![new-screenshot2[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/IkhuvyD.jpg "new-screenshot2[1].jpg")
One of the things i miss from the 'old internet' is the sensation that everysite was kind of an island, isolated from the rest of the world. Probably irc resembles this more than anything, every channel having their own rules, users, etc. Now everything is too packet: big forums, youtube channels with thousands of views and people sharing one opinion, wikis with all the information you could dream, leaving no space for rumors and whatnots.
Anyway, post your favourite vr page
http://www.woodus.com/den/home.php
>>3280338
The picture shrines
Still can't believe this site is still up, and anime web turnpike.
>is the sensation that everysite was kind of an island
That's just because pre social media internet had an irl you and an online you. Now it's just social media shit everywhere and irl life is online life.
>>3280338
>the 'old internet'
>everysite was kind of an island, isolated from the rest of the world
Well put. The "wild west" days of the internet really were the best.
Always enjoyed browsing this one:
http://alexandria.rpgclassics.com/
The quality of the shrines varied greatly, but there was mostly good stuff.
>>3280343
The CG Picture Shrines? I remember those from 20 years ago. Since then I've hopped on once maybe in the last 5 years and noticed some content is actually missing that I distinctively remember from before.
Of course some it was the "adult" content....
>>3280363
Exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe it was a DMCA? But the majority of the hentai art was from old geocities sites IIRC, I don't know if those artists are still around or would even care for that matter.
https://web.archive.org/web/20000614232927/http://smbhq.com/users/nc/mario.html
I miss sprite comics. I don't know why, since most of them were terrible, but they just fill me with so much nostalgia.
I really do miss it.
You used to visit hundreds of different sites.
Now you visit like 5 different sites that all host sanitized versions of the content you used to enjoy.
Thank god for 4chan.
It may be a huge site, but at least it's not sanitized like the modern, corporate web.
>>3280338
Detstar's Goldeneye page was one of my favorites.
I was in a GE beta kick back in 98-99, and there were quite a few sites then
matt's vicinity
destar
subdrag
betaBond
Q's lab
http://web.archive.org/web/20090101094647/http://goldeneye.detstar.com/
>>3280390
4chan is policed as fuck. Most containment boards are filled with rulefags and moralfags. Especially consumer boards like /tv/ /v/ and /g/. Not to mention all the kiddies and marketers.
It's a shitshow
>>3280338
I wish I had taken more screenshots. Many sites lost to time. My friends used Limewire/Kazaa more than I did.
>>3280338
You might enjoy https://neocities.org/browse. It is properly "retro" in the sense of it being a new thing consciously modeled after an old thing.
One of my favorite damn sites did the robot.txt thing, so none of their good old stuff is on the internet archive.
www.nesplayer.com
It's technically still there and there's still updates, but only a fraction of the content there used to be.
>>3280558
Pretty much this. I remember back when sites that used buttons were considered flashy and, at times, overly bandwidth intensive. Now you have 4k quality ads on every page.
>>3280338
The thing I miss about 'old days' is pages filled with information.
Nowadays it's popular to have a page full of nothing.
For example, here's the Microsoft homepage.
You can count on your fingers all the words you see on the screen.
You have to scroll infinitely to see something valuable.
I hope I'll make someday a script that recomposes sites in order to have them more information on one screen.
>>3280380
>smbhq
>neglected mario characters
My fucking nigga
>>3281656
All information moved to wikis or blogs.
Corporate pages are like slideshows or brochures. Because corporate and academia people can not digest information otherwise
This was once non-ironic.
>>3280459
Mah dude. The only reason I have so many GameSharks is because of Zoinkity, Subdrag and the GE community. Finding all that stuff in my early days of the internet was like heaven. Detstar especially.
These sites did, however, enlighten me to the fact that what I thought I was the first to do, had in fact been done by hundreds of people before I even had the game, probably.
There are too many people thinking they have important things to say. In the old days you would have experts who would put up the information. Now you have everyone thinking that they can and they should "create" their own website, which is really just rehashing the popular opinions.
For example nutrition and the idea that fruit juice isn't good for you. There is some sort of theoretical argument there, but it's not enough to go around just jamming it everywhere that you shouldn't drink fruit juice. You have so many sites like who all they're doing is going around reading other blogs and similar websites and throwing it out as their own ideas. They don't seem to realize that all of these sites aren't reaching a "consensus", they're all simply copying each other. They're copying one another, the next person comes along then and creates a similar website with all the same mistakes and shady claims.
I blame the culture as well. The almost obscene positivity flying around about "creating" stuff. Just stop... stop going around copy and pasting stuff. Stop trying to appear productive and doing something cause you're really not .
>>3280338
I remember browsing a bunch of Nintendo fan sites. Mario, Zelda, Metroid... Ahh...
mmhp.net, one of the first "fan sites" I found and the site is practically a time capsule of how I remember it in 2000
vgmusic.com for the same reason even if they do take in MIDIs of questionable quality
So when are we starting the /vr/webring?
>>3281752
That hits deep. When you think about it, blogs, websites like reddit, even 4chan are all just big internet watercoolers where popular opinions are regurgitated en-masse. We read something somewhere and it becomes fact we use to sound smart. The only good thing about anonymity is that it allows real ideas to slip in from time to time thanks to the lack of consequences.
