Anyone who didn't already know that the entire point of youtube, facebook, myspace and other social networking sites is to cater to self-involved, narcissistic, attention-whores with low self-esteem obviously has had their head buried in the sand. It's a nonstop stream of idiots posting bulletins about every single thought they have or thing they do, putting up idiotic pictures to get attention and putting up long retarded videos from their bedrooms where they blather on about how hard life is or shake their ass to some brainless music so that a bunch of middle aged men will pay attention to them.
The fee for admission to social networking sites should be sterilization.
I was going to go buy a PS3 this week after the price drop, but then I remembered that the only game of any interest available on the PS3 is some car racing game that I can already play on the XBOX 360.
I'm happy to buy a PS3 as soon as they manage to get at least a few PS3-only games that I absolutely want to play.
But hey, it's only been nine months. You can't expect a company to release at least one good game in only nine months, right?
The future of the internet is less individual freedom, more commercializati1on. It's all about the multi-billion dollar broad-stroke websites. If you're not eBay, AOL, Digg, youtube or myspace, you're just some whacked-out schmuck wasting time broadcasting your dumbass show on the public access channel at two in the morning that nobody will ever watch.
The internet was about the individual in the 90s. The 21st century is all about corporations and commercialism, while convincing individuals that it's really "their" internet.
Of course you can measure how long someone spends on a website. Nielson families will simply have an application installed on their computer that will monitor how long they spend at each site and phone that back home to the Nielson headquarters. Just like Neilson does with television.
I find two things troubling about this:
There are a lot of very popular websites that may not have enough penetration to rank up there with Google an Youtube, but the nature of the internet is that you don't have to pull a ten-share to be big and significant. There are a lot of very popular websites that have been around for a decade that most web surfers have probably never even heard of. But - if the select group of families Nielson decides to monitor don't happen to fall into that group, the sites presumably won't register.
And more importantly... what does how much time you spend on a site have to do with how popular it is or its rankings? This isn't television. The goal shouldn't be how long you can keep people glued to your website, but providing them with an efficient service that they appreciate and perhaps regularly return for. Why should spending two hours to passively watch idiots on Youtube be more important than someone who visits a forum for updates or an auction site to make some purchases every day?
In the rush to commodotize every inch of webspace, they're also completely ripping it apart.
Fortunately, nobody actually gives a fuck what Nielson's ratings are. Who the hell has ever used Nielson to figure out what the top sites are anyway?!
Most adults work for a living and are exhausted when they get home.
Most kids don't have yards or at least not yards big enough to enjoy.
It's all find to tell kids to "go out and play!", but what are they supposed to do in that postage-stamp sized plot of grass you have for them in your suburban neighborhood?
People are squirting out kids when they can't afford a home with plenty of property for a child to really enjoy their childhood. They are scared by the news that their kid is going to be molested or killed if they go anywhere on their own, like taking the bus to the library. Parents are too busy pulling in double incomes so they can afford that speed boat they take out every year for two days.
Videogames and television are a way they can keep the kids out of their hair and off the streets. At least, until we can invent some sort of space-tech that lets your children incubate in a giant pull-out drawer until they're 18 and you can just unplug them from the nutrition tube and wash your hands of them.
Kids like anything that makes them feel/look more grown-up. Did we really need a study for this? Paying the mortgage and rolling over IRAs is totally all the rage in teenagers these days.
I don't see what the problem is. For one thing it is animated violence. And even if it were live-action violence . . . isn't that a good thing? This is America. We condone violence. What we do not condone is sex.
This is quite easily demonstrated by movie ratings. The SAW movies? Rated R meaning you have to be 17 years old to see people thrown into a giant vat of hypodermic needles or have their heads sliced in half or watch then tear out their own eyeball with a razor or have their entire head juiced by a top-only iron maiden. You can see this if you are under 17 as long as you bring an adult with you who can explain why someone is hacksawing their own foot off.
On the other hand, show a vagina? Instant NC-17 (good luck being shown in theaters), meaning your film can only be seen by adults, even if you have a guardian. After all, one can explain to a teenager why someone is ripping another person's heart right out of their ribcage, but you obviously can't possibly explain why a female would have an unclothed vagina in the shower.
