a meta-moderation system to keep the moderation system tuned right.
That's what the indie artists of all kinds need right now. A service such as MP3.com that advertises them to a following of people. The problem is, of course, that any such service usually gets bought up by "big media" and we're back in the hole we started in.
I think the music industry is headed for the "widget frosting" model of business. Giving the core product away cheap or free, then making it up on the accessories.
HP is legendary for doing this with printers. Anybody notice that the cheapest printers always need the most expensive forms of ink? If you can't get them coming, get them going.
So Britney Spears makes more money going on tour in skimpy outfits, and being photographed in skimpy outfits than she does for singing in the first place... what a second, isn't that the way the industry has been for years, at least from the artist's point of view?
But you can never filter port 80 outbound, and you can never filter high ports in return. Use the HTTP ports backwards, and you can't close those ports without blocking web browsers.
AIMster was shut down by lawsuit, but nothing prevents another service piggy-backing a ride on AIM, or any other software that allows file sharing.
One of the most popular file sharing services at some colleges is simply the Windows Network Neighborhood. Some people are even sharing their whole hard drive without knowing it!
Fact is, whenever you have the ability to transmit files, you have the ability to transmit illegal files. IP is a P2P protocol by its nature. There's no way you can block illegal sharing without seriously reworking the 'net.
Digital audio delivery is piggy-backing it's way into your home through a box sitting around most of your TV... DirecTV, Dish Network, and almost all digital cable systems have about 40 128kbps-quality audio streams coming in... streaming Internet Radio, you've been replaced.
The big difference? Music is always cheaper when somebody else is picking what track comes next. These digital music services aren't even allowed to release their playlists in advance... you will always have to pay for the right to hear the song you want to hear on your demand. In fact, newer versions of all of these services try to sell you CDs at higher prices than in the store.
Or, as another option, rate the off target suggestions "three thumbs down" so that it gets the hint you didn't like whatever it came up with.
Furthermore, you only have to open up your code to those who you distribute your software to...
Which means Army can give software to the Navy, and they'd only have to give the code to the Navy, not to the general public.
This company isn't calling its visitors thieves, it's calling the visitors to the sites its customer runs theives.
They don't mind offending the people who block ads with software... that is not the target audience of their site anyway. They're speaking to the people who make money off of ads, people who would rather not see them blocked.