how many politicians are on facebook now? facebook is THE social network
Indeed, just like how MySpace was THE social network. And how Friendster was THE social network. And how LiveJournal was THE social network. And how...
Not to mention how there's certainly no politicians or celebrities on other websites, like Twitter.
So, would this kill off my phone's data connection while I'm driving? Given my phone happens to be my navigation system, and it sort of depends on getting data from Google for map and route data, it sounds like this would make things considerably inconvenient for people like me. Hey, I wonder if this idea is sponsored by Garmin and TomTom!
Funny, I seem to recall TV ads a few years back for a series of phones — "Jitterbug", as it was called — that effectively did just this. Complete with the "old person afraid of smartphones" use case example. Though with screens (just to see the numbers as you dial them).
Did Nintendo themselves ever actually use the phrase? I thought it was just a pop culture reference kinda thing, never a part of the actual franchise. >_>
I call shenanigans.
TFA says they're using it now to promote the new donkey kong country, but it seems like they're taking a phrase that the public created that is in the public domain and are trying to claim it as theirs.
Of course, it could also be as simple as someone in marketing deciding to use the phrase in advertisements (as a pop culture reference and nothing more), and the legal team, entirely by force of habit, attempting to trademark every last letter on the advertisement copy on a just-in-case-it-works basis.
I'll grant that Nintendo's tried pulling trademark/copyright nonsense like this before (and were almost victims of it in the famous Universal case regarding Donkey Kong itself), but something tells me this was an overzealous lawyer deluging the trademark office with the standard-issue forest of paperwork when a new game is released, expecting the trademark office to do the fact-checking for him. Or failing that, to get a few bonus trademarks and maybe another raise if they're not paying attention.
I say give it time to see how it pans out before we go... well, apeshit, appropriately.
Okay, I honestly forgot. Did Nintendo flip out when people started developing PC drivers for the Wii remote? I don't seem to recall them raising hell over someone making drivers for their controllers (and Nintendo WOULD be the ones to do so), but Microsoft is doing that for what is effectively a couple cameras?
The only question is why it got into the market to begin with. I'd've thought they'd make a quick cursory glance at the summary before putting it in.
They don't. When I first submitted my app, as soon as I hit "Publish" on the web interface, I searched for it on my phone and found it immediately. All of Google's enforcement is apparently afterward, if complaints are raised.
Whether you find that good on the whole or not is another matter, of course.
This seems like a good opportunity for Google to step in and sponsor some open source software. I was really surprised when I got to know that it wasn't even in the top 10 companies supporting Linux Kernel development (Oracle was at 7th), considering that it uses the Kernel extensively in their systems. It is about time the companies that use and make money out of OSS start supporting some projects as well.
Sounds good in theory, and I know Google loves the odf format popularized by OpenOffice, but wouldn't that run against Google Docs?
What do you mean Mozilla's stand on H.264? It's MPEG-LA that refuses to license H.264 for free software!
Perhaps, but the end user won't see "MPEG-LA refuses to license H.264 for free software". They'll see "Firefox won't play this cute cat movie" and stop there.
I absolutely hate the way VLC thinks I always want to put things in a frakin' playlist. That's not user-friendly at all, no other player works like that.
iTunes does that. If you're not going through the Library, it expects you to put the media files in a new playlist. And the Library simply behaves like a really big playlist anyway.
WinAmp, last I knew, did that. If you tried to open anything normally, it simply nuked the playlist you had created a new one only consisting of one track/movie/etc. That might be different now, it's been years since I touched it.
In fact, I think Banshee, Amarok, Rhythmbox, and a lot of other Windows/Linux/Mac media players enforce the playlist model, too. Come to think of it, what media players are you thinking of that don't, again? I mean, MPlayer kinda doesn't, if only because it doesn't actually store the playlist externally without your direct intervention (when you play something in MPlayer or MPlayer-alikes, it just makes a single-entry playlist that doesn't loop).