So why is violence acceptable everywhere but in video games?
And really, why are people shocked?! Little boys play cops and robbers and love guns and weapons and military stuff as soon as they're able to walk.
As a geek who needs his enormous amounts of caffeine, but is trying to stay away from soda and coffee, I have found that Viso is a delicious beverage. It comes from Portland, Oregon and there are some great flavors. All of them are natural, organic and there is no corn syrup or other fake crap. They have 100% vitamins and minerals and every 20oz bottle has 300mgs of caffeine (at least the two caffeinated versions do).
I drink about four of those a day. Sometimes a half dozen. I guess according to this new study, that's about the same as four six-packs of Coke.
I do try to stick to 80 columns out of consistency, but it does seem kind of silly when I have 322 columns in my editor at full screen. I think the idea is not entirely that 80 columns is enough to fit on a terminal, but that after a certain point, you are going to be expending a lot of energy and effort to read more than X number of columns. My main desktop has a 30" display, but I run my browser at 1024 width rather than a full 2560. Why? Because I don't want to sprain my neck playing tennis-spectator with every web page I'm looking at. Confined to 1024, I can read most content without having to move my head or eyes a great distance and I can absorb information faster.
Have you ever actually dealt with a cell phone company before? When they double charge you, change your service without your permission, add services you didn't ask for, remove services you wanted and every time you call up, you get a different answer or someone says they will take the actions you requested (say, cancel the services they tossed onto your contract without you asking for them) and then the person you talked to never actually does it... trust me, you can end up calling them quite a bit.
If the bundles, contracts and bills were simpler and not so intentionally complex and cryptic, they could solve a lot of these problems.
I can understand dismissing an entire console based on its technical demerits. Having a $400 or $600 console failing on you should be abnormal; not common place.
On the other hand, I would rather own an XBOX 360 that stands a good chance of breaking down on me, but has a ton of really great videogames than own a console that is equally or more expensive, less likely to break down on me . . . and has only a couple decent games.
It's the same reason people like me own machines with Microsoft's OS installed. Would I like to be linux, OSX and Solaris only? Absolutely. But why do I have one powerful machine that runs Windows over there in the corner? Because all the cool games are made for that platform.
I think the lesson here is that it's all about the content. People will tolerate anything and go through absurd lengths to own your console as long as you're the best source of great games.
I've already decided that if my XBOX 360 ever dies on me, I will immediately go out and buy another one. That way, whenever one is in the shop, I'll have a second one I can play with. And when that one fails, I can send it back to the shop and play on the other one again.
I've been watching Doctor Who episodes in-time with the UK releases (they just finished season three while we are just starting the third season in America). So, if you're just starting to watch season three, don't read my post.
Anyway . . .
The insane clamor over the iPhone release has amused me in light of recent episodes of Doctor Who. This season saw the popularization of a cell phone network called Arch Angel that reached every cell phone on the planet. The Arch Angel Network was massively popular among everyone. Little did they know, it was actually a sort of subliminal network that was feeding into the brains of every user, in preparation of The Master's attempt to take over the planet. It was also later used by The Doctor who reversed his aging (brought on by The Master) by tying the entire planet together, mentally.
The only argument that could possibly be made here for fair use is that the lessons are presumably being offered with no charge. otherwise, it is clearly a violation of the copyright holder's rights. After all, you couldn't go publish a DVD to teach people how to play the guitar and then fill it with lessons on playing Stairway To Heaven or Smoke On The Water (all three cords of it!) or a number of other non-public domain songs. Well, you could - but only if you acquired the rights to do so from the copyright holders - probably for a fee.
Why do you think all of your grade school music books were filled with songs about Old Smokey and the guy with the frying pans? Textbook companies can't afford to purchase the rights to contemporary stuff.
You're confusing two things. Making a copy of data from the customer's computer is not the same as stealing their silverware. One deprives the customer of an item. The other does not.
Now, if they were copying the customer's private photos or information, that's very different. Making a copy of their Milf Cruiser 11 video is not the same as making a copy of their child's dance recital.
