It's one thing to say that China has the largest on-line population, and it's an interesting factoid. But I'm not sure it counts as net access, since it is somewhat (as in noticably) restricted as such.
With all due respect that's like saying that the USA has the highest proportion of outdoor workers in the western world, because most of the offices have clean windows and sometimes you can see a few trees.
It doesn't seem like I've been using Google for very long. I remember the first search engine that I really came to rely on was AltaVista. Looking back at the waybackmachine, I can tell that I only used AltaVista for six months at most. Which means, by inference, that I've now been using google for nine years. I use it every day, and don't even realise that I'm doing it. And the fact that I've barely even noticed it yet is a credit to how little, for a company so large, Google throw shit at my window.
There's a lot of talk about how Google is in decline, and I won't comment on that, because every company has its tipping point. But for them to have been a invaluable (and in many cases incomparable) tool in my life for the best part of a decade and to have remained almost invisible as an agent in that process takes some doing.
In fact, the most insidious thing about Google may well be that any new attempts at reorganizing the layout of a traditional search engine, such as cuil is now attempting, seem like deliberate contrivances. And probably are.
They didnt do anything illegal.
All they did was copy data of packets passing THROUGH their Tor servers they had setup. They didnt compromise other's systems. This may be a moral question, ala reading emails that pass through your relay.
At which point did it become legal to read emails that were being passed through your relay?
The real issue I see with this isn't so much that the ISP's are sending out warning letters - they've all stated that they're not prepared to cancel anyone's service - but that the record companies have essentially got the ISP's to do their dirty work for them.
Whilst I strongly disapprove of this turn of events, one benefit of the ISPs doing the record companies' dirty work is that the record companies have less reason to want your personal information if their will is being done directly by ISPs. And, more importantly, the ISPs have a much better case for not handing it over.
I really want to see one of these fusion processes work. It would make a radical change in our society, by removing any reason for the US government to care what happens in the middle east.
I really want to see one of these processes work, but it's massively shortsighted to care on the basis of what happens in the middle east. We're talking about the next step in world energy here, not the end of one government's petty feud with a geographical area.
The next step? A "family friendly" ISP, that blocks all pornography all together.
Back in the early days of the internet there were content providers with limited/restricted/obscured access to the real internet. Compuserve and AOL were two of them. What happened, I hear you ask? Nobody gave a shit about their 'content' in the face of a real internet full of real goodies, and their finances began to atrophy. Cserve was bought out by AOL, which made steps to become a more genuine ISP, and incidentally isn't doing all that well anyway.
The agony of not knowing everything in the world about your child is too much for many people to bear. Nonetheless, it is the sacrifice you must make, if you are to allow them to become individuals.
But no company can make something and offer no help or support, period. That's not legal.
It is? How do you figure?
You may not need to offer end user support helplines, sure. But there are many legal requirements that effectively require you to provide some level of 'support' for any product that you are selling, first amongst these is the law that you must provide something which is fit for purpose. If you don't think that this involves any kind of response or feedback from the company, then I don't know what to tell you. Even setting up a department that solely and ONLY deals with refunds would constitute a support nightmare.
If Microsoft don't want the headache then, existing contracts notwithstanding, there's not a lot we can do about it.
What if huge swathes of industry, government and education rely on your *new* technology to work well, or even properly? There are certain standards that need to be maintained, and this is one instance where a company (one that has admitted their new offering is lacking) should be forced to keep supplying something that "works".
Large enterprise companies on the Campus license will not be affected by the cessation of sale of end user licenses. Small businesses probably do not have the kind of enterprise systems which rely on older versions of Windows. Yes, some people will get caught in the middle. But it's not quite the problem that you make out.
The problem up for discussion is what do you do if YOU want XP on YOUR computer, and the answer is 'deal with it' or 'buy an old computer'.
As an aside, I know of very few large enterprsises, including my own, who have - or intend to - switch to Vist in the forseeable future.
