Right on. This card might process incoming data quicker, or perhaps even send the data to the CPU faster, but it won't reduce latency. The high price ($280? TFA is not responding) does not justify the alleged 'improvements' in lag this card offers. Games communicating over UDP like BF2 have fairly low lag anyway (when they stay connected...). As others have said: spend the money on RAM or some other upgrade. The 'lag' improvement will be much more cost-effective.
But, as some users would argue, Cedega isn't encouraging gaming companies to develop games for Linux.
As TFA alluded above, it can be argued the presence and popularity of software such as Cedega doesn't do much to encourage companies to develop a native Linux client. The mentality is "If people are willing to get it working through Cedega/Wine, then why should we invest time and money making a Linux client?".
Similarly, my mention of card specs follows a similar line of reasoning -
ATI/nVIDIA decision-maker: "Why should we release the specs to our cards or an open driver if the majority of Linux users are happy using the binary blobs we give them?"
I'm happy the Open Graphics Project is trying to remedy this situation, but last I checked, you couldn't run the likes of Doom III on their hardware (and so I guess other modern games don't get a look-in either). I would happily pay a premium over ATI and nVIDIA's offerings if the OGP had functionally/technically equivalent cards so I can play games with good performance and stability under Linux.
Cedega running on Linux is nice and peachy - it installs games well, and will try and configure its WINE/transgaming layer to run the game as well as possible. However, you can forget playing a lot of games if you have an ATI graphics card. I know a lot of folk on here frequently espouse how bad driver support for ATI cards on Linux is, but you would still expect to be able to at least play some of the more popular games. I couldn't get Halflife 2 (well, any source games) to work after a fair amount of trying, and Battlefield 2 will plain not work with any ATI card (so the Cedega release notes say).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to deride Cedega for what are clearly ATI's shortcomings. It is, however, fairly disappointing to have a theoretically decent graphics card that can't be used for gaming on Linux. TFA would do well to include such a note for ATI card users contemplating a Cedega subscription -- I'd certainly have given it more careful consideration.
Now, if we could convince ATI and nVIDIA to release specs for their cards, while convincing more games companies to release a native Linux client, I'd be very happy. And I'd bet that a significant number of gamers would switch to Linux (any takers?). We'll see what happens when Vista-only DX10 comes along...
If you're thinking of buying an AMD64 X2 for gaming and intend to put the chip in a motherboard with the Nvidia N4 chipset beware...
Myself and several others have had problems with both Battlefield 2 and Source games (CS:S, day of defeat etc)
Seconded. I can't comment about the N4 chipset, but there certainly are issues with ming and the X2 line (I know that the X2s weren't 'meant' for gaming, but they do pretty well). The issues tend to fall into two categories: those that can't handle a 64-bit processor (even with WOW64); and those that can't handle two cores. The former isn't too much of an issue - there's a few games from the era of 16-bit installers that just won't work without downloading a fixed installer. Sadly this encompasses a lot of the classic Lucasarts games:( You can alternatively get around this by using a 32bit flavour of Windows, like what I'm doing currently. It doesn't feel right, but so far it was worked better for some things.
The dual-core problem is annoying, but can be handled by telling the process only to use one core (task manager -> affinity). It does some strange things though. Some games run at half speed, others run at double speed (that was fun in classic CS, not).
So I'd agree with the parent - there are issues with using X2, but I wouldn't let it put you off buying one. After these price cuts they should be pretty damn good value for money.
Yep, positive current. We generate some positrons and feed them into a a matter-antimatter reaction chamber. That's what is actually needed to power these, uh, tiny things. We didn't think it could be done until Geordi inverted the warp field and hooked up a mini-deflector dish to each of the flying cellophane wrapp... ah, 'robots'.
Now all we need to do is make these things able to carry a payload of some decription without collapsing under the strain... They should do someday in some form, but this early stage is needed.
Actually, I have a forumla that gives the best chance of winning an auction: bid 10x what the item is worth. Can I have some money to study the obvious^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H research the tricky questions of our age now please?
The fact that this was tagged as duh before it had any comments is very telling.
... but they and the advertisers are the ones driving people to them.
No seriously, is it any wonder people turn to ad-blockers? Try reading an informative bit of text when there's a Flash advertisement of box jumping around and flashing like a student at Mardi Gras. I don't care if you are trying to tell me I'm your millionth visitor. You misspelled congratulations! The box makes me wish I had no peripheral vision! FOAD.
Now I know publishers want to make a buck (I have a few websites [sans-advertising] myself), but if the advertisers are going to use annoying/underhand methods, people will take steps to protect themselves. A lot of these companies would do well to look at the sort of program Google offers: inoffensive, targeted, text ads.
In short: make your advertising better -- advertisers AND publishers -- or lose that which you supposedly value. Eyeballs.
I'm also not a doctor, but I've heard that the human body can also become aware of an allergen after repeated exposure
And on the flip side, people with allergies can become desensitized through repeated systematic exposure. Sounds great, right? The bad news is it takes two years of repeated exposure to achieve desenitization (from a doctor friend of mine).
One reason I'm aware of this is I do have allergies (hayfever? check. pet fur? check. etc ad nauseum); one of which is latex. Certain things have a latex component, of which gloves are one. So I get to buy my own box of nitrile gloves (blue ones) instead of being supplied with the nice white ones everyone else gets. Desensitization would be nice, but 2 years of repeated histematic reactions? No thanks.
