Somehow, I knew people would immediately try ripping apart my comments without thinking first....
The historical game console upgrade cycle doesn't need to apply to the present or the future, does it? I really doubt that it will.
In the past, game consoles were clearly superior to playing games on a home computer. You had the obvious price advantage, first off. (I can plug this thing into my TV set, instead of buying an expensive monitor! I don't have to buy joysticks seperately! The up-front cost of the system itself is over $1000 lower than a new computer!) Second, a console was the only way to get near arcade-quality sound/graphics/speed/gameplay. Remember the old Intellivision, for example? If you liked the classic game "BurgerTime" - that was the only way to play it, short of pumping quarters in the real arcade game. The Atari 2600 was offering pretty respectable sound/graphics for its day, too. (I had a Timex/Sinclair 1000 at that time, playing games with no sound and only black and white block graphics.) Even fast-forwarding to the days of the Nintendo, Mario Brothers and the like offered more than the average home computer in terms of graphics quality.
IMHO, ever since the Playstation and Nintendo 64, they're entering an age where the consoles tout their incredibly superior technology, only to have PCs trump it within 6 months.
Where are all the exciting multi-player, Internet-capable games for the PS2? Oh yeah - I can buy an overpriced USB ethernet adapter and make Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 play on the net. Gee - now that sure beats the new Unreal Tournament 2002 or Wolfenstein 3D, doesn't it? Not!
As for all the sports games, I see no real difference between playing them on the PS2 or on the PC. EA Sports stuff looks about the same, either way - except for more disk space to save stats, saved games, and so forth on the PC version.
Sure, Grand Theft Auto 3 was a great game. I bought it for my PS2 and played it - until the PC version was released, with *identical* graphics/sound/gameplay. What about making add-on packs for it? They talked about that a while ago, but on a game console - you have to throw the whole thing on a new DVD. There's no hard drive to allow modular expansion packs to plug-into the existing game installation. Another strike against the PS2. (Not to mention, they'er doing custom mods to GTA3 for the PC already, like custom people and vehicles to download and hack into it. No chance people can enjoy that on the console version.)
Yeah, I also agree that it's a fairly cool idea. It's one of those things that I'm honestly surprised Apple didn't do first. Would have been much easier for them to make it catch on, by building every iMac with a mouse of that type and building support into OSX natively.
Anyway, it's still not really in the same league as the proposed "tactile feedback OS". It simply enhances your existing GUI with an extra touch.
Personally, I think the text interfaces and GUIs are here to stay until A.I. and voice recognition mature to the point where we can simply talk to our computers and hear voice responses back. Star Trek has the right idea.
People strive to work with their PC the same way they communicate in everyday life. Since the technology limitations prevented us from chatting with our PC like we would another person, we opted for our other preferred method of communcation - reading/writing/typing.
Any other proprosed "new interfaces" are too alien to our usual modes of communications, so they won't ever catch on. Humans use the sense of touch as additional feedback that corresponds with a primary means of information retreival (sight or sound). Touch as an interface itself is only acceptable to blind people, who are forced to use touch as a substitute.
Yeah, that was my thought too.... If they're saying it won't be finished until at least the end of 2004, and expected for official "launch" in 2005 - that's too long a wait for the next Playstation.
Microsoft will already have at least 2 more X-Box upgrades on the shelves by then.... virtually guaranteeing it will dominate over the outdated PS2.
If this "cell" gets used in a Playstation, I'd bet more on it being in a PS4 - with some other upgrade in-between as the PS3.
I already sold my PS2 (at a considerable loss, even) due to lack of interest. When I first saw Gran Turismo 3 - I thought I had to have it. After owning it a while and buying 14 more games for it, I realized that Gran Turismo 3 was about as good as it gets. Most games have considerably worse graphics, and some have worse gameplay too. I get much more out of my Pentium 4 system. In another year, PS2 will look pretty pathetic next to the current crop of PCs.
Yes, you're quite right - although the system the Japanese are implementing is a little more invasive than the SS# in the U.S.
If you think about it, the SS# is really just a numerical equivalent to your full name. The reason it became ubiquitous is because too many people have the same exact first, middle and last name. Banks had issues with directing deposits to the wrong person's account, because they shared the same name (and still do sometimes, when they only do look-ups based on name and get careless).
If people were willing to refer to themselves by unique strings of numbers - there would never have been a need for the SS# in the first place.
The whole "national ID" controversy comes into play because they want everyone to carry around a form of ID that contains some of your personal information, tied to your unique identifier.
Even if you have to give out your SS# to pay with a personal check at the gas station, the attendant doesn't automatically get to know much else about you (other than your address and phone number printed on the check). If they start making you swipe a national ID card through a reader, however, they just added lots of your personal information to their computer database.
I think your submission was clear enough.... I think many readers are simply trying to say that they don't feel it's realistic to get what you want with an "off the shelf" software/hardware combo for the PC without spending a lot of money.
Products like this absolutely do exist, but because they're useful/valuable to businesses, people are selling them at pretty high prices. EG. Brooktrout is a manufacturer of cards that plug into your PC and work with a variety of different software packages that support them. They handle voice mail, voice recognition, and automatic call routing functions, incoming and outgoing faxes, caller ID recognition, etc. Last I checked, though, a Brooktrout board was well over $500, and you still need a software package that works with it. Otherwise, it's just a cool piece of unusable hardware.
By contrast, you can buy a complete PBX system with phone handsets for under $200 on eBay. If you look for older NEC "NEAX" phone systems, for example - you'll occasionally see them going for minimum bids of only $50 or so. These things have battery backup for power outages, pretty much any feature you could want on a phone (day and night + holiday modes, least-cost routing of outgoing long distance calls, automatic wake-up calls in the morning, priority ringing for specific callers, etc.), and if you pick it up in person - you won't get hit with a huge shipping charge on it.
Honestly, if 90% of your new messages received are spam and this is with an email address you never gave out - you have issues with your particular ISP.
I, for example, have an account with Southwestern Bell, and last time I checked - they don't even have any spam filtering in place on their end.
I try not to give this address out, but I have accidently posted a message once or twice to Usenet with my real email address in it. (This was due to freshly re-installing my OS and applications, and forgetting to change a couple defaults before I posted.)
