But there was a risk that you would just keep the tape and buy nothing, wasn't there?
Of course there's a risk that I'm not going to like music that I'm not familiar with. In fact, with me, it's a 98% probability. But if I didn't like it, I'd have tossed the tape in a drawer somewhere and threw it out eventually. I would lose nothing, and Tori would lose nothing.
We all know what happened in my situation, and I can say with a fair degree of certainty that nearly everyone else like me would have done the same thing... buy some albums. The only excuse that I can come up with to NOT buy the albums of an artist you really like is perhaps you can't afford it. And if you can't afford a CD (they aren't cheap, but...) then you have no business owning a computer with which to download MP3s.:P
Again, Underworld took a risk, and luckily for them, it paid off (at least in your case).
This is the original argument at it's core. Again, I have to agree with the other guy that replied to my post. That MP3 leads to sampling which leads to spending money on an album. I don't see the risk involved. Right now the RIAA would like you to purchase an $18 CD for every album that you'd like to listen to regardless of how much you like it and regardless of whether you like it or not. The artists that are truly talented and deserve to get paid for their work will have a devoted fan base that buys their CDs. Those that don't, don't. This is a fact of life that will never go away and really shouldn't.
There are always going to be the relatively few that decide they like (say) Tori Amos but opt to download all the MP3s they can find rather than purchasing an album or two. To them, I offer my condolences because not only does Tori not see any reward (all 12 cents of it), but the poor MP3 bloke misses out on the album art and has to settle for suboptimal sound quality. As a sidenote, MP3 compression simply does NOT do Tori's beautiful voice any justice.
But shouldn't Underworld and Tori have the right to decide not to take that risk?
I believe that if they're not willing to accept the risk that there may be an unpaid-for copy of their work out there, then they have no business releasing it. It would be different if they/she decided NOT to release a song and it got all over the net anyway.
That "risk" is how you gather fans and make your music known. This has been proven, and you'll see it said time and time again in this whole Napster story thread.
Hey, I agree with you completely. I like Napster and I use Napster mainly to find new music.
I have my three favourite artists (Tori Amos, Weird Al Yankovic, and Underworld) and I have purchased almost all of their CDs because these happen to be the artists that I think are good enough for my money. There's NO WAY IN HELL that I'm going to shell out $18 for a CD of a group that I might like.
Despite this, the RIAA should thank "music sharing" for roughly $150 of my business. Why? Because out of those three artists mentioned above, two were the result of me being able to sample the music before deciding whether I liked it or not.
Tori Amos. I knew a friend on IRC who was a Tori fanatic. One day he asked me if he could make me a tape of some of his favourite Tori songs and send it to me. I said sure. A few months later and I was hooked. I have three Tori albums and four singles, with plans to buy more. Under the RIAA's definition of pirating, I'm a criminal even though I bought their goods.
Underworld. Not quite so fancy a story this time, but a few years back I was downloading anything techno and the only ones to hold my attention for any period of time was the group Underworld. I downloaded the Born Slippy MP3 and after loving it for a few weeks, went out and bought the album. I now have seven Underworld albums, and despite this, the RIAA still considers me a criminal. I have downloaded lots of Underworld MP3's using Napster, but almost all have been songs that haven't been released in the US or live performances. I even have an entire show that was done in Germany, which burned to CD takes up two entire discs.
Anyway, I think I've made my point now. I'm going back to bed.
Hate to be so harsh, but the WSJ article quite clearly states that Shawn Fanning has had little to do with the actual creation of Napster beyond some of the initial coding.
The rest of it is 100% pure corporation, and many others in this thread have given many very good reasons why the death of napster would actually be even more beneficial to the music community than if they were to stick around.
Personall, I haven't made my own decision regarding that... I think the freeware/GPL products have a long long way to go until they get enough public recognition and usuability to the point that they reach Napster's coverage.
I like Gnapster and all.. nice interface, nice features, etc. but it's too buggy for me. But it keeps segfaulting! ARRRR!
I'm using gnome-napster for now, but I can't figure out how to get it to connect to opennap servers. It always fails saying that it can't connect to the server.
err, well if it's a standalone box at his ISP (which I what I'm assuming), all they have to do is unplug it from the network and reinstall an OS or something. I would assume that any ISP worth their beans has ways to defend against damage to the rest of their network caused by a rogue box.
