Re:"We want open protocols" from Yahoo+MS, yeah ri
on
AOL Jilts Open Source
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· Score: 1
AOL doesn't allow POP3/SMTP simply because there is no need for it. Anyone who knows what POP3 and SMTP are, probably isn't using AOL.
Most AOLers would be dumbfounded if presented with more than the 4 or 5 options AOL's client provides. The AOL client wasn't built to be stable, efficient, or small. It was designed to be easy to use. Very illogical and stupid at times, but overall, it's the easiest thing a newbie can get their hands on.
They're not targeting nerds, or even people who are moderately computer-literate. They're targeting newbies. People who leave their Caps Lock on when typing in their password.
By the way, this is why AOL passwords are case-insensitive, 6 to 8 characters, and alphanumeric ONLY. If the password contains any non-alphanumeric characters, they are simply ignored. Heheh.
Ok, I guess I wandered off a bit... I'll shut up now.
Even so, any group that "reviews" its committment to the open source community when its wallet becomes threatened needs to be "reviewed" by the community in turn.
Corporations will always be about profit first, and everything else second. You can't change that. The best you can do is try to get them on your side and stay there.
Finally, there is a place for me to post comments about my Slashdot wishes, and I forgot what I was looking for.
Although I do remember someone asking for an "Offtopic" checkbox so that posts can automatically be marked offtopic by their posters. When you think about it, it would be pretty useful for those long discussion threads we Slashdotters tend to get into.
My own wish would be to have a few permanent slashdot discussion areas. To name two of them, news, and Slashdot ideas/bugs. Maybe have the comments deleted after 3 days or something.
Err.. I'm sorry. I really thought that no comments have been posted yet (dumbass) because Slashdot was in "overload mode", and because the main page said that there weren't any comments yet.
I can see why noone has commented on this article yet. I think I'm brave enough to be the first to break the silence.
There is absolutely no practical application to this, and the chances that someone will actually get the signal are virtually nonexistant. I guess it's pretty cool to let people pretend that they're talking to aliens. Essentially, this is what is happening here. But you won't see me spending 11 bucks on this.:-)
Perhaps "Person of the Century" is a bad idea from the start. They should have a whole edition of the magazine dedicated to these people, and list them in alphabetical order, since no two people can agree on the same order of importance.
I can't think of any one person that could be considered the most important person of this century, which the title seems to imply.
1) You can only pick one choice out of the list. 2) The choices at the top will probably get more votes simply because they're at the top.
Still, it's quite entertaining just to read through the choices.
By the way, I voted for Albert Einstein for the Person of the Century, simply because it's the best thing I could come up with. How Madonna or Linus even got on the list is beyond me. And who is Yitzhak Rabin? Am I missing something?
The problem is that not all AOL employees follow the standard procedures, especially since... well... they're AOL employees. Their peons get paid about 5 dollars per hour, so they could care less. If someone calls in claiming to be the FBI or even just the police, their first reaction is to cooperate.
This has been demonstrated in meny cases. You can read about the most famous one is when a man was discharged from the marines because AOL revealed his account information (without even confirmation that the people who were requesting the information were indeed the Marines). He listed his marital status as "gay" in his AOL profile.
Well, I wouldn't exactly say that OSS is "black market" software. The same would apply for the ISPs you're talking about, unless an actual law would be put into effect that would make them illegal.
Although I'm not very proud of it, I do know some things on the subject. (There once was a time when I purchased my first computer with a modem and didn't know any better.)
AOL employees as a whole don't stand out with their intelligence. I personally know of a few cases where accounts were compromised by just calling AOL tech support and telling them the password was forgotten. Although they're _supposed_ to ask you for full account information including the last 4 digits of the credit card number, some were happy with just some basic information like the name of the account holder and the address.
What I'm trying to say is that the information could be given out accidentally, against AOL's policies (although the press release doesn't seem to confirm this - that's what they were saying some time ago). When someone calls in and claims to be the Police or the FBI, a person's first reaction is probably to try to cooperate. Of course, if the information was disclosed after a court order, they really should have done that.
I think some of us may still remember the story about the homosexual marine who revealed his sexual orientation in his AOL profile. The Marine Corps (or whoever) called AOL, and they happily gave out his information without even confirming that they were indeed who they claimed to be. He was "honorably" discharged only because the media caught the story.
I don't consider anniversaries (or anything else that merely celebrates something that happened some time ago, but was pretty cool, even though it doesn't matter now) to be very important (including my birthday). Of course, this makes me seem like "some kind of a freak" compared to all the other people, so I don't express this opinion very often for lack of rejection (of which I already get a lot of).
On the other hand, reminders like this come in very handy. I wouldn't have gone there today (or anytime soon) had it not been for this story. That said, I will probably go there less often since their design favors Internet Explorer, which I dislike using.
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Re:I don't know if I like the new format
on
Return of The Onion
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· Score: 1
Also, I just noticed that they use the IFRAME tag to display ads.
