The digital fascism that ABC seems to be supporting would normally lead me to boycott their products. But since I don't watch any ABC shows anyway (teh suck), that probably wouldn't be much of a statement on my part. Nevertheless, I certainly won't be rushing to watch any of their shows now that I know how they feel about my freedom not to watch their ads. I watch plenty of ads already, rarely skipping unless I'm pressed for time. But I'd consider being forced to watch ads on my TiVo recorded shows to be an act of war. Don't mess with my bread and circuses!
It would be nice if it came out earlier from the standpoint to rabid...err...enthusiastic gamers, but there may actually be more advantage in coming out around the same time as the PS3. If Wii comes out at the same time as PS3, the stark contrast in price will be more apparent. And coupled with PS3 shortages, Wii could gain a lot of sales by being both cheaper and more available. Being innovative and having a stronger launch line up would also help Wii versus PS3. This also depends on Nintendo being able to meet demand too. If they come out early and then have low supplies when the PS3 comes out, they won't be able to press that advantage. But given the lower cost of producing the Wii, it is likely that supplies won't be as big an issue for Nintendo. This of course is all speculation.
I guess he just won't be punished by us! Even though he was involved in something that ruined the livelihoods of thousands of people, I can't help but feel a little sorry for him ending this way. Even if one argues that dying now is better than jail time, some will see it as divine judgement, or the karma wheel having a turn. I don't think this is the end he would have wanted. But perhaps those who were hurt by him will sleep easier now...
Indeed, I think most casual gamers would not consider themselves as gamers at all. I don't play my RPGs for long enough stretches to be considered a hardcore gamer, but I do have a lot of interest in games, I follow the industry and code a little. So I do consider myself a gamer, even though I don't really play more than a few hours a week on average (too much other stuff to do).
At this point, they'd better not do too much air travel with that stuff in their veins or they'll be arrested. Seriously, Sony seems to be doing all they can to nuke the PS3 launch. Expensive console + expensive games + another confusing format war != success in the marketplace. Assuming they are not high or insane, then that just leaves full of hubris. They must really think they own the market and can do whatever they want. If so, they're about to find out that hype and fanbois/fangrrls cannot carry a console.
Actually this sounds like a decent and neighborly idea. It would be better though if they had someone other than law enforcement do the notifying since the real point isn't that some horrible criminal things might happen if you leave your access point open. The point is to make people aware of something that maybe they did not intend to do and thereby give them a choice. Having "the man" come by to tell you about it can have nothing but negative vibes. Some people want to leave there access points open, but I suspect that most users simply leave the defaults in place, which are often open or well known. Why not work with a local volunteer group to get the word out in a friendly, nonthreatening manner?
This actually looks like a nice advertising move. Imagine if your first encounter with the Gap was in some game like SL and later you discovered the real thing in RL. It might be amusing/cool enough to make you more likely to buy something at the RL store. It's probably too soon to tell, but American Apparel might just see some RL store sales from this. Heck, this/. story about them won't hurt either. The only real problem here is that SL is not the most popular MMO around. Now if they could open a shop in Azeroth, then they'd be talking!
Hmmm, creating a huge database of child porn in order to fight child porn seems like a pretty wonky idea. Wouldn't it be better to simply hire and train real humans to track this stuff down and aid law enforcement in finding the producers of this junk? Technology is great, but there are quite a lot of tasks for which automation is not a substitute, especially if one's goal is the just application of the law. But I fear that right now we are living in a climate in which a thirst for surveillance rather than a thirst for justice is holding sway.
There have been plenty of comments here about robots taking over the world, etc.. But this does remind me a bit of the conversations among the Tachikoma, the spider-like AI mini-tanks of the anime Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. The Tachikoma link up and discuss all sorts of things during their downtime. I remember one such discussion involved taking over the world. In that case, I believe the Major was listening in on them, but if robots are left to evolve their own languages, isn't it likely that we humans won't be able to understand anymore? Sufficiently capable robots might just decide that the best way to get the ball and play with it might be to get rid of those pesky humans first!
I hate to be mean, but this just looks like another case of lawyers and distraught/greeding parents trying to cash in on a tragic situation. As irresponsible as people can be, I really do not believe that any reasonable person believes MySpace holds any responsibility for what happened. Ultimately, people are responsible for their own actions and deep inside everybody knows this to be true. Lawsuits like these are more about revenge and greed than they are about going after the people responsible for some wrong-doing.