>>3280338
>too packet
please explain?
>>3281979
He misspelled packed?
>>3281752
Fucking this. No one used to take other peoples opinions or themselves so damn seriously. Even during the Bush era people laughed and didn't take things as seriously.
Now everyones opinions are brought up on a pedestal like some nonexistent political soap box, especially on places like Reddit and Twitter where people have fully defined handles and personalities through their screen name. Now all that gets shilled around to "btfo" other people is screencapped shit from social media instead of any meaningful source. And when people try to show sources, it's always the same regurgitated information that has a political party affiliation or bias.
Last sentence you stated is spot on. Can't stand that smug self-assured attitude that these people think they are doing something noble when they are just hardcore narcissists.
>>3281681
Academics, especially older ones, are the worst (or perhaps best) offenders of all too much information on one page. They make webpages like they write dense academic books. Now academic institution webpages on the other hand are basically made like corporate webpages.
>>3280349
Not quite true, people weren't afraid to create personal sites that had their names and hobbies out on the internet before, and old usenet posts can sometimes easily be traced back to exact individuals. It's just that the people who used the internet back then were a different group of people and without huge Search/content and discussion aggregators you actually had to know how to connect to people or information
>>3282081
>without huge Search/content and discussion aggregators you actually had to know how to connect to people or information
it was a ... web. Nowadays it's a bunch of hubs or bazaars. Most of us have a few sites we visit repeatedly to interact with people. Very few people are browsing, in the real meaning of the word, the web, or actually create sites. The content we do create is very superficial and shallow, in part because it's so easy to create, so limited, and because it's so ephemeral. Like on here, you write plain text and at most add a picture, that's it. No layout, no style, no depth. A strict limit on length, and what is posted is gone within a week. So there's little need or desire to actually put in some work and make your words count. It's similar with tumblr, twitter, reddit, even facebook. Contrast that to someone setting up their own geocities page back in the days. You needed at least some crude understanding of html, needed a topic, and enough interest to "fill" more than a single page with it. In a way that ease of creation is a curse, not a blessing. The difficulty threshold was a good filter.
>>3282012
Who are you referring to? The people who own the websites, or people who post on Twitter?
>>3281689
it fills me with a warm happy feeling
>>3282097
>it was a ... web. Nowadays it's a bunch of hubs or bazaars.
and I actually missed my point in all that rambling. What I meant here is that all the sites were peers, more or less on the same level, connecting each other through links. So you'd browse, move from one page to the next, from one site to the next, discover new things, and maybe link them in your own site. There were some hubs, but they were small and topic-specific.
What you have now is almost exclusively hubs, very few big sites, that either link within themselves, or are a link aggregators (that includes most social sites). There's no web structure left, as hubs link to pages, pages link to hubs, and that's it
>>3282097
>No layout, no style, no depth.
Speak for yourself. There are a lot of people on this site, myself included, who actually bother to format the layout of their posts through spacing for better readability. And some people do have obvious posting styles, and, on very rare occasion, something of high quality is posted.
I think posting quality is important especially as boards like /v/ and /b/ continue to promote and invite low level posting. Even from your own post it's all just one block of text.
>it was a ... web.
Yes I agree with the sentiment, and to another degree I see individualism and moderate style, but you didn't capitalize and you misused ellipsis, which are traditional no-nos that are increasingly getting a pass.
The point is it doesn't have to be shit, but we all give up and let it go to hell anyway.
>>3282125
You can't do much styling. Also this all gets deleted unfortunately. No archive.
>>3282108
People who post on twitter. Not just twitter but all of social media
>>>/g/
This board is for video games, not general internet discussion.
>>3282123
Oh definitely. A lot of creativity in terms of webpages have gone bankrupt, and a form of community really feels withdrawn with most popular sites consisting of regurgitating retarded jokes or basic general normie things to post about on your facebook or twitter. the way we once accessed and gained information from websites feel more streamlined though, and in a lazy and thoughtless effort. one thing i dont like is how all popular youtube videos seem to be top 10 things no one should care about or lets plays or reactions. i know theres still a lot of creativity out there, i guess im just more old fashioned with the way it was once presented
>>3282125
>who actually bother to format the layout of their posts through spacing for better readability
and that's all you get. You can't adjust the font, color, margins, use italics or bolding for emphasis, inline links, inline images, use formatted lists, quotes, and so on. Plain text is plenty, but it's a tiny fraction of what the web was designed to enable.
>I think posting quality is important
Not disagreeing, but that does not change the nature of this place (and quite a few others). It's exchanges for the moment, deleted soon, and forgotten shortly afterwards. Knowing that, would you be willing to invest an hour or two into a well researched post (or group of posts) about a topic that does not fit within 2000 characters?
>Even from your own post it's all just one block of text
I'm used to better paragraph control
>you didn't capitalize and you misused ellipsis
I treat this site like a chat/newsgroup equivalent, which roughly resembles spoken word. As such I used an ellipsis to indicate a pause. As for the lack of capitalization, I do it, probably not as consistently as you demand. So I apologize for that, and will remove myself from your board.
