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Recent Posts

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2001
Living Room / Re: Blog Article: Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 11:04 PM »
Another great article. Nice and short too! The recommendations at the end are very good. I particularly liked the "make participation a side-effect" suggestion - that's a really interesting dynamic they've hit on. That last one is interesting too - "promote quality contributors". He suggests doing it based on "reputation ranking" (from reputation manager sites, presumably). The problem with that is there are few, if any, real *generalized* *people-centric* reputation management systems. Is this a niche waiting to be filled? Or is someone going to point out that there are tons of these systems already? :D

- Oshyan
2002
Living Room / Re: Mike-O-Matic on GooTube and The Power of Branding
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 04:00 PM »
Yes, there is an issue with some of these in that yes they're brand names, but there isn't necessarily a generic version of the product.

I don't think "Lava Lamp" works for example because the original inventor called it "Astrolight" or "Astro Lamp", and the people who bought the American rights for it called it "Lava Lite" (which is the registered trademark). Lava Lamp does appear to be somewhat generic.

According to the Wikipedia page Yo-yo doesn't really qualify either, even though a company with the name "Yo-yo" in it did make Yo-yo's. This is similar to how "Motor" isn't trademarked just because General Motors Corporation has the word in its name.

However again according to Wikipedia "Cat Litter" is the proper name for the brand name "Kitty Litter".

Likewise with Hula Hoop, which is an interesting one because apparently the inventors couldn't patent it since very similar hoop toys had been in use for 1000's of years (made of bamboo and whatnot - which is where they got the idea). However they could protect their "Hula Hoop" trademark and thanks to their head start and good marketing efforts no one wanted any other brand of "hoop toy". Nice. :D

Zamboni is named after the inventor, but is also definitely a trademark, although a genericized one now. The general term is "ice resurfacing machine". As evidenced by Olympia Ice Resurfacing Machines.

Oreos are definitely Oreos and anyone calling any other cooke the same is just contributing to the genericizing of that name. I'm actually surprised people in the south call "soda" "Coke". Coke is a much more specific brand name to me. But language is all about use, that's one of the fascinating things about it.

Novocaine is not actually the proper name for the drug and is in fact a brand name. The name of the drug itself is Procaine. Of course the original inventor did also create the tradename Novocaine, so it's kind of a fuzzy one.

Oh and when I tell someone to "Google it", I really do mean that they should look it up in Google. So far as I've seen other search engines continue to be largely a waste of time. :D

- Oshyan
2003
Living Room / Re: What a bunch of MacMuffins ...
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 03:41 PM »
Headlines are almost always cryptic and stupid IMO. :D

It gets worse for malware shipped on music players though:
Apple Ships iPods with Windows Virus

The most interesting thing is this quote:
The company also took the opportunity to blast Microsoft's Windows operating system for not doing more to protect customers from such malware. "As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it," Apple said.
Now who would put it past Apple to have seeded the virus themselves just to stir up a little bad publicity for MS? ;)

- Oshyan
2004
Best E-mail Client / Re: Pegasus Mail?
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 03:11 PM »
Gotcha. So basically it's actually implemented well and there is no good reason not to use it? :D I think just from past experience I feared any MS "archiving" feature would make my mail not immediately accessible. It even sounds like "put your mail in storage, just don't expect to have access to it" - "Archive". I guess that was my thought process back then anyway. *shrug*

Thanks for the info. :)

- Oshyan
2005
Living Room / Re: What a bunch of MacMuffins ...
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 01:59 PM »
lol! Ouch.

- Oshyan
2006
Best E-mail Client / Re: Pegasus Mail?
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 01:44 PM »
There is absolutely no reason not to have constant access to all your emails. All you have to do is File > Open PST File and unless you close the file manually it will be loaded with Outlook every time you start the program.
Yes, I know that of course. But what exactly does Archive do? I certainly did turn it off first time because when it first asked me was about 5 years ago, well before I was even close to ready to need it. :D

- Oshyan
2007
Living Room / Re: Mike-O-Matic on GooTube and The Power of Branding
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 01:33 PM »
Actually according to Wikipedia Georges de Mestral, the inventor of Velcro, did actually name it Velcro. So although you could say "velcro" is a form of "hook and loop tape", that would be like saying an automobile is a form of wheel and engine transport. ;) I think "duck tape" is also just a misconception/mispronunciation and although a brand name by that name does exist, I think it followed the pronunciation issues, not the other way around.