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Re:I don't know if I like the new format
on
Return of The Onion
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· Score: 2
That's because Internet Explorer displays all HTML text a size larger than Netscape does. A long time ago (when I first discovered this "feature") I said that this was implemented to make pages designed for Explorer (as The Onion was) to be virtally unreadable in Netscape.
According to the previous reply to your post (I did the same thing) they succeeded.
Look at VCRs. To program it, all you have to do is set the date and time when you want it to record whatever it is you want to record, and the channel it will be on. Still, most people have trouble doing this - the endless jokes are evidence.
TVs and VCRs are fairly simple to use. How do you expect an average person to use a computer? Maybe things like the iToast will solve this, but today's computers aren't for everyone.
Also, most people who have never even seen a computer, except on TV, see them as something complex and something that is beyond their ability to understand.
Another obstacle is all the articles about some naive girl meeting someone she talked to on AOL and getting raped and/or killed. "I don't want my kids on the Internet with all those psychos around."
Here is more proof. Make sure you read the users' comments.
This is why not everyone is on the Net yet. Just give it some time, though - we'll get there eventually.
During my first two years of high school (this was 2 years ago, I just graduated), bus tokens were only given out to the "minority" students, as opposed to those living the farthest from the school. I didn't see anyone complain beyond a half-whispered "that's pretty stupid". Had the rule been the opposite, there would be 10 lawsuits for every black student in the school. By the way, I think the rule is still in effect - I just went to a different school for the second two years.
Many colleges are now offering scholarships for "minority" students only. Of course, how could I forget mentioning affirmative action.
It seems to have become acceptable to favor minorities simply because of their race, which is what the minorities were fighting against not so long ago. If race really doesn't matter (which is my opinion, BTW) then these statistics are pointless, right? So why pay attention to them? </rant>
Music, in my opinion, is ear candy. It's something that you like to listen to. This guy is talking about furniture, not music.
I don't really care how rare the music I'm listening to is. If I like it, I'm going to listen to it. If I don't like it, I'm not going to listen to it, even if the CD is the only one that exists in the world. I'm just going to sell the CD to someone like the author of this article.
Slashdot Mirror
AOL doesn't allow POP3/SMTP simply because there is no need for it. Anyone who knows what POP3 and SMTP are, probably isn't using AOL.
Most AOLers would be dumbfounded if presented with more than the 4 or 5 options AOL's client provides. The AOL client wasn't built to be stable, efficient, or small. It was designed to be easy to use. Very illogical and stupid at times, but overall, it's the easiest thing a newbie can get their hands on.
They're not targeting nerds, or even people who are moderately computer-literate. They're targeting newbies. People who leave their Caps Lock on when typing in their password.
By the way, this is why AOL passwords are case-insensitive, 6 to 8 characters, and alphanumeric ONLY. If the password contains any non-alphanumeric characters, they are simply ignored. Heheh.
Ok, I guess I wandered off a bit... I'll shut up now.
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Even so, any group that "reviews" its committment to the open source community when its wallet becomes threatened needs to be "reviewed" by the community in turn.
Corporations will always be about profit first, and everything else second. You can't change that. The best you can do is try to get them on your side and stay there.
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AOL only took down the main page. If you still need a copy, you can download it here:
http://www.aim.aol.com/tik/tik-0.75.tar. gz
All of the other pages are also available through HotBot here.
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Good, now I can get those extra fps in Quake to set me apart from the lamers.
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"... so rather than compete with you, I've decided to simply buy you out."
"I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks! Mwuahahahaha!"
-Bill Gates (The Simpsons)
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Finally, there is a place for me to post comments about my Slashdot wishes, and I forgot what I was looking for.
Although I do remember someone asking for an "Offtopic" checkbox so that posts can automatically be marked offtopic by their posters. When you think about it, it would be pretty useful for those long discussion threads we Slashdotters tend to get into.
My own wish would be to have a few permanent slashdot discussion areas. To name two of them, news, and Slashdot ideas/bugs. Maybe have the comments deleted after 3 days or something.
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Err.. I'm sorry. I really thought that no comments have been posted yet (dumbass) because Slashdot was in "overload mode", and because the main page said that there weren't any comments yet.
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I can see why noone has commented on this article yet. I think I'm brave enough to be the first to break the silence.
:-)
There is absolutely no practical application to this, and the chances that someone will actually get the signal are virtually nonexistant. I guess it's pretty cool to let people pretend that they're talking to aliens. Essentially, this is what is happening here. But you won't see me spending 11 bucks on this.
---
Perhaps "Person of the Century" is a bad idea from the start. They should have a whole edition of the magazine dedicated to these people, and list them in alphabetical order, since no two people can agree on the same order of importance.
I can't think of any one person that could be considered the most important person of this century, which the title seems to imply.
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At last it looks as if Linux (#15) has beaten Window~1 (#17)... and all's fair in love and war. Great these surveys, arn't they ?
It's interesting to see how far people will carry the OS wars. It seems to have gotten to a point where it can be compared to religion.