Even having done this, I only get 2 to 4 emails per day of spam. I receive quite a bit of email each day, too - so this isn't a bad ratio at all, IMHO.
Every time I've had real problems with spam on an email account, I can trace it back to something stupid I did myself. (Most often, it had to do with leaving it up on a web site for a long time, under one of those "click here to email me" links.) Those email harvesting bots will eventually find it and add it to spam lists if you do that.
For what it's worth, legislation rarely solves problems. Our knee-jerk reaction of "there oughta be a law!" every time we're upset usually causes our country more long-term harm than good.
I will say, however, that laws have been in place for quite a long time that may already apply to spam email. I just saw a Supreme Court ruling yesterday, while perusing a list of older "free speech/free press related" rulings. It basically stated that anyone receiving an article in the mail that they consider to be offensive or obscene (and the receiver can make this determination on their own) can legally ask the post office to block any further articles from that recipient. As you also pointed out, there are laws in place governing unsolicited fax transmissions.
We may not really need any *additional* laws to handle the problem.... only the courts interpreting existing laws in such a way that they cover electronic mail as well.
My wife, for example, created a Hotmail account, even though she already has her own email address with my ISP. The only reason she created the additional Hotmail account is to serve as a junk box. Many web sites that you don't really trust ask for your email address so they can send you a login/password to use their message forum or what-have-you. Why give them your primary email address, and risk them reselling it (or endlessly spamming you themselves)? She can just use the Hotmail account whenever she's not sure about the people on the other end.
How much of the spam in there is actually Hotmail's own fault? Who knows.... We don't really care either. She just deletes everything in it, each time she signs on, after retreiving anything of value buried in all the junk.
I agree.... WC3 isn't all that innovative, but honestly, I'm willing to bet that the majority of people playing it under WineX are also the folks who downloaded the ISO image off a newsgroup or copied it from a friend. In fact, considering Blizzard's poor attitude towards independent people developing gaming servers for the product - I'd have to say I'd condone/encourage that.
The question isn't really "Why pay good money to support software that's not innovative?" (If you enjoy the game, then that should pretty much speak for itself. People buy the games they have fun playing - innovative or not.) The question here is, "Why pay to support a company that punishes developers of open source software that compliments the commercial product?"
http://www.isp-planet.com/news/2002/v_020411.htm l
Umm... even if this were true a while back, it's quickly becoming a non-issue. Last time I needed a small hub (5 to 8 port) for my house, I went shopping, only to discover that a switch was only about $10 more expensive than a hub. Some stores weren't even carrying the hubs anymore, except as closeout items, or only in 10-baseT flavor (with 3 or 4 ports) for under $20, as opposed to anything 100-BaseT.
The fact is, almost no home users have a valid reason to purchase a hub instead of a switch, other than cost-savings. With the cost difference vaporizing, it's foolish to buy a hub and flood your network with excessive traffic.
I also tend to question how much of an issue this ever really was, because protocols like Netbios are non-routable. In the past, people setting up cheap home LANs were running Netbios more often than not. (They usually weren't really smart enough to understand the proper configuration of a TCP/IP subnet mask and so forth.)
Nah,I don't see it as "too little, too late" at all. It's simply "too little". The side-effect of the Internet being brought, inexpensively, to the masses is the ability for anyone to publish anything to the world at almost no cost.
You have a flood of poor quality web sites with poor quality writing. It seems to me that many folks are looking for a new method of presentation as the "solution" to make their web site stand out - when in reality, the answer is to publish something substantial and worth reading!
I've been on very popular web sites that use nothing but plain HTML, in only the default font size and style - and almost no graphics or illustrations. People keep coming back because of the quality of information found there. Typically, they fill a niche. (EG. Someone offers a comprehensive online database of police scanner frequencies. This fills a need for hobbyists with police scanners, and saves them money buying books with similar information - so they go there.)
I think the "blog" is simply the latest hyped-up Internet fad. The mass media keeps covering it because they don't want to miss out, if it really does take off.
Like everything else, *some* blogs will become successful and popular - but only because they're written by good authors.
I recently had a big discussion with several techie friends about the floppy drive and reasons it keeps lingering.
I think we came to a conclusion that 2 factors keep it alive. #1, the low price (both of the media and of the drives themselves). There's considerable usefulness to a form of digital storage that's so universal, yet nearly as inexpensive as pieces of paper. (Who doesn't have a bunch of old floppies lying around someplace or other, and would think nothing of giving one or two away to anyone who needed one?)
#2, motherboards always have the seperate floppy drive ribbon cable and connector on them. All of the alternatives that were supposed to "kill off the floppy" ended up co-existing with it instead (or dying off themselves). I think part of it is a psychological thing. People feel the need to use the slots and cable connections they're given in their PC. The zip drives, Syqyest and Orb removeables, and LS-120's all used SCSI, USB, parallel or IDE connectors. They never actually let you physically attach them to the floppy cable!
I knew many people who used up all of their IDE drive connectors and didn't want to mess around (or spend extra $'s for) a SCSI card. Therefore, they never considered an LS-120 or zip as an adequate floppy replacement. They simply had no place to connect one up. The floppy port has its own IRQ and I/O address space though, untouched by any other peripheral.
Re: Most wars are fought at many levels
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RIAA Smacked by DoS
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The whole "don't bring yourselves down to their level" cliche is one that you can count on to be trotted out each and every time someone counter-attacks a person, group of people, or corporate or govt. entity using something other than journalism.
In reality, most wars get fought on many levels. The teen hacker who takes down a web site is that person's way of protesting the situation. Nobody said it has to be *everybody's* way of protesting. If you have the "clout" and the intelligence to write constructive critism of the RIAA and get it published - then do it! That's your own personal "trump card" against them. If you happen to be a teacher, then teach your students about what's going on. You're the one who can give them education on the rights and freedoms they're losing. But if you're a young hacker who has nothing else to offer but your hacking skills (and can use your age as an advantage to avoid getting caught/getting in serious trouble), then maybe defacing or DoSing their web site is your own best method of protest.
Re:Changes the dynamic of the business
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Borrowing ROMs
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· Score: 1, Troll
For every example of a failure you can produce, you can also show examples of successes in lending of these materials.