As a post-script, there is apparently overlap between latex allergies and allergies to bananas and some other fruit. I don't have a banana allergy (thankfully), and I don't know anyone who does, but if you have one, watch out for the other !
...and speaking of desensitzation, do we reckon people can be desensitized after repeated systematic two years of violence on TV...?;-)
According to (a 30 page bonanza of mostly pictures) TFA, I own a something that could qualify as a 'gaming' case. And my vote for the "Treasures or Trash?" conundrum is: trash. Why?
LEDs on the front of the case
Yeah, they look cool. For about 5 minutes. They are dim enough not to illuminate, but bright enough to catch your eye. Hardware equivalent of a flash ad. Also, if you keep your PC in your bedroom, you'd better find something to put in front of the LEDs.
"Cheap plastic USB port covers"
Yup, cheap is right. I snapped mine off literally about half an hour before reading the article. How's that for irony? To be fair, the cover was fine until now, just a bit superfluous. I won't miss it.
Side panels
I have seen about 3 PCs in my lifetime that get sidepanels right: easy to take off, but fit snugly and stay on well in spite of semifrequent access. For my last few boxes, I hav mostly kept my sidepanel off, but laying up against the case. Well, it helps cooling...
Sliding front / moving bits
I said the cheap plastic USB port covers were superfluous? My mistake. Any moving parts such as the case front are entirely superfluous and downright annoying. My last case had a sliding front. Up, it blocked the optical drives. Down, it blocked the USB ports. Argh...
Power supplies
Gaming cases tend to get these right, assuming they include a PSU with the case. No real complaints here in my experience.
----
I'd say that unless you are shallow and/or a showoff at LAN parties you'd be better off with a standard case. The money you save on the case can go on a bit of better quality RAM, or at the very worst, a round of beers. So if you have a big budget to blow on a computer you are going to be showing to a lot a people, then sure, get a cool-looking case. But make sure it's cool looking 'features' don't compromise its rather more important 'functions'.
Let me start by saying I applaud these guys' motivation. Circumventing censorship is certainly a worthy goal in the name of individual freedom. However, this is just another step toward that goal, though TFA gives these hackers status approaching messianic. The paragraph I found most interesting:
Psiphon takes the concept of a third-party computer doing the work yours can't because of censorship, and protects it by relying on trusted friends and close family, to create a program the creators say is nearly fail-safe.
(emphasis mine)
First of all, to claim a new tool for defeating censorship is "nearly fail-safe" does not give the Chinese and other goverments enough credit. China hass a government heavily invested (financially and emotionally in terms of propaganda) in controlling information sources available to its people. I'm sure they will try very hard to make sure this tool is rendered ineffective. Here's hoping they don't achive this; but you can be sure they will try hard.
Secondly, the technical side is somewhat dubious. It relies on "close friends and family" in friendly countries such as Canada -- but what if all your friends and family are living in China? And even if you make a secure, encrypted connection, how long before the censor get suspicious? Say encryption is declared illegal, and all external access has to go through certain proxies. Where does that leave Psiphon ?
These are just my two cents on the issue. I'd like it to work, but it may just cause the net to tighten (no pun intended).
They could just be blunt when booting the smallest publishers, but that would be bad PR; and completely flying in the face of "do no evil" (something Matt Cutts recently reaffirmed).
Saying "We cut small advertisers" = bad PR, "doing evil"
Saying "We are tough on click fraud" = good PR (to advertisers, Wall St, et al); "Don't be evil"
I should point out here that my point was interpretive, ie "Google is doing foo, hence you could say bar". The serious point is that under Google's TOS, clickfraud itself can be widely interpreted.
Ever clicked your own ad? By mistake? Checking it works? Clickfraud. Told family / friends / coworkers you have a website [with fancy Google ads]? Did they click to "help you out"? Clickfraud. Drawn 'undue attention' to your ads (as interpreted by the powers that be at Google) that resulted in a click? Clickfraud. While these don't fall under the definition of I-bought-a-robot-to-generate-1000s-of-clicks, or other egregious violations, Google could call it clickfraud if it so wished.
While these are small potatoes to Google, they are still technically valid reasons to terminate an AdSense account. Maybe Google would use such a technicality as an excuse to terminate an account that was small and a liability to them, maybe they wouldn't. Draw your own conclusions.
The better you are treated. Seems obvious, but there are a quite a few small publishers that don't make enough for Google to go to any trouble over. Fraudulent click activity? If the advertisers are getting angry, its easier just to say "We have banned the site in question." than to actually find and deal with the source of the problem. They need to be seen to strike a balance - and it's much easier to be harsh to someone that is only bringing your company $100 / week than someone who brings in $100k / week.
A touch cynical? Perhaps, but consider that: they have recently made some Big Changes(TM) to they way they crawl (aka Big Daddy(TM)); they have admitted a storage problem; and their stock has slipped recently. What better message to send to publishers that "We are tough on fraudulent clicks" to restore confidence.
I'm not bashing them. Seriously. Business is business. They run their advertising program, they determine the TOS and how they are applied. It's not like alternatives aren't avaliable (one recently launched at the Center of attention...). Anyway, it isn't all bad news. There is a publisher who netted over $1M from AdSense in three short months. Yes, you heard me, net. And this publisher isn't a corp, business or big team. Just one guy with a whole lotta pageviews. I bet he's treated very well by the folks at the 'plex...