Man vs. Environment doesn't make for a good TV series, and Man vs. Self isn't good for ensemble casts and protracted plotlines. So, that leaves Man. vs. Man, so, fighting and dystopia it is.
But the point wasn't shifting from one extreme (pure dystopia) to another (pure utopia). The point was suggesting to shift from one extreme to a combination of the various conflict and world types. A constant dystopian Man vs. Man world is terribly grating, as it starts getting, well, dystopian and hopeless to the viewer. It's miserable and depressing and you start wondering why you're caring about a story where everybody gets emotionally abused week after week with no apparent hope. It turns into an empathic snuff film, in effect. End result is, you need some variety to make a truly engaging story. Not dogged adherance to extremes.
What I'd like to know is, what is this "Verizon Droids" ISP that they plan to subpeona? I mean, Slashdot readers tend to keep pretty up-to-date on the ISP world, especially with Verizon, and I wasn't aware they were using their license to the term "Droid" to start another ISP. Is this anything like their FiOS service?
They could have assimilated them that around 1998 without much of a problem, but they let them slip, now that might have been a fatal undoing for the Borg.
Highly doubtful. At that time, the FTC would've unloaded a heaping helping of antitrust lawsuits to block the merger with extreme prejudice if need be. Doesn't matter how irrelevant Apple was at the time; one whiff of "the only company most people think of with regards to computers buying the only other company most of the remaining people think of with regards to computers" would've stopped that idea cold.
For the love of all that is good, I sincerely hope Ray Ozzie's choice of the term "Connected Companions" was solely so that this message could be interpreted by the buzzword-based PHBs at Microsoft, and not a hint that he wants to turn the next company he goes to into the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
So, thanks to the turtleneck's power trip, it'll be harder for me to continue developing Android apps or the Android OS on my MacBook, or, for that matter, continue using Eclipse (and not Xcode) in general? Man. Why on earth would they want to do THAT?</sarcasm>
Good thing I'm not particularly attached to my MacBook. And that I've been in the market for a new laptop anyway...
And if I wanted to distribute my apps on Android Market I'm not aware of any fee or approval BS that comes with Apple's market.
If someone wanted to be really, really, really pedantic, there IS the $25 fee to get on the Android Market in general.
Of course, that's once and only once. No recurring fees (certainly not the $100/year Apple's charging) and no approval nonsense (though they do reserve the right to yoink stuff if they see fit). I was actually somewhat giddy with excitement when, as soon as I clicked "Submit" to put my little app on the marketplace, it showed up in a search on my phone immediately.
Was this "near-dead" thing a US problem, or worldwide? I have some of my fondest gaming memories from 1982 to 1989.
I'm talking about the UK of course.
Was a US-only problem, as I understand it. Once everyone, their brother, and their dog had to jump on the video game bandwagon (there was even a time when Quaker Oats, a grain company, wanted a video game division), store shelves were filled with crap games (retailers couldn't tell the difference) that never sold and took space from potentially good games that never got a chance to sell, and the whole thing soured everyone on this side of the pond to video gaming enough that it knocked video games out of stores entirely.
Then along comes a small Japanese electronics company with R.O.B., claiming that it's a toy, not a video game console (so really, R.O.B. was a trojan horse), and the rest is history. Well, that and a rather draconian policy of content control to stave off the same too-many-games glut from happening again, a policy which many would argue they held on to for WAY too long, but still.
This claim seems strange to me. What games back then do you think had soul? And what new games have you played that you felt lacked soul? It's a sort of nebulous concept, so I could benefit from some examples. Maybe some explanation of what gave those examples soul.
I can explain it in two words: "Nostalgia filter".
To add more words, there's really the same proportion of good games to bad games nowadays. That didn't change. But when you look at the past through the rose-tinted glasses of your own nostalgia, back to your memories of the carefree days of your youth with NES games right alongside them, it looks a lot better than your more recent memories of the cynical, stressed-out days of your adulthood with more modern games right alongside them.
So, give it about ten or so years until we get the people who grew up on video game generation n (where n is some generation after the NES). We'll hear them wax soulful and philosophical about THOSE games, too, while deriding the current generation of the time. And then the cycle of life continues! Ah...