It would be different if it were a shared server, which can't be the case because then he wouldn't have been able to give access to everyone.
but it seems more likely to me that it's HIS box at HIS home and he's simply got a high bandwidth connection or something.
Not to be a um.. well a troll, but do you have any evidence or links or something to back this up? I agree that some CDRs are made very shabbily (The aluminum on FujiFilm CDRs frequently peels up after small amounts of use), but the majority I've seen look to be able to withstand time for at least a few decades... I would expect professionally pressed CDs to last most of my life barring any regretful gouges or scratches.
I only say this because there are a few CDs that I've had for years now and no sign of deterioration (what are the signs anyway?:P), and one CDR has been with me for two years and has had frequent use with no hint of death befalling it in the near future at all.
I don't see the real big problem here. I mean, if eBay, etc want to stop their site from being indexed in price indexes (which is what I assume this is all about), it seems to me that they're only hurting themselves... the only motive for retail sites to try and block this metabrowsing stuff is if they have a substantial markup on merchandise that smaller ma-and-pop type can easily beat and they don't want the public to know. They only want Joe Blow to know *their* prices and *their* sales.
Yes, it's fair to say that this doesn't give the average use quite as much freedom, but I blame that partly on the ignorance of said average user.
I, for one, believe that voluntary price listing sites (ie Pricewatch) will always be around and will always be the best deal for the consumer. Why? Well because the companies that participate are doing so because they *want* the world to know their prices and aren't afraid to challenge each other. I believe it's called capitalism .
Take me, for example. I recently built a computer that cost me a total of around $3500. Nearly every compontent was bought from a retailer that advertised their products on pricewatch. I would estimate that if I had gone the more "traditional" route and done my own hunt-and-search for retail prices I would have only covered a tiny fraction of the kind of sites listed on pricewatch and thus it's very feasible that I could have paid in excess of $5000 total for the complete system. Most of the components I bought through pricewatch listees cost around 50%-75% of the recommended retail price, which is what most retail stores adhere to.
This may sound like some kind of blatant Pricewatch plug, so you're free to flame just go ahead and do your research before you do. Hell, even compare pricewatch to some other sites, maybe you could educate me. I'm just stating my experience with e-commerce thus far.
I don't think that's entirely accurate either. After all, said customer would still have to buy those products from your competitor... which sounds to me like free advertising for your competitor.
Yes they are. MAPS is 100% voluntary by the ISPs that use it, and Yesmail is going after MAPS rather than the ISPs because it's an easier target than thousands of ISPs.
The lights are on, but nobody's really home. I'd like to see for once an internet company that really "gets" the true nature of the internet. It's built (practically) on openness and freedom and corporations think they can sue certain internet entities as easily as a newstand magazine.
The only sad thing is, these corporations have the courts in their pocket and therefore *are* shaping the internet to their profiteering needs.
"Of course, I'd rather have cracker insurance." -- emmett, esq
Methinks emmett doesn't know the difference between one who loves to learn about computers (hackers) and one who loves to learn about computers (crackers). Hmm... one would also deduce that he hasn't quite yet figured out the definition of a Skr1pt K1dd13.
The teacher in charge of computing is often the one who wasn't any good at anything else.
Hah, now I really have to agree with this one. In my school, we had a middle-aged computer teacher who's only claim to fame was that she could could type like 120 words per minute. But she knew nothing about computers. Every machine in the room (except for hers) ran Windows 3.1 on a 486/44 or lower (in 1998). The highest computer class offered *was* a programming course... in QBASIC. That was cancelled when the teacher decided she'd rather take up the open teaching slot for US Government. After that, the highest class was Microcomputer Applications which consisted of how to make your cells add themselves up in Microsoft Excel.
I am not even close to joking.
Thank the gods my mom let me veg in front of the computer at a young age, or there's not a single chance in hell I'd have a shot at a computer science degree like I am persuing right now. Not saying it was really the best thing for me all of the time, but it certainly did give me a worthwhile intellectual persuit at a young age.