>which are traditional no-nos
Chat used to have more relaxed rules compared to edited text.
>The point is it doesn't have to be shit
Don't worry, I will no longer soil your site with my shit.
>>3282135
>i dont like is how all popular youtube videos seem to be top 10 things
I developed a mental filter for "<number> <objects> that <property>" headers and posts. Pure algorithmical clickbait. Kind of sad how much "content" gets filtered that way. We've kind of swapped quality for quantity.
>>3282131
The only people that actually care about twitter are retards and people that use /v/. You get my point, I just avoid that shit. Twitter and instagram have some of the most stupid people that love posting their thoughts, as if anybody really cares what they think about a current event in such an uneducated manner. I'm not saying everyones stupid on there, but the most talked about stories and daily posts really make the site a waste of time to go on, there really isnt much worth. and only having 150 characters really limits the way of conversation, you want to express yourself fully and without limitations.
>>3282143
The problem is that people make a living on youtube. Like all things like that, it turns to shit. In the early days of youtube people didn't do things for money but mostly just to do random videos for fun
>>3282126
Even if I put minimal effort into making my posts not terrible, I have no delusion that most of this stuff should be archived for the future. People may have saved their old chat logs, but even in the past most discussion wasn't archived. I don't really have a desire to see most old IRC posts (other than for purely academic reasons) and those came from an era of strong internet exclusivity.
>>3280338
http://pudding-days.com/
/vr/ content but not really a retro page, and certainly not my favorite though it does have a retro style to it. Found it while searching for the contents of a screensaver. It seems a lot of Japanese personal pages have the oldschool page design ingrained in them.
>>3282156
>I have no delusion that most of this stuff should be archived for the future
Nobody's suggesting it should (although the current implementation goes a bit against the concept of the web). It does have an impact though on the effort people put into editing their posts.
IRC was not exactly following AP style guides either, and that was intentional. It's not part of the web either.
It's not a function of internet exclusivity, it's a trade-off between fast and casual communication and thorough writing that's designed to last. Both forms of writing are valid and useful. The modern web massively prefers the former though, and that's at the very least noteworthy.
>>3282156
>I have no delusion that most of this stuff should be archived for the future
100 years from now, historians will wish that more throwaway internet posts were archived. Geocities will be a lost cultural snapshot.
>>3282195
Geocities more so than throwaway posts. One was intentionally designed to be a record of sorts, people created these pages to stay. The other is closer to informal speech, and historically we didn't record that either, for good reason.
>>3280349
I got on Internet in mid 90's (via university) and used my real name, except when I went on IRC. My email account was in my real name, and it also showed up on Usenet posts I made. About the only thing that was anynoymous (other than IRC) was those guestbook CGI scripts that were all over the place.
But at least everything wasn't completely connected, monitored, and tracked like today. A lot of the stuff I wrote has basically vanished. Only some things remain becasue they were picked up by Dejanews (which google bought out and transformed into Google Groups, and fucked up the interface as much as they could in the process with all their Web 2.0 shit).
I think the only big website I followed those days was Blues News (the Quake news thing). Otherwise, I found a lot of things via web rings, directories (the kind like yahoo and dmoz), webcrawler/altavista, and maybe even more significant: browsing people's list of links (almost everyone with a homepage had their onwn "links" subpage).
>>3282206
>almost everyone with a homepage had their onwn "links" subpage
It was a beautiful misunderstanding of the web and hypertext concepts.
Does anybody miss old school forums? These days it seems like most forums are just either for tech support or video game clans. General hobby discussion is relegated to a subreddit or Facebook group nowadays, which is a shame. Forums all had their own personality and many of the users weren't just there to discuss the topic at hand. Many times, the off topic board would be one of the biggest. A lot of forums were close knit communities of people who quickly became friends due to a common interest. Facebook, reddit, even 4chan all feel so business like. You come here to talk about the immediate topic and then leave. No shooting the shit allowed.
>>3282353
I really miss forums. Grew up on the Nintendo NSider forums. Midway through I broke off into other forum communities across the web.
Remember signatures at the bottom of your posts? Man, good times.
>>3282353
>>3282394
I really miss forums, too. Social media and web 2.0 definitely seemed to kill them.
I long for those days if tightly knit communities, where everyone knew everyone and friends were made. Forums with just a couple dozen users (enough for variety and regular activity but not so much so that no one knew each other) were the best forums./vr/ spin-off forum whenJesus Christ how many times can I fuck up this post?
>>3281681
>Corporate pages are like slideshows or brochures
But that's not only corporate pages issue.
Every page badly to look like a slideshow.
![original[1].jpg_1446179734.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/kq0l484.jpg "original[1].jpg_1446179734.jpg")
It can only go to worse. As it happens with cities vs villages, we are slowly moving into a super-web in which everything will happens inside it. We are really close with pages like reddit, facebook and twitter.
>>3283237
>pages like reddit, facebook and twitter
and 4chan
>tfw myincesthentai is gone
>>3283247
>2007
More like 2000.