I did find out about a lot of new ones I hadn't expected, like novocaine, granola and escalator (the first is still trademarked, the latter used to be but aren't anymore).

Not surprisingly Wikipedia does have a rather comprehensive and info-packed page on "genericized trademarks". What's interesting is it seems like ultimately trademark owners don't have much ability to defend a trademark that has come so fully into popular and generic usage. As you said app, I wonder then if such trademarks are really effective anymore - I suppose Kleenex and Q-tip do really solidify those brands as "the" brand in their respective markets, but as you also said people refer to other company's products by the same names. Interesting stuff.

- Oshyan
2008
General Software Discussion / Re: CNET: Last hurrah for PC-based software?
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 01:12 PM »
That's just the point though. With both Ajax and Flash the *data* is loaded from the server-side (this is what servers are good at - serving data) and the *processing* goes on client-side. Although this is not directly rebutting anything to do with the original topic of the thread, the mention of thin clients and whatnot sparked that response. If you had a "fatter" client with servers just dealing with data, and used this to power this future "web 2.0 as operating system" model then maybe it could work, it just seems massively inefficient.

- Oshyan
2009
General Software Discussion / Re: Cool Open Source file-sharing app: HTTP File Server (HFS)
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 01:01 PM »
Awww, I posted about this months ago. One of my favorite apps. :D But it seems your thread has bested mine. You even got the dev in here. Nice. ;) Welcome rejetto!

- Oshyan
2010
Living Room / Re: Weird Al New Video - White And Nerdy
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 12:53 PM »
I definitely thought "Hey, it's Kip!". :D

- Oshyan
2011
Living Room / Re: Windows Vista Pronunciation
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 12:52 PM »
The weirdest one to me is "buggy" for a shopping cart in the south. WTF!?  ;D

- Oshyan
2012
Living Room / Re: Cool Poster of How the Domain Name System Works (and other posters)
« Last post by JavaJones on October 17, 2006, 12:58 AM »
Oh hey wow, I kept avoiding this thread cuz I figured it was posters for sale or something. And I thought, hey, I don't need more things to buy. But now downloadable high quality PDF's, that's something I can get behind! Sweeeet.  :-*

- Oshyan
2013
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: pandora.com - Internet radio for EVERY taste! FREE!
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 11:53 PM »
Yeah, that's just it, it requires a bit of training. I definitely want to invest in training it at some point. In the meantime I found a radio station that plays a pretty good selection of what I like. I liked them so much I donated: RadioParadise :)

- Oshyan
2014
Living Room / Re: Apple back down and cough up to Creative ...
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 09:55 PM »
Wow, how'd I miss this one. lol. Go Creative! :D

- Oshyan
2015
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: pandora.com - Internet radio for EVERY taste! FREE!
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 09:37 PM »
Likewise vegas. I guess maybe it's not consistently good *and* varied enough to hold my interest. Plus the web-based player thing is annoying (and attendant high CPU/memory use). But they are working on things, rolling out new and enticing features (sharing of stations, "backstage", etc.). It's very early for Pandora yet. I think it shows the most potential, and certainly has the coolest back end, of any of the other services out there. The only other one that interests me much is Last.fm

- Oshyan
2016
General Software Discussion / Re: CNET: Last hurrah for PC-based software?
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 09:34 PM »
AJAX actually works by transferring *more* of the load to the client-side. :D

- Oshyan
2017
Site/Forum Features / Re: forum search improvement
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 09:29 PM »
For sure. I have strongly considering doing so myself, and probably will soon as SMF is pretty well solidifying itself as my favorite forum system (free or otherwise - bought a license of vB and I don't like it :D).

But, er... any idea if this stuff is going to be included in 1.1 final? ;)

- Oshyan
2018
General Software Discussion / Re: Outlook Nightmares...
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 09:00 PM »
That's a fair enough point. I wonder if there is any truly safe software license that could be used for that kind of thing. :D

- Oshyan
2019
Site/Forum Features / Re: forum search improvement
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 08:59 PM »
Hmm, missing or off limits? Are you a supporter? :D

And really I don't care much about access just now. Just want to know if it'll be included in 1.1 final.

