Not knocking the guy, he has a responsibility to the shareholders that he is appeasing...but lets say for example that Yahoo really didn't have big plans up its sleeve and was in trouble, would he really be saying anything different?
First there were pictures. Then it became fairly easy for everybody to take digital ones, and share them and so it was.
Then there were portable MP3 players and DV recorders and cell phone videos followed by easy to use distribution services for people to share them through, and so it was.
My prediction? This stuff was just giving us a glimpse of what is to eventually come. There is a technology that is completely linked up with these others through the distribution channel it will inevitably find itself on. Desktop fabrication. I'm talking 3D printers with downloadable blueprints that people share through P2P networks. You think the RIAA and MPAA are bad? Just wait till car manufacturers and insurance comopanies figure out that there are people driving "pirated" custom printed AMG55's that aren't made by Mercedes. I realize there's already a pirated car market in the East, but it is NOTHING like what we will eventually have. We're going to seriously reconsider how we view products, raw materials, IP, liability, etc. This is only the beginning.
My gut reaction is to respond to this with a solid NO. If we experience something "virtually" we're still experiencing it. It is a fundamentally different experience from actually operating the camera. Yes, much of the knowledge gained from actually using the device is directly applicable when you are actually holding it, but there is something to be said for the physical hands-on experience.
Or, perhaps the simplest answer...your students are dumb, they couldn't remember all of the instructions 100% accurately and screwed them up. Upon questioning their stupidity they responded "the computer...it...it gave me false memories! TETSUOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!"
What does everybody use for grabbing clips from DivX/Xvid files? Is there a way to grab a clip and automatically resave it as a new Divx/Xvid file? This would be a huge help for making AMVs from downloaded anime as well as splitting up the scenes in my um....personal...movie collection.
Thank you for putting into words what I could not. The whole time I watched it I felt like there was a lot of unnecessary tension there. Colbert being a geek and all, should have at the least paid the man the respect he has EARNED. Colbert frequently pays homage to geeky things and so it was kind of offputting to watch Will Wright who is a geek celebrity, get mocked in an unintelligent fashion by Colbert who I'm willing to bet is dying to play Spore as badly as the rest of us.
Bingo. Not only that but the escape key is likely to be disabled (or all keys for that matter) in an attempt to make you a truly "captive" audience. While I could certainly understand that option on loading screens for games that have them if it gave me a discount (especially on an MMO monthly fee) but unless there is some value add there I'm not buying it.
And I don't particularly like the excuse that "oh, well, production costs are higher so we need to supplement that somehow". Production costs have only gone up because studios think they need the latest and greatest technology to make an awesome game. As we have seen time and time again that is not true. So I really don't have much sympathy for them.
Last I checked Wikipedia was not a for-profit company. These guys are just trying to milk the mainstream for free labor and they know it. People who can break quality stories are often people who know the value of those stories. If I called Reuters or Yahoo to give them an exclusive story for something new and hot and they asked me to submit it for free with this new service I'd laugh at them and tell them I'll see what amount their competitors will offer me and how it probably won't have to be much to beat their offer of nothing.
Agreed on the background. A good start on the history and the major players in this field can be found on Wikipedia. In includes a nice timeline with pictures of the various forms the technology has evolved into over the years.
One thing I didn't see on there and maybe a Slashdotter can help me...is the wearable unit created by one of the folks at the MIT Media Lab I believe. It was a tiny little laser that looked about the size of two watch batteries stacked together and it clipped to the top of a regular pair of glasses (so no horrid form factor) and projected a low-power laser directly into the eye which displayed the screen. Can anybody provide links to this? Is this something commercially available yet? Seems like all these people wasting their time would be better served just making an add on for regular glasses as people are more than fine buying them for purely aesthetic purposes these days and those frames would look a helluva lot better than anything a technology designer would come up with.
While they are indeed similar, they are still drastically different. In the US if you don't like the way a certain website is promoting certain viewpoints, you are free to take your message to a different website without big brother coming a knockin at your door. Or hell, take the message to the streets if you want!
Try doing that in China and then tell me how much your example applies to that form of censorship.
So Zango is one problem, and not to digress, but when will MySpace do something about the scum that is True? Something tells me True must be paying them quite a hefty sum every month for the kind of placement they have on that site because MySpace sure as hell isn't doing it for the pristidigous brand name of True. Google it and look at the kind of results that pop up. They have many investigations going on against them right now and I'd say they're just as fraudulent as Zango.