Well, Yahoo! (and the others) are just following the money. And of course cutting stuff out of returned search results is probably not very hard to do, if you really don't care about unintentionally blocking other stuff. We can all be pretty sure that the saavy Chinese internet user knows that the results they get back are censored. It's too bad that U.S. based companies have to be such willing participants. But hey, they're just in it for the money like any for profit corporation. Just stating the obvious...
Seriously, if Balmer were to step down too, the door would be open for some substantial change at Microsoft. Just like the palace revolution Steve Jobs staged on his return to Apple which saw, among other things, the Copeland project dropped in favor of what became the BSD based (essentially) MacOS X, a big change at the top of Microsoft could open the door to MS Linux. The fact is that it is really Office that keeps companies in Microsoft's corner more than Windows itself. Most don't care about the OS, as long as it runs Microsoft Office. MS could still make gobs of money and even cut costs by not having to use so many resources on OS development. They could focus more energy on a great user experience. And being able to offer a great OS at a much lower price, the piracy problem would not be such a big deal anymore. And we all know that the major PC makers would continue to bundle the MS OS along with all of the other stuff they do. Third party software publishers might complain at first, but they would quickly get on board too, to stay in business.
I know there are plenty of obstacles to this, but the biggest by far is probably the pride of the current leadership.
That's a very good question. My guess is that since the theft is relatively high profile, that eBay may feel obliged to shut down all auctions of black DS Lites for a while. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if Nintendo itself made such a request. In any case, anyone trying to sell any of the stolen DS Lites is likely going to attract more attention than usual for a while and has a higher risk of getting caught. Knowing this, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to try to get a black DS Lite on eBay right now since you wouldn't know and may even end up having to give the DS back if it turns out to be part of the stolen shipment.
Hmm, it looks like Flickr is between a rock and a hard place. I don't know exactly how they do it now, but I would guess they use automation to flag images that are not considered photographic. It's just too big a job to do this manually, even if you offshore the whole thing to a low wage country. So if they decide that due to demand, to allow "photos" of users' virtual lives in WoW, SL, FFXI, etc., then policing it is going to be a real challenge. There are ways to make it easier to automate this, but the things I have in mind right now would require some tech saavy on the part of the user. It would not be wise to assume that just because someone figured out how to take an in-game snapshot, that they also know how to either add the necessary digital tags say, or avoid wiping said tags during the editing process. And of course this would be open to the usual abuse fueled by commercial interests. Some kind of community based policing might be the best bet, but none of these solutions will be perfect. And this all assumes that there is enough demand for this from Flickr customers. If not, they could just keep quiet and wait for the next story to make people forget about this!
This is just more fuel for the fire. Next there will be an article about some CEO complaining about how there aren't enough skilled IT workers in the U.S. and how college students are not entering the field. I just don't understand how U.S. companies can continue to build up so much ill-will (or bad karma if you will) with practices that BoA at least acknowledges are offensive and yet continue said practices. A big price is going to be paid for these betrayals someday, a very big price.
Ahem! Not that I know anything about porn, cough, but you're quite right. I remember working at a company where there was talk of taking some cues from porn sites in technologies to deploy on various web sites we were setting up because they tended to be cutting edge. Heck, one of the first programs I ever wrote was a uudecoder for multipart picture posts...cough cough...
Hmmm, the only way this won't be as big a waste is if the results are used in the premise of the next great reality based TV show. The real crooks and terrorists are not going to make finding them that easy, so most of the data collected will be from the mostly ridiculous and sometimes pathetic lives of ordinary, mostly young, people. Afterall, we old folks already have enough good sense not to link our real lives with the net, right???? It could all be quite entertaining and won't require the hiring of any writers, since good ones are so hard to find.
When I opened up this Slashdot article in Internet Explorer, the headline read "U.S. House Rejects Net Neutrality" but when I opened it up in Firefox it read "Wealthy Old White Men Reject Yet Another Form Of Equality."
Same as it ever was... This is yet another attempt to squeeze money out of the internet. In the end it will be won by those with the money to buy off the most politicians. Never mind making new things and innovation, just squeeze squeeze squeeze. One could even argue that the juiciest targets are not the big multimedia content providers, but the hundreds, if not thousands of porn sites out there. In aggregate, the bandwidth used for adult entertainment on the web is probably significant. So these efforts could be seen as a backdoor way (pardon the pun) for "legitimate" companies to profit from porn.
I don't really think it's a cop out, but it may actually be missing an even bigger picture than Yahoo! acknowledges in their letter. Yes, Yahoo! and other multinationals must obey the local laws to do business in a given country. And yes, that may mean being at odds with their own values. But what they miss or fail to acknowledge are the long term costs to them of being on the wrong side. If China ever does develop into what the west recognizes as a free and open society, there will very likely be those who want to punish the companies that were willing supporters of the previous oppressive regime. That means that companies like Yahoo!, Google, MSN and others may find themselves on the outside looking in. All of that stuff about the benefits they bring to the Chinese people by being in China may be true, but people who have been hurt have a habit of forgetting subtleties like that. They will remember all of the people jailed and executed with the help of said company though.
