Oh? It's impossible for a corporate entity to force you to do business with them? Obviously you have never heard of "Ma Bell". Their monopoly was so solid they were able to force their customers to pay a monthly fee to rent a phone. Yes, customers did not own their own phones, this only changed in the late 70s or early 80s. (I'm sure you won't believe this.)
Or cable for that matter either. How many cable providers are there typically in a market? One. I'd say that forces you to do business if you want any sort of TV. (You can say "satellite", but for a lot of people, this just isn't an option. Unless they don't want to watch TV when it rains or snows.)
Hell, Microsoft anyone? Look at the power they hold over the software market, and are likely to continue holding for a long time.
This is the age-old problem of double blind anonymity. We've been seeing it for years in MMOGs, where 2-5% of the playerbase terrorized UO completely, or where a couple of trolls, if left unchecked, can destroy an online community.
There are more people willing to destroy, than there are people willing to police. Given that it is also far easier to destroy than police, those who seek to police wikipedia will always be outpaced by those who wish to destroy.
It's not helped by corporate and political whitewashing either. You have people who's job it is to deface wikipedia, whether it's "correcting" the entry for their corporate overlords, or defacing that of the competition.
As others have no doubt mentioned, a change board, or editorial board, could work. The problem is that it destroys the community aspect of wikipedia, and it does nothing to prevent infiltration or defacing done by the editorial staff itself.
I used to buy 2 or 3 retail games a month, right up until I started playing UO. Currently, I may buy three to six games a year, and they are for the most part big titles like Warcraft III or Civ 4. In fact, I'd say half of the games I have bought for the past couple years have been for the gamecube I bought "for the children".
The industry has no one to blame but themselves, unfortunately. The way that MMOGs are designed, in order to be "successful" in the game, one has to spend an extraordinary amount of time playing. This really cuts into your free time that might have been spent playing other games.
I'll also point to the pain that can be installing a new game. I recently received Half Life 2 as a gift. It took me a couple hours to get the whole thing working. First, I had to install, then patch. That took a good while. I launched HL2, and was told there may be issues with my video card, please update. So I update the video drivers, and reinstall activex on my machine. Then I discovered there was a conflict with my video drivers with an MMOG that I play, so I had to roll back the video drivers I had installed. Fortunately, both HL2 and DAoC now work on my machine quite happily, but it took, as I said, a couple of hours to get that right.
Many people who play video games are getting past the point in their lives where they want to spend a couple hours swearing at their computer. They'd rather come home and play with friends in an MMOG, or drop a disc into a console and have some fun.
Assuming Microsoft puts ads into Office, any time anyone mentions this to me, I'll be sure to point out the existance of Open Office. Free, no ads, all the basic functionality home users need.
Personally, I think he'd be dismayed how long it's been since the last revolution. Not to mention the apathy we display as our freedoms are taken in the name of security.
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Several possibilities:
1. The number of people they wanted to wiretap was higher than FISA would likely allow.
2. The people they wanted to wiretap would not be allowed by FISA.
3. They wanted to set the precedent of "If the president does it, it's not illegal."
Mix and match as you like. It's probably some of all the above.
"Rush Limbaugh said so!"
There is precedent for a taxpayer funded infrastructure extension to those the "free market" refuses to build out to - The Rural Electrification Act.
Oh? It's impossible for a corporate entity to force you to do business with them? Obviously you have never heard of "Ma Bell". Their monopoly was so solid they were able to force their customers to pay a monthly fee to rent a phone. Yes, customers did not own their own phones, this only changed in the late 70s or early 80s. (I'm sure you won't believe this.)
Or cable for that matter either. How many cable providers are there typically in a market? One. I'd say that forces you to do business if you want any sort of TV. (You can say "satellite", but for a lot of people, this just isn't an option. Unless they don't want to watch TV when it rains or snows.)
Hell, Microsoft anyone? Look at the power they hold over the software market, and are likely to continue holding for a long time.
This is the age-old problem of double blind anonymity. We've been seeing it for years in MMOGs, where 2-5% of the playerbase terrorized UO completely, or where a couple of trolls, if left unchecked, can destroy an online community. There are more people willing to destroy, than there are people willing to police. Given that it is also far easier to destroy than police, those who seek to police wikipedia will always be outpaced by those who wish to destroy. It's not helped by corporate and political whitewashing either. You have people who's job it is to deface wikipedia, whether it's "correcting" the entry for their corporate overlords, or defacing that of the competition. As others have no doubt mentioned, a change board, or editorial board, could work. The problem is that it destroys the community aspect of wikipedia, and it does nothing to prevent infiltration or defacing done by the editorial staff itself.
I used to buy 2 or 3 retail games a month, right up until I started playing UO. Currently, I may buy three to six games a year, and they are for the most part big titles like Warcraft III or Civ 4. In fact, I'd say half of the games I have bought for the past couple years have been for the gamecube I bought "for the children".
The industry has no one to blame but themselves, unfortunately. The way that MMOGs are designed, in order to be "successful" in the game, one has to spend an extraordinary amount of time playing. This really cuts into your free time that might have been spent playing other games.
I'll also point to the pain that can be installing a new game. I recently received Half Life 2 as a gift. It took me a couple hours to get the whole thing working. First, I had to install, then patch. That took a good while. I launched HL2, and was told there may be issues with my video card, please update. So I update the video drivers, and reinstall activex on my machine. Then I discovered there was a conflict with my video drivers with an MMOG that I play, so I had to roll back the video drivers I had installed. Fortunately, both HL2 and DAoC now work on my machine quite happily, but it took, as I said, a couple of hours to get that right.
Many people who play video games are getting past the point in their lives where they want to spend a couple hours swearing at their computer. They'd rather come home and play with friends in an MMOG, or drop a disc into a console and have some fun.
Slashdot has ads?
Assuming Microsoft puts ads into Office, any time anyone mentions this to me, I'll be sure to point out the existance of Open Office. Free, no ads, all the basic functionality home users need.
There isn't enough time to do it right the first time, but there's time to do it four or five times.
I'd hardly call it a cute article. It seems a poorly written fluff piece that was largely aimed at pushing advertisements at more eyeballs.
Personally, I think he'd be dismayed how long it's been since the last revolution. Not to mention the apathy we display as our freedoms are taken in the name of security.
Military applications drive innovation. The consumer applications of the technology are coming.
The good news is there is plenty of prior art to prevent anyone from taking out patents?
And now our overlords are looking to postpone the elections.
You don't need an election.