So uh...what is different about this from other community sites for WoW? Why should I switch? Ok, so it has in-game IM...that COULD be useful as long as it doesn't clutter things and provides more functionality than the current whisper or guild chat system. But honestly I think he's entering a market that is WAY too crowded and that is sensible enough to recognize this for what it is, another jumping on the "me too" gryphon.
I'm right with you. I am actually ok with them giving a game away for free where you have to buy the components and I think that model could work for them in the future. But what pissed everybody off was the fact that they were essentially saying "yeah, we're selling you the full game...but uh....you have to buy all this other crap online for way more if you want it to be worth playing". Full my ass.
Bingo. Its not a question of IF Earth gets wiped out. Its a question of WHEN. And yes, it probably won't be happening in the foreseeable future for us, but it could really happen at any time and there's not a damn thing we could do if a large enough meteor was heading our way. In any event, when you're talking about the survival of a species, its best not to leave things to chance.
Although personally I think we'll all kill ourselves in stupid wars before we get enough people off this blasted rock to seed a new world.
Exactly. And I post this everytime a story about MMORPG addiction is posted but for those wondering how it could possibly addict someone that badly, I STRONGLY urge you to read this excellent essay on how EQ (and games similar to it) are essentially giant virtual Skinner Boxes. Psychological addiction can be just as bad, if not worse than chemical addiction. At least with chemical addiction once its out of your system you stop craving it for the most part.
Why would you assume that this was device was unique?
No kidding. I can picture the conversation now:
"Hey guys, lets take this brand new device which is technological leap years ahead of our current technology and would certainly sell for a lot if more were produced, and lets stick the only one we got on this here ship and send it off to god knows what fate on the sea."
Just out of curiosity, how in the hell could you justify paying $15/mo for this service?
Thats the thing that gets me...I KNOW this type of data transfer does not cost the companies anywhere near this much, yet they continue to keep raising the prices of new services that are still just data being streamed. It is absofuckinglutley ridiculous. And don't even get me started on the fact that SMS costs more than voice chat.
I get paid for every hour I work. I will work my ass off...
And this is why I've decided to eventually find a way to make money off of the hourly rate, such as by selling a product. If your pay is tied to your hourly rate, you have hit the glass ceiling. The potential for more income beyond the hours you work (and the freedom that comes with this) is certainly worth it, no?
While I agree that Digg's quicker updates make it more "relevant", and that Slashdot indeed needs a shakeup with its editors there is a reason Slashdot is still superior. In the Digg comments for that story, most of the people quite obviously have no science to back up their responses. On Slashdot you will find some of the most thorough scientific debunking on the net. You see, not only do the intelligent people on Slashdot hate to see crap like this posted, but they also hate for people to read it and go away believing it. So they do their due diligence and make a post explaining why, scientifically, something is a load of crap.
And yes, there are plenty of pseudo scientists who post their crap along with the real ones, but the good ones tend to be validated by others and filter to the top. So while I read Digg to stay up to date on the latest greatest 5 minutes of distraction, I come to Slashdot to read the discussions and learn the varying viewpoints on things.
Look around a college campus during class change. How many of those people have a phone attached to their head, completely ignoring all the real people around them?
As opposed to who? The fake people they are talking to on the phone?
I've been noticing a real trend from older generations lately. They seem to think that just because we have alternate methods of communication and connection...with most of the newer ones not involving direct face-to-face contact, that we are becoming disconnected. To some extent yes, we are. There is a lot lost when you do not have the in person interaction. However there is a LOT to be gained from the new forms of connection. Not only is it streamlined (with the exception of MySpace, har har) enabling us to process far more information about people and thus broaden our networks and make them much larger than previous generations were capable of (even if the individual connections are considerably weaker), but we are also able to filter. And filtering has been having quite the interesting effect. It seems to make people view each other in much higher contrast. You see, if I filter for people that have similar interests, I am going to be more likely to respond to them in a positive way, since it is assumed we have a lot in common. Of course, this kind of puts a stake in the heart of the old saying "Opposites attract" since I likely will never interact with my opposites...at least if I have my way with filtering. And that creates a whole new can of worms waiting to be opened.
But please, do not think we are less connected and divorced from reality. There are several bad examples out there that the media picks up on, but the vast majority of younger people know damn well what is real and what is't. It just seems that their collective definition of reality differs slightly from that of older generations as we become more and more accepting of virtual reality as a part of our lives. Ah well, as soon as the non-internet generations die off perhaps we'll be done with this argument. Heh, who am I kidding, I'm 23 and when I'm 60 I'll probably think that the kids who live their lives entirely within a Matrix like VR shell are disconnected from reality.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do I have an image in my head of a Canadian rocket-jumping over the border yelling, "Up here ay?!"