They are so friendly and customer-focused that you have to jump through hoops to get the product that you want. Why do we put up with this shit when we wouldn't accept this from almost any other industry?
An industry related example: Good luck buying a power PC Apple Mac direct from the manufacturer. That's right - even if you ask really nicely, and even if they were still making them less than two years ago. It's an old product, and you can't get it any more.
A car analogy: Good luck buying a Jaguar XJ220 direct from Jag. It's an older model. They don't make them any more.
OK, so with software it's a bit different - 'making' them is as simple as copying the data, insofaras manufacture goes. But no company can make something and offer no help or support, period. That's not legal. If they want to lay old tech to rest, then that's their decision.
Yes, Vista is inferior to XP in many ways. Lots of new products are inferior to old products in many ways. If a company is done with a product, consumers do not have a right to force them to keep supplying it.
... and which ISP do you work for exactly? My shill sense is tingling!
My entire post highlighted the issues that are at stake being the direct fault of poor planning by badly run ISPs, so I doubt it was your 'shill' sense tingling. Most likely you just shat yourself again.
This was bound to happen. P2P is very useful technology.
This was bound to happen, as you say. And has already, in many places - although not so much with streaming media as yet, but there are more than a few well-backed pilots out there. Even video games use P2P. World of Warcraft, although not a lot of people realise this, uses P2P in order to get its patches out. I believe it may actually use the dreaded bittorrent!
Personally, I remember being slightly irked that they were using my bandwidth to get their patches out when I was paying them a monthly fee. But it's hard to hold it against them, it's a smart business decision. In many cases, it brings the patches back FASTER.
Although it is a stupid business practice, ISPs have for years been selling 'unlimited' or otherwise cut price service to end users whom they expect will barely use those internet connections. A small percentage of users eat up bandwidth like they were doritos and dip, but the ISPs take the hit. Us heavy users are their loss leaders, realistically.
That's been changing. People are now more aware of applications they can use to get the most out of their broadband. That's why we saw questions asked recently of the BBC's iPlayer. Who will foot the bill for the increase in bandwidth, we were asked. The ISPs? Or the BBC, who have 'caused' such an increase in traffic?
The answer is the ISPs, obviously. That's what they get paid for, by the customer - and usually the customer has already paid more than once, without realising it. In many cases an ISP's infrastructure has been HUGELY subsidised by public funds, and many have frittered away a lot of money they could have spent preparing for some kind of a high-bandwidth revolution.
But every time a new trend starts, and a new high bandwidth application becomes easily available to the masses, the situation gets a little worse for our ISPs. They're not nearly as prepared for this as they should be.
Here's a new application of P2P, one that could very easily replace regular scheduled television, and it's as easy to use as plugging in a box.
Eventually, the ISPs will have to raise those prices, and not just by a little bit, but by enough to tear up and relay a lot of their infrastructure.
This doesn't seem like breaking news to me. It's not even like he's talking about ceasing to use a naming scheme. The scheme is no longer used, now there's just a name. And the name is just a number, which no longer has any (other than historical) relevance. That's all we're talking about, in fact: Getting rid of a vestigial number.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't something capable of "automating captcha attacks" be, um, a major advance in artificial cognition, and quite a wealth of scientific information, since that means it can solve an arbitrary captcha like a human can?
Even if a universal tool existed, which could read all and any CAPTCHAs better than humans did exist, it would not necessarily solve it 'like a human can'. Speech recognition software, which I work with a lot as an Accessible Technologist, has become very, very good this days - certainly in comparison with a few years ago. However, just because it can now recognise 98% of speech from a brand new, untrained user does not mean that it understands that speech, much less processes it like a human.
The point, I suppose, is that we're a long way from having any AI that can do anything 'like a human can'. We mostly just fake it for individual tasks. Some new, more annoying, human detection software will hit the web soon enough.