It may well be that in the long run, greater profits are to be made by being on the right side in the first place rather than taking that quick buck now.
I hear you! After PCXL went away, I started looking at consoles more for gaming. I miss PCXL's craziness and often hard edged commentary. These days, I read EGM, but it really isn't the same, though it is a good mag.
Even if this is true, it wouldn't be the first time that developers have had to wrangle with funky hardware and still manage to get some impressive games out. The Saturn architecture made it a bear to program for and still it had some impressive games and the PS2 itself took some time to work out as well. So while, developers certainly won't be happy if Cell is gimped, they'll figure out something, they have to! I seriously doubt that the bosses at EA, Sega, or Konami are just going to ignore the PS3 because of this.
Indeed, most "normal" people are not going to run out and buy a new OS. And the hardcore gamers were going to buy Vista anyway since they're always on the cutting edge. So I don't really see how Microsoft expects to get any more sales out of this move. Most people will get Vista the way they always do, when they buy a new PC and most of those people are not the cutting edge gamer types.
Assuming that Microsoft knows/agrees with all of this, it could be that the DirectX 10 move is just a technical one to save them time, money, and hassle. Yeah, they'll market and hype it up, but only to keep Vista in the news and give the look that things are moving forward.
Bravo! The subtle nature of the changes is very appealing. I can't wait to see this go live. It'll be almost like having a brand new Slashdot. Kinda reminds me of the last time my wife changed her hair...hmmm, better call the hair dresser...heh heh...
I've lost count too and certainly won't be the first in line to buy a PS3. Sony does seem to be going out of their way to sink the PS3 launch and by extension the rest of their business. There's still time to make it all work, but if even some of these stories are true, they're going to need some major internal shake up to get back on track. It's too bad that this sort of thing nearly always happens to market leaders who become overconfident and arrogant. At this rate, the sound that Sony makes when it falls will be deafening!
Slashdot Mirror
The digital fascism that ABC seems to be supporting would normally lead me to boycott their products. But since I don't watch any ABC shows anyway (teh suck), that probably wouldn't be much of a statement on my part. Nevertheless, I certainly won't be rushing to watch any of their shows now that I know how they feel about my freedom not to watch their ads. I watch plenty of ads already, rarely skipping unless I'm pressed for time. But I'd consider being forced to watch ads on my TiVo recorded shows to be an act of war. Don't mess with my bread and circuses!
It would be nice if it came out earlier from the standpoint to rabid...err...enthusiastic gamers, but there may actually be more advantage in coming out around the same time as the PS3. If Wii comes out at the same time as PS3, the stark contrast in price will be more apparent. And coupled with PS3 shortages, Wii could gain a lot of sales by being both cheaper and more available. Being innovative and having a stronger launch line up would also help Wii versus PS3. This also depends on Nintendo being able to meet demand too. If they come out early and then have low supplies when the PS3 comes out, they won't be able to press that advantage. But given the lower cost of producing the Wii, it is likely that supplies won't be as big an issue for Nintendo. This of course is all speculation.
I guess he just won't be punished by us! Even though he was involved in something that ruined the livelihoods of thousands of people, I can't help but feel a little sorry for him ending this way. Even if one argues that dying now is better than jail time, some will see it as divine judgement, or the karma wheel having a turn. I don't think this is the end he would have wanted. But perhaps those who were hurt by him will sleep easier now...
Indeed, I think most casual gamers would not consider themselves as gamers at all. I don't play my RPGs for long enough stretches to be considered a hardcore gamer, but I do have a lot of interest in games, I follow the industry and code a little. So I do consider myself a gamer, even though I don't really play more than a few hours a week on average (too much other stuff to do).
At this point, they'd better not do too much air travel with that stuff in their veins or they'll be arrested. Seriously, Sony seems to be doing all they can to nuke the PS3 launch. Expensive console + expensive games + another confusing format war != success in the marketplace. Assuming they are not high or insane, then that just leaves full of hubris. They must really think they own the market and can do whatever they want. If so, they're about to find out that hype and fanbois/fangrrls cannot carry a console.