Well I went specifically out of my way not to sterotype every single person of a specific sex into one group (ie- Every male likes cars). But it is, however, fairly obvious to me that most people of a specific gender tend to exhibit the socially recognized traits of that gender. (ie- Most females have painted their fingernails.)
I realize that not every male is a computer geek, but anyone can tell that a female computer geek is the exception and not the norm. Which is not to say that I don't think it shouldn't be the norm... I personally don't care one way or another what % of the geek population is a certain gender. Things just are what they are.
This is exactly what I was trying to say. Computers are highly technical things, and thats why more males seem to go for them. To suggest the reason there *aren't* more females in computer science fields is because they're afraid to or don't think they can is just nutty.
I tend to believe (ie- might not be pure fact, but it sure has evidence, IMHO) that most females just plain aren't interested in the IT field. Most don't *want* to become sysadmins or programmers.
My girlfriend, for example, is a very typical female. She's 20 and trying to attain her degree in Theatre and already has had about a half-dozen requests from some fairly prominent organizations before she even had a degree! Now take me, a fairly typical geek male. for example. I never want to be a Stage Manager because a) it involves a LOT of stress b) The whole theatre community is about 100x more social than I like to be. Ergo, it's nowhere near my line of work.
Would she make a very good programmer? Of course not. She's been using computers for years now and still is afraid to experiment with her Windows95 Appearance settings.
Now what point was I trying to make here... kinda went of on a tangent. Anyway, my gf and I have completely different interests which is mostly due to our gender. Neither of us can help it, and no amount of convincing is going to get her to take up something like software development.
I would like to agree. Modems were fine when telephone lines were the only signal that could transmit digital data to/from the common household and text-based BBSes were the norm.
But things have changed. Now that the internet has come about and has the capability to serve multimedia data to millions of people at once, 20-some-odd thousand bits per second just isn't going to keep up.
I personally have to question the motives of the telephone companies. They claim (or used to claim) that all the modem traffic was saturating their networks to the point of reducing the quality of service for voice callers. They are ticked that ISPs are using *their* telephone networks for essentially free while charging their $20 a month for internet access. This is the primary reason, I expect, that our telephone networks (here in the US) haven't really seen any additional upgrades or accomidations to increase the quality of service for modem users.
DSL? I think it *could* be the magic ingredient for widespread low-cost internet access if the telco's would only let it. Here in Albuquerque, we've been promised DSL by various companies for the last few years and still there is none available for private consumers. NONE. Rumour has it that our local telephone monopoly, US West, is denying DSL providers access to the lines. If anyone from around here can provide more info or prove me wrong, please do.
Meanwhile, I'm stuck with a maximum of 28.8 despite my V.90 modem, because all the fucking phone lines in this part of town are multiplexed and AD/DA converted a few times before the signal even sees a CO.
I think the problem here is that people aren't yet understanding that the two genders in our society are not the same. They have different behaviors (in general), and are interested in different things. Does this mean that one sex is obviously better or superior? Of course not. Does this mean that women aren't capable of some of things men are generally more proficient at (such as programming) or vice versa? Don't be absurd.
My point is that females are just different than males. Just what is so wrong with *most* women not liking the same things as men? Trying to figure out *why* this is the case is irrelevant, and so far it's leading to a whole slew of stupid assumptions in this thread, since it's fairly obvious that it won't change a whole lot in the near future.
I see nothing wrong with trying to introduce females (and maybe more males) to technology, computers, and programming. But specifically trying to recruit more women into computer technology fields simply because the male/female ratio isn't balanced is just plain ignorant. It's exactly the same as pushing more females to become NASCAR drivers or encouraging males to do cheerleading in highschool. And if I don't keep repeating this, some troll is going to flame me: This doesn't mean that [gender] can't do [activity], it just means that most [gender] aren't interested in [activity].
I think your idea of guys in general is a little off... In my dorm, I'd say 98% of the guys here range in age from 20 to 24 and seem interested in loud music, drinking, fast cars, and pussy. Sorry if that last word might be a little offensive to some, but that is exactly how girls around here get treated. I am the only person I know of here that has more than one computer. A few think it's hip to own a computer, but those that do generally troll AOL and download pr0n.