Then there were portable MP3 players and DV recorders and cell phone videos followed by easy to use distribution services for people to share them through, and so it was.
My prediction? This stuff was just giving us a glimpse of what is to eventually come. There is a technology that is completely linked up with these others through the distribution channel it will inevitably find itself on. Desktop fabrication. I'm talking 3D printers with downloadable blueprints that people share through P2P networks. You think the RIAA and MPAA are bad? Just wait till car manufacturers and insurance comopanies figure out that there are people driving "pirated" custom printed AMG55's that aren't made by Mercedes. I realize there's already a pirated car market in the East, but it is NOTHING like what we will eventually have. We're going to seriously reconsider how we view products, raw materials, IP, liability, etc. This is only the beginning.
Or, perhaps the simplest answer...your students are dumb, they couldn't remember all of the instructions 100% accurately and screwed them up. Upon questioning their stupidity they responded "the computer...it...it gave me false memories! TETSUOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!"
Something like that.
And I don't particularly like the excuse that "oh, well, production costs are higher so we need to supplement that somehow". Production costs have only gone up because studios think they need the latest and greatest technology to make an awesome game. As we have seen time and time again that is not true. So I really don't have much sympathy for them.
One thing I didn't see on there and maybe a Slashdotter can help me...is the wearable unit created by one of the folks at the MIT Media Lab I believe. It was a tiny little laser that looked about the size of two watch batteries stacked together and it clipped to the top of a regular pair of glasses (so no horrid form factor) and projected a low-power laser directly into the eye which displayed the screen. Can anybody provide links to this? Is this something commercially available yet? Seems like all these people wasting their time would be better served just making an add on for regular glasses as people are more than fine buying them for purely aesthetic purposes these days and those frames would look a helluva lot better than anything a technology designer would come up with.
Try doing that in China and then tell me how much your example applies to that form of censorship.
Although personally I think we'll all kill ourselves in stupid wars before we get enough people off this blasted rock to seed a new world.
(Computerized Voice) "If you are looking for trouble, then you have found it."
"Hey guys, lets take this brand new device which is technological leap years ahead of our current technology and would certainly sell for a lot if more were produced, and lets stick the only one we got on this here ship and send it off to god knows what fate on the sea."
Not just a great commercial, but also great for the song that is played in it. Apparently that song is top of the charts right now thanks to that ad.
Thats the thing that gets me...I KNOW this type of data transfer does not cost the companies anywhere near this much, yet they continue to keep raising the prices of new services that are still just data being streamed. It is absofuckinglutley ridiculous. And don't even get me started on the fact that SMS costs more than voice chat.
And this is why I've decided to eventually find a way to make money off of the hourly rate, such as by selling a product. If your pay is tied to your hourly rate, you have hit the glass ceiling. The potential for more income beyond the hours you work (and the freedom that comes with this) is certainly worth it, no?
And yes, there are plenty of pseudo scientists who post their crap along with the real ones, but the good ones tend to be validated by others and filter to the top. So while I read Digg to stay up to date on the latest greatest 5 minutes of distraction, I come to Slashdot to read the discussions and learn the varying viewpoints on things.
As opposed to who? The fake people they are talking to on the phone?
I've been noticing a real trend from older generations lately. They seem to think that just because we have alternate methods of communication and connection...with most of the newer ones not involving direct face-to-face contact, that we are becoming disconnected. To some extent yes, we are. There is a lot lost when you do not have the in person interaction. However there is a LOT to be gained from the new forms of connection. Not only is it streamlined (with the exception of MySpace, har har) enabling us to process far more information about people and thus broaden our networks and make them much larger than previous generations were capable of (even if the individual connections are considerably weaker), but we are also able to filter. And filtering has been having quite the interesting effect. It seems to make people view each other in much higher contrast. You see, if I filter for people that have similar interests, I am going to be more likely to respond to them in a positive way, since it is assumed we have a lot in common. Of course, this kind of puts a stake in the heart of the old saying "Opposites attract" since I likely will never interact with my opposites...at least if I have my way with filtering. And that creates a whole new can of worms waiting to be opened.
But please, do not think we are less connected and divorced from reality. There are several bad examples out there that the media picks up on, but the vast majority of younger people know damn well what is real and what is't. It just seems that their collective definition of reality differs slightly from that of older generations as we become more and more accepting of virtual reality as a part of our lives. Ah well, as soon as the non-internet generations die off perhaps we'll be done with this argument. Heh, who am I kidding, I'm 23 and when I'm 60 I'll probably think that the kids who live their lives entirely within a Matrix like VR shell are disconnected from reality.