EG. Blockbuster Video. These people make millions and millions of dollars loaning out their video games and movies. In fact, their revenues were up considerably last quarter, based primarily on game rentals. (And these are brand new games... exactly the ones the gaming industry would most like you to run out and buy, rather than borrow for a few days and return.)
Furthermore, many libraries let you check out software titles for PCs. This seems even more questionable, since the borrower has to install the product on his/her machine's drive in order to use it. The library has no way of ensuring the borrowing deletes the installed copy after he/she is done checking it out.
Yeah.... there's even a PC emulator for the Timex/Sinclair 1000/ZX-81 out there. Why you'd want to emulate one though, I dunno.
I used to own a TS-1000, with the 16K RAM expansion. (I believe you couldn't go larger than that using anything sold by Timex/Sinclair. As I recall, there was a popular 3rd. party expansion cartridge made by MemoTech or somebody like that.... Those went up to 32K or 64K.)
I even had the plastic Sinclair carrying case. I had to order it via direct mail. Apparently, only 2,000 were made or something... Supposed to be sort of a collector's edition item. It held all the cables and AC adapter, TS-1000 itself, memory pack, and 4 cassette tapes.
The Timex/Sinclair 1000/ZX-81 had a flat membrane keyboard though, not even a "chicklet" keyboard. It was horrible, but back in the day, it seemed cool enough to me.
My brother eventually bought a newer Timex/Sinclair. Can't remember the model number anymore... might have been a 1500 or 2048? Anyway, it was a silver plastic case and real chicklet keys, and I believe more standard RAM in it. I think it's the only one I ever saw, other than in magazine photos. (We used to subscribe to a Sinclair magazine called Sync.)
Wow - that goes back a ways! I remember shopping for software on cassettes tape at the local K-Mart store, back when they had a "computer center". The Timex/Sinclair stuff was always behind the glass counter though and you had to ask for it. They had an Atari 400 on display too, also with sort of a membrane keyboard (but full-sized at least).
What you're describing has always been a problem with "electronic music" in general.
A friend of mine put together a band some years ago, doing all electronic/sampled music. He had 2 or 3 really good CDs they put together - but he said they broke up after doing a couple live shows. They immediately realized that it was nearly impossible to generate any type of crowd interest, due to the way their music was made. (They did everything on the computer, on cheap synths run through a rack of effects processors, or with sounds generated with creative mic'ing of common household items.)
They really never had a full-time "singer". They just sampled their voices over and over until they got sections right, and then edited those phrases into their mixes where the vocals were needed.
How can you re-produce something like this live, without just setting up a computer desk on stage and letting people watch you click your mouse and keyboard all night?
Ah, ok. I see what you're driving at now. That's a very valid point, too. I think the truth was probably somewhere in the middle. Certainly, there were companies with "free money" to squander because their stock became ultra-valuable overnight.
I don't doubt there were people getting $70K a year to show up for work only when they felt like it. If they could convince an employer they were so valuable, they should get whatever they wanted - then it probably happened.
Still, being in I.T. through the whole thing myself, I saw much more of the opposite happening. People I knew got paid pretty big salaries for their skills, but they still had actual work to do when they accepted a job.
I think in most cases, it wasn't so much a problem of hiring people that weren't really working, just because you had the cash to burn.
I think it was more a matter of overbuilding a computer infrastructure in anticipation of a large (and increasing) flow of customers that didn't pan out. The I.T. guys put in all the hours to build it, but the people never came to use the results.
When they scaled back (or died off), all those I.T. works were out of jobs.
Hey - whatever pal. It just so happens my family and their needs take precedence over my feelings about Microsoft's product line.
In an ideal world, sure - we'd all be supporting Unix servers that don't crash. Reality is a bit different, though. Companies are willing to pay people to keep their Win-based systems alive and running. I can't, however, find a single person willing to hire me (at any price) to help run a Linux-based environment. If I could, I'd do it.
(Incidently, I live in the Midwest.... I think the Linux scene is much stronger on the coasts, or maybe even in Chicago, where IBM pushed it really hard for a while. But here in St. Louis, Missouri - Linux is really only seen where a Windows admin. snuck it in the back-door of a company and secretly swapped a Windows server out with it. That and a few small ISPs who don't seem to be hiring any administrators.)
Oh, so people are useless because they have skills using FrontPage and an MCSE?
Come on, now. Only on Slashdot could that assertion be made. I'm sorry folks, but I've been unemployed since May, despite having over 10 years of computer experience. I *do* feel like I know what I'm doing when it comes to many aspects of computing. Nonetheless, I see *far* more opportunities available that say "MCSE preferred" than I do ALL of the Linux certifications put together.
I don't have an MCSE, because I, too, believed there were far too many "paper MCSEs" running around, and the whole thing disgusted me. Nonetheless, the days of the NT 4.0 based MCSE are over. The Win2K based version is much harder to earn, and companies do give it some weight in hiring decisions. I wish I had one - because maybe I'd be off of unemployement pay if I did.
Was it a "waste time and money" boom or a "tech boom"? I'm going to say it doesn't matter. Seriously, what if they're one and the same?
Obviously, new web sites and e-commerce businesses went online at exponential rates in '99 and 2000. You had the whole "Y2K scare" which turned out to be a non-issue, too.
Nonetheless, it took lots of folks with technical skills to check that code and patch Y2K flaws. It took people with HTML, coding, and systems administration skills to run all those web sites.
Maybe they did turn out to be a complete waste of everyone's time -- but it doesn't change the fact that it required lots of tech-savvy people to make it all happen.
It was clearly a "boom" for people with the right technical skillsets - whether or not it proved to advance society as a whole in the long-run.
You know, I do have to admit, Oki has been putting out some really respectable printers for ages now - and yet they never seem to make the list when people talk about their "favorite printer brands".
Maybe they just never did the advertising push of the other brands? I dunno.... But I remember them having one of the really early personal laser printers on the market, back when I paid nearly $1000 for a Panasonic KXP-4410 laser. The Oki was cheaper, but I bet on Panasonic having the superior product. Seems I probably bet wrong - as the thing had constant paper jam issues, really slow printing, and a tendency to have their fusers die unexpectedly.