To summarize, pretty much every guy I know (aside from my one friend and those I meet at LAN parties) doesn't give one pissing iota about technology, so to say that *that's* the reason a lot of girls aren't into it isn't quite the exact answer. I am a male, btw.
Actually, I just put junkbuster on one of my other computers today, and it's not really all that difficult if you have an rpm-based distribution. All you have to do after installing the package is su root and run the junkbuster init script. There's one pre-packaged (and slightly modified) version of junkbuster right here that comes with premade blockfiles even. On the site, he maintains some blocklists that get updated every month, and even if you don't want to be bother to get new ones all the time, the ones that come in the package will still block 90% of your ads for a good long time to come.
No,this isn't really what I'm talking about.. I mean.. links and certain images won't work correctly if the ads don't appear on the page. I've seen it elsewhere, but pr0n sites and other sites that make a quick buck off shitloads of banner ads are the most common.
It's like the server detects a proxy (will junkbuster identify itself in ANY way?) and then decide to serve up crap to discourage the user from taking advantage of the page, but w/o viewing the ads.
I Am Not A Programmer, but this is something I'd really like to see as a Gnome or KDE panel applet. Except having the applet specific to Junkbuster, you could customize it to toggle anything on/off with perhaps a little pseudo-LED and label to indicate status. A tiny gkrellm plugin wouldn't be a bad idea either. Maybe this could be a project for my 4-day weekend...
The only problem I have with this feature is that some servers load all their images from another machine. All the slashdot icons come from images.slashdot.org as well as it's ads.
I think it shouldn't be all that difficult to add Junkbuster-like capability to Mozilla. If cookie and imaging blocking are available, seems easy enough to extend it a little bit to be more flexible. The hardest part would probably be creating a decent interface. But IANAP, so prove me wrong if need be.
And on the topic of Junkbuster, I find that some sites won't let you view the whole page if you "proxy out" their ads and extraneous images. Anyone else come across the problem and mayhaps care to explain the implementation of how this works?
Slashdot Mirror
But there was a risk that you would just keep the tape and buy nothing, wasn't there?
Of course there's a risk that I'm not going to like music that I'm not familiar with. In fact, with me, it's a 98% probability. But if I didn't like it, I'd have tossed the tape in a drawer somewhere and threw it out eventually. I would lose nothing, and Tori would lose nothing.
We all know what happened in my situation, and I can say with a fair degree of certainty that nearly everyone else like me would have done the same thing... buy some albums. The only excuse that I can come up with to NOT buy the albums of an artist you really like is perhaps you can't afford it. And if you can't afford a CD (they aren't cheap, but...) then you have no business owning a computer with which to download MP3s.
Again, Underworld took a risk, and luckily for them, it paid off (at least in your case).
This is the original argument at it's core. Again, I have to agree with the other guy that replied to my post. That MP3 leads to sampling which leads to spending money on an album. I don't see the risk involved. Right now the RIAA would like you to purchase an $18 CD for every album that you'd like to listen to regardless of how much you like it and regardless of whether you like it or not. The artists that are truly talented and deserve to get paid for their work will have a devoted fan base that buys their CDs. Those that don't, don't. This is a fact of life that will never go away and really shouldn't.
There are always going to be the relatively few that decide they like (say) Tori Amos but opt to download all the MP3s they can find rather than purchasing an album or two. To them, I offer my condolences because not only does Tori not see any reward (all 12 cents of it), but the poor MP3 bloke misses out on the album art and has to settle for suboptimal sound quality. As a sidenote, MP3 compression simply does NOT do Tori's beautiful voice any justice.
But shouldn't Underworld and Tori have the right to decide not to take that risk?
I believe that if they're not willing to accept the risk that there may be an unpaid-for copy of their work out there, then they have no business releasing it. It would be different if they/she decided NOT to release a song and it got all over the net anyway.
That "risk" is how you gather fans and make your music known. This has been proven, and you'll see it said time and time again in this whole Napster story thread.
Hey, I agree with you completely. I like Napster and I use Napster mainly to find new music.
I have my three favourite artists (Tori Amos, Weird Al Yankovic, and Underworld) and I have purchased almost all of their CDs because these happen to be the artists that I think are good enough for my money. There's NO WAY IN HELL that I'm going to shell out $18 for a CD of a group that I might like.