>>3283247
The sad thing about this change is that it makes it more difficult for internet shenanigans to take place. I'm not promoting illegal webpages or anything, but imagine if the Internet traffic of the early 2000's was similar to the modern day. With fewer webpages to track and more social media than ever pointing people to "questionable sites" (law enforcement and the people who frequent them), it may have very well been possible to shut down P2P sharing sites and stop free MP3's from running rampant.
All I see in this graph is an Internet design that is easier to control. Social media allows governing bodies free information on where people are hiding and meeting on the Internet and where to track them down (because naturally, people on the social media can't STFU). This information coupled with fewer and fewer websites to dig through makes controlling the landscape of the Internet much easier for anyone who desires to do so.
I know it's been quite some time since the world wide web phased out of the "wild west" days, but this just illustrates how the digital frontier is shrinking everyday.
>>3283261
The internet really went to shit fast. I think what they did was basically brute force their will.
They do mad engineering and reverse engineering in order to make that possible. Programs that detect copyrighted material be it images, videos or audio. It's still funny how people still fight back, either by adding filters in order to fool said detecting algorithms, or directly uploading copyrighted stuff even if it means it will be deleted a few hours later. I've been watching the last episodes of DBS from youtube the past weeks. And if I miss it then I just go to some other streaming site and watch it there. I also still have the option to download torrents.
With video games they do that denovo shenanigans or whatever. It's a matter of time until they invent something like that for videos and music. And again a matter of time until hackers crack it, but now it's getting harder to combat it because the other side also have experienced people working on anti-hacking measures, faster and stronger than ever before. There might be ways of cracking stuff but not completely and it might be a bit complicated for the computer illiterate who could easily download Megaupload stuff back in 2005.
But for some older material, yes, it's getting hard to come by. I cry when I remember the amount of MU stuff I had pending to download from various blogs. Many of that stuff will probably never be dumped on the internet again.
>>3283276
>I think what they did was basically brute force their will
We did it. We're flocking to these hub sites
>Programs that detect copyrighted material be it images, videos or audio
They're largely useless in a decentralized web. We're using very few "service providers", sites that "host" that data. That makes it easy to mass-scan it
>I've been watching the last episodes of DBS from youtube the past weeks
>from youtube
see? That's the problem. They didn't do anything, it's us
>It's a matter of time until they invent something like that for videos and music
You're too late to the party. Netflix and Spotify already exist
>a matter of time until hackers crack it
That used to be the case with disc protection, because all the data is in the possession of the consumer. Most modern DRM measures rely on keeping part of the data remote, and only providing it to verified clients
>I remember the amount of MU stuff
MU was a hub site. Part of the problem
>>3283301
>That used to be the case with disc protection, because all the data is in the possession of the consumer. Most modern DRM measures rely on keeping part of the data remote, and only providing it to verified clients
This has been increasing dramatically over the last few years. By warming consumers up to the idea of digital media, manufacturers have gained unprecedented control over the end product their customers receive.
The sad thing is most consumers are too technologically illiterate or complacent to care about any of this. They just want a good or service delivered; they could care less about the condition it's delivered in. As long as they can watch their favorite TV show 10 times in a row, they'll agree to whatever halfbaked digital distribution agreement a company wants to throw at them.
Don't get me wrong, I think digital distribution is the way of the future. But I don't think most people realize what a tech savy company can get away with through it.
>>3283321
>I think digital distribution is the way of the future
of course it is, bittorrent is the living proof of that, it's a true web protocol. digital distribution and DRM are completely independent things, and that's something publishers refuse to understand.
Though it sounds a bit as if you suggesting digital distribution to have drm, even if "just light drm". Not gonna fly. drm is malware, no exception
>>3283335
>Always online drm is great on paper
never. DRM is malware, plain and simple. Also, you're on /vr/, you should know better than to rely on perpetual publisher support for a product
>>3283321
People who have a lot of money can buy the content, people who are poorfags and are more determined can get it for free. Where's the problem?
You agree that people who make content should get compensated for it right?
>>3283338
That's why I said on paper.
PC gaming has been shit since the late 2000s. DRM shit playing a huge role in that.
Don't remember the last time I played a game with mods like they used to be.
>>3280483
>rulefags
Did you just suddenly forget what board you were on
>>3283341
>That's why I said on paper.
no, not even on paper. The concept of DRM is broken by design, and online is not changing any of that.
>>3283350
How else do you protect copyrighted software?
>>3283261
The thing is, there already are decentralized darknets that are reasonably secure and private. Their main problem is that they are hard to use compared to a Web browser.
Actually, the rise of mobile apps might help: in a native application that lets you create normal UNIX sockets you can totally put obscure cryptographic P2P shit behind a friendly UI. I think it's a matter of time before FaceYakChat 3.0 comes out that has a design out of a cypherpunk's dream. It might not overtake the "old" social media but it may well, err, secure a niche.
>>3283358
I don't. I do not consider it useful to think about prevention of duplication of data. The ability to duplicate data is inherent, nothing can change that. As such, there's no inherent value in copying data. Nothing to charge for, nothing to prevent.
I'm more interested in coming up with mechanisms to pay people for creation of data. That shit's difficult and should be compensated.