Actually this sounds like a decent and neighborly idea. It would be better though if they had someone other than law enforcement do the notifying since the real point isn't that some horrible criminal things might happen if you leave your access point open. The point is to make people aware of something that maybe they did not intend to do and thereby give them a choice. Having "the man" come by to tell you about it can have nothing but negative vibes. Some people want to leave there access points open, but I suspect that most users simply leave the defaults in place, which are often open or well known. Why not work with a local volunteer group to get the word out in a friendly, nonthreatening manner?
This actually looks like a nice advertising move. Imagine if your first encounter with the Gap was in some game like SL and later you discovered the real thing in RL. It might be amusing/cool enough to make you more likely to buy something at the RL store. It's probably too soon to tell, but American Apparel might just see some RL store sales from this. Heck, this /. story about them won't hurt either. The only real problem here is that SL is not the most popular MMO around. Now if they could open a shop in Azeroth, then they'd be talking!
Hmmm, creating a huge database of child porn in order to fight child porn seems like a pretty wonky idea. Wouldn't it be better to simply hire and train real humans to track this stuff down and aid law enforcement in finding the producers of this junk? Technology is great, but there are quite a lot of tasks for which automation is not a substitute, especially if one's goal is the just application of the law. But I fear that right now we are living in a climate in which a thirst for surveillance rather than a thirst for justice is holding sway.
There have been plenty of comments here about robots taking over the world, etc.. But this does remind me a bit of the conversations among the Tachikoma, the spider-like AI mini-tanks of the anime Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. The Tachikoma link up and discuss all sorts of things during their downtime. I remember one such discussion involved taking over the world. In that case, I believe the Major was listening in on them, but if robots are left to evolve their own languages, isn't it likely that we humans won't be able to understand anymore? Sufficiently capable robots might just decide that the best way to get the ball and play with it might be to get rid of those pesky humans first!
I hate to be mean, but this just looks like another case of lawyers and distraught/greeding parents trying to cash in on a tragic situation. As irresponsible as people can be, I really do not believe that any reasonable person believes MySpace holds any responsibility for what happened. Ultimately, people are responsible for their own actions and deep inside everybody knows this to be true. Lawsuits like these are more about revenge and greed than they are about going after the people responsible for some wrong-doing.
Well, Yahoo! (and the others) are just following the money. And of course cutting stuff out of returned search results is probably not very hard to do, if you really don't care about unintentionally blocking other stuff. We can all be pretty sure that the saavy Chinese internet user knows that the results they get back are censored. It's too bad that U.S. based companies have to be such willing participants. But hey, they're just in it for the money like any for profit corporation. Just stating the obvious...
Seriously, if Balmer were to step down too, the door would be open for some substantial change at Microsoft. Just like the palace revolution Steve Jobs staged on his return to Apple which saw, among other things, the Copeland project dropped in favor of what became the BSD based (essentially) MacOS X, a big change at the top of Microsoft could open the door to MS Linux. The fact is that it is really Office that keeps companies in Microsoft's corner more than Windows itself. Most don't care about the OS, as long as it runs Microsoft Office. MS could still make gobs of money and even cut costs by not having to use so many resources on OS development. They could focus more energy on a great user experience. And being able to offer a great OS at a much lower price, the piracy problem would not be such a big deal anymore. And we all know that the major PC makers would continue to bundle the MS OS along with all of the other stuff they do. Third party software publishers might complain at first, but they would quickly get on board too, to stay in business.
I know there are plenty of obstacles to this, but the biggest by far is probably the pride of the current leadership.
That's a very good question. My guess is that since the theft is relatively high profile, that eBay may feel obliged to shut down all auctions of black DS Lites for a while. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if Nintendo itself made such a request. In any case, anyone trying to sell any of the stolen DS Lites is likely going to attract more attention than usual for a while and has a higher risk of getting caught. Knowing this, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to try to get a black DS Lite on eBay right now since you wouldn't know and may even end up having to give the DS back if it turns out to be part of the stolen shipment.
Hmm, it looks like Flickr is between a rock and a hard place. I don't know exactly how they do it now, but I would guess they use automation to flag images that are not considered photographic. It's just too big a job to do this manually, even if you offshore the whole thing to a low wage country. So if they decide that due to demand, to allow "photos" of users' virtual lives in WoW, SL, FFXI, etc., then policing it is going to be a real challenge. There are ways to make it easier to automate this, but the things I have in mind right now would require some tech saavy on the part of the user. It would not be wise to assume that just because someone figured out how to take an in-game snapshot, that they also know how to either add the necessary digital tags say, or avoid wiping said tags during the editing process. And of course this would be open to the usual abuse fueled by commercial interests. Some kind of community based policing might be the best bet, but none of these solutions will be perfect. And this all assumes that there is enough demand for this from Flickr customers. If not, they could just keep quiet and wait for the next story to make people forget about this!