Despite this, the RIAA should thank "music sharing" for roughly $150 of my business. Why? Because out of those three artists mentioned above, two were the result of me being able to sample the music before deciding whether I liked it or not.
Tori Amos. I knew a friend on IRC who was a Tori fanatic. One day he asked me if he could make me a tape of some of his favourite Tori songs and send it to me. I said sure. A few months later and I was hooked. I have three Tori albums and four singles, with plans to buy more. Under the RIAA's definition of pirating, I'm a criminal even though I bought their goods.
Underworld. Not quite so fancy a story this time, but a few years back I was downloading anything techno and the only ones to hold my attention for any period of time was the group Underworld. I downloaded the Born Slippy MP3 and after loving it for a few weeks, went out and bought the album. I now have seven Underworld albums, and despite this, the RIAA still considers me a criminal. I have downloaded lots of Underworld MP3's using Napster, but almost all have been songs that haven't been released in the US or live performances. I even have an entire show that was done in Germany, which burned to CD takes up two entire discs.
Anyway, I think I've made my point now. I'm going back to bed.
Nah, I don't think Katz has ever used "progeny" before.
Hate to be so harsh, but the WSJ article quite clearly states that Shawn Fanning has had little to do with the actual creation of Napster beyond some of the initial coding.
The rest of it is 100% pure corporation, and many others in this thread have given many very good reasons why the death of napster would actually be even more beneficial to the music community than if they were to stick around.
Personall, I haven't made my own decision regarding that... I think the freeware/GPL products have a long long way to go until they get enough public recognition and usuability to the point that they reach Napster's coverage.
But until then, HOO-RAH OpenNAP!
I like Gnapster and all.. nice interface, nice features, etc. but it's too buggy for me. But it keeps segfaulting! ARRRR!
I'm using gnome-napster for now, but I can't figure out how to get it to connect to opennap servers. It always fails saying that it can't connect to the server.
err, well if it's a standalone box at his ISP (which I what I'm assuming), all they have to do is unplug it from the network and reinstall an OS or something. I would assume that any ISP worth their beans has ways to defend against damage to the rest of their network caused by a rogue box.
It would be different if it were a shared server, which can't be the case because then he wouldn't have been able to give access to everyone.
but it seems more likely to me that it's HIS box at HIS home and he's simply got a high bandwidth connection or something.
Not to be a um.. well a troll, but do you have any evidence or links or something to back this up? I agree that some CDRs are made very shabbily (The aluminum on FujiFilm CDRs frequently peels up after small amounts of use), but the majority I've seen look to be able to withstand time for at least a few decades... I would expect professionally pressed CDs to last most of my life barring any regretful gouges or scratches.
I only say this because there are a few CDs that I've had for years now and no sign of deterioration (what are the signs anyway?
Just curious.
I don't see the real big problem here. I mean, if eBay, etc want to stop their site from being indexed in price indexes (which is what I assume this is all about), it seems to me that they're only hurting themselves... the only motive for retail sites to try and block this metabrowsing stuff is if they have a substantial markup on merchandise that smaller ma-and-pop type can easily beat and they don't want the public to know. They only want Joe Blow to know *their* prices and *their* sales.
Yes, it's fair to say that this doesn't give the average use quite as much freedom, but I blame that partly on the ignorance of said average user.
I, for one, believe that voluntary price listing sites (ie Pricewatch) will always be around and will always be the best deal for the consumer. Why? Well because the companies that participate are doing so because they *want* the world to know their prices and aren't afraid to challenge each other. I believe it's called capitalism .
Take me, for example. I recently built a computer that cost me a total of around $3500. Nearly every compontent was bought from a retailer that advertised their products on pricewatch. I would estimate that if I had gone the more "traditional" route and done my own hunt-and-search for retail prices I would have only covered a tiny fraction of the kind of sites listed on pricewatch and thus it's very feasible that I could have paid in excess of $5000 total for the complete system. Most of the components I bought through pricewatch listees cost around 50%-75% of the recommended retail price, which is what most retail stores adhere to.
This may sound like some kind of blatant Pricewatch plug, so you're free to flame just go ahead and do your research before you do. Hell, even compare pricewatch to some other sites, maybe you could educate me. I'm just stating my experience with e-commerce thus far.