I also do not consider copyright for software something useful, but that's an entirely different conversation
>>3283364
>copyright isn't important
So you're a fucking retarded commie and probably homosexual. Explains a lot.
Nothing stamps out creativity and production like saying "Hey kiddo! Wanna make that new invention? Go ahead so I can just copy it and sell it under you".
>>3283358
Copyright is legal protection. You sue those who sell cracked copies of your software or otherwise make money off your work illegally on a reasonably large scale. As for home users who pirate software for their own use and don't profit much, you probably just leave them alone or find a way to make them into customers (like students who pirate and learn Photoshop).
>>3283370
>new invention
we're talking about digital data
>so I can just copy it
just like everyone else, nothing special
>and sell it
how? Anybody could just copy it. There's no value in that
>>3283364
>The ability to duplicate data is inherent, nothing can change that. As such, there's no inherent value in copying data. Nothing to charge for, nothing to prevent.
Did you consider taking that self-righteous anal probe out of your ass so you can think more realistically? What you "consider" as a random person here isn't worth a hill of beans, either you put up a good argument or just don't claim anything. .
This is a very complex issue. There is nothing "inherent" about duplicating data, it is something that is allowed in varying degrees in varying circumstances. You yourself accept that copying it with the idea of reselling it should be prohibited.
>>3283390
It relates to the later part of your post.
A large portion of Altera's profit comes form home inventors.
>>3283383
>There is nothing "inherent" about duplicating data
ctrl-c, ctrl-v. Works with all data, guaranteed, costs nothing, guaranteed. No way to change that.
>You yourself accept that copying it with the idea of reselling it should be prohibited.
No? If someone's foolish enough to pay for a copy, let them have it. Others will just copy it on their own, no big deal. I do not consider selling copies of data a useful business, so why prohibit it?
>>3283384
>They make money from the software that enables their hardware to be far more productive.
If you say so. They make money from maintaining that software, updating it, staying ahead of what others can do. Their value is the skill, knowledge and experience of their developers. The source code of their software is just an artifact.
Here's the thing: imagine their software was OSS, but you need a new function. You can go to fatty mcneckbeard and he'll maybe get it to work with few bugs in a month, and wants a couple hundred bucks for that work. Or you can go to Altera, and get it implemented in 2 days (they know their code, after all), give them a couple thousand bucks, and got the new feature you really want. You think it's fictional? Red Hat bases their entire business model on support and maintenance. All their code is OSS. It works, because they're selling the abilities of their employees, not the code. Code is worthless, unwritten code is super valuable.
>>3283392
I am not terribly familiar with FPGAs but I know that each time a new version of MATLAB is released it gets cracked in no time. Is FPGA software different?
>>3283395
>muh Red Hat
Holy shit go back to /g/ already.
A company like Altera would be bunkrupt in your lala land of rainbows and "free" piracy.
Technology would be very different currently without a company like Altera.
>>3283384
no company has a natural right to exist. If their business relies on assumptions about reality that just don't hold true, they'll go under. That's the nature of the market you worship. Someone else can and will step in, if they see an opportunity. If they don't, there's apparently no demand for, and no value in the product, and the company was artificially propped up to begin with.
>>3283406
Altera is known for releasing updates that brick chink clones or just don't work at all.
So even if you crack it you need the hardware to actually be good. So it's very difficult for the chinamen to make a working clone. They do try though.
>>3283414
>Altera is known for releasing updates that brick chink clones or just don't work at all
So they are known to spend their resources on something the customer does not benefit from, and you support that why? Don't bother answering, the question's rhetorical
>>3283410
Man just look at the free Chinamen making those wonderful fpga and drivers that just work! Man sooooo great.
Oh wait they're all fucking garbage and that's why Altera is still in businesses.
The funny thing about open source retards. They hide behind closed source hardware.
>>3283426
>free
I didn't say anything about free. Developing software costs a lot of resources and should be compensated for. Duplicating developed software on the other hand ...
>>3283423
Protecting the customer by deterring clones in the market is bad?
Main reason I buy from Mouser more than ebay when it comes to electronic components.
>>3283434
>Protecting the customer by deterring clones in the market is bad?
prohibiting capable manufacturers from making competitive products is not exactly a positive thing, indeed.
>Main reason I buy from Mouser more than ebay when it comes to electronic components.
It's almost as if there are situations where you pay for experience, reliability, support, and don't just go for the lowest number
>>3283431
How can you expect to be paid for software development when you enable it to be gotten for free?
>>3283440
>chinamen
>capable manufacturers
>>3283441
not my job to figure that out. The usual approaches you can find at the moment are support subscriptions and fundraisers.
>to be gotten for free
It's virtually impossible to get software for free that has not been written yet. Depending on how much you need that particular piece of non-existent software, what price are you willing to pay for it to be made? Can you lower the cost to yourself by asking others to join you? What value do you lose if people afterwards get it without paying anything? Were you not willing to pay the price you paid? Do you think they were willing to pay the price you paid, or any price? Do you know their pressure to obtain that piece of software? Or maybe some other piece of software you would have a use for, but are not aware of yet, that they want really badly. Once they paid for it, it's made, anybody can use it. It really helps spreading and lowering the costs, and puts the money where the value is, creation
>>3283414
Interesting. So if I decide to buy an FPGA to play with I should avoid the clones? I'll remember that. Anyway, I don't see much of a problem with that kind of DRM, though I do wonder if *intentionally* bricking cloned hardware (as opposed to simply refusing to work with it) is illegal. What I was talking about was more to do with the kind of DRM that bothers the legal end user without preventing zero-day piracy. I've experienced it.