Cripes, JoCo will need to update that verse of the song. Only, I don't think "Mandelbrot's in Heaven........." and a long pause, while respectful, would work as well musically.
Of course, he sings an updated version of "Curl" in some of his live shows to account for the fact that the leader of a curling team is the Skip, not the Skipper, so maybe we'll hear a new version soon.
I submitted a story a few days ago. Click the link once, then close the page. Then click the link again. You should get a paywall.
Hi. Look at my submission. Now click the link. Now back to the submission. Now BACK to the link. Sadly, you should get a paywall. But if your link didn't go to a corporate dinosaur's website, it wouldn't smell like a paywall. Scroll up. Now back down. Where are you? You're on Slashdot. What's in your hand? Back up to me. I have it. It's a mouse, clicking on those links you like to see. Now look at me. The mouse is now diamonds. Anything is possible when you use the power of the world wide web to freely distribute information regardless of payment or network. I'm on a computer.
That being said, I don't know why Verizon pushes their V-Cast services so hard...out of all the people I know that use Verizon, I don't know anyone that actually uses anything V-Cast has to offer.
Our logic states that because nobody uses V-Cast and hasn't used it in the X years it's been around, perhaps they should realize their failure, stop pushing it, and try something else, as it's clear nobody wants it.
Their logic states that because nobody uses V-Cast and hasn't used it in the X years it's been around, it obviously has not been pushed hard enough, as it's clear these customers are misbehaving by not throwing their money at it.
Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Tracking Emerging 'Darkness' Botnet
Pssht, easy. Just cast magic missile at it. That's a proven method of attacking the darkness.
"We called you all here today so that we may announce that we can actually make budget next year AND do something with it! WOOOOOOO!"
(stunned gasps from audience)
how many politicians are on facebook now? facebook is THE social network
Indeed, just like how MySpace was THE social network. And how Friendster was THE social network. And how LiveJournal was THE social network. And how...
Not to mention how there's certainly no politicians or celebrities on other websites, like Twitter.
So, would this kill off my phone's data connection while I'm driving? Given my phone happens to be my navigation system, and it sort of depends on getting data from Google for map and route data, it sounds like this would make things considerably inconvenient for people like me. Hey, I wonder if this idea is sponsored by Garmin and TomTom!
Funny, I seem to recall TV ads a few years back for a series of phones — "Jitterbug", as it was called — that effectively did just this. Complete with the "old person afraid of smartphones" use case example. Though with screens (just to see the numbers as you dial them).
Did Nintendo themselves ever actually use the phrase? I thought it was just a pop culture reference kinda thing, never a part of the actual franchise. >_>
I call shenanigans.
TFA says they're using it now to promote the new donkey kong country, but it seems like they're taking a phrase that the public created that is in the public domain and are trying to claim it as theirs.
Of course, it could also be as simple as someone in marketing deciding to use the phrase in advertisements (as a pop culture reference and nothing more), and the legal team, entirely by force of habit, attempting to trademark every last letter on the advertisement copy on a just-in-case-it-works basis.
I'll grant that Nintendo's tried pulling trademark/copyright nonsense like this before (and were almost victims of it in the famous Universal case regarding Donkey Kong itself), but something tells me this was an overzealous lawyer deluging the trademark office with the standard-issue forest of paperwork when a new game is released, expecting the trademark office to do the fact-checking for him. Or failing that, to get a few bonus trademarks and maybe another raise if they're not paying attention.
I say give it time to see how it pans out before we go... well, apeshit, appropriately.
AOL is still around outside of AIM? And they have enough money to buy another company?
Well, it IS only Yahoo they're considering buying.
Okay, I honestly forgot. Did Nintendo flip out when people started developing PC drivers for the Wii remote? I don't seem to recall them raising hell over someone making drivers for their controllers (and Nintendo WOULD be the ones to do so), but Microsoft is doing that for what is effectively a couple cameras?