I don't think that's entirely accurate either. After all, said customer would still have to buy those products from your competitor... which sounds to me like free advertising for your competitor.
Corporations are not evil.
Yes they are. MAPS is 100% voluntary by the ISPs that use it, and Yesmail is going after MAPS rather than the ISPs because it's an easier target than thousands of ISPs.
The lights are on, but nobody's really home. I'd like to see for once an internet company that really "gets" the true nature of the internet. It's built (practically) on openness and freedom and corporations think they can sue certain internet entities as easily as a newstand magazine.
The only sad thing is, these corporations have the courts in their pocket and therefore *are* shaping the internet to their profiteering needs.
Why do you mock that which drives up your airline ticket prices so high?
"Of course, I'd rather have cracker insurance." -- emmett, esq
Methinks emmett doesn't know the difference between one who loves to learn about computers (hackers) and one who loves to learn about computers (crackers). Hmm... one would also deduce that he hasn't quite yet figured out the definition of a Skr1pt K1dd13.
2600: The Hacker Quarterly
Phrack (Phreak + Hack)
I rest my case. Nutty emmett.
You're just angry 'cause you didn't think of it first.
I know I am.
You be troll. Shoo, shoo.
The teacher in charge of computing is often the one who wasn't any good at anything else.
Hah, now I really have to agree with this one. In my school, we had a middle-aged computer teacher who's only claim to fame was that she could could type like 120 words per minute. But she knew nothing about computers. Every machine in the room (except for hers) ran Windows 3.1 on a 486/44 or lower (in 1998). The highest computer class offered *was* a programming course... in QBASIC. That was cancelled when the teacher decided she'd rather take up the open teaching slot for US Government. After that, the highest class was Microcomputer Applications which consisted of how to make your cells add themselves up in Microsoft Excel.
I am not even close to joking.
Thank the gods my mom let me veg in front of the computer at a young age, or there's not a single chance in hell I'd have a shot at a computer science degree like I am persuing right now. Not saying it was really the best thing for me all of the time, but it certainly did give me a worthwhile intellectual persuit at a young age.
Well I went specifically out of my way not to sterotype every single person of a specific sex into one group (ie- Every male likes cars). But it is, however, fairly obvious to me that most people of a specific gender tend to exhibit the socially recognized traits of that gender. (ie- Most females have painted their fingernails.)
I realize that not every male is a computer geek, but anyone can tell that a female computer geek is the exception and not the norm. Which is not to say that I don't think it shouldn't be the norm... I personally don't care one way or another what % of the geek population is a certain gender. Things just are what they are.
This is exactly what I was trying to say. Computers are highly technical things, and thats why more males seem to go for them. To suggest the reason there *aren't* more females in computer science fields is because they're afraid to or don't think they can is just nutty.
I tend to believe (ie- might not be pure fact, but it sure has evidence, IMHO) that most females just plain aren't interested in the IT field. Most don't *want* to become sysadmins or programmers.
My girlfriend, for example, is a very typical female. She's 20 and trying to attain her degree in Theatre and already has had about a half-dozen requests from some fairly prominent organizations before she even had a degree! Now take me, a fairly typical geek male. for example. I never want to be a Stage Manager because a) it involves a LOT of stress b) The whole theatre community is about 100x more social than I like to be. Ergo, it's nowhere near my line of work.
Would she make a very good programmer? Of course not. She's been using computers for years now and still is afraid to experiment with her Windows95 Appearance settings.
Now what point was I trying to make here... kinda went of on a tangent. Anyway, my gf and I have completely different interests which is mostly due to our gender. Neither of us can help it, and no amount of convincing is going to get her to take up something like software development.
I would like to agree. Modems were fine when telephone lines were the only signal that could transmit digital data to/from the common household and text-based BBSes were the norm.
But things have changed. Now that the internet has come about and has the capability to serve multimedia data to millions of people at once, 20-some-odd thousand bits per second just isn't going to keep up.