You would think the issue would have been dealt with by now if it's a disc problem (which it probably is), since tons of people would be encountering it. I have purchased four copies of Forza 2 from three different sources, so they should be different batches... and all four had the same problem. Argh.
First of all, they're copying your porn. Not steeling it. And second of all, who cares? How is he hurting anyone by making a copy of your porn? And if it's porn that you are personally starring in or other personal information, why aren't you putting that somewhere else before letting someone on your computer?
On the flip side, the rest of an album is often crappy fluff to round out the contract obligation and completely sucks. Even musicians who will never chart or don't even have a label are going to have some good songs and some songs that are total ass. Why should I pay for those songs? Also, who cars about singles? Talking about "singles" indicates we're talking mostly about radio-play music and who the hell actually listens to that drivel? They can do whatever they want with their singles, because it doesn't mean anything to the rest of the world. Your comment about more subtle music being sacrificed because it doesn't present well on the radio is irrelevant now. That would have been a great point to make twenty years ago. Radio isn't about to become crap. It is crap. It has been crap for a very long time. The idea that only a couple songs (if that) get off a record and spin frequently enough on the radio to sell is about as new as payola.
Not to mention, your statement ignores the fact that MOST musicians and their music never make it onto the radio, so there's no point in them making a bunch of air-play friendly singles crap. The only people who need to do that are the select few that the labels are sending to the radio stations for air play and promotion. It has been that way for quite awhile. The only thing you have to be concerned with is Vitamin C or Eminem ruining their own albums in an attempt to produce nothing but singles... and... well... who cares about them?
More interesting to me is that I heard Fox News report last night (and quite ignorantly) that "There are 20 BILLION songs illegally downloaded every year, so the music industry is losing $20 BILLION in revenue per year!".
The ability to rip CDs to your computer and digital music downloads have both been around long enough now that the music industry is starting to feel the painful effect of losing out on the extra cash that having to re-buy songs constantly used to bring them. They used to be able to keep publishing the same catalog from a year ago, a decade ago and fifty years ago. They would sell plenty of this, because people would need to re-build their library in the new format. Or replace a stolen collection. Or replace scratched or lost albums and discs. - Today? Just pull them off of your system backup. And no need to re-buy in a new format. I still have it in MP3 or OGG, thanks.
My post is clearly a guess as to what the future holds and NOT what I *want* to happen. Did you even read the final sentence which said it's sad but probably what will end up happening?
And did you even read my response to the other two people who think that if you predict something that will happen in the future it means you also agree with it? I predict a lot more people will die in Iraq and that a lot of people will die of cancer next year. That doesn't mean I hope it happens. It means I predict that it probably will.
Jesus, people. Come on. Really. Can you not read?!
I haven't had a lot of problems with mine, except that Forza 2 won't play. I've tried four different brand new copies of it and about 98% of the time, the XBOX 360 tries to play it as if it were a DVD and not a game. I literally have to reboot the XBOX about 40 times every time I want to play, before it finally works. Mind you, my 48+ other XBOX 360 games are just fine in it.
What's weird is when I called a month ago for help with the game (no solutions, they were baffled), it turned out my XBOX had another year of coverage on it... the first year expires in ten days, but they said my expiration for warranty was actually in 2008. I wonder if it was because of this.
Also, I wonder what this means for people who paid the $60 extra for a warranty? Microsoft gave something like a one year warranty with the console and for another $60, you could get a second year (I think). So I wonder if those people will actually get four years, now?
And if your product is failing so often that it's impacting your actual *game* sales (who's going to buy games when their console is broken?), maybe you should just replace everyone's console with a good one. Otherwise it's like having a Pinto and saying "this car is going to explode -- we won't replace it now, but if it blows up in a year, we will replace it then".
I'm sure that someday the WTO will have something arranged so that the guy producing the most benefit from the trademark will win. If you came up with the trademark (or a copyrighted idea) twenty years ago and are using it to generate a million dollars in business per year, you have to surrender it to the bigger company who comes along and is making a billion dollars per year off of it. And that would be good why, exactly? Not only did you seem to miss the tone of my post (understandable), but you apparently missed the last line which said "Sad, but... I think that might be in our future".