- Oshyan
2020
General Software Discussion / Re: CNET: Last hurrah for PC-based software?
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 08:34 PM »
On the subject of MMO's, there's a very good reason for the monthly fee: the infrastructure and support costs just in connecting 1000's of users together (not to mention the regular free content updates many MMO's provide) are quite high. The more popular the game, the more costly it is to support on an ongoing basis. This is different than say having to pay Microsoft a yearly fee to continue using Windows, or from paying Google to use their Docs & Spreadsheet system. Google *does* provide an ongoing service like the MMO company - bandwidth, storage space, and some processing power - but it's not something you can't get any other way, that's the real trick. In other words you can easily run Office on your home computer without having to ever pay anyone ever again (except the electric company :D). You can't do that with an MMO because parts of its very nature is connecting to many, many other people at once. The limit of peer-to-peer network gaming for anything 3D has been found to be about 128 clients when hosted on a fast home broadband connection. That will increase over time, but so will the demands of gaming.

I think your points and perspective on episodic gaming are important though, and I do like that model better for those cases. In fact it would be interesting to see a show of hands on who would be interested in seeing more frequent releases of say Photoshop, that you can buy for less, but you have to pay again to get each new release. For those who only need certain functionality it would be a good savings. For anyone who needs the latest-greatest, it would mean more money. I doubt it's a viable model, but interesting to consider.

But you also make an important distinction which I think, as above, is really what distinguishes the "service" model from the "product" model - and that is that with episodic games you keep the game and can replay that episode at any time in the future, as many times as you want. It's not a service you must pay for every time you play. You only pay for *new* content.

Basing everything out of the browser sounds like an amazingly inefficient way to accomplish these kinds of goals in any case. If anything like that does happen I would imagine it would have to be on a refresh of Windows where MS collaborated closely with PC hardware manufacturers to reorient everything toward network-based functionality. Speaking of the PC manufacturers, they are very strong partners for MS. Where would they fit in to a service-based system? Sure they could sell the underlying client system, but it would be fairly light and probably non-upgradeable. That's not where the real money is. A whole industry would be screwed. I don't see it happening. They'd hire private militia's before that would be allowed. ;)

- Oshyan
2021
General Software Discussion / Re: Outlook Nightmares...
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 08:18 PM »
Right, that's one approach. I'd love to see DC get a little word of mouth from other forums through this, so the hosted/central server approach may be better in that regard. I also don't know how Mouser feels about opening the code. But I do think such systems have positive benefit and lots of other sites might enjoy using them.

- Oshyan
2022
General Software Discussion / Re: Thunderbird forks to become next Eudora?
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 08:09 PM »
Yeah I've always hated Eudora, hehe. Just a terrible UI IMO. Very messy. But a lot of people swear by it. No accounting for taste says I. :D

TB has really disappointed me. I don't think it lives up to the standard of FF really. Unless FF has the same profile and other major, known problems that I just haven't seen yet. I'm still shocked that this default profile issue exists (and yes I have run afoul of it!) and hasn't been corrected yet in all these updates.

Aside from the security issues OE is really surprisingly functional and capable. It's got its quirks too of course.

I haven't tried TheBat (I refuse to put the ! :P), but as much as it sounds very capable, the stuff I've heard from many other users, both lovers and haters, doesn't entice me much. It sounds like one of those programs you either love or hate, and even those who love it see these awful problems in it, but tolerate it because everything else is just so great. There are few programs I really stand for that with. Opera is one of them. ;)

Speaking of which, maybe I should give M2 a try again. My only concern is that 2+GB of mail would slow down my browser too much so I'd rather have a slow email client but zippy browser.

- Oshyan
2023
Best E-mail Client / Re: Pegasus Mail?
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 08:05 PM »
It's a "kludge" because it has to be done manually. ;) I have never messed with the Outlook "archive" functionality because I didn't want to lose immediate access to all of my email (yes this is actually important to me - even 6+ year old email). My bad if this function basically does what you're describing but automatically and I can still maintain full, direct access to my old mail.

As for backing up, I certainly keep my email file backed up regularly, and it's not too large to do so. I don't need to keep several old backups of old mail around, I actually want regular access to my old mail which is why I keep it around, that's all. :)

- Oshyan
2024
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Registry Mechanic 5.0 - FREE
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 08:02 PM »
Good find. Cheers!

- Oshyan
2025
General Review Discussion / Re: Vote for what Review to do Next
« Last post by JavaJones on October 16, 2006, 07:58 PM »
Actually that is fairly similar to part of the structure being considered for the future of the review system. There is definitely thought and work being put toward some major improvements and structural considerations are certainly a fundamental part of that. So this kind of feedback is very valuable. As things move forward I'm sure more will be shared about the intended changes and - as ever on this site - feedback will be solicited in a broader fashion. For now in the earlier planning phases your comments will most definitely be taken into account.

- Oshyan
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