They were always selling dot-matrix printers in the consumer computer mags, long before that.
Many Oki 24-pin dot-matrix printers get use and abuse every day in manufacturing shop-floor and retail environments, and they work like a charm.
I guess they never really got into the inkjet market though... As I finish this message, I think maybe that's the biggest reason they remain a relatively obscure brand today.
Well, if you dislike HP's printers, I fear you'll really be sorry if you choose Lexmark.
I've done a lot of work with both - and my experiences have always been decidedly poor with Lexmark. For inkjets, they consistently have the *worst* printhead technologies. You'll never get "photo quality" printing out of a Lexmark inkjet -- at least, not nearly comparable to a good Epson Stylus Photo series, or a high-end Canon inkjet.
On the laser printer side, Lexmark lasers print perfectly ok - but their toners always seem to cost $40+ more than the competiton, and they tend to have annoying little parts that break and cost big $'s to replace. (EG. One of our Lexmark Optra lasers quit realzing the lid was closed, so it wouldn't go online anymore. You'd figure it's just a small switch that broke, right? Wrong! Lexmark had this goofy plastic "ice-pick" looking thing on the top of the lid that pokes down deep into the printer, to trip a switch that lets it know the lid is shut. Of course, this thing snapped off. Replacement part cost? Around $60!)
I do agree that HP Laserjets are "hit and miss" with quality nowdays. You almost have to hand-examine every single new model before you order it, to see if it's a "winner" or a complete "loser". At least, I find you can usually tell in just a few minutes. They either build flimsy-looking stuff or really solid stuff. There's not much in-between with HP. We had good luck with the 8000 series, other than some hassles cleaning it out pretty regularly to avoid strange errors and poor print quality. We tried the 8100 series after that, and again - good quality. Seemed to fix some of our small complaints on the 8000 line, even. Expensive, but you got a big, solid printer for the $'s.
Eh.... more competition is always beneficial to the consumer, if nothing else. Therefore, sure - I encourage Dell to go for it.
Honestly though, I don't forsee Dell really building their own printer, the way they do their desktop PCs. I have a strong suspicion they're just going to re-label printers sold by another manufacturer. (Lexmark's failure to comment at all on the situation makes one wonder if they were at least approached by Dell about supplying printers for them.)
In fact, this is probably the main reason HP was so angered by the move. They probably realize that it's a thinly veiled way of Dell telling them "We'd rather sell your competition's product as our primary printer than keep offering yours." (Maybe they already tried to get HP to allow them to put Dell labeling on their printers, and HP refused?)
Actually, you're talking about two completely different things.
In scenario #1, you're asking about a *purchased* cable box. Why yes, if the owner of said box wishes to make some modifications to the electronics inside of it that allow it to decrypt all incoming signals - I think that's perfectly ok and legal. If the owner proceeds to actually *use* the box to watch cable he/she isn't paying for, then that's a seperate issue and more of a "grey area".
In scenario #2, you're talking about *stealing* a move theater's key. Right there, obviously, it's illegal. Stealing isn't legal. If, however, you were an owner of the theater and copied the key - do you think anyone would care or have a problem with it? Probably not!
(Incidently, back to scenario #1, the real problem, in my opinion, is that cable companies made poor decisions in the design of their systems. They pipe *all* of the channels in to the homes of their customers.... in many cases - to homes of people who are no longer even customers at all, simply because they didn't bother to disconnect the physical cable when the previous home-owner moved. By doing this, they've created a "grey area" for themselves. Is it morally ok and/or legally ok to use one's own equipment to descramble these signals that are already coming into his/her home? Perhaps so. If the cable company didn't want this to happen, they shouldn't put the signals out there to begin with.) It's sort of like me signing all of the checks in my checkbook in advance, leaving the book in a public place, and walking off. Then I scream about the illegal activities being done against me when people start using those checks without my approval. Hey, why was I stupid enough to sign them all ahead of time? Do I even have a strong legal case against the users of said checks?
How would free competition work? I don't think you'd have "everyone running their cables on existing poles". The point is, you'd leave the copper up to the regional Bells. If they're completely released from govt. control and have to compete in the marketplace, that's their only unique asset. They'll, of course, want to sell everyone on the idea that they're the "only one who can bring you DSL" - and in my scenario, yes - they would be.
The fact is, competitors would simply have to think "outside the box" a little bit. Instead of worrying about running more copper (or finding ways to share Bell's copper), they'd have to offer competing technologies that use other means of transmission. Perhaps the electric companies will sub-contract new companies to offer Internet over their lines? The cable company's high-speed access is already working quite well. Some of the wireless Inet services offered via microwave that didn't survive before might be viable in the near future, too. Certainly, cellular phone providers would have more incentive to offer high-speed Inet service over their networks. (Instead of trying to convince us we really need to get web services on that tiny cellphone screen, they can sell adapter cards for laptops and desktop systems to get you on their network at high-speed.)
Don't forget, too, there are other ways to get cable into a home. There was talk in the past of running fiber through sewer lines. Some properly protected fiber could come in through water, sewer, or maybe even gas lines. In all these cases, the public utility wouldn't have to offer the service themselves. (I don't think you'll really want your local water company becoming your web host.....) They simply need to strike up a deal with someone else to make this happen together.
Quite so, but I bet in reality - it's really a "mixed bag". I bet some spam does generate revenue, while other spam is a complete waste of time.
For example, I've been spammed with those offers of a "free phone" or "free pager" (where you'll indeed get the item free, up-front, but only upon signing some sort of 1 or 2 year contract). While I'd never waste my time with that, the people still interested in relatively low-tech like a pager (or those who *still* haven't ever bought that cellphone they've been thinking about for years) might go for this.
They aren't likely to be the type educated enough on Internet issues to realize that it's always unwise to respond to spam. They also probably only check email rarely, compared to the more "computer savvy", so they may not realize spam like this is so pervasive.
Heck, some of them may even think it earns them some "bragging rights" to proudly say they got a "great deal" on their new item "on the Internet!".