Say what you will, but without camps like this, where will the bible belt send their kids so the next generation will have its share of abortion clinic bombers and crazy tax-evading, government-hating, federal building demolishers?
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone who didn't already know that the entire point of youtube, facebook, myspace and other social networking sites is to cater to self-involved, narcissistic, attention-whores with low self-esteem obviously has had their head buried in the sand. It's a nonstop stream of idiots posting bulletins about every single thought they have or thing they do, putting up idiotic pictures to get attention and putting up long retarded videos from their bedrooms where they blather on about how hard life is or shake their ass to some brainless music so that a bunch of middle aged men will pay attention to them.
The fee for admission to social networking sites should be sterilization.
I was going to go buy a PS3 this week after the price drop, but then I remembered that the only game of any interest available on the PS3 is some car racing game that I can already play on the XBOX 360.
I'm happy to buy a PS3 as soon as they manage to get at least a few PS3-only games that I absolutely want to play.
But hey, it's only been nine months. You can't expect a company to release at least one good game in only nine months, right?
The future of the internet is less individual freedom, more commercializati1on. It's all about the multi-billion dollar broad-stroke websites. If you're not eBay, AOL, Digg, youtube or myspace, you're just some whacked-out schmuck wasting time broadcasting your dumbass show on the public access channel at two in the morning that nobody will ever watch.
The internet was about the individual in the 90s. The 21st century is all about corporations and commercialism, while convincing individuals that it's really "their" internet.
Of course you can measure how long someone spends on a website. Nielson families will simply have an application installed on their computer that will monitor how long they spend at each site and phone that back home to the Nielson headquarters. Just like Neilson does with television.
I find two things troubling about this:
There are a lot of very popular websites that may not have enough penetration to rank up there with Google an Youtube, but the nature of the internet is that you don't have to pull a ten-share to be big and significant. There are a lot of very popular websites that have been around for a decade that most web surfers have probably never even heard of. But - if the select group of families Nielson decides to monitor don't happen to fall into that group, the sites presumably won't register.
And more importantly... what does how much time you spend on a site have to do with how popular it is or its rankings? This isn't television. The goal shouldn't be how long you can keep people glued to your website, but providing them with an efficient service that they appreciate and perhaps regularly return for. Why should spending two hours to passively watch idiots on Youtube be more important than someone who visits a forum for updates or an auction site to make some purchases every day?
In the rush to commodotize every inch of webspace, they're also completely ripping it apart.
Fortunately, nobody actually gives a fuck what Nielson's ratings are. Who the hell has ever used Nielson to figure out what the top sites are anyway?!
Most adults work for a living and are exhausted when they get home.
Most kids don't have yards or at least not yards big enough to enjoy.
It's all find to tell kids to "go out and play!", but what are they supposed to do in that postage-stamp sized plot of grass you have for them in your suburban neighborhood?
People are squirting out kids when they can't afford a home with plenty of property for a child to really enjoy their childhood. They are scared by the news that their kid is going to be molested or killed if they go anywhere on their own, like taking the bus to the library. Parents are too busy pulling in double incomes so they can afford that speed boat they take out every year for two days.
Videogames and television are a way they can keep the kids out of their hair and off the streets. At least, until we can invent some sort of space-tech that lets your children incubate in a giant pull-out drawer until they're 18 and you can just unplug them from the nutrition tube and wash your hands of them.
I don't see what the problem is. For one thing it is animated violence. And even if it were live-action violence . . . isn't that a good thing? This is America. We condone violence. What we do not condone is sex.
This is quite easily demonstrated by movie ratings. The SAW movies? Rated R meaning you have to be 17 years old to see people thrown into a giant vat of hypodermic needles or have their heads sliced in half or watch then tear out their own eyeball with a razor or have their entire head juiced by a top-only iron maiden. You can see this if you are under 17 as long as you bring an adult with you who can explain why someone is hacksawing their own foot off.
On the other hand, show a vagina? Instant NC-17 (good luck being shown in theaters), meaning your film can only be seen by adults, even if you have a guardian. After all, one can explain to a teenager why someone is ripping another person's heart right out of their ribcage, but you obviously can't possibly explain why a female would have an unclothed vagina in the shower.
So why is violence acceptable everywhere but in video games?