As soon as I can use a mouse and keyboard of my choosing... then I'll play just console games. It's a different market. Deal with it.
I'm fine with the way things are. I wouldn't give up my PC for anything. Some days I think I could just about go over to linux full time, but it's the games that draw me back.
But it used to be the case that the PC led the way for developers, and games were ported to the console. Since that process is increasingly occuring the other way around, and finer detail is not often added for the PC, the extra graphics hardware is wasted in many releases.
some parts of it look absolutely grotesque. All the character's 3D models have outlines, ffs. The "grass" at the end looks like something out of Doom. The only decent parts are the far-off windmills over the town.
Mod parent troll, blind, or a Philistine. I think the complex cell-shading effect is absolutely delicious.
But in all honesty, the number of games released each year for the PC that *require* a card like this to run at high settings can be counted on one hand. I'm pretty sure that didn't used to be the case.
I am not a soothsayer here once again to predict the death of PC gaming (once again). The PC is still a wonderful platform for development, flexibility, versatility, and complexity when compared to the consoles. Games will always keep coming for the PC, and not just MMOs, but all manner of wonderful things.
But I will say this: things aren't looking great for the hardware.
The recent nose dive in all but the very highest end card prices tells an interesting story, I think. The relative dearth of genuinely triple AAA graphically intensive titles tells another. The slow uptake of DX10, the slow uptake of Vista, the pissweak 'Games for Windows' label, and the smaller shelves in retail stores, as everything goes online...
Pretty soon the only thing that will be exclusive about the PS3 will be the group of people who own them.
I saw some article the other day called '10 reasons to own a PS3' or something like that, with ten games coming out in the next few months. I'd never heard of most of them, and they all looked terrible.
I've got one in my lounge. I call it the obelisk. It was last on in March.
you have a medium expanding daily in the 100's of million eyeballs and your audience is shrinking daily because of outdated, and frankly stupid rules regarding distribution
It's more likely they're holding off distributing in other countries because the advertising dollars need to be targetted properly for other countries. I'm not saying I approve, but there's not many people in Europe need to see US commercials for products they don't want and can't buy.
Slashdot Mirror
It's one thing to say that China has the largest on-line population, and it's an interesting factoid. But I'm not sure it counts as net access, since it is somewhat (as in noticably) restricted as such. With all due respect that's like saying that the USA has the highest proportion of outdoor workers in the western world, because most of the offices have clean windows and sometimes you can see a few trees.
There's a lot of talk about how Google is in decline, and I won't comment on that, because every company has its tipping point. But for them to have been a invaluable (and in many cases incomparable) tool in my life for the best part of a decade and to have remained almost invisible as an agent in that process takes some doing.
In fact, the most insidious thing about Google may well be that any new attempts at reorganizing the layout of a traditional search engine, such as cuil is now attempting, seem like deliberate contrivances. And probably are.
For example, a 17-year-old boy was gang-raped in prison [nytimes.com] after he robbed a guy with a toy gun.
I don't know how many times that is, but it sounds like a lot.
They didnt do anything illegal. All they did was copy data of packets passing THROUGH their Tor servers they had setup. They didnt compromise other's systems. This may be a moral question, ala reading emails that pass through your relay.
At which point did it become legal to read emails that were being passed through your relay?
The real issue I see with this isn't so much that the ISP's are sending out warning letters - they've all stated that they're not prepared to cancel anyone's service - but that the record companies have essentially got the ISP's to do their dirty work for them.
Whilst I strongly disapprove of this turn of events, one benefit of the ISPs doing the record companies' dirty work is that the record companies have less reason to want your personal information if their will is being done directly by ISPs. And, more importantly, the ISPs have a much better case for not handing it over.
Remember kids, buying gold funds terrorism!
I really want to see one of these fusion processes work. It would make a radical change in our society, by removing any reason for the US government to care what happens in the middle east.
