I beleive forum posts and so on much more accurately reflect sites people are talking about and finding useful than what you get from only scanning the pages of the site itself. Forum posts and comments are made by the people who use and require the information that they seek when searching, it seems backwards to ignore them.
For example, an extremely resourceful but static page may have several other relevant webpages link to it at the time it is launched. But only that once - a webpage rarely has other sites post news about the simple fact that it is still there. On the other hand, the page may be so useful to the user's of those site's that it's link is being given in forum responses on a daily basis.
If setting rel=nofollow by default becomes common practice on comments and forums, then I fear search engines will be giving much poorer results. If it is not set by default, then I suspect it will hardly be used and hence will have negligible effect either on search results or at discouraging spam.
I suppose it could work well if rel=nofollow is only set for "Anonymous Coward" comments by default, or some other sensible usage that will probably rarely happen because those who would have to code that sort of thing probably dont have much incentive.
I can never quite fathom slashdot comment scoring. Posting links to a site even while stating that they do not work is considered as informative as it gets, while posting a link that works is only a little bit informative.
True. At least two people have offered to give it a go (IIRC, some guy from Aspyr in his free time, and an author of one of ET's biggest mods, ETPro), however either id or Activision isn't giving them the code they need in order to do it, which is kind of understandable since they'd need to give them all of it.
both ET and the patches are on the id FTP, and about all of the usual download sites (and plenty others too). Try activision's rtcw site, and click the Enemy Territory tab at the top, there are several mirrors for both ET and the patch listed there.
A better (IMO) list of mirrors for ETF is here at PlanetETF, also including the torrents which have been posted already.
ET is about 260mb, and ETF is just over 200mb. Not an awful lot to download for essentially two completely free multiplayer FPS games.
There's nothing new in gamers "marketing" their current favourite multiplayer games, all the MP games I've played intensively I've seen players constantly try to nudge other people into the game via websites, forums, IRC. Admittedly few are that organised at spamming, but the result is liable to be at least as much exposure on at least as many forums, etc. (yes, including/. newsposts, most newsposts on current games are probably posted by their existing fans, right?)
Movies are hardly new either, though for the games I play they tend to be more of the nature of making a video really for the experience of making one, often under the guise of pimping their clan. This trailer (for some clan "R3") was released yesterday and the quality of the edit and artistry is so far above that PS one (though at 7x the filesize).
Scoring a new 7day trial is an impressive acheivement, though the game video'd above is Enemy Territory which doesnt have a subscription. Or a retail price - it's totally free to download.
bah, everyone talks about adware in free software. How about adware-free paid-for hardware? As in, not at all like the Logitech mouse driver [bad language] that comes on the supplied CD.
Long answer: The description of how the software works sounds like a perfect setup for installing spyware, but I cannot find any documented reports. perfect setup how? because... its a program?
It's anticheat software. It's approved enough by quite a few major publishers for them to pay evenbalance to implement it. It's used on 99% of servers for most of the biggest MP games out there, despite millions of users, you yourself say you cannot find any documented reports. Punkbuster even comes with most of the game above, or comes with their patches. There is a limit to how careful you need to be without a certain modded-down 'troll' reply being justifed and fair.
Personally, for when playing it's supported games, there is no way I would play on a server that does not have PB enabled.
The difference is quite distinct, or rather it should be - but often isnt.
Journalism should always be completely objective, while a blog is nearly always subjective. This doesnt have to mean being "down" on blogging, the same applies to an editorial or (especially) a column article, which is often not-dissimilar to a blog in actual content. The primary difference tends to be that a column, and especially an editorial, almost always has some reasonable justification why the author's voice should be widely heard and respected. Anyone can write a blog, and hence blogging generally will be looked down upon, despite the known and respected existence of some excellent blogs written by people with all the credentials required for an editorial of a respected publication.
There is also suggestion that journalists have a code of practice and they can be held to account, which is part of the reason they can be considered professional.
I rad AdAware for the first time in at least 3 months today, and didnt even come up with suspect cookies. I'm not sure why I bother with an antivirus because it's come up with one hit in a couple of years (and it's not like I use my PC for anything important).
Keep your OS updated, run Firefox (ok or opera or whatever) instead of IE, get a decent hosts file... A couple of painless steps and easy, basic maintenance like pointing your browser to windowsupdate occasionally and you'll be sitting wondering what all the fuss is about.
But above all, just use your head: if in any doubt, just delete that email or refuse that unrequested file download. Free software? Sounds pretty suspect to me, aint putting THAT near my PC without a quick spot of forum/google research - where i'm liable to be pointed to better software anyway. Plain, simple, common sense. I'm absolutely confident the vast majority of spyware infections could be prevented if the user was just a little savvy - or even just sceptical.
Slashdot Mirror
I beleive forum posts and so on much more accurately reflect sites people are talking about and finding useful than what you get from only scanning the pages of the site itself. Forum posts and comments are made by the people who use and require the information that they seek when searching, it seems backwards to ignore them.