Well, I can't wait to see the iPod ad inspired parodies that this is likely to produce!
This is just more fuel for the fire. Next there will be an article about some CEO complaining about how there aren't enough skilled IT workers in the U.S. and how college students are not entering the field. I just don't understand how U.S. companies can continue to build up so much ill-will (or bad karma if you will) with practices that BoA at least acknowledges are offensive and yet continue said practices. A big price is going to be paid for these betrayals someday, a very big price.
Ahem! Not that I know anything about porn, cough, but you're quite right. I remember working at a company where there was talk of taking some cues from porn sites in technologies to deploy on various web sites we were setting up because they tended to be cutting edge. Heck, one of the first programs I ever wrote was a uudecoder for multipart picture posts...cough cough...
Hmmm, the only way this won't be as big a waste is if the results are used in the premise of the next great reality based TV show. The real crooks and terrorists are not going to make finding them that easy, so most of the data collected will be from the mostly ridiculous and sometimes pathetic lives of ordinary, mostly young, people. Afterall, we old folks already have enough good sense not to link our real lives with the net, right???? It could all be quite entertaining and won't require the hiring of any writers, since good ones are so hard to find.
When I opened up this Slashdot article in Internet Explorer, the headline read "U.S. House Rejects Net Neutrality" but when I opened it up in Firefox it read "Wealthy Old White Men Reject Yet Another Form Of Equality."
Same as it ever was... This is yet another attempt to squeeze money out of the internet. In the end it will be won by those with the money to buy off the most politicians. Never mind making new things and innovation, just squeeze squeeze squeeze. One could even argue that the juiciest targets are not the big multimedia content providers, but the hundreds, if not thousands of porn sites out there. In aggregate, the bandwidth used for adult entertainment on the web is probably significant. So these efforts could be seen as a backdoor way (pardon the pun) for "legitimate" companies to profit from porn.
I don't really think it's a cop out, but it may actually be missing an even bigger picture than Yahoo! acknowledges in their letter. Yes, Yahoo! and other multinationals must obey the local laws to do business in a given country. And yes, that may mean being at odds with their own values. But what they miss or fail to acknowledge are the long term costs to them of being on the wrong side. If China ever does develop into what the west recognizes as a free and open society, there will very likely be those who want to punish the companies that were willing supporters of the previous oppressive regime. That means that companies like Yahoo!, Google, MSN and others may find themselves on the outside looking in. All of that stuff about the benefits they bring to the Chinese people by being in China may be true, but people who have been hurt have a habit of forgetting subtleties like that. They will remember all of the people jailed and executed with the help of said company though.
It may well be that in the long run, greater profits are to be made by being on the right side in the first place rather than taking that quick buck now.
Game magazines died with PC Accelerator...
I hear you! After PCXL went away, I started looking at consoles more for gaming. I miss PCXL's craziness and often hard edged commentary. These days, I read EGM, but it really isn't the same, though it is a good mag.
Even if this is true, it wouldn't be the first time that developers have had to wrangle with funky hardware and still manage to get some impressive games out. The Saturn architecture made it a bear to program for and still it had some impressive games and the PS2 itself took some time to work out as well. So while, developers certainly won't be happy if Cell is gimped, they'll figure out something, they have to! I seriously doubt that the bosses at EA, Sega, or Konami are just going to ignore the PS3 because of this.
Indeed, most "normal" people are not going to run out and buy a new OS. And the hardcore gamers were going to buy Vista anyway since they're always on the cutting edge. So I don't really see how Microsoft expects to get any more sales out of this move. Most people will get Vista the way they always do, when they buy a new PC and most of those people are not the cutting edge gamer types.
Assuming that Microsoft knows/agrees with all of this, it could be that the DirectX 10 move is just a technical one to save them time, money, and hassle. Yeah, they'll market and hype it up, but only to keep Vista in the news and give the look that things are moving forward.
Bravo! The subtle nature of the changes is very appealing. I can't wait to see this go live. It'll be almost like having a brand new Slashdot. Kinda reminds me of the last time my wife changed her hair...hmmm, better call the hair dresser...heh heh...
I've lost count too and certainly won't be the first in line to buy a PS3. Sony does seem to be going out of their way to sink the PS3 launch and by extension the rest of their business. There's still time to make it all work, but if even some of these stories are true, they're going to need some major internal shake up to get back on track. It's too bad that this sort of thing nearly always happens to market leaders who become overconfident and arrogant. At this rate, the sound that Sony makes when it falls will be deafening!