I have to think they're just about out of people clueless enough to repond to spam begging for your bank account number, so some head of a foreign govt. can deposit funds in there temporarily - and split the earnings with you later.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Somehow, I knew people would immediately try ripping apart my comments without thinking first....
The historical game console upgrade cycle doesn't need to apply to the present or the future, does it? I really doubt that it will.
In the past, game consoles were clearly superior to playing games on a home computer. You had the obvious price advantage, first off. (I can plug this thing into my TV set, instead of buying an expensive monitor! I don't have to buy joysticks seperately! The up-front cost of the system itself is over $1000 lower than a new computer!) Second, a console was the only way to get near arcade-quality sound/graphics/speed/gameplay. Remember the old Intellivision, for example? If you liked the classic game "BurgerTime" - that was the only way to play it, short of pumping quarters in the real arcade game. The Atari 2600 was offering pretty respectable sound/graphics for its day, too. (I had a Timex/Sinclair 1000 at that time, playing games with no sound and only black and white block graphics.) Even fast-forwarding to the days of the Nintendo, Mario Brothers and the like offered more than the average home computer in terms of graphics quality.
IMHO, ever since the Playstation and Nintendo 64, they're entering an age where the consoles tout their incredibly superior technology, only to have PCs trump it within 6 months.
Where are all the exciting multi-player, Internet-capable games for the PS2? Oh yeah - I can buy an overpriced USB ethernet adapter and make Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 play on the net. Gee - now that sure beats the new Unreal Tournament 2002 or Wolfenstein 3D, doesn't it? Not!
As for all the sports games, I see no real difference between playing them on the PS2 or on the PC. EA Sports stuff looks about the same, either way - except for more disk space to save stats, saved games, and so forth on the PC version.
Sure, Grand Theft Auto 3 was a great game. I bought it for my PS2 and played it - until the PC version was released, with *identical* graphics/sound/gameplay. What about making add-on packs for it? They talked about that a while ago, but on a game console - you have to throw the whole thing on a new DVD. There's no hard drive to allow modular expansion packs to plug-into the existing game installation. Another strike against the PS2. (Not to mention, they'er doing custom mods to GTA3 for the PC already, like custom people and vehicles to download and hack into it. No chance people can enjoy that on the console version.)
Yeah, I also agree that it's a fairly cool idea. It's one of those things that I'm honestly surprised Apple didn't do first. Would have been much easier for them to make it catch on, by building every iMac with a mouse of that type and building support into OSX natively.
Anyway, it's still not really in the same league as the proposed "tactile feedback OS". It simply enhances your existing GUI with an extra touch.
Personally, I think the text interfaces and GUIs are here to stay until A.I. and voice recognition mature to the point where we can simply talk to our computers and hear voice responses back. Star Trek has the right idea.
People strive to work with their PC the same way they communicate in everyday life. Since the technology limitations prevented us from chatting with our PC like we would another person, we opted for our other preferred method of communcation - reading/writing/typing.
Any other proprosed "new interfaces" are too alien to our usual modes of communications, so they won't ever catch on. Humans use the sense of touch as additional feedback that corresponds with a primary means of information retreival (sight or sound). Touch as an interface itself is only acceptable to blind people, who are forced to use touch as a substitute.
Yeah, that was my thought too.... If they're saying it won't be finished until at least the end of 2004, and expected for official "launch" in 2005 - that's too long a wait for the next Playstation.
Microsoft will already have at least 2 more X-Box upgrades on the shelves by then.... virtually guaranteeing it will dominate over the outdated PS2.
If this "cell" gets used in a Playstation, I'd bet more on it being in a PS4 - with some other upgrade in-between as the PS3.
I already sold my PS2 (at a considerable loss, even) due to lack of interest. When I first saw Gran Turismo 3 - I thought I had to have it. After owning it a while and buying 14 more games for it, I realized that Gran Turismo 3 was about as good as it gets. Most games have considerably worse graphics, and some have worse gameplay too. I get much more out of my Pentium 4 system. In another year, PS2 will look pretty pathetic next to the current crop of PCs.
Yes, you're quite right - although the system the Japanese are implementing is a little more invasive than the SS# in the U.S.
If you think about it, the SS# is really just a numerical equivalent to your full name. The reason it became ubiquitous is because too many people have the same exact first, middle and last name. Banks had issues with directing deposits to the wrong person's account, because they shared the same name (and still do sometimes, when they only do look-ups based on name and get careless).
If people were willing to refer to themselves by unique strings of numbers - there would never have been a need for the SS# in the first place.
The whole "national ID" controversy comes into play because they want everyone to carry around a form of ID that contains some of your personal information, tied to your unique identifier.
Even if you have to give out your SS# to pay with a personal check at the gas station, the attendant doesn't automatically get to know much else about you (other than your address and phone number printed on the check). If they start making you swipe a national ID card through a reader, however, they just added lots of your personal information to their computer database.
I think your submission was clear enough.... I think many readers are simply trying to say that they don't feel it's realistic to get what you want with an "off the shelf" software/hardware combo for the PC without spending a lot of money.
Products like this absolutely do exist, but because they're useful/valuable to businesses, people are selling them at pretty high prices. EG. Brooktrout is a manufacturer of cards that plug into your PC and work with a variety of different software packages that support them. They handle voice mail, voice recognition, and automatic call routing functions, incoming and outgoing faxes, caller ID recognition, etc. Last I checked, though, a Brooktrout board was well over $500, and you still need a software package that works with it. Otherwise, it's just a cool piece of unusable hardware.
By contrast, you can buy a complete PBX system with phone handsets for under $200 on eBay. If you look for older NEC "NEAX" phone systems, for example - you'll occasionally see them going for minimum bids of only $50 or so. These things have battery backup for power outages, pretty much any feature you could want on a phone (day and night + holiday modes, least-cost routing of outgoing long distance calls, automatic wake-up calls in the morning, priority ringing for specific callers, etc.), and if you pick it up in person - you won't get hit with a huge shipping charge on it.
Honestly, if 90% of your new messages received are spam and this is with an email address you never gave out - you have issues with your particular ISP.
I, for example, have an account with Southwestern Bell, and last time I checked - they don't even have any spam filtering in place on their end.