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Forget Linus, vote for Rob Malda!
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The 100 Worst Ideas. I only have two small complaints:
1) You can only pick one choice out of the list.
2) The choices at the top will probably get more votes simply because they're at the top.
Still, it's quite entertaining just to read through the choices.
By the way, I voted for Albert Einstein for the Person of the Century, simply because it's the best thing I could come up with. How Madonna or Linus even got on the list is beyond me. And who is Yitzhak Rabin? Am I missing something?
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The problem is that not all AOL employees follow the standard procedures, especially since... well... they're AOL employees. Their peons get paid about 5 dollars per hour, so they could care less. If someone calls in claiming to be the FBI or even just the police, their first reaction is to cooperate.
This has been demonstrated in meny cases. You can read about the most famous one is when a man was discharged from the marines because AOL revealed his account information (without even confirmation that the people who were requesting the information were indeed the Marines). He listed his marital status as "gay" in his AOL profile.
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Well, I wouldn't exactly say that OSS is "black market" software. The same would apply for the ISPs you're talking about, unless an actual law would be put into effect that would make them illegal.
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Although I'm not very proud of it, I do know some things on the subject. (There once was a time when I purchased my first computer with a modem and didn't know any better.)
AOL employees as a whole don't stand out with their intelligence. I personally know of a few cases where accounts were compromised by just calling AOL tech support and telling them the password was forgotten. Although they're _supposed_ to ask you for full account information including the last 4 digits of the credit card number, some were happy with just some basic information like the name of the account holder and the address.
What I'm trying to say is that the information could be given out accidentally, against AOL's policies (although the press release doesn't seem to confirm this - that's what they were saying some time ago). When someone calls in and claims to be the Police or the FBI, a person's first reaction is probably to try to cooperate. Of course, if the information was disclosed after a court order, they really should have done that.
I think some of us may still remember the story about the homosexual marine who revealed his sexual orientation in his AOL profile. The Marine Corps (or whoever) called AOL, and they happily gave out his information without even confirming that they were indeed who they claimed to be. He was "honorably" discharged only because the media caught the story.
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I loved the one about the American college student's vacation in Greece. Anyone have the URL? I haven't been able to find it myself.
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I don't consider anniversaries (or anything else that merely celebrates something that happened some time ago, but was pretty cool, even though it doesn't matter now) to be very important (including my birthday). Of course, this makes me seem like "some kind of a freak" compared to all the other people, so I don't express this opinion very often for lack of rejection (of which I already get a lot of).
On the other hand, reminders like this come in very handy. I wouldn't have gone there today (or anytime soon) had it not been for this story. That said, I will probably go there less often since their design favors Internet Explorer, which I dislike using.
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Also, I just noticed that they use the IFRAME tag to display ads.
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That's because Internet Explorer displays all HTML text a size larger than Netscape does. A long time ago (when I first discovered this "feature") I said that this was implemented to make pages designed for Explorer (as The Onion was) to be virtally unreadable in Netscape.
According to the previous reply to your post (I did the same thing) they succeeded.
---
Look at VCRs. To program it, all you have to do is set the date and time when you want it to record whatever it is you want to record, and the channel it will be on. Still, most people have trouble doing this - the endless jokes are evidence.
TVs and VCRs are fairly simple to use. How do you expect an average person to use a computer? Maybe things like the iToast will solve this, but today's computers aren't for everyone.
Also, most people who have never even seen a computer, except on TV, see them as something complex and something that is beyond their ability to understand.
Another obstacle is all the articles about some naive girl meeting someone she talked to on AOL and getting raped and/or killed. "I don't want my kids on the Internet with all those psychos around."
Here is more proof. Make sure you read the users' comments.
This is why not everyone is on the Net yet. Just give it some time, though - we'll get there eventually.
---
During my first two years of high school (this was 2 years ago, I just graduated), bus tokens were only given out to the "minority" students, as opposed to those living the farthest from the school. I didn't see anyone complain beyond a half-whispered "that's pretty stupid". Had the rule been the opposite, there would be 10 lawsuits for every black student in the school. By the way, I think the rule is still in effect - I just went to a different school for the second two years.
Many colleges are now offering scholarships for "minority" students only. Of course, how could I forget mentioning affirmative action.
It seems to have become acceptable to favor minorities simply because of their race, which is what the minorities were fighting against not so long ago. If race really doesn't matter (which is my opinion, BTW) then these statistics are pointless, right? So why pay attention to them?
</rant>
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How many nerds do you know that actually use a computer case? :-)
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I'm sorry if my post was misunderstood - it was only half-serious, and was referring to the sex bot article some time ago.
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Is this the return of perfocards? :P
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Music, in my opinion, is ear candy. It's something that you like to listen to. This guy is talking about furniture, not music.
I don't really care how rare the music I'm listening to is. If I like it, I'm going to listen to it. If I don't like it, I'm not going to listen to it, even if the CD is the only one that exists in the world. I'm just going to sell the CD to someone like the author of this article.
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