So while ther may indeed be a problem/conspiracy/whatever, do consider that 1) they may actually be engaging in click fraud (eg "drawing undue attention to advertisements") or 2) they may be more of a liability than they are worth.
There are a number of options you have, depending on how aggressive you want to be. You may have implemented some of these suggestions already, but they may help other forum admins in a similar quandry.
Firstly, disable anonymous posting. What works for slashdot does not necessarily work for phpbb. This may sound obvious, but a forum I check on now and again is slowly haemorrhaging members due to guest bot spam.
Secondly, find yourself a list of public proxy servers. Ban them. Find some more. Ban them too. Also, take note of the IPs the spambots were using to post. Ban them as well (unless they are AOL IPs -- be smart and do an nslookup). Keep this list of banned IPs, and are them with the blacklist groups, or other forum admins you know. You help them, they help you.
Thirdly, augment your signup process. You say you are using CAPTCHAs, but if the bots are getting arond or through them, you have to do more. Write a few hundred straightforward questions; you can get your community to help you for this one. Have one o two of those questions displayed at regitration time, along with the CAPTCHA. For example:
Which of this is not one of the seven dwarves?
Doc
Sleepy
Bashful
Horsey
Or would you like another question ?
Keep this as simple as possible. "What color is the sky?" is about the level you are looking for. A bot won't be able to answer these unless it is specifically programmed to. Need I say you should serve a random question?
For bonus points on this one, make the questions something to do with the topic of the forums. If the forums were about widgets, you could ask something (really basic) like "What is the most common color of widget?". Or make come of the questions about the TOS. You know, the thing everyone checks the box saying "I agree to abide by the TOS". This may alienate some people, though, which you may or may not want. Also remember to consider non-native English speakers.
If you are sill getting those darned bots, consider manually approving by hand all registrations. This will obviously depend on how many new signups you get, and what kind of manpower you have (think moderators and "trusted community members"). On the other hand, you should be able to spot and stop bots right off the bat.
But why stop there? Be even more proactive! Set up a honeypot. Disallow a certain directory with robots.txt, and ban all IPs that find their way there. Include an invisible link to the disallowed location and see what falls in the trap. Remember that blacklist you started earlier? Add (and share) these IPs!
Finally, let your community know what you are doing. They will appreciate the effort (If you have noticed the spam, so have they). Set clear guidelines, and encourage community vigilance.
Seriously though, if you are up for 'lets work together', and don't mind sharing the controller/keyboard, I would recommend something more puzzle & adventure oriented. Could be a point 'n click, but it doesn't have to be. I mean, some of the older Tomb Raiders were good in this respect (puzzles); just remember to look at other parts of the screen once in a while or your plan may backfire. Let's face it, FPS' are more reaction time and fine motor control -- which can be fun -- but I have a sneaking suspicion your better half will appreciate something more cerebral.
If you really do want a truly 2 player game, I would recommend something coop. If you have Half Life and more than one computer (and what self-respecting geek doesn't?), then give Sven Co-op a try. Play through Half Life co-operatively. There is also a huge map pack avaliable with decent maps; not all of which are quick-blast-everything-that-moves. Other choices include other coop games, such as Halo 2. I'm sure you can think of others without too much effort; eg sports games, racing games usually have > 1 player mode built-in, at least for consoles.
Personally, I'd go for the one that gets you the most thanks-for-thinking-of-me-honey... points.
A big well done to the Opera team. Safari passed the test in November last year, and hopefully Firefox will pass soon as well. Increased standards compliace is a Good Thing(tm) for users and webmasters alike. If the minority browsers continue to push standards (which the tech-savvy webmasters follow) it will push IE into improving its own rendering engine. Although even their unreleased version seems to be a bit behind the times...
From TFA:It is somewhat worrying that IE 6 renders Acid 2 very similarly to Opera 3.6, and the hyped IE 7 renders it very similarly to Opera 4.
'Somewhat worrying' indeed. I know people (of the pretty-damn-computer-literate variety) that won't switch from IE6 because it "works fine for them". I'm sure they know about the vulnerabilities [now that Symantec says so, it must be official!], the rendering issues and speed*, but they are sticking to their guns. So the only way people like this will have their experience enhanced is by teams like Mozilla and Opera pushing the browser envelope and hoping IE take interest. Either that or some X factor that makes the alternative browser a 'killer app', rather than IE, which is an app killer. (I couldn't resist, sorry!)
Well done again to Opera. Webmasters everywhere are silently saying a big 'thank you'.
*Note: I am aware that some will say that IE 6 loads quicker/renders quicker than FF. I have found the two of comparable speed for light pages, and FF slightly faster for 'heavier' pages. Opera is faster than both of them. Draw your own conclusions, and install all three (or two if your run a non-Windows OS). I found an old demo disc with IE 3 recently, and will be trying that out.
This kind of tool might be nice for those people that are to lazy to either blog themselves or do some honest-to-god surfing, but can you really see publishers being thrilled that their content is going to be diluted and published on some Joe Q Random's Boxxet page?
Now, some bloggers and others might be happy to be republished verbatim outwith their control. That's fine. But most professional webmasters have a name for bots that go around taking content and putting it on other sites without permission*. The are called scrapers. The Boxxet bot and others like it are and will be banned by many webmasters (including myself) because the potential for abuse is too high.