I try not to give this address out, but I have accidently posted a message once or twice to Usenet with my real email address in it. (This was due to freshly re-installing my OS and applications, and forgetting to change a couple defaults before I posted.)
Even having done this, I only get 2 to 4 emails per day of spam. I receive quite a bit of email each day, too - so this isn't a bad ratio at all, IMHO.
Every time I've had real problems with spam on an email account, I can trace it back to something stupid I did myself. (Most often, it had to do with leaving it up on a web site for a long time, under one of those "click here to email me" links.) Those email harvesting bots will eventually find it and add it to spam lists if you do that.
For what it's worth, legislation rarely solves problems. Our knee-jerk reaction of "there oughta be a law!" every time we're upset usually causes our country more long-term harm than good.
I will say, however, that laws have been in place for quite a long time that may already apply to spam email. I just saw a Supreme Court ruling yesterday, while perusing a list of older "free speech/free press related" rulings. It basically stated that anyone receiving an article in the mail that they consider to be offensive or obscene (and the receiver can make this determination on their own) can legally ask the post office to block any further articles from that recipient. As you also pointed out, there are laws in place governing unsolicited fax transmissions.
We may not really need any *additional* laws to handle the problem.... only the courts interpreting existing laws in such a way that they cover electronic mail as well.
My wife, for example, created a Hotmail account, even though she already has her own email address with my ISP. The only reason she created the additional Hotmail account is to serve as a junk box. Many web sites that you don't really trust ask for your email address so they can send you a login/password to use their message forum or what-have-you. Why give them your primary email address, and risk them reselling it (or endlessly spamming you themselves)? She can just use the Hotmail account whenever she's not sure about the people on the other end.
How much of the spam in there is actually Hotmail's own fault? Who knows.... We don't really care either. She just deletes everything in it, each time she signs on, after retreiving anything of value buried in all the junk.
I agree.... WC3 isn't all that innovative, but honestly, I'm willing to bet that the majority of people playing it under WineX are also the folks who downloaded the ISO image off a newsgroup or copied it from a friend. In fact, considering Blizzard's poor attitude towards independent people developing gaming servers for the product - I'd have to say I'd condone/encourage that.
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The question isn't really "Why pay good money to support software that's not innovative?" (If you enjoy the game, then that should pretty much speak for itself. People buy the games they have fun playing - innovative or not.) The question here is, "Why pay to support a company that punishes developers of open source software that compliments the commercial product?"
http://www.isp-planet.com/news/2002/v_020411.ht
http://www.boycottblizzard.org/
Umm... even if this were true a while back, it's quickly becoming a non-issue. Last time I needed a small hub (5 to 8 port) for my house, I went shopping, only to discover that a switch was only about $10 more expensive than a hub. Some stores weren't even carrying the hubs anymore, except as closeout items, or only in 10-baseT flavor (with 3 or 4 ports) for under $20, as opposed to anything 100-BaseT.
The fact is, almost no home users have a valid reason to purchase a hub instead of a switch, other than cost-savings. With the cost difference vaporizing, it's foolish to buy a hub and flood your network with excessive traffic.
I also tend to question how much of an issue this ever really was, because protocols like Netbios are non-routable. In the past, people setting up cheap home LANs were running Netbios more often than not. (They usually weren't really smart enough to understand the proper configuration of a TCP/IP subnet mask and so forth.)
Nah,I don't see it as "too little, too late" at all. It's simply "too little". The side-effect of the Internet being brought, inexpensively, to the masses is the ability for anyone to publish anything to the world at almost no cost.
You have a flood of poor quality web sites with poor quality writing. It seems to me that many folks are looking for a new method of presentation as the "solution" to make their web site stand out - when in reality, the answer is to publish something substantial and worth reading!
I've been on very popular web sites that use nothing but plain HTML, in only the default font size and style - and almost no graphics or illustrations. People keep coming back because of the quality of information found there. Typically, they fill a niche. (EG. Someone offers a comprehensive online database of police scanner frequencies. This fills a need for hobbyists with police scanners, and saves them money buying books with similar information - so they go there.)
I think the "blog" is simply the latest hyped-up Internet fad. The mass media keeps covering it because they don't want to miss out, if it really does take off.
Like everything else, *some* blogs will become successful and popular - but only because they're written by good authors.
I recently had a big discussion with several techie friends about the floppy drive and reasons it keeps lingering.
I think we came to a conclusion that 2 factors keep it alive. #1, the low price (both of the media and of the drives themselves). There's considerable usefulness to a form of digital storage that's so universal, yet nearly as inexpensive as pieces of paper. (Who doesn't have a bunch of old floppies lying around someplace or other, and would think nothing of giving one or two away to anyone who needed one?)
#2, motherboards always have the seperate floppy drive ribbon cable and connector on them. All of the alternatives that were supposed to "kill off the floppy" ended up co-existing with it instead (or dying off themselves). I think part of it is a psychological thing. People feel the need to use the slots and cable connections they're given in their PC. The zip drives, Syqyest and Orb removeables, and LS-120's all used SCSI, USB, parallel or IDE connectors. They never actually let you physically attach them to the floppy cable!
I knew many people who used up all of their IDE drive connectors and didn't want to mess around (or spend extra $'s for) a SCSI card. Therefore, they never considered an LS-120 or zip as an adequate floppy replacement. They simply had no place to connect one up. The floppy port has its own IRQ and I/O address space though, untouched by any other peripheral.
The whole "don't bring yourselves down to their level" cliche is one that you can count on to be trotted out each and every time someone counter-attacks a person, group of people, or corporate or govt. entity using something other than journalism.
In reality, most wars get fought on many levels. The teen hacker who takes down a web site is that person's way of protesting the situation. Nobody said it has to be *everybody's* way of protesting. If you have the "clout" and the intelligence to write constructive critism of the RIAA and get it published - then do it! That's your own personal "trump card" against them. If you happen to be a teacher, then teach your students about what's going on. You're the one who can give them education on the rights and freedoms they're losing. But if you're a young hacker who has nothing else to offer but your hacking skills (and can use your age as an advantage to avoid getting caught/getting in serious trouble), then maybe defacing or DoSing their web site is your own best method of protest.
For every example of a failure you can produce, you can also show examples of successes in lending of these materials.