I personally have to question the motives of the telephone companies. They claim (or used to claim) that all the modem traffic was saturating their networks to the point of reducing the quality of service for voice callers. They are ticked that ISPs are using *their* telephone networks for essentially free while charging their $20 a month for internet access. This is the primary reason, I expect, that our telephone networks (here in the US) haven't really seen any additional upgrades or accomidations to increase the quality of service for modem users.
DSL? I think it *could* be the magic ingredient for widespread low-cost internet access if the telco's would only let it. Here in Albuquerque, we've been promised DSL by various companies for the last few years and still there is none available for private consumers. NONE. Rumour has it that our local telephone monopoly, US West, is denying DSL providers access to the lines. If anyone from around here can provide more info or prove me wrong, please do.
Meanwhile, I'm stuck with a maximum of 28.8 despite my V.90 modem, because all the fucking phone lines in this part of town are multiplexed and AD/DA converted a few times before the signal even sees a CO.
I think the problem here is that people aren't yet understanding that the two genders in our society are not the same. They have different behaviors (in general), and are interested in different things. Does this mean that one sex is obviously better or superior? Of course not. Does this mean that women aren't capable of some of things men are generally more proficient at (such as programming) or vice versa? Don't be absurd.
My point is that females are just different than males. Just what is so wrong with *most* women not liking the same things as men? Trying to figure out *why* this is the case is irrelevant, and so far it's leading to a whole slew of stupid assumptions in this thread, since it's fairly obvious that it won't change a whole lot in the near future.
I see nothing wrong with trying to introduce females (and maybe more males) to technology, computers, and programming. But specifically trying to recruit more women into computer technology fields simply because the male/female ratio isn't balanced is just plain ignorant. It's exactly the same as pushing more females to become NASCAR drivers or encouraging males to do cheerleading in highschool. And if I don't keep repeating this, some troll is going to flame me: This doesn't mean that [gender] can't do [activity], it just means that most [gender] aren't interested in [activity].
I think your idea of guys in general is a little off... In my dorm, I'd say 98% of the guys here range in age from 20 to 24 and seem interested in loud music, drinking, fast cars, and pussy. Sorry if that last word might be a little offensive to some, but that is exactly how girls around here get treated. I am the only person I know of here that has more than one computer. A few think it's hip to own a computer, but those that do generally troll AOL and download pr0n.
To summarize, pretty much every guy I know (aside from my one friend and those I meet at LAN parties) doesn't give one pissing iota about technology, so to say that *that's* the reason a lot of girls aren't into it isn't quite the exact answer. I am a male, btw.
Actually, I just put junkbuster on one of my other computers today, and it's not really all that difficult if you have an rpm-based distribution. All you have to do after installing the package is su root and run the junkbuster init script. There's one pre-packaged (and slightly modified) version of junkbuster right here that comes with premade blockfiles even. On the site, he maintains some blocklists that get updated every month, and even if you don't want to be bother to get new ones all the time, the ones that come in the package will still block 90% of your ads for a good long time to come.
No,this isn't really what I'm talking about.. I mean.. links and certain images won't work correctly if the ads don't appear on the page. I've seen it elsewhere, but pr0n sites and other sites that make a quick buck off shitloads of banner ads are the most common.
It's like the server detects a proxy (will junkbuster identify itself in ANY way?) and then decide to serve up crap to discourage the user from taking advantage of the page, but w/o viewing the ads.
I Am Not A Programmer, but this is something I'd really like to see as a Gnome or KDE panel applet. Except having the applet specific to Junkbuster, you could customize it to toggle anything on/off with perhaps a little pseudo-LED and label to indicate status. A tiny gkrellm plugin wouldn't be a bad idea either. Maybe this could be a project for my 4-day weekend...
Of course, Mozilla isn't really even on the shelf yet.
The only problem I have with this feature is that some servers load all their images from another machine. All the slashdot icons come from images.slashdot.org as well as it's ads.
I think it shouldn't be all that difficult to add Junkbuster-like capability to Mozilla. If cookie and imaging blocking are available, seems easy enough to extend it a little bit to be more flexible. The hardest part would probably be creating a decent interface. But IANAP, so prove me wrong if need be.
And on the topic of Junkbuster, I find that some sites won't let you view the whole page if you "proxy out" their ads and extraneous images. Anyone else come across the problem and mayhaps care to explain the implementation of how this works?