Many home users are also gamers in the sense of tetris/solitaire gamers. Linux has many of these games already written and free.
It's the action/adventure/simulator gamers who are missing something.
Are there any open source projects for gaming? It seems to meet the model of 'code what you want' as many coders are gamers. I guess it needs to fit with libraries that run across Windows and Linux (GCC?)
Re:every rose has its thorn
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One good thing has come out.... SCO's share price is down (unless it's just a coincidence).
Some Open Source advocates were telling people what a crock of shit SCO were talking, and it did nothing. Someone launches a ddos attack and it takes something off the share price.
The interesting thing about the internet to me was always that it acted as an alternative source of information. Most magazines in shops are just advertising whores. Magazines like the NME used to be interesting and quite counter cultural, but now are just part of the industry. I imagine that Rolling Stone was the same.
The thing is, the word of mouth and the brevity of the link makes it easy. Passing URLs to others is simple. When Google first appeared, the circle of people I knew who used it grew from a few to most within a few weeks. The 'viral' spread of such information is huge.
For content, the 'community' aspect has a big effect. People are contributing articles and comments to sites - this makes traditional print media look very slow, and at the same time, can provide more depth than TV.
I too am fed up with ugly link sites headed as "companies selling the whizzbang 123" which basically just link to their sponsors. The whizzbang 123 might not even be for sale there - they've just generated a ton of pages with a revised list of titles and told Google to look at them.
My advice... Try and find well known independent review sites or newsgroups on things.
There's also the times (like after a messenger update) when they say "would you like to change your home page to MSN" (recommended). I could do with a "no, I'd prefer to endure chinese water torture" box.
Anytime I see it as the default on someone's PC, I point out either Google or Yahoo to them.
I've tried some alternatives like Overture, and they still don't top Google.
Sure, some searches are a pain - like I was looking for a florist in an area, and all I got were sites which had created pages with the area name in, and they pointed to big internet florists, presumably through linking their pages and using link farms.
Trouble is, I don't know of any other search engine that would do better.
I don't think that even Thunderbird warns of spoofing in addresses (although apparantly Opera does).
As for home users just expecting the stuff to work and protect them, that's largely down to people having a machine that is general purpose.
I have a pretty good idea how to protect myself from viruses/unsolicitied requests etc, but then I work in IT.
Social engineering and bad practice are what hits most people. Most viruses work because of people, not tech. Telling people not to answer any requests that "remind us of your credit card/PINs" are part of that. If any company wrote to me asking for this, I'd personally go to my browser, type in their site address and contact them for clarification.
If companies that I deal with phone me, and I'm not expecting a call, I ask the person for their name, department and office and I tell them I will call them back using the number on my last bill.
It's interesting how Apple is actively seeking bands to sell through iTunes. If bands start cutting deals with iTunes, the record companies could be finished.
What iTunes seems to be doing now is getting people to use it. The fact that the record companies are taking the money now from selling on iTunes is not necessarily relelvant to the long term.
Personally, I think that if you are getting into sites that are spoofing you elsewhere, you are probably going to bad sites in the first place.
However, IE doesn't help to inform a user in their decision making. In Mozilla, I can get the toolbar to tell me what's behind a hyperlink - so a designer can't pretend it's another address.
Andrew Stanton. But then I've seen the DVD extras.
For me, it's about "who's the driving force". The feeling I get about Pixar is that it's about Lasseter, and he's got some great guys in and created the environment for them to thrive.
For many films, it's the director who has the vision and the name gives them the backing. Particularly if they are directors who don't compromise and do their own editing. Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, Alan Parker et al.
I rarely go and see a film because of an actor, because it's a bad yardstick. Tom Cruise is one of the few actors who seems to pick generally interesting films.
I would look at such a thing and say "where are the people who should have told these kids". It's like "why are people's diets so poor" when the UK has no education in schools about home economics any more.
I rarely blame users for being incompetent at using computer systems, because mostly it's down to a lack of training/support or bad UI. The number of times I've heard techies blame users for typing in the wrong code which crashes a system, rather than validating it.
That doesn't excuse some things some users do, though.
These figures are always inflated because they ignore some fundamentals of physics.
Money, like matter is not created or destroyed, only moved.
So, that $250million is a loss to some businesses. Loss in what? Staff time? Having to pay consultants to come in and fix the machines? Well, there's someone on an up - consultants being paid to fix things.
Don't forget that for those businesses that don't get the virus, there's a potential gain. If one of your competitors has the virus and say can't process orders, the order is likely to come to you.
My view is "friends get free tech support, friends of friends don't".