There is also a name for such sites automatically produced by scrapers -- made for AdSense
* Note: There is no problem with sites that take headlines, write a summary/teaser and link back (like a certain site we are all very familiar with). These sites are doing a Good Thing(TM) for the content creators -- sending them an interested [ie targeted] audience. The problem for both the publishers and the search engines is the scraping. Only time will tell whether Boxxet is one of the troublemakers (cause the article and the site sure don't give many clues).
RFC 1925 should be required reading for everyone who thinks they have a bright new idea for a network. In this case the company should pay particular attention to rule number two:
[2] No matter how hard you push and no matter what the priority, you can't increase the speed of light.
Since the signal has to travel a certain physical distance, there will always be unavoidable lag. Changing the NIC will have little to no effect, unless you are using some antiquated card that was designed around the early TCP/IP stacks. And gamers are hardly known for not having hardware that is so cutting edge the wounds are still bleeding.
I'm waiting until some new VC-funded company requests major sums of money to build a NIC that communicates on the basis of quantum enatnglement for zero lag. Not to buy one, you understand, since you can't send information faster than the speed of light -- not even by entanglement.
Well, this is a router that runs on custom hardware; not a city in Texas. (Yes, or a nickname for a certain city in the Bay Area...)
But yes, FREESCO is "A small free firewall router intended as a replacement for more costly commercial products." And, if you are wondering... "The name stands for FREE ciSCO". They have a website, and a very helpful group of friendly support forum [not located in NJ, I might add].
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with FREESCO, but my router does run their software on a very old PC. Does the job very nicely, too.
Good point, but actually I host them between two continents. But that didn't seem as apposite. And I'll tell you, one of the continents seems to be increasingly safer -- and I'm not just talking about fault lines.
If in the unlikely event that this law (or something of its form) passes, you won't see any smart webmasters hosting out of NJ, except maybe completely static sites or information services. Have a blog? It has the ability for people to post, so it can be considered a 'public forum'. Guestbook? Product comments/review pages? All public 'forums' for discussion of a sort, since 'forum' isn't well-defined in this case. It sure means more than phpbb/invision/whatever forum software.
These kinds of laws, if they are passed are dangerous, unenforceable or not. Although the DMCA has yet to be found unenforcable, if it was competently argued in court, it would most likely be. But it sure has cause a lot of headaches. I don't mean to mix apples and oranges, but we have to be wary of all legislation [yes, even the proposals] that wants to resrtict our rights in some way. It's easier to get a proposal struck down than a law.
Finally, back to the 'two continents' point. If a law like this making webmasters liable for a [fairly anonymous] worldwide-accessible service was passed at a federal level, I and many like me would be unable (unwilling to take the risk) to host in the US. Let's hope it doesn't happen.
First up, does anyone have the background to the reasoning behind this? Was there some big case in New Jersey that was predicated on an anonymous post? Or was this the result of a crack-fueled late night in the NJ legislative chamber?
Secondly, if they expect this to pass, how do they expect it to apply? I've heard of the MPAA sending DMCA takedown notices to Swedish websites and such, but how do they expect this legislation to be enforced? Is there method to their madness?
Will they expect any 'internet forum' sites hosted in NJ to require this data? Or US-based sites that [potentially?] cater to NJ users to do this? Or are they ignorant and exepct everyone to follow it? I can see the first and the last being possible explanations, but still...
Regardless, this is an opportunity to send a clear message saying that yes, we actually do want some privacy and anonymity. If it is resoundingly struck down and that its rejection is so reported then other policymakers elsewhere might take the hint. Just maybe.
And if it does pass... well then I'm just glad my hosted websites are located in sunny California!
While it's all well and nice that the 360 has added 'another dimension' to gaming by adding leaderboards, I still think we need to wait for the 360 port of NetHack before players of this particular console know the true meaning of the word "addiction":)
Joking aside, I think it is small touches like leaderboards that can keep a certain element coming back for more, and if titles for the 360 implement this, more power to them. Competition in gaming is nice and healthy, for the most part, so as long as it doesn't descent to the levels of stat-padding for globally ranked games as seen in BF2; or the account farming [from the psst-hey-fella-wanna-buy-a-top-score? dept] of WoW (or other MMORPGs), it should be -- dare I say -- fun for the Xbox 360 players.
I get the feeling that these people (yeah, the "industry icons") have some pretty Big Ideas(TM), but they don't really know what they are saying. Sure they postulate about multiplayer gaming and the disc going the way of the dodo, but these are just guesses wrapped up in verbal fluff.From TFA:
That move to digital distribution is just one in a series of transitions to a connected era the industry is currently undergoing. Moore could easily have been addressing the sum of those changes when he referred to the Xbox 360 as "a living entertainment experience powered by human energy," but it seemed every member of the panel foresaw a gaming industry where the publishers and the games themselves were much more closely integrated with the consumers.
"It [gaming] has been a mutant monster only made possible by unconnected computers.
We're not selling the bits. We're selling those other intangibles, the opportunity to feel special
Ironically, the idea with the best potential was:
"Linear entertainment in single-player is to media what masturbation is to sex,"
Even still, that was wordy and could have been trimmed down for a nice take-away thought. Perhaps, I'm cynical, but this article didn't feel like a 'discussion on the on-line future of the gaming industry'; it felt like a bunch of high-schoolers trying to come up with big, meaningful statements for their English essays.