The only question is why it got into the market to begin with. I'd've thought they'd make a quick cursory glance at the summary before putting it in.
They don't. When I first submitted my app, as soon as I hit "Publish" on the web interface, I searched for it on my phone and found it immediately. All of Google's enforcement is apparently afterward, if complaints are raised.
Whether you find that good on the whole or not is another matter, of course.
This seems like a good opportunity for Google to step in and sponsor some open source software. I was really surprised when I got to know that it wasn't even in the top 10 companies supporting Linux Kernel development (Oracle was at 7th), considering that it uses the Kernel extensively in their systems. It is about time the companies that use and make money out of OSS start supporting some projects as well.
Sounds good in theory, and I know Google loves the odf format popularized by OpenOffice, but wouldn't that run against Google Docs?
What do you mean Mozilla's stand on H.264? It's MPEG-LA that refuses to license H.264 for free software!
Perhaps, but the end user won't see "MPEG-LA refuses to license H.264 for free software". They'll see "Firefox won't play this cute cat movie" and stop there.
I absolutely hate the way VLC thinks I always want to put things in a frakin' playlist. That's not user-friendly at all, no other player works like that.
iTunes does that. If you're not going through the Library, it expects you to put the media files in a new playlist. And the Library simply behaves like a really big playlist anyway.
WinAmp, last I knew, did that. If you tried to open anything normally, it simply nuked the playlist you had created a new one only consisting of one track/movie/etc. That might be different now, it's been years since I touched it.
In fact, I think Banshee, Amarok, Rhythmbox, and a lot of other Windows/Linux/Mac media players enforce the playlist model, too. Come to think of it, what media players are you thinking of that don't, again? I mean, MPlayer kinda doesn't, if only because it doesn't actually store the playlist externally without your direct intervention (when you play something in MPlayer or MPlayer-alikes, it just makes a single-entry playlist that doesn't loop).
Man vs. Environment doesn't make for a good TV series, and Man vs. Self isn't good for ensemble casts and protracted plotlines. So, that leaves Man. vs. Man, so, fighting and dystopia it is.
But the point wasn't shifting from one extreme (pure dystopia) to another (pure utopia). The point was suggesting to shift from one extreme to a combination of the various conflict and world types. A constant dystopian Man vs. Man world is terribly grating, as it starts getting, well, dystopian and hopeless to the viewer. It's miserable and depressing and you start wondering why you're caring about a story where everybody gets emotionally abused week after week with no apparent hope. It turns into an empathic snuff film, in effect. End result is, you need some variety to make a truly engaging story. Not dogged adherance to extremes.
What I'd like to know is, what is this "Verizon Droids" ISP that they plan to subpeona? I mean, Slashdot readers tend to keep pretty up-to-date on the ISP world, especially with Verizon, and I wasn't aware they were using their license to the term "Droid" to start another ISP. Is this anything like their FiOS service?
They could have assimilated them that around 1998 without much of a problem, but they let them slip, now that might have been a fatal undoing for the Borg.
Highly doubtful. At that time, the FTC would've unloaded a heaping helping of antitrust lawsuits to block the merger with extreme prejudice if need be. Doesn't matter how irrelevant Apple was at the time; one whiff of "the only company most people think of with regards to computers buying the only other company most of the remaining people think of with regards to computers" would've stopped that idea cold.
Using "virii" (or the equivalently stupid "boxen") in any context just makes you look like a pretentious dolt.
And complaining with the amount of vitroil you're dedicating to it about people using those words doesn't?
For the love of all that is good, I sincerely hope Ray Ozzie's choice of the term "Connected Companions" was solely so that this message could be interpreted by the buzzword-based PHBs at Microsoft, and not a hint that he wants to turn the next company he goes to into the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
So, thanks to the turtleneck's power trip, it'll be harder for me to continue developing Android apps or the Android OS on my MacBook, or, for that matter, continue using Eclipse (and not Xcode) in general? Man. Why on earth would they want to do THAT?</sarcasm>
Good thing I'm not particularly attached to my MacBook. And that I've been in the market for a new laptop anyway...