I really pissed off someone in my family because I refused to help someone at a school they knew. My answer was "school hardware is supported by companies. If the company isn't good enough, go elsewhere. I'm not going to fill in for their failings".
I once bought an ADSL modem for 6UKP (about $10), which is just silly.
Reason? It had been listed in with non-ADSL modems and without a title of "ADSL". I figure that the people looking for ADSL modems missed it because of category, and people looking for non DSL modems would have clicked it and seen it was ASDL.
It was just a lucky hit, and I don't deliberately go looking for these things.
I remember all that Diana horseshit, being british and having to endure people weeping over someone they didn't even know.
Then, our government bans the use of landmines by the military as some sort of gesture to this simpleton nonsense.
Landmines used indiscriminately are bad, but they have their uses. I'm sure they were used in WW2, and yes, probably some civilians got blown up after. But they probably helped keep the Nazis at bay and help preserved the freedom that people like Diana Spencer could enjoy.
The BBC showed it on Xmas day here. It's probably the weirdest film I've seen since Requiem for a Dream.
I thought it was visually very inventive and really interesting, but I didn't really enjoy it. Some moments were very good, but it didn't do it for me.
Still, I'm glad it's made because it adds diversity. Even if I didn't like it, someone else will, and hopefully it will inspire more people to do animation.
Personally, it looks like I'll be backing Nemo, which was a very good film.
Even if code was put in, the bottom line is that the Linux community will remove it.
One thing that this case has 100% shown is that the Linux community is serious about respecting people's copyrights. They've said again and again that if SCO tell them what exactly the infringing code is, they'll remove it, and time and again, this hasn't been shown.
There's been no wavering from that message. Next time that some code gets in (and chances are that it will happen) from someone and the owner questions it (and acts decently like showing the code) I have no doubt it will be removed and rewritten.
Imagine if a single corporation owned 90% of the road network and granted licenses to use it which are integrated into the car, which will only start the car if on their network. There's also a little road network being put together by a bunch of guys, but the guys who own the big corporation won't tell the little guys how to use the car on their road network.
Of course, the car companies don't build for a 10% market share. In addition, the company that owns the network owns the billboards and also pretunes the radio on any cars to initially use their radio stations (and the car occassionally suggests the users tune into their stations). These stations then broadcast details of the wonderful new cars by the road corporation.
CocaCola and McDonalds have huge market power and huge brand influence, but they simply aren't the same as Microsoft. You have a genuine choice with those companies - eat and drink their stuff or not. There's no protocols involved. It's quite easy to find competitors - making a choice of food is easy. Switching from Microsoft for many people is not.
I think also that kids have a huge tolerance for bad movies, because visual presentation is so exciting at that age. When I got older, things like story mattered more. It's only when a movie that raises the technological game comes along (Jurassic Park, The Matrix) that I'm interested.
However, I also believe that some movies stick with people because they transcend the visual presentation. The Harry Potter movies will be forgotten because they're nothing special. What is there of current times that will remain with kids? Pixar movies? LoTR?
At least the matrix sequels had some visual power about them. EP1 and 2 have less going on that the average car commercial. Remember as a kid the first time you saw that Imperial Star Destroyer on screen;)
As for childhood memories, I loved EP4-6 because they were just great. Whether kids would view them as a bit backward now because of effects being out of date, I don't know. But I do know that for all their faults, they do have some coherent plot and characters you care about. I don't look at any point of it and say "that wouldn't happen". There are however lots of moments in EP2 which are just like "yeah, like f**k they'd do that". Just felt like Lucas didn't want to worry about stuff as long as it got to the next bit of CGI, regardless of sense.
I left EP2 at the end and HAD to have a drink. I was so angry at having spent money on such a turd of a film. I was disappointed at EP1, and thought that maybe EP2 would be better. It wasn't.
I tried to think back to the last time I'd spent money on a cinema film and had such a miserable time. Police Academy IV at least had that guy who did the noises. Even "Under The Cherry Moon" had some good Prince songs.
I had to conclude it was the worst film I had spent money on, ever.
This sounds daft, what with it being set in another time/place with strange supernatural forces/aliens/spaceships, but the character motivations and actions make sense.
There's so many silly things in EP1 and 2 which are like 'Huh' and feel like Lucas just cut a corner to get past a difficult bit.
I love the original trilogy, I ain't paying to see any more Star Wars movies until I start seeing good reviews. I will watch them though, probably borrow a mate's DVD of it when it gets released.
In fact, if the feedback I get from EP3 reviews is "worse than EP2", I won't waste my time on it.