EG. Blockbuster Video. These people make millions and millions of dollars loaning out their video games and movies. In fact, their revenues were up considerably last quarter, based primarily on game rentals. (And these are brand new games... exactly the ones the gaming industry would most like you to run out and buy, rather than borrow for a few days and return.)
Furthermore, many libraries let you check out software titles for PCs. This seems even more questionable, since the borrower has to install the product on his/her machine's drive in order to use it. The library has no way of ensuring the borrowing deletes the installed copy after he/she is done checking it out.
Yeah.... there's even a PC emulator for the Timex/Sinclair 1000/ZX-81 out there. Why you'd want to emulate one though, I dunno.
I used to own a TS-1000, with the 16K RAM expansion. (I believe you couldn't go larger than that using anything sold by Timex/Sinclair. As I recall, there was a popular 3rd. party expansion cartridge made by MemoTech or somebody like that.... Those went up to 32K or 64K.)
I even had the plastic Sinclair carrying case. I had to order it via direct mail. Apparently, only 2,000 were made or something... Supposed to be sort of a collector's edition item. It held all the cables and AC adapter, TS-1000 itself, memory pack, and 4 cassette tapes.
The Timex/Sinclair 1000/ZX-81 had a flat membrane keyboard though, not even a "chicklet" keyboard. It was horrible, but back in the day, it seemed cool enough to me.
My brother eventually bought a newer Timex/Sinclair. Can't remember the model number anymore... might have been a 1500 or 2048? Anyway, it was a silver plastic case and real chicklet keys, and I believe more standard RAM in it. I think it's the only one I ever saw, other than in magazine photos. (We used to subscribe to a Sinclair magazine called Sync.)
Wow - that goes back a ways! I remember shopping for software on cassettes tape at the local K-Mart store, back when they had a "computer center". The Timex/Sinclair stuff was always behind the glass counter though and you had to ask for it. They had an Atari 400 on display too, also with sort of a membrane keyboard (but full-sized at least).
What you're describing has always been a problem with "electronic music" in general.
A friend of mine put together a band some years ago, doing all electronic/sampled music. He had 2 or 3 really good CDs they put together - but he said they broke up after doing a couple live shows. They immediately realized that it was nearly impossible to generate any type of crowd interest, due to the way their music was made.
(They did everything on the computer, on cheap synths run through a rack of effects processors, or with sounds generated with creative mic'ing of common household items.)
They really never had a full-time "singer". They just sampled their voices over and over until they got sections right, and then edited those phrases into their mixes where the vocals were needed.
How can you re-produce something like this live, without just setting up a computer desk on stage and letting people watch you click your mouse and keyboard all night?
Ah, ok. I see what you're driving at now. That's a very valid point, too. I think the truth was probably somewhere in the middle. Certainly, there were companies with "free money" to squander because their stock became ultra-valuable overnight.
I don't doubt there were people getting $70K a year to show up for work only when they felt like it. If they could convince an employer they were so valuable, they should get whatever they wanted - then it probably happened.
Still, being in I.T. through the whole thing myself, I saw much more of the opposite happening. People I knew got paid pretty big salaries for their skills, but they still had actual work to do when they accepted a job.
I think in most cases, it wasn't so much a problem of hiring people that weren't really working, just because you had the cash to burn.
I think it was more a matter of overbuilding a computer infrastructure in anticipation of a large (and increasing) flow of customers that didn't pan out. The I.T. guys put in all the hours to build it, but the people never came to use the results.
When they scaled back (or died off), all those I.T. works were out of jobs.
Hey - whatever pal. It just so happens my family and their needs take precedence over my feelings about Microsoft's product line.
In an ideal world, sure - we'd all be supporting Unix servers that don't crash. Reality is a bit different, though. Companies are willing to pay people to keep their Win-based systems alive and running. I can't, however, find a single person willing to hire me (at any price) to help run a Linux-based environment. If I could, I'd do it.
(Incidently, I live in the Midwest.... I think the Linux scene is much stronger on the coasts, or maybe even in Chicago, where IBM pushed it really hard for a while. But here in St. Louis, Missouri - Linux is really only seen where a Windows admin. snuck it in the back-door of a company and secretly swapped a Windows server out with it. That and a few small ISPs who don't seem to be hiring any administrators.)
Oh, so people are useless because they have skills using FrontPage and an MCSE?
Come on, now. Only on Slashdot could that assertion be made. I'm sorry folks, but I've been unemployed since May, despite having over 10 years of computer experience. I *do* feel like I know what I'm doing when it comes to many aspects of computing. Nonetheless, I see *far* more opportunities available that say "MCSE preferred" than I do ALL of the Linux certifications put together.
I don't have an MCSE, because I, too, believed there were far too many "paper MCSEs" running around, and the whole thing disgusted me. Nonetheless, the days of the NT 4.0 based MCSE are over. The Win2K based version is much harder to earn, and companies do give it some weight in hiring decisions. I wish I had one - because maybe I'd be off of unemployement pay if I did.
Was it a "waste time and money" boom or a "tech boom"? I'm going to say it doesn't matter. Seriously, what if they're one and the same?
Obviously, new web sites and e-commerce businesses went online at exponential rates in '99 and 2000. You had the whole "Y2K scare" which turned out to be a non-issue, too.
Nonetheless, it took lots of folks with technical skills to check that code and patch Y2K flaws. It took people with HTML, coding, and systems administration skills to run all those web sites.
Maybe they did turn out to be a complete waste of everyone's time -- but it doesn't change the fact that it required lots of tech-savvy people to make it all happen.
It was clearly a "boom" for people with the right technical skillsets - whether or not it proved to advance society as a whole in the long-run.
You know, I do have to admit, Oki has been putting out some really respectable printers for ages now - and yet they never seem to make the list when people talk about their "favorite printer brands".
Maybe they just never did the advertising push of the other brands? I dunno.... But I remember them having one of the really early personal laser printers on the market, back when I paid nearly $1000 for a Panasonic KXP-4410 laser. The Oki was cheaper, but I bet on Panasonic having the superior product. Seems I probably bet wrong - as the thing had constant paper jam issues, really slow printing, and a tendency to have their fusers die unexpectedly.