And really, why are people shocked?! Little boys play cops and robbers and love guns and weapons and military stuff as soon as they're able to walk.
Great reading skills there. Who said it was a soda?
As a geek who needs his enormous amounts of caffeine, but is trying to stay away from soda and coffee, I have found that Viso is a delicious beverage. It comes from Portland, Oregon and there are some great flavors. All of them are natural, organic and there is no corn syrup or other fake crap. They have 100% vitamins and minerals and every 20oz bottle has 300mgs of caffeine (at least the two caffeinated versions do).
I drink about four of those a day. Sometimes a half dozen. I guess according to this new study, that's about the same as four six-packs of Coke.
I do try to stick to 80 columns out of consistency, but it does seem kind of silly when I have 322 columns in my editor at full screen. I think the idea is not entirely that 80 columns is enough to fit on a terminal, but that after a certain point, you are going to be expending a lot of energy and effort to read more than X number of columns. My main desktop has a 30" display, but I run my browser at 1024 width rather than a full 2560. Why? Because I don't want to sprain my neck playing tennis-spectator with every web page I'm looking at. Confined to 1024, I can read most content without having to move my head or eyes a great distance and I can absorb information faster.
Have you ever actually dealt with a cell phone company before? When they double charge you, change your service without your permission, add services you didn't ask for, remove services you wanted and every time you call up, you get a different answer or someone says they will take the actions you requested (say, cancel the services they tossed onto your contract without you asking for them) and then the person you talked to never actually does it... trust me, you can end up calling them quite a bit.
If the bundles, contracts and bills were simpler and not so intentionally complex and cryptic, they could solve a lot of these problems.
I can understand dismissing an entire console based on its technical demerits. Having a $400 or $600 console failing on you should be abnormal; not common place.
On the other hand, I would rather own an XBOX 360 that stands a good chance of breaking down on me, but has a ton of really great videogames than own a console that is equally or more expensive, less likely to break down on me . . . and has only a couple decent games.
It's the same reason people like me own machines with Microsoft's OS installed. Would I like to be linux, OSX and Solaris only? Absolutely. But why do I have one powerful machine that runs Windows over there in the corner? Because all the cool games are made for that platform.
I think the lesson here is that it's all about the content. People will tolerate anything and go through absurd lengths to own your console as long as you're the best source of great games.
I've already decided that if my XBOX 360 ever dies on me, I will immediately go out and buy another one. That way, whenever one is in the shop, I'll have a second one I can play with. And when that one fails, I can send it back to the shop and play on the other one again.
I've been watching Doctor Who episodes in-time with the UK releases (they just finished season three while we are just starting the third season in America). So, if you're just starting to watch season three, don't read my post.
Anyway . . .
The insane clamor over the iPhone release has amused me in light of recent episodes of Doctor Who. This season saw the popularization of a cell phone network called Arch Angel that reached every cell phone on the planet. The Arch Angel Network was massively popular among everyone. Little did they know, it was actually a sort of subliminal network that was feeding into the brains of every user, in preparation of The Master's attempt to take over the planet. It was also later used by The Doctor who reversed his aging (brought on by The Master) by tying the entire planet together, mentally.
The only argument that could possibly be made here for fair use is that the lessons are presumably being offered with no charge. otherwise, it is clearly a violation of the copyright holder's rights. After all, you couldn't go publish a DVD to teach people how to play the guitar and then fill it with lessons on playing Stairway To Heaven or Smoke On The Water (all three cords of it!) or a number of other non-public domain songs. Well, you could - but only if you acquired the rights to do so from the copyright holders - probably for a fee.
Why do you think all of your grade school music books were filled with songs about Old Smokey and the guy with the frying pans? Textbook companies can't afford to purchase the rights to contemporary stuff.
As in iShelled out a lot of cash for this phone. Am I nuts?!
They have been calling it an OctoSquid. I have to say, I dislike that. I would prefer that they call it a Squidopus!
Also, it looks a lot like a weird Japanese sex toy.
You're confusing two things. Making a copy of data from the customer's computer is not the same as stealing their silverware. One deprives the customer of an item. The other does not.