Slashdot Mirror
This, of course, was covered earlier. And I still agree with the tag - I think it is snake oil.
Let's try and remember a few fundamentals. As per RFC 1925, "The 12 Networking Truths":
(Déja vu? Yes!)
Right on. This card might process incoming data quicker, or perhaps even send the data to the CPU faster, but it won't reduce latency. The high price ($280? TFA is not responding) does not justify the alleged 'improvements' in lag this card offers. Games communicating over UDP like BF2 have fairly low lag anyway (when they stay connected...). As others have said: spend the money on RAM or some other upgrade. The 'lag' improvement will be much more cost-effective.As TFA alluded above, it can be argued the presence and popularity of software such as Cedega doesn't do much to encourage companies to develop a native Linux client. The mentality is "If people are willing to get it working through Cedega/Wine, then why should we invest time and money making a Linux client?".
Similarly, my mention of card specs follows a similar line of reasoning -
ATI/nVIDIA decision-maker: "Why should we release the specs to our cards or an open driver if the majority of Linux users are happy using the binary blobs we give them?"
I'm happy the Open Graphics Project is trying to remedy this situation, but last I checked, you couldn't run the likes of Doom III on their hardware (and so I guess other modern games don't get a look-in either). I would happily pay a premium over ATI and nVIDIA's offerings if the OGP had functionally/technically equivalent cards so I can play games with good performance and stability under Linux.
Cedega running on Linux is nice and peachy - it installs games well, and will try and configure its WINE/transgaming layer to run the game as well as possible. However, you can forget playing a lot of games if you have an ATI graphics card. I know a lot of folk on here frequently espouse how bad driver support for ATI cards on Linux is, but you would still expect to be able to at least play some of the more popular games. I couldn't get Halflife 2 (well, any source games) to work after a fair amount of trying, and Battlefield 2 will plain not work with any ATI card (so the Cedega release notes say).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to deride Cedega for what are clearly ATI's shortcomings. It is, however, fairly disappointing to have a theoretically decent graphics card that can't be used for gaming on Linux. TFA would do well to include such a note for ATI card users contemplating a Cedega subscription -- I'd certainly have given it more careful consideration.
Now, if we could convince ATI and nVIDIA to release specs for their cards, while convincing more games companies to release a native Linux client, I'd be very happy. And I'd bet that a significant number of gamers would switch to Linux (any takers?). We'll see what happens when Vista-only DX10 comes along...
Seconded. I can't comment about the N4 chipset, but there certainly are issues with ming and the X2 line (I know that the X2s weren't 'meant' for gaming, but they do pretty well). The issues tend to fall into two categories: those that can't handle a 64-bit processor (even with WOW64); and those that can't handle two cores. The former isn't too much of an issue - there's a few games from the era of 16-bit installers that just won't work without downloading a fixed installer. Sadly this encompasses a lot of the classic Lucasarts games :( You can alternatively get around this by using a 32bit flavour of Windows, like what I'm doing currently. It doesn't feel right, but so far it was worked better for some things.
The dual-core problem is annoying, but can be handled by telling the process only to use one core (task manager -> affinity). It does some strange things though. Some games run at half speed, others run at double speed (that was fun in classic CS, not).
So I'd agree with the parent - there are issues with using X2, but I wouldn't let it put you off buying one. After these price cuts they should be pretty damn good value for money.
Yep, positive current. We generate some positrons and feed them into a a matter-antimatter reaction chamber. That's what is actually needed to power these, uh, tiny things. We didn't think it could be done until Geordi inverted the warp field and hooked up a mini-deflector dish to each of the flying cellophane wrapp... ah, 'robots'.
Now all we need to do is make these things able to carry a payload of some decription without collapsing under the strain... They should do someday in some form, but this early stage is needed.
(Yep, I read some parodies recently.)
1 Snipe eBay auctions
2 ?????
3 Profit!
Actually, I have a forumla that gives the best chance of winning an auction: bid 10x what the item is worth. Can I have some money to study the obvious^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H research the tricky questions of our age now please?
The fact that this was tagged as duh before it had any comments is very telling.
... but they and the advertisers are the ones driving people to them.
No seriously, is it any wonder people turn to ad-blockers? Try reading an informative bit of text when there's a Flash advertisement of box jumping around and flashing like a student at Mardi Gras. I don't care if you are trying to tell me I'm your millionth visitor. You misspelled congratulations! The box makes me wish I had no peripheral vision! FOAD.
Now I know publishers want to make a buck (I have a few websites [sans-advertising] myself), but if the advertisers are going to use annoying/underhand methods, people will take steps to protect themselves. A lot of these companies would do well to look at the sort of program Google offers: inoffensive, targeted, text ads.
In short: make your advertising better -- advertisers AND publishers -- or lose that which you supposedly value. Eyeballs.
I, for one, do not welcome our new malware-installing overlords!
And on the flip side, people with allergies can become desensitized through repeated systematic exposure. Sounds great, right? The bad news is it takes two years of repeated exposure to achieve desenitization (from a doctor friend of mine).
One reason I'm aware of this is I do have allergies (hayfever? check. pet fur? check. etc ad nauseum); one of which is latex. Certain things have a latex component, of which gloves are one. So I get to buy my own box of nitrile gloves (blue ones) instead of being supplied with the nice white ones everyone else gets. Desensitization would be nice, but 2 years of repeated histematic reactions? No thanks.