These hardly feel like Star Wars films to me. I know I was young when I first saw them, but these prequels are just flabby garbage riddled with ludicrous plot holes and no sparkle. I can't imagine any kid feeling anything about them beyond 10 minutes after they leave the cinema.
Thing is, he could be really damaging the DVD releases.
Sure, a lot of people of a certain age (like me) will be in line waiting to buy these films, but for those people who didn't see them first time around, EP1 and 2 will have really soured the Star Wars brand.
Enough people will see the film, but I expect audiences from young fans will be a bit non-existent. They don't have the same mania about these films as older folk. LOTR and Harry Potter are more the films the kids care about.
Personally, I love the original trilogy, was disappointed by EP1 and gave Lucas another chance with EP2 (which was one of the worst films I have ever paid to see). I still want to see EP3, more because I'm curious about the Anakin storyline. However, I'll wait until it's out on DVD and borrow it off someone.
Slashdot Mirror
It's the action/adventure/simulator gamers who are missing something.
Are there any open source projects for gaming? It seems to meet the model of 'code what you want' as many coders are gamers. I guess it needs to fit with libraries that run across Windows and Linux (GCC?)
Some Open Source advocates were telling people what a crock of shit SCO were talking, and it did nothing. Someone launches a ddos attack and it takes something off the share price.
The interesting thing about the internet to me was always that it acted as an alternative source of information. Most magazines in shops are just advertising whores. Magazines like the NME used to be interesting and quite counter cultural, but now are just part of the industry. I imagine that Rolling Stone was the same.
The thing is, the word of mouth and the brevity of the link makes it easy. Passing URLs to others is simple. When Google first appeared, the circle of people I knew who used it grew from a few to most within a few weeks. The 'viral' spread of such information is huge.
For content, the 'community' aspect has a big effect. People are contributing articles and comments to sites - this makes traditional print media look very slow, and at the same time, can provide more depth than TV.
My advice... Try and find well known independent review sites or newsgroups on things.
Anytime I see it as the default on someone's PC, I point out either Google or Yahoo to them.
Sure, some searches are a pain - like I was looking for a florist in an area, and all I got were sites which had created pages with the area name in, and they pointed to big internet florists, presumably through linking their pages and using link farms.
Trouble is, I don't know of any other search engine that would do better.
As for home users just expecting the stuff to work and protect them, that's largely down to people having a machine that is general purpose.
I have a pretty good idea how to protect myself from viruses/unsolicitied requests etc, but then I work in IT.
Social engineering and bad practice are what hits most people. Most viruses work because of people, not tech. Telling people not to answer any requests that "remind us of your credit card/PINs" are part of that. If any company wrote to me asking for this, I'd personally go to my browser, type in their site address and contact them for clarification.
If companies that I deal with phone me, and I'm not expecting a call, I ask the person for their name, department and office and I tell them I will call them back using the number on my last bill.
What iTunes seems to be doing now is getting people to use it. The fact that the record companies are taking the money now from selling on iTunes is not necessarily relelvant to the long term.
Personally, I think that if you are getting into sites that are spoofing you elsewhere, you are probably going to bad sites in the first place.
However, IE doesn't help to inform a user in their decision making. In Mozilla, I can get the toolbar to tell me what's behind a hyperlink - so a designer can't pretend it's another address.
For me, it's about "who's the driving force". The feeling I get about Pixar is that it's about Lasseter, and he's got some great guys in and created the environment for them to thrive.
For many films, it's the director who has the vision and the name gives them the backing. Particularly if they are directors who don't compromise and do their own editing. Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, Alan Parker et al.
I rarely go and see a film because of an actor, because it's a bad yardstick. Tom Cruise is one of the few actors who seems to pick generally interesting films.
You paid 1 dollar for something... that's 1 dollar from you to someone else.
Someone paid 2 dollars for something. That's 2 dollars from them to someone else.
There's been no increase in the number of dollars in supply.
I rarely blame users for being incompetent at using computer systems, because mostly it's down to a lack of training/support or bad UI. The number of times I've heard techies blame users for typing in the wrong code which crashes a system, rather than validating it.
That doesn't excuse some things some users do, though.
Money, like matter is not created or destroyed, only moved.
So, that $250million is a loss to some businesses. Loss in what? Staff time? Having to pay consultants to come in and fix the machines? Well, there's someone on an up - consultants being paid to fix things.
Don't forget that for those businesses that don't get the virus, there's a potential gain. If one of your competitors has the virus and say can't process orders, the order is likely to come to you.