I really want to see one of these processes work, but it's massively shortsighted to care on the basis of what happens in the middle east. We're talking about the next step in world energy here, not the end of one government's petty feud with a geographical area.
The next step? A "family friendly" ISP, that blocks all pornography all together.
Back in the early days of the internet there were content providers with limited/restricted/obscured access to the real internet. Compuserve and AOL were two of them. What happened, I hear you ask? Nobody gave a shit about their 'content' in the face of a real internet full of real goodies, and their finances began to atrophy. Cserve was bought out by AOL, which made steps to become a more genuine ISP, and incidentally isn't doing all that well anyway.
The agony of not knowing everything in the world about your child is too much for many people to bear. Nonetheless, it is the sacrifice you must make, if you are to allow them to become individuals.
But no company can make something and offer no help or support, period. That's not legal.
It is? How do you figure?
You may not need to offer end user support helplines, sure. But there are many legal requirements that effectively require you to provide some level of 'support' for any product that you are selling, first amongst these is the law that you must provide something which is fit for purpose. If you don't think that this involves any kind of response or feedback from the company, then I don't know what to tell you. Even setting up a department that solely and ONLY deals with refunds would constitute a support nightmare.
If Microsoft don't want the headache then, existing contracts notwithstanding, there's not a lot we can do about it.
What if huge swathes of industry, government and education rely on your *new* technology to work well, or even properly? There are certain standards that need to be maintained, and this is one instance where a company (one that has admitted their new offering is lacking) should be forced to keep supplying something that "works".
Large enterprise companies on the Campus license will not be affected by the cessation of sale of end user licenses. Small businesses probably do not have the kind of enterprise systems which rely on older versions of Windows. Yes, some people will get caught in the middle. But it's not quite the problem that you make out.
The problem up for discussion is what do you do if YOU want XP on YOUR computer, and the answer is 'deal with it' or 'buy an old computer'.
As an aside, I know of very few large enterprsises, including my own, who have - or intend to - switch to Vist in the forseeable future.
They are so friendly and customer-focused that you have to jump through hoops to get the product that you want. Why do we put up with this shit when we wouldn't accept this from almost any other industry?
An industry related example: Good luck buying a power PC Apple Mac direct from the manufacturer. That's right - even if you ask really nicely, and even if they were still making them less than two years ago. It's an old product, and you can't get it any more.
A car analogy: Good luck buying a Jaguar XJ220 direct from Jag. It's an older model. They don't make them any more.
OK, so with software it's a bit different - 'making' them is as simple as copying the data, insofaras manufacture goes. But no company can make something and offer no help or support, period. That's not legal. If they want to lay old tech to rest, then that's their decision.
Yes, Vista is inferior to XP in many ways. Lots of new products are inferior to old products in many ways. If a company is done with a product, consumers do not have a right to force them to keep supplying it.
... and which ISP do you work for exactly? My shill sense is tingling!
My entire post highlighted the issues that are at stake being the direct fault of poor planning by badly run ISPs, so I doubt it was your 'shill' sense tingling. Most likely you just shat yourself again.
This was bound to happen. P2P is very useful technology.
This was bound to happen, as you say. And has already, in many places - although not so much with streaming media as yet, but there are more than a few well-backed pilots out there. Even video games use P2P. World of Warcraft, although not a lot of people realise this, uses P2P in order to get its patches out. I believe it may actually use the dreaded bittorrent!
Personally, I remember being slightly irked that they were using my bandwidth to get their patches out when I was paying them a monthly fee. But it's hard to hold it against them, it's a smart business decision. In many cases, it brings the patches back FASTER.
That's been changing. People are now more aware of applications they can use to get the most out of their broadband. That's why we saw questions asked recently of the BBC's iPlayer. Who will foot the bill for the increase in bandwidth, we were asked. The ISPs? Or the BBC, who have 'caused' such an increase in traffic?