>>3283443
if they're not capable, why be afraid of their "competition"? People that want and can afford the quality will still go to the reliable manufacturer, and people that can't afford that, have the option of getting something less reliable for less, to learn with, and maybe build from there.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If they're incapable, they're no competition. If they're competition, they're justified to exist
>>3283452
Can't steal or copy something that doesn't exist.
>>3283458
indeed, that was the whole point. But you can put a number on changing it from non-existent to existent. If the value of it coming into existent matches the price you're willing to pay, and the money someone is asking to make it, you have a deal. Others that may or may not have use for it afterwards do not enter the picture
>>3283454
>So if I decide to buy an FPGA to play with I should avoid the clones?
Depends. Usually yes.
The USB blasters is an exception. (thing needed to program the chips or update/etc.) Altera wants like $300 for that thing which is a joke. Dumb simple device.
>>3283456
>if they're not capable, why be afraid of their "competition"?
Because I like to know when I buy something it's not a piece of shit.
>You can't have your cake and eat it too.
I live in America and i'm white. Only thing I have to worry about is libs like you destroying everything.
>>3283471
>Because I like to know when I buy something it's not a piece of shit.
simple enough, buy from someone you trust. It may or may not cost more, but you have the choice. You like choice, don't you?
>>3283471
>The USB blasters is an exception.
Noted. Thanks.
>>3283474
No I hate choice. Have to do so much research to find companies that actually make parts in Japan or America. It's a pain in the ass.
I'd love if it was just a handful of companies or if a giant wall was made around China.
>>3283308
I'm pointing out that not everyone who used the internet was different from their real self. A lot of people actually were attached to their real name and thus their real-life reputation.
Segmentation and social media has little to do with it, especially on Usenet which was a connected community. Sure, people could have handles and some sites didn't name names, but you can easily find archived geocities pages about personal lives and people on Usenet were often not anonymous. If you mean that these days you can't both be cUMB|@$73R and Reginald Martin like in the old days, you still can, it's just uncommon for people to go that route.
>>3283485
That's why I mentioned blogs.
Something like facebook though? There's no parallel in the past.
>>3283485
>A lot of people actually were attached to their real name and thus their real-life reputation
at least where it was useful and acceptable. The segmentation allowed to keep your cycles away from each other.
>If you mean that these days you can't both be cUMB|@$73R and Reginald Martin like in the old days, you still can
You really can't. The sites are so tightly connected, it's trivial to make the association. You'd have to go out of your way, using different browsers and different IPs (VPN) for different sites. Otherwise the various tracking mechanisms make it trivial to tell that the user logged in at site X has the cookies for site Y, same IP, same browser, and so on. So the accounts likely belong to the same person. And even that account is secondary. Merely visiting a page is plenty to have it show up in trackers. Even if you may not care about trackers, the associations may or may not create links in search indexes, and before long, googling for Reginald Martin will have his cUMB|@$73R profile show up in the first 5 links
>>3283395
>ctrl-c, ctrl-v. Works with all data, guaranteed, costs nothing, guaranteed. No way to change that.
You have to get the data first genius.
>No? If someone's foolish enough to pay for a copy, let them have it. Others will just copy it on their own, no big deal. I do not consider selling copies of data a useful business, so why prohibit it?
Again with this "I do not consider" stuff, dude you're hopeless. I tried to have an adult conversation with you. Other people are doing things that make sense and it's fine for you to be sitting at home saying they're all doing things stupidly but you're wrong. Copyright as it is is like I said very complex and what's happening makes much more sense than your stupid idea of how things are/should be.
>>3283531
>You have to get the data first genius.
just copying it from someone else. unless it doesn't exist. In which case I commented on that already
>"I do not consider"
that phrase is used to mark opinion
>what's happening makes much more sense
if you say so. I consider it utter madness, like fighting windmills. So much energy wasted, so much software damaged, all because people are obsessed with the idea that data is a scarce resource and in any way comparable to physical products. I've shown and explained my position and gave examples of it working already, in the present market. Whether you accept or refuse that is your decision.
In the meantime, though, understand that treating data like a scarce resource is extremely expensive and relies on intentionally breaking computer systems left and right.
Again, you're on /vr/, you know what people on here are playing, and how they're playing it. I hope you also know and understand that, no matter what your opinion of the current generation of gaming is, it'll be almost completely lost in a couple decades. I don't know about you, but I consider that an extreme cultural loss. And with what motivation? Maintaining a physical business model for data? You can call me names all you want, but in the end the childish ones are the ones kicking and screaming, instead of facing reality.