They were always selling dot-matrix printers in the consumer computer mags, long before that.
Many Oki 24-pin dot-matrix printers get use and abuse every day in manufacturing shop-floor and retail environments, and they work like a charm.
I guess they never really got into the inkjet market though... As I finish this message, I think maybe that's the biggest reason they remain a relatively obscure brand today.
Well, if you dislike HP's printers, I fear you'll really be sorry if you choose Lexmark.
I've done a lot of work with both - and my experiences have always been decidedly poor with Lexmark. For inkjets, they consistently have the *worst* printhead technologies. You'll never get "photo quality" printing out of a Lexmark inkjet -- at least, not nearly comparable to a good Epson Stylus Photo series, or a high-end Canon inkjet.
On the laser printer side, Lexmark lasers print perfectly ok - but their toners always seem to cost $40+ more than the competiton, and they tend to have annoying little parts that break and cost big $'s to replace. (EG. One of our Lexmark Optra lasers quit realzing the lid was closed, so it wouldn't go online anymore. You'd figure it's just a small switch that broke, right? Wrong! Lexmark had this goofy plastic "ice-pick" looking thing on the top of the lid that pokes down deep into the printer, to trip a switch that lets it know the lid is shut. Of course, this thing snapped off. Replacement part cost? Around $60!)
I do agree that HP Laserjets are "hit and miss" with quality nowdays. You almost have to hand-examine every single new model before you order it, to see if it's a "winner" or a complete "loser". At least, I find you can usually tell in just a few minutes. They either build flimsy-looking stuff or really solid stuff. There's not much in-between with HP. We had good luck with the 8000 series, other than some hassles cleaning it out pretty regularly to avoid strange errors and poor print quality. We tried the 8100 series after that, and again - good quality. Seemed to fix some of our small complaints on the 8000 line, even. Expensive, but you got a big, solid printer for the $'s.
Eh.... more competition is always beneficial to the consumer, if nothing else. Therefore, sure - I encourage Dell to go for it.
Honestly though, I don't forsee Dell really building their own printer, the way they do their desktop PCs. I have a strong suspicion they're just going to re-label printers sold by another manufacturer. (Lexmark's failure to comment at all on the situation makes one wonder if they were at least approached by Dell about supplying printers for them.)
In fact, this is probably the main reason HP was so angered by the move. They probably realize that it's a thinly veiled way of Dell telling them "We'd rather sell your competition's product as our primary printer than keep offering yours." (Maybe they already tried to get HP to allow them to put Dell labeling on their printers, and HP refused?)
Actually, you're talking about two completely different things.
In scenario #1, you're asking about a *purchased* cable box. Why yes, if the owner of said box wishes to make some modifications to the electronics inside of it that allow it to decrypt all incoming signals - I think that's perfectly ok and legal. If the owner proceeds to actually *use* the box to watch cable he/she isn't paying for, then that's a seperate issue and more of a "grey area".
In scenario #2, you're talking about *stealing* a move theater's key. Right there, obviously, it's illegal. Stealing isn't legal. If, however, you were an owner of the theater and copied the key - do you think anyone would care or have a problem with it? Probably not!
(Incidently, back to scenario #1, the real problem, in my opinion, is that cable companies made poor decisions in the design of their systems. They pipe *all* of the channels in to the homes of their customers.... in many cases - to homes of people who are no longer even customers at all, simply because they didn't bother to disconnect the physical cable when the previous home-owner moved. By doing this, they've created a "grey area" for themselves. Is it morally ok and/or legally ok to use one's own equipment to descramble these signals that are already coming into his/her home? Perhaps so. If the cable company didn't want this to happen, they shouldn't put the signals out there to begin with.) It's sort of like me signing all of the checks in my checkbook in advance, leaving the book in a public place, and walking off. Then I scream about the illegal activities being done against me when people start using those checks without my approval. Hey, why was I stupid enough to sign them all ahead of time? Do I even have a strong legal case against the users of said checks?
How would free competition work? I don't think you'd have "everyone running their cables on existing poles". The point is, you'd leave the copper up to the regional Bells. If they're completely released from govt. control and have to compete in the marketplace, that's their only unique asset. They'll, of course, want to sell everyone on the idea that they're the "only one who can bring you DSL" - and in my scenario, yes - they would be.
The fact is, competitors would simply have to think "outside the box" a little bit. Instead of worrying about running more copper (or finding ways to share Bell's copper), they'd have to offer competing technologies that use other means of transmission. Perhaps the electric companies will sub-contract new companies to offer Internet over their lines? The cable company's high-speed access is already working quite well. Some of the wireless Inet services offered via microwave that didn't survive before might be viable in the near future, too. Certainly, cellular phone providers would have more incentive to offer high-speed Inet service over their networks. (Instead of trying to convince us we really need to get web services on that tiny cellphone screen, they can sell adapter cards for laptops and desktop systems to get you on their network at high-speed.)
Don't forget, too, there are other ways to get cable into a home. There was talk in the past of running fiber through sewer lines. Some properly protected fiber could come in through water, sewer, or maybe even gas lines. In all these cases, the public utility wouldn't have to offer the service themselves. (I don't think you'll really want your local water company becoming your web host.....) They simply need to strike up a deal with someone else to make this happen together.
Quite so, but I bet in reality - it's really a "mixed bag". I bet some spam does generate revenue, while other spam is a complete waste of time.
:)
For example, I've been spammed with those offers of a "free phone" or "free pager" (where you'll indeed get the item free, up-front, but only upon signing some sort of 1 or 2 year contract). While I'd never waste my time with that, the people still interested in relatively low-tech like a pager (or those who *still* haven't ever bought that cellphone they've been thinking about for years) might go for this.
They aren't likely to be the type educated enough on Internet issues to realize that it's always unwise to respond to spam. They also probably only check email rarely, compared to the more "computer savvy", so they may not realize spam like this is so pervasive.
Heck, some of them may even think it earns them some "bragging rights" to proudly say they got a "great deal" on their new item "on the Internet!".
I have to think they're just about out of people clueless enough to repond to spam begging for your bank account number, so some head of a foreign govt. can deposit funds in there temporarily - and split the earnings with you later.