For example, an extremely resourceful but static page may have several other relevant webpages link to it at the time it is launched. But only that once - a webpage rarely has other sites post news about the simple fact that it is still there. On the other hand, the page may be so useful to the user's of those site's that it's link is being given in forum responses on a daily basis.
If setting rel=nofollow by default becomes common practice on comments and forums, then I fear search engines will be giving much poorer results. If it is not set by default, then I suspect it will hardly be used and hence will have negligible effect either on search results or at discouraging spam.
I suppose it could work well if rel=nofollow is only set for "Anonymous Coward" comments by default, or some other sensible usage that will probably rarely happen because those who would have to code that sort of thing probably dont have much incentive.
I can never quite fathom slashdot comment scoring. Posting links to a site even while stating that they do not work is considered as informative as it gets, while posting a link that works is only a little bit informative.
True. At least two people have offered to give it a go (IIRC, some guy from Aspyr in his free time, and an author of one of ET's biggest mods, ETPro), however either id or Activision isn't giving them the code they need in order to do it, which is kind of understandable since they'd need to give them all of it.
There is loads on the etfgame.com website but it was giving up even before the release, with all the people refreshing the page or whatever.
But anyway I cobbled some together from what I already had on-site from news-postings etc - ETF screenshots.
both ET and the patches are on the id FTP, and about all of the usual download sites (and plenty others too). Try activision's rtcw site, and click the Enemy Territory tab at the top, there are several mirrors for both ET and the patch listed there.
A better (IMO) list of mirrors for ETF is here at PlanetETF, also including the torrents which have been posted already.
ET is about 260mb, and ETF is just over 200mb. Not an awful lot to download for essentially two completely free multiplayer FPS games.
There's nothing new in gamers "marketing" their current favourite multiplayer games, all the MP games I've played intensively I've seen players constantly try to nudge other people into the game via websites, forums, IRC. Admittedly few are that organised at spamming, but the result is liable to be at least as much exposure on at least as many forums, etc. (yes, including /. newsposts, most newsposts on current games are probably posted by their existing fans, right?)
Movies are hardly new either, though for the games I play they tend to be more of the nature of making a video really for the experience of making one, often under the guise of pimping their clan. This trailer (for some clan "R3") was released yesterday and the quality of the edit and artistry is so far above that PS one (though at 7x the filesize).
Scoring a new 7day trial is an impressive acheivement, though the game video'd above is Enemy Territory which doesnt have a subscription. Or a retail price - it's totally free to download.
bah, everyone talks about adware in free software. How about adware-free paid-for hardware? As in, not at all like the Logitech mouse driver [bad language] that comes on the supplied CD.
"Is Punkbuster spyware?"
short answer: no
Long answer:
The description of how the software works sounds like a perfect setup for installing spyware, but I cannot find any documented reports.
perfect setup how? because... its a program?
It's anticheat software. It's approved enough by quite a few major publishers for them to pay evenbalance to implement it. It's used on 99% of servers for most of the biggest MP games out there, despite millions of users, you yourself say you cannot find any documented reports. Punkbuster even comes with most of the game above, or comes with their patches. There is a limit to how careful you need to be without a certain modded-down 'troll' reply being justifed and fair.
Personally, for when playing it's supported games, there is no way I would play on a server that does not have PB enabled.
The difference is quite distinct, or rather it should be - but often isnt.
Journalism should always be completely objective, while a blog is nearly always subjective. This doesnt have to mean being "down" on blogging, the same applies to an editorial or (especially) a column article, which is often not-dissimilar to a blog in actual content. The primary difference tends to be that a column, and especially an editorial, almost always has some reasonable justification why the author's voice should be widely heard and respected. Anyone can write a blog, and hence blogging generally will be looked down upon, despite the known and respected existence of some excellent blogs written by people with all the credentials required for an editorial of a respected publication. There is also suggestion that journalists have a code of practice and they can be held to account, which is part of the reason they can be considered professional.
I rad AdAware for the first time in at least 3 months today, and didnt even come up with suspect cookies. I'm not sure why I bother with an antivirus because it's come up with one hit in a couple of years (and it's not like I use my PC for anything important).
Keep your OS updated, run Firefox (ok or opera or whatever) instead of IE, get a decent hosts file... A couple of painless steps and easy, basic maintenance like pointing your browser to windowsupdate occasionally and you'll be sitting wondering what all the fuss is about.
But above all, just use your head: if in any doubt, just delete that email or refuse that unrequested file download. Free software? Sounds pretty suspect to me, aint putting THAT near my PC without a quick spot of forum/google research - where i'm liable to be pointed to better software anyway. Plain, simple, common sense. I'm absolutely confident the vast majority of spyware infections could be prevented if the user was just a little savvy - or even just sceptical.
somehow Standard and Poor is an amusing name for a ratings firm.