The answer is the ISPs, obviously. That's what they get paid for, by the customer - and usually the customer has already paid more than once, without realising it. In many cases an ISP's infrastructure has been HUGELY subsidised by public funds, and many have frittered away a lot of money they could have spent preparing for some kind of a high-bandwidth revolution.
But every time a new trend starts, and a new high bandwidth application becomes easily available to the masses, the situation gets a little worse for our ISPs. They're not nearly as prepared for this as they should be.
Here's a new application of P2P, one that could very easily replace regular scheduled television, and it's as easy to use as plugging in a box.
Eventually, the ISPs will have to raise those prices, and not just by a little bit, but by enough to tear up and relay a lot of their infrastructure.
This doesn't seem like breaking news to me. It's not even like he's talking about ceasing to use a naming scheme. The scheme is no longer used, now there's just a name. And the name is just a number, which no longer has any (other than historical) relevance. That's all we're talking about, in fact: Getting rid of a vestigial number.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't something capable of "automating captcha attacks" be, um, a major advance in artificial cognition, and quite a wealth of scientific information, since that means it can solve an arbitrary captcha like a human can?
Even if a universal tool existed, which could read all and any CAPTCHAs better than humans did exist, it would not necessarily solve it 'like a human can'. Speech recognition software, which I work with a lot as an Accessible Technologist, has become very, very good this days - certainly in comparison with a few years ago. However, just because it can now recognise 98% of speech from a brand new, untrained user does not mean that it understands that speech, much less processes it like a human.
The point, I suppose, is that we're a long way from having any AI that can do anything 'like a human can'. We mostly just fake it for individual tasks. Some new, more annoying, human detection software will hit the web soon enough.
As soon as I can use a mouse and keyboard of my choosing... then I'll play just console games. It's a different market. Deal with it.
I'm fine with the way things are. I wouldn't give up my PC for anything. Some days I think I could just about go over to linux full time, but it's the games that draw me back.
But it used to be the case that the PC led the way for developers, and games were ported to the console. Since that process is increasingly occuring the other way around, and finer detail is not often added for the PC, the extra graphics hardware is wasted in many releases.
some parts of it look absolutely grotesque. All the character's 3D models have outlines, ffs. The "grass" at the end looks like something out of Doom. The only decent parts are the far-off windmills over the town.
Mod parent troll, blind, or a Philistine. I think the complex cell-shading effect is absolutely delicious.
It's got 'outlines, ffs.' FFS indeed.
I am not a soothsayer here once again to predict the death of PC gaming (once again). The PC is still a wonderful platform for development, flexibility, versatility, and complexity when compared to the consoles. Games will always keep coming for the PC, and not just MMOs, but all manner of wonderful things.
But I will say this: things aren't looking great for the hardware.
The recent nose dive in all but the very highest end card prices tells an interesting story, I think. The relative dearth of genuinely triple AAA graphically intensive titles tells another. The slow uptake of DX10, the slow uptake of Vista, the pissweak 'Games for Windows' label, and the smaller shelves in retail stores, as everything goes online...
This hardware is not required.
The one where in order to enjoy any entertainment products at all, we have to pay per , per license. Your apathy only brings us closer.
And kneecapped, obviously.
I'll put good money on him cracking before this article gets 200 comments.
We're at 204. Pay up.
Alright, it's in an untraceable paypal account. Obviously I'm not handing over the password.
I saw some article the other day called '10 reasons to own a PS3' or something like that, with ten games coming out in the next few months. I'd never heard of most of them, and they all looked terrible.
I've got one in my lounge. I call it the obelisk. It was last on in March.
you have a medium expanding daily in the 100's of million eyeballs and your audience is shrinking daily because of outdated, and frankly stupid rules regarding distribution
It's more likely they're holding off distributing in other countries because the advertising dollars need to be targetted properly for other countries. I'm not saying I approve, but there's not many people in Europe need to see US commercials for products they don't want and can't buy.