>>3283509
That has nothing to do with social media though. Sites can be totally segmented, but ISPs monitor traffic. That's not a social media thing, that's a telecom company and media conglomerate thing. Even if the internet were still in web-ring format ISPs and other trackers could still find out who you are. I'm arguing against the idea that in the past online life and real life were completely separate as posted in
>>3280349
>pre social media internet had an irl you and an online you. Now it's just social media shit everywhere and irl life is online life.
Even in the oldest of internets people chose to be identified by their actual selves.
>>3283497
No not exactly like facebook back then, but when we recall facebook was a place where people in college could register and stay in contact it wasn't that far off from college students registering for usenet and posting with their actual identity. The difference is that usenet was a place for discussion of topics where facebook is like a place to post yourself (everything) so other people can comment on it. Also blogging isn't the same as a personal geocities page anyway.
>>3283608
>That has nothing to do with social media though
the social sites are the ones shaping the search indices and mining the data
>Sites can be totally segmented, but ISPs monitor traffic
they don't shape search indices
>media conglomerate thing
which social ... media is part of
>ISPs and other trackers
they're fairly different things
>I'm arguing against the idea that in the past online life and real life were completely separate
I'm saying it was at least doable, if you wished to do it. No option for that now
>Even in the oldest of internets
make that especially, not even. The desire for anonymity is closely related to sites and people tracking everything and everybody, keeping records. It's no longer a plaza for people to chat and move on. Whatever you do socially online is here to stay, and will bite you
>>3281752
>There are too many people thinking they have important things to say.
>Now you have everyone thinking that they can and they should "create" their own website, which is really just rehashing the popular opinions.
>The almost obscene positivity flying around about "creating" stuff.
>>3283635
>Now you have everyone thinking that they can and they should "create" their own website
If only. That would have been the actual web. No, they just do tumblrs and instagrams and twitters. They don't create sites, they use existing sites. It's "less work". There's a big difference between creation and voicing your opinion. To the web it's all "content" though. I strongly dislike the word, because it does not say anything about its (creative) value or cultural contribution. It's a filler word
>>3283625
Social media sites can't track emails they don't know and they can only see my IP when I use their services (which google sees a lot of but facebook sees nothing). It's the ISP that can see where all of my traffic goes regardless of what services I use. When I say media conglomerate I'm referring to ISPs that are also tied to media companies like Comcast and AT&T, though one can argue that google is a media conglomerate as well. Facebook can see an occasional behavior of mine, but they can't trace most of my business on the internet.
>tfw forums are pretty much gone
>all discussion takes place on a number of websites you could count with your fingers
>unique and contained forum culture, lore, drama, in-jokes are all gone
>all internet culture is now global, everyone uses the same jargon and talks about the same things
>closely-knit online communities are now a rarity, pretty much limited to IRC channels
It hurts...
>>3281730
Tell us more.
What can you do to Goldeneye with a gameshark?
>>3283936
>Social media sites can't track emails
So they encourage you to not use any. Also, webmailers
>facebook sees nothing
unless you block, every single facebook widget on any site is tracking. These buttons aren't just for facebook users to click on.
CDNs can see you from various sites and unlike social widgets they're virtually impossible to block, as you'll break pages when you do.
>It's the ISP that can see where all of my traffic goes regardless of what services I use
which ISPs do you know that have a facebook-level storage behind them for all your shit?
>one can argue that google is a media conglomerate as well
ad provider. Google has very little to do with media
>but they can't trace most of my business on the internet.
yet. It's one of the reasons why these companies work so hard to set up web frontends for internet services. If you do everything through your browser, there's a common interface to keep up with you.
>>3281916
I still visit mmhp regularly, if for no other reason than I'm too lazy to write down my Mega Man passwords
>>3284189
>unless you block, every single facebook widget on any site is tracking. These buttons aren't just for facebook users to click on...
Well I suppose I didn't know just how far this shit goes. I suppose smaller sites are less of a problem if they don't implement those "services" but I guess general browsing is seen by everybody.
So what are the best plugins to bypass ads, bloat, tracking, and other shit that normies take for granted having never experiencd the web when it was good?
I use uBlock Origin, uMatrix, and HTTPS everywhere.
Is it me or does this just seem really comfy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWq4DWfrpu8
>>3280338
That picture makes me want to kill myself
>>3286031
>>3280338
http://wayback.archive.org/web/20160401031405/http://toryanse.net/draculaxtasy/
This old Castlevania site was pretty cute, and had some rad games on it. I'm not sure if you can still play them though.
Imagine all those flash games lost to the sands of time.
>>3286031
this is both nostalgic and depressing.
>>3282589
>>3282353
Those are still around, but they're just hard to find.
By nature, small forums are hard to find because they're small. When you find one though, you somehow find many.
Also try IRCs and liveboards. Liveboards are a newish thing that I really like. They're basically ircs in imageboard format.
>>3284543
I don't think you need uBlock if you have uMatrix, or in fact you shouldn't use both because they duplicate each others' functions and blocklists. uMatrix is all you need.
Decentraleyes and Self-Destructing Cookies are worth considering as well. I don't currently have SDU but I think it should at least clean up unnecessary cookies (uMatrix saves all cookies but doesn't allow them to be accessed unless you give permission).