As a post-script, there is apparently overlap between latex allergies and allergies to bananas and some other fruit. I don't have a banana allergy (thankfully), and I don't know anyone who does, but if you have one, watch out for the other !
According to (a 30 page bonanza of mostly pictures) TFA, I own a something that could qualify as a 'gaming' case. And my vote for the "Treasures or Trash?" conundrum is: trash. Why?
LEDs on the front of the case
Yeah, they look cool. For about 5 minutes. They are dim enough not to illuminate, but bright enough to catch your eye. Hardware equivalent of a flash ad. Also, if you keep your PC in your bedroom, you'd better find something to put in front of the LEDs.
"Cheap plastic USB port covers"
Yup, cheap is right. I snapped mine off literally about half an hour before reading the article. How's that for irony? To be fair, the cover was fine until now, just a bit superfluous. I won't miss it.
Side panels
I have seen about 3 PCs in my lifetime that get sidepanels right: easy to take off, but fit snugly and stay on well in spite of semifrequent access. For my last few boxes, I hav mostly kept my sidepanel off, but laying up against the case. Well, it helps cooling...
Sliding front / moving bits
I said the cheap plastic USB port covers were superfluous? My mistake. Any moving parts such as the case front are entirely superfluous and downright annoying. My last case had a sliding front. Up, it blocked the optical drives. Down, it blocked the USB ports. Argh...
Power supplies
Gaming cases tend to get these right, assuming they include a PSU with the case. No real complaints here in my experience.
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I'd say that unless you are shallow and/or a showoff at LAN parties you'd be better off with a standard case. The money you save on the case can go on a bit of better quality RAM, or at the very worst, a round of beers. So if you have a big budget to blow on a computer you are going to be showing to a lot a people, then sure, get a cool-looking case. But make sure it's cool looking 'features' don't compromise its rather more important 'functions'.
Let me start by saying I applaud these guys' motivation. Circumventing censorship is certainly a worthy goal in the name of individual freedom. However, this is just another step toward that goal, though TFA gives these hackers status approaching messianic. The paragraph I found most interesting:
(emphasis mine)
First of all, to claim a new tool for defeating censorship is "nearly fail-safe" does not give the Chinese and other goverments enough credit. China hass a government heavily invested (financially and emotionally in terms of propaganda) in controlling information sources available to its people. I'm sure they will try very hard to make sure this tool is rendered ineffective. Here's hoping they don't achive this; but you can be sure they will try hard.
Secondly, the technical side is somewhat dubious. It relies on "close friends and family" in friendly countries such as Canada -- but what if all your friends and family are living in China? And even if you make a secure, encrypted connection, how long before the censor get suspicious? Say encryption is declared illegal, and all external access has to go through certain proxies. Where does that leave Psiphon ?
These are just my two cents on the issue. I'd like it to work, but it may just cause the net to tighten (no pun intended).
They could just be blunt when booting the smallest publishers, but that would be bad PR; and completely flying in the face of "do no evil" (something Matt Cutts recently reaffirmed).
Saying "We cut small advertisers" = bad PR, "doing evil"
Saying "We are tough on click fraud" = good PR (to advertisers, Wall St, et al); "Don't be evil"
I should point out here that my point was interpretive, ie "Google is doing foo, hence you could say bar". The serious point is that under Google's TOS, clickfraud itself can be widely interpreted.
Ever clicked your own ad? By mistake? Checking it works? Clickfraud. Told family / friends / coworkers you have a website [with fancy Google ads]? Did they click to "help you out"? Clickfraud. Drawn 'undue attention' to your ads (as interpreted by the powers that be at Google) that resulted in a click? Clickfraud. While these don't fall under the definition of I-bought-a-robot-to-generate-1000s-of-clicks, or other egregious violations, Google could call it clickfraud if it so wished.
While these are small potatoes to Google, they are still technically valid reasons to terminate an AdSense account. Maybe Google would use such a technicality as an excuse to terminate an account that was small and a liability to them, maybe they wouldn't. Draw your own conclusions.
The better you are treated. Seems obvious, but there are a quite a few small publishers that don't make enough for Google to go to any trouble over. Fraudulent click activity? If the advertisers are getting angry, its easier just to say "We have banned the site in question." than to actually find and deal with the source of the problem. They need to be seen to strike a balance - and it's much easier to be harsh to someone that is only bringing your company $100 / week than someone who brings in $100k / week.
A touch cynical? Perhaps, but consider that: they have recently made some Big Changes(TM) to they way they crawl (aka Big Daddy(TM)); they have admitted a storage problem; and their stock has slipped recently. What better message to send to publishers that "We are tough on fraudulent clicks" to restore confidence.
I'm not bashing them. Seriously. Business is business. They run their advertising program, they determine the TOS and how they are applied. It's not like alternatives aren't avaliable (one recently launched at the Center of attention...). Anyway, it isn't all bad news. There is a publisher who netted over $1M from AdSense in three short months. Yes, you heard me, net. And this publisher isn't a corp, business or big team. Just one guy with a whole lotta pageviews. I bet he's treated very well by the folks at the 'plex...
So while ther may indeed be a problem/conspiracy/whatever, do consider that 1) they may actually be engaging in click fraud (eg "drawing undue attention to advertisements") or 2) they may be more of a liability than they are worth.
There are a number of options you have, depending on how aggressive you want to be. You may have implemented some of these suggestions already, but they may help other forum admins in a similar quandry.