I really pissed off someone in my family because I refused to help someone at a school they knew. My answer was "school hardware is supported by companies. If the company isn't good enough, go elsewhere. I'm not going to fill in for their failings".
Reason? It had been listed in with non-ADSL modems and without a title of "ADSL". I figure that the people looking for ADSL modems missed it because of category, and people looking for non DSL modems would have clicked it and seen it was ASDL.
It was just a lucky hit, and I don't deliberately go looking for these things.
Then, our government bans the use of landmines by the military as some sort of gesture to this simpleton nonsense.
Landmines used indiscriminately are bad, but they have their uses. I'm sure they were used in WW2, and yes, probably some civilians got blown up after. But they probably helped keep the Nazis at bay and help preserved the freedom that people like Diana Spencer could enjoy.
I thought it was visually very inventive and really interesting, but I didn't really enjoy it. Some moments were very good, but it didn't do it for me.
Still, I'm glad it's made because it adds diversity. Even if I didn't like it, someone else will, and hopefully it will inspire more people to do animation.
Personally, it looks like I'll be backing Nemo, which was a very good film.
One thing that this case has 100% shown is that the Linux community is serious about respecting people's copyrights. They've said again and again that if SCO tell them what exactly the infringing code is, they'll remove it, and time and again, this hasn't been shown.
There's been no wavering from that message. Next time that some code gets in (and chances are that it will happen) from someone and the owner questions it (and acts decently like showing the code) I have no doubt it will be removed and rewritten.
Imagine if a single corporation owned 90% of the road network and granted licenses to use it which are integrated into the car, which will only start the car if on their network. There's also a little road network being put together by a bunch of guys, but the guys who own the big corporation won't tell the little guys how to use the car on their road network.
Of course, the car companies don't build for a 10% market share. In addition, the company that owns the network owns the billboards and also pretunes the radio on any cars to initially use their radio stations (and the car occassionally suggests the users tune into their stations). These stations then broadcast details of the wonderful new cars by the road corporation.
CocaCola and McDonalds have huge market power and huge brand influence, but they simply aren't the same as Microsoft. You have a genuine choice with those companies - eat and drink their stuff or not. There's no protocols involved. It's quite easy to find competitors - making a choice of food is easy. Switching from Microsoft for many people is not.
However, I also believe that some movies stick with people because they transcend the visual presentation. The Harry Potter movies will be forgotten because they're nothing special. What is there of current times that will remain with kids? Pixar movies? LoTR?
At least the matrix sequels had some visual power about them. EP1 and 2 have less going on that the average car commercial. Remember as a kid the first time you saw that Imperial Star Destroyer on screen ;)
As for childhood memories, I loved EP4-6 because they were just great. Whether kids would view them as a bit backward now because of effects being out of date, I don't know. But I do know that for all their faults, they do have some coherent plot and characters you care about. I don't look at any point of it and say "that wouldn't happen". There are however lots of moments in EP2 which are just like "yeah, like f**k they'd do that". Just felt like Lucas didn't want to worry about stuff as long as it got to the next bit of CGI, regardless of sense.
I left EP2 at the end and HAD to have a drink. I was so angry at having spent money on such a turd of a film. I was disappointed at EP1, and thought that maybe EP2 would be better. It wasn't.
I tried to think back to the last time I'd spent money on a cinema film and had such a miserable time. Police Academy IV at least had that guy who did the noises. Even "Under The Cherry Moon" had some good Prince songs.
I had to conclude it was the worst film I had spent money on, ever.
He can write IMO. Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
There's so many silly things in EP1 and 2 which are like 'Huh' and feel like Lucas just cut a corner to get past a difficult bit.
In fact, if the feedback I get from EP3 reviews is "worse than EP2", I won't waste my time on it.
These hardly feel like Star Wars films to me. I know I was young when I first saw them, but these prequels are just flabby garbage riddled with ludicrous plot holes and no sparkle. I can't imagine any kid feeling anything about them beyond 10 minutes after they leave the cinema.
Sure, a lot of people of a certain age (like me) will be in line waiting to buy these films, but for those people who didn't see them first time around, EP1 and 2 will have really soured the Star Wars brand.
Enough people will see the film, but I expect audiences from young fans will be a bit non-existent. They don't have the same mania about these films as older folk. LOTR and Harry Potter are more the films the kids care about.
Personally, I love the original trilogy, was disappointed by EP1 and gave Lucas another chance with EP2 (which was one of the worst films I have ever paid to see). I still want to see EP3, more because I'm curious about the Anakin storyline. However, I'll wait until it's out on DVD and borrow it off someone.