Now, if they were copying the customer's private photos or information, that's very different. Making a copy of their Milf Cruiser 11 video is not the same as making a copy of their child's dance recital.
Oops. I meant "steal".
I'm an idiot.
You would think the issue would have been dealt with by now if it's a disc problem (which it probably is), since tons of people would be encountering it. I have purchased four copies of Forza 2 from three different sources, so they should be different batches... and all four had the same problem. Argh.
First of all, they're copying your porn. Not steeling it. And second of all, who cares? How is he hurting anyone by making a copy of your porn? And if it's porn that you are personally starring in or other personal information, why aren't you putting that somewhere else before letting someone on your computer?
On the flip side, the rest of an album is often crappy fluff to round out the contract obligation and completely sucks. Even musicians who will never chart or don't even have a label are going to have some good songs and some songs that are total ass. Why should I pay for those songs? Also, who cars about singles? Talking about "singles" indicates we're talking mostly about radio-play music and who the hell actually listens to that drivel? They can do whatever they want with their singles, because it doesn't mean anything to the rest of the world. Your comment about more subtle music being sacrificed because it doesn't present well on the radio is irrelevant now. That would have been a great point to make twenty years ago. Radio isn't about to become crap. It is crap. It has been crap for a very long time. The idea that only a couple songs (if that) get off a record and spin frequently enough on the radio to sell is about as new as payola.
Not to mention, your statement ignores the fact that MOST musicians and their music never make it onto the radio, so there's no point in them making a bunch of air-play friendly singles crap. The only people who need to do that are the select few that the labels are sending to the radio stations for air play and promotion. It has been that way for quite awhile. The only thing you have to be concerned with is Vitamin C or Eminem ruining their own albums in an attempt to produce nothing but singles... and... well... who cares about them?
More interesting to me is that I heard Fox News report last night (and quite ignorantly) that "There are 20 BILLION songs illegally downloaded every year, so the music industry is losing $20 BILLION in revenue per year!".
The ability to rip CDs to your computer and digital music downloads have both been around long enough now that the music industry is starting to feel the painful effect of losing out on the extra cash that having to re-buy songs constantly used to bring them. They used to be able to keep publishing the same catalog from a year ago, a decade ago and fifty years ago. They would sell plenty of this, because people would need to re-build their library in the new format. Or replace a stolen collection. Or replace scratched or lost albums and discs. - Today? Just pull them off of your system backup. And no need to re-buy in a new format. I still have it in MP3 or OGG, thanks.
HOW FUCKING STUPID ARE YOU?!
Can you people not fucking read?
My post is clearly a guess as to what the future holds and NOT what I *want* to happen. Did you even read the final sentence which said it's sad but probably what will end up happening?
And did you even read my response to the other two people who think that if you predict something that will happen in the future it means you also agree with it? I predict a lot more people will die in Iraq and that a lot of people will die of cancer next year. That doesn't mean I hope it happens. It means I predict that it probably will.
Jesus, people. Come on. Really. Can you not read?!
I haven't had a lot of problems with mine, except that Forza 2 won't play. I've tried four different brand new copies of it and about 98% of the time, the XBOX 360 tries to play it as if it were a DVD and not a game. I literally have to reboot the XBOX about 40 times every time I want to play, before it finally works. Mind you, my 48+ other XBOX 360 games are just fine in it.
What's weird is when I called a month ago for help with the game (no solutions, they were baffled), it turned out my XBOX had another year of coverage on it... the first year expires in ten days, but they said my expiration for warranty was actually in 2008. I wonder if it was because of this.
Also, I wonder what this means for people who paid the $60 extra for a warranty? Microsoft gave something like a one year warranty with the console and for another $60, you could get a second year (I think). So I wonder if those people will actually get four years, now?
And if your product is failing so often that it's impacting your actual *game* sales (who's going to buy games when their console is broken?), maybe you should just replace everyone's console with a good one. Otherwise it's like having a Pinto and saying "this car is going to explode -- we won't replace it now, but if it blows up in a year, we will replace it then".
Say what you will, but without camps like this, where will the bible belt send their kids so the next generation will have its share of abortion clinic bombers and crazy tax-evading, government-hating, federal building demolishers?