Firstly, disable anonymous posting. What works for slashdot does not necessarily work for phpbb. This may sound obvious, but a forum I check on now and again is slowly haemorrhaging members due to guest bot spam.
Secondly, find yourself a list of public proxy servers. Ban them. Find some more. Ban them too. Also, take note of the IPs the spambots were using to post. Ban them as well (unless they are AOL IPs -- be smart and do an nslookup). Keep this list of banned IPs, and are them with the blacklist groups, or other forum admins you know. You help them, they help you.
Thirdly, augment your signup process. You say you are using CAPTCHAs, but if the bots are getting arond or through them, you have to do more. Write a few hundred straightforward questions; you can get your community to help you for this one. Have one o two of those questions displayed at regitration time, along with the CAPTCHA. For example:
Which of this is not one of the seven dwarves?
Or would you like another question ?
Keep this as simple as possible. "What color is the sky?" is about the level you are looking for. A bot won't be able to answer these unless it is specifically programmed to. Need I say you should serve a random question?
For bonus points on this one, make the questions something to do with the topic of the forums. If the forums were about widgets, you could ask something (really basic) like "What is the most common color of widget?". Or make come of the questions about the TOS. You know, the thing everyone checks the box saying "I agree to abide by the TOS". This may alienate some people, though, which you may or may not want. Also remember to consider non-native English speakers.
If you are sill getting those darned bots, consider manually approving by hand all registrations. This will obviously depend on how many new signups you get, and what kind of manpower you have (think moderators and "trusted community members"). On the other hand, you should be able to spot and stop bots right off the bat.
But why stop there? Be even more proactive! Set up a honeypot. Disallow a certain directory with robots.txt, and ban all IPs that find their way there. Include an invisible link to the disallowed location and see what falls in the trap. Remember that blacklist you started earlier? Add (and share) these IPs!
Finally, let your community know what you are doing. They will appreciate the effort (If you have noticed the spam, so have they). Set clear guidelines, and encourage community vigilance.
In the end, remember: spam is beatable.
'Cause if it does, I feel I should quote C-3P0:
I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the wookie win.
Seriously though, if you are up for 'lets work together', and don't mind sharing the controller/keyboard, I would recommend something more puzzle & adventure oriented. Could be a point 'n click, but it doesn't have to be. I mean, some of the older Tomb Raiders were good in this respect (puzzles); just remember to look at other parts of the screen once in a while or your plan may backfire. Let's face it, FPS' are more reaction time and fine motor control -- which can be fun -- but I have a sneaking suspicion your better half will appreciate something more cerebral.
If you really do want a truly 2 player game, I would recommend something coop. If you have Half Life and more than one computer (and what self-respecting geek doesn't?), then give Sven Co-op a try. Play through Half Life co-operatively. There is also a huge map pack avaliable with decent maps; not all of which are quick-blast-everything-that-moves. Other choices include other coop games, such as Halo 2. I'm sure you can think of others without too much effort; eg sports games, racing games usually have > 1 player mode built-in, at least for consoles.
Personally, I'd go for the one that gets you the most thanks-for-thinking-of-me-honey... points.
A big well done to the Opera team. Safari passed the test in November last year, and hopefully Firefox will pass soon as well. Increased standards compliace is a Good Thing(tm) for users and webmasters alike. If the minority browsers continue to push standards (which the tech-savvy webmasters follow) it will push IE into improving its own rendering engine. Although even their unreleased version seems to be a bit behind the times...
From TFA: It is somewhat worrying that IE 6 renders Acid 2 very similarly to Opera 3.6, and the hyped IE 7 renders it very similarly to Opera 4.
'Somewhat worrying' indeed. I know people (of the pretty-damn-computer-literate variety) that won't switch from IE6 because it "works fine for them". I'm sure they know about the vulnerabilities [now that Symantec says so, it must be official!], the rendering issues and speed*, but they are sticking to their guns. So the only way people like this will have their experience enhanced is by teams like Mozilla and Opera pushing the browser envelope and hoping IE take interest. Either that or some X factor that makes the alternative browser a 'killer app', rather than IE, which is an app killer. (I couldn't resist, sorry!)
Well done again to Opera. Webmasters everywhere are silently saying a big 'thank you'.
*Note: I am aware that some will say that IE 6 loads quicker/renders quicker than FF. I have found the two of comparable speed for light pages, and FF slightly faster for 'heavier' pages. Opera is faster than both of them. Draw your own conclusions, and install all three (or two if your run a non-Windows OS). I found an old demo disc with IE 3 recently, and will be trying that out.
This kind of tool might be nice for those people that are to lazy to either blog themselves or do some honest-to-god surfing, but can you really see publishers being thrilled that their content is going to be diluted and published on some Joe Q Random's Boxxet page?
Now, some bloggers and others might be happy to be republished verbatim outwith their control. That's fine. But most professional webmasters have a name for bots that go around taking content and putting it on other sites without permission*. The are called scrapers . The Boxxet bot and others like it are and will be banned by many webmasters (including myself) because the potential for abuse is too high.
There is also a name for such sites automatically produced by scrapers -- made for AdSense
* Note: There is no problem with sites that take headlines, write a summary/teaser and link back (like a certain site we are all very familiar with). These sites are doing a Good Thing(TM) for the content creators -- sending them an interested [ie targeted] audience. The problem for both the publishers and the search engines is the scraping. Only time will tell whether Boxxet is one of the troublemakers (cause the article and the site sure don't give many clues).