And if I wanted to distribute my apps on Android Market I'm not aware of any fee or approval BS that comes with Apple's market.
If someone wanted to be really, really, really pedantic, there IS the $25 fee to get on the Android Market in general.
Of course, that's once and only once. No recurring fees (certainly not the $100/year Apple's charging) and no approval nonsense (though they do reserve the right to yoink stuff if they see fit). I was actually somewhat giddy with excitement when, as soon as I clicked "Submit" to put my little app on the marketplace, it showed up in a search on my phone immediately.
Was this "near-dead" thing a US problem, or worldwide? I have some of my fondest gaming memories from 1982 to 1989.
I'm talking about the UK of course.
Was a US-only problem, as I understand it. Once everyone, their brother, and their dog had to jump on the video game bandwagon (there was even a time when Quaker Oats, a grain company, wanted a video game division), store shelves were filled with crap games (retailers couldn't tell the difference) that never sold and took space from potentially good games that never got a chance to sell, and the whole thing soured everyone on this side of the pond to video gaming enough that it knocked video games out of stores entirely.
Then along comes a small Japanese electronics company with R.O.B., claiming that it's a toy, not a video game console (so really, R.O.B. was a trojan horse), and the rest is history. Well, that and a rather draconian policy of content control to stave off the same too-many-games glut from happening again, a policy which many would argue they held on to for WAY too long, but still.
This claim seems strange to me. What games back then do you think had soul? And what new games have you played that you felt lacked soul? It's a sort of nebulous concept, so I could benefit from some examples. Maybe some explanation of what gave those examples soul.
I can explain it in two words: "Nostalgia filter".
To add more words, there's really the same proportion of good games to bad games nowadays. That didn't change. But when you look at the past through the rose-tinted glasses of your own nostalgia, back to your memories of the carefree days of your youth with NES games right alongside them, it looks a lot better than your more recent memories of the cynical, stressed-out days of your adulthood with more modern games right alongside them.
So, give it about ten or so years until we get the people who grew up on video game generation n (where n is some generation after the NES). We'll hear them wax soulful and philosophical about THOSE games, too, while deriding the current generation of the time. And then the cycle of life continues! Ah...
I didn't know he was still alive. So much for assumptions.
I only knew he was still alive because of this song.
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/Mandelbrot%20Set
Cripes, JoCo will need to update that verse of the song. Only, I don't think "Mandelbrot's in Heaven... ... ..." and a long pause, while respectful, would work as well musically.
Of course, he sings an updated version of "Curl" in some of his live shows to account for the fact that the leader of a curling team is the Skip, not the Skipper, so maybe we'll hear a new version soon.
I submitted a story a few days ago. Click the link once, then close the page. Then click the link again. You should get a paywall.
Hi. Look at my submission. Now click the link. Now back to the submission. Now BACK to the link. Sadly, you should get a paywall. But if your link didn't go to a corporate dinosaur's website, it wouldn't smell like a paywall. Scroll up. Now back down. Where are you? You're on Slashdot. What's in your hand? Back up to me. I have it. It's a mouse, clicking on those links you like to see. Now look at me. The mouse is now diamonds. Anything is possible when you use the power of the world wide web to freely distribute information regardless of payment or network. I'm on a computer.
That being said, I don't know why Verizon pushes their V-Cast services so hard...out of all the people I know that use Verizon, I don't know anyone that actually uses anything V-Cast has to offer.
Our logic states that because nobody uses V-Cast and hasn't used it in the X years it's been around, perhaps they should realize their failure, stop pushing it, and try something else, as it's clear nobody wants it.
Their logic states that because nobody uses V-Cast and hasn't used it in the X years it's been around, it obviously has not been pushed hard enough, as it's clear these customers are misbehaving by not throwing their money at it.
Why aren't there giant penguins around today? It must be due to global warming...
Nah, they've just been working on trimming the code a lot. If you thought the Linux kernel's bloated NOW, you don't know what they had before.