RFC 1925 should be required reading for everyone who thinks they have a bright new idea for a network. In this case the company should pay particular attention to rule number two:
[2] No matter how hard you push and no matter what the priority, you can't increase the speed of light.
Since the signal has to travel a certain physical distance, there will always be unavoidable lag. Changing the NIC will have little to no effect, unless you are using some antiquated card that was designed around the early TCP/IP stacks. And gamers are hardly known for not having hardware that is so cutting edge the wounds are still bleeding.
I'm waiting until some new VC-funded company requests major sums of money to build a NIC that communicates on the basis of quantum enatnglement for zero lag. Not to buy one, you understand, since you can't send information faster than the speed of light -- not even by entanglement.
And have a read of the RFC I mentioned as well. Well worth the time.
Well, this is a router that runs on custom hardware; not a city in Texas. (Yes, or a nickname for a certain city in the Bay Area...)
But yes, FREESCO is "A small free firewall router intended as a replacement for more costly commercial products." And, if you are wondering... "The name stands for FREE ciSCO". They have a website, and a very helpful group of friendly support forum [not located in NJ, I might add].
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with FREESCO, but my router does run their software on a very old PC. Does the job very nicely, too.
Good point, but actually I host them between two continents. But that didn't seem as apposite. And I'll tell you, one of the continents seems to be increasingly safer -- and I'm not just talking about fault lines.
If in the unlikely event that this law (or something of its form) passes, you won't see any smart webmasters hosting out of NJ, except maybe completely static sites or information services. Have a blog? It has the ability for people to post, so it can be considered a 'public forum'. Guestbook? Product comments/review pages? All public 'forums' for discussion of a sort, since 'forum' isn't well-defined in this case. It sure means more than phpbb/invision/whatever forum software.
These kinds of laws, if they are passed are dangerous, unenforceable or not. Although the DMCA has yet to be found unenforcable, if it was competently argued in court, it would most likely be. But it sure has cause a lot of headaches. I don't mean to mix apples and oranges, but we have to be wary of all legislation [yes, even the proposals] that wants to resrtict our rights in some way. It's easier to get a proposal struck down than a law.
Finally, back to the 'two continents' point. If a law like this making webmasters liable for a [fairly anonymous] worldwide-accessible service was passed at a federal level, I and many like me would be unable (unwilling to take the risk) to host in the US. Let's hope it doesn't happen.
First up, does anyone have the background to the reasoning behind this? Was there some big case in New Jersey that was predicated on an anonymous post? Or was this the result of a crack-fueled late night in the NJ legislative chamber?
Secondly, if they expect this to pass, how do they expect it to apply? I've heard of the MPAA sending DMCA takedown notices to Swedish websites and such, but how do they expect this legislation to be enforced? Is there method to their madness?
Will they expect any 'internet forum' sites hosted in NJ to require this data? Or US-based sites that [potentially?] cater to NJ users to do this? Or are they ignorant and exepct everyone to follow it? I can see the first and the last being possible explanations, but still...
Regardless, this is an opportunity to send a clear message saying that yes, we actually do want some privacy and anonymity. If it is resoundingly struck down and that its rejection is so reported then other policymakers elsewhere might take the hint. Just maybe.
And if it does pass... well then I'm just glad my hosted websites are located in sunny California!
I live 5 minutes walk from that station. Used it tonnes. Nice to know it made history, in some little way.
While it's all well and nice that the 360 has added 'another dimension' to gaming by adding leaderboards, I still think we need to wait for the 360 port of NetHack before players of this particular console know the true meaning of the word "addiction" :)
Joking aside, I think it is small touches like leaderboards that can keep a certain element coming back for more, and if titles for the 360 implement this, more power to them. Competition in gaming is nice and healthy, for the most part, so as long as it doesn't descent to the levels of stat-padding for globally ranked games as seen in BF2; or the account farming [from the psst-hey-fella-wanna-buy-a-top-score? dept] of WoW (or other MMORPGs), it should be -- dare I say -- fun for the Xbox 360 players.
From the blurb:
Gamasutra reports that Cedega 1.5 has been released for Linux gamers looking for a Civ IV fix
A bit of editorial nostalgia, perhaps?I get the feeling that these people (yeah, the "industry icons") have some pretty Big Ideas(TM), but they don't really know what they are saying. Sure they postulate about multiplayer gaming and the disc going the way of the dodo, but these are just guesses wrapped up in verbal fluff.From TFA:
That move to digital distribution is just one in a series of transitions to a connected era the industry is currently undergoing. Moore could easily have been addressing the sum of those changes when he referred to the Xbox 360 as "a living entertainment experience powered by human energy," but it seemed every member of the panel foresaw a gaming industry where the publishers and the games themselves were much more closely integrated with the consumers.
"It [gaming] has been a mutant monster only made possible by unconnected computers.
We're not selling the bits. We're selling those other intangibles, the opportunity to feel special
Ironically, the idea with the best potential was:
"Linear entertainment in single-player is to media what masturbation is to sex,"
Even still, that was wordy and could have been trimmed down for a nice take-away thought. Perhaps, I'm cynical, but this article didn't feel like a 'discussion on the on-line future of the gaming industry'; it felt like a bunch of high-schoolers trying to come up with big, meaningful statements for their English essays.