>>3286031
What's funny about that video is that it's almost exactly the same as what I was doing at the same time. The only difference is that at the time I hadn't yet discovered anime, but otherwise everything is the same.
>>3286125
>Small forums are hard to find because they're small
You know, I've never seen anyone put it so positively. I'll still always miss my Totse days though.
>>3283452
>not my job to figure that out.
Then why feel so cemented in your stupid-ass opinion if you can't be bothered to think it all the way through?
>>3287638
>Then why feel so cemented in opinion
because the current protection system is artificially propped up and damaging. I'd rather let the free market and business people smarter than me come up with solutions to the digital reality, than them going to big-brother-government and begging them for support against the big bully that is reality.
>>3286125
>Liveboards
What the fuck is that?
http://www.zophar.net/
>>3286125
I've tried IRC multiple times but most rooms are just full of idlers, there's never any activity. Also it seems like most rooms now are either for tech support or perverts.
>>3287878
That's IRC for you. Some channels are active though, like #totse used to be
>>3282394
>Remember signatures at the bottom of your posts? Man, good times.
Heh I got into making those. Last forums I went to where about making them. There was even a battle forum where two people would make a picture signature each and others would vote which was best.
![Well-futile---Nathan-Barl-009[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/8X67cxn.jpg "Well-futile---Nathan-Barl-009[1].jpg")
>>3282012
trashbat.co.ck
>>3282081
>Academics, especially older ones, are the worst (or perhaps best) offenders of all too much information on one page. They make webpages like they write dense academic books.
Yeah and they're always in Times New Roman with really long pages.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030306182929/http://members.madasafish.com/~Kefka/
I just really hate the whole wikification of the internet
>>3288817
>internet
web
and how would you rather have it?
>>3288582
Nigga what? NC Comics used to be huge. Shit SMBHQ was in fucking Nintendo Power!
>>3288335
Most of those genre descriptions are wrong...
>>3288819
yeah lol. i'm not sure if the poster remembers how things were before wikipedia. everything was web rings. this was sure as fuck not a preferable system.
Remember when 4chan finally became "web2.0"?
I still can't get over it.
>>3288841
I know right?
>calling them scrolling beat 'em up
>not belt scroller
>>3288873
Web rings were fun.
>Downloading SNES roms late at night
>There are always porn banners and pop-ups on ROM websites.
It seems that back then, in the early days of the internet, that everything was somehow at least tangentially related to porn. At the most, you were rarely more than 2-3 links away from porn websites.
The coolest, and most interesting thing about the old internet, is that it wasn't all easy accessible by search engines. Having bookmarks actually meant something, because if you happened across a cool website, you might not remember the specific chain of links that got you there in the first place. With search engines in their infancy, you might never find that cool website again.
>>3288135
what did he mean by this?
>>3283968
I remember when one of my favorite places shut down, I'm still sad honestly but I remember discussing it with another guy who used to hang out there recently and by the end when the owner pulled the plug it was being overran by kids who still though 4chan was a super underground haxx0r site and they were some kind of badass for spamming maymays. Yeah this shit was a problem way back in '09 too, arguably it was worse when shit first blew up. I remember one of the last new users I saw had named himself "/b/-tard".
It's pretty much impossible to have a net community now that isn't either stuffy liberals with a permenant "I just smelled shit" look on their face or some version of chantards. The shit sniffers have always been a major presence on the internet, don't let any nostalgiafags convince you otherwise, but the variety of gaymers and sick fucks and junkies with their different jokes and traditions on different boards I used to hang around are all gone and what's still around is just 4chan-lite.
I trally try not to fall into this mindset, cause there's still plenty of fun to be had and interezting shit to find online, but I sure do miss when we were the only people who said "fap">>3280338
>>3288925
Remember those porn hotlines that would install themselves onto your PC and then whenever you would turn on your computer the porn pop ups would appear.
I remember when I first got into hentai I would check out this site called hentaikitty and it was basically a hub for other sites and through that I found some spanish site that had snes roms and hentai pics and through that I discovered emulation. It was great.
>>3287878
IRC is the bomb. Perverts are everywhere. #wetfish
>>3280338
why did it have to go so wrong
>>3281681
The Internet is turning into real.life. corporate sites are towering over small ones just like big box retailers,Walmart and chain restaurants
>>3291032
Just a couple of years back it was the opposite, where the internet leaked IRL
Now it's just a shitshow of normalfags projecting their mundane and innane shit. It only took one shitty reality show to make plebs accept big brother into their hearts and think they are a celebrity for being a voyeuristic cunt.
It seems like the early internet attracted all sorts of weird, brilliant and talented people.
>>3287657
Think like an imageboard, but you type in real time, and others can see you typing up your post too. Rather than multiple threads though, it tends to get contained in one thread unless you have a very large community.
Basically, you get a cross between an imageboard and an irc.
Do people still legitimately discuss stuff on usenet? It seems like these days people only talk about it in the context of piracy and shady shit.
>>3283559
>just copying it from someone else. unless it doesn't exist. In which case I commented on that already
You're genuinely retarded. To make those statements in the conversation we're having, I cannot imagine what you must be thinking.
Good luck in life.
>>3283247
What are all these people doing on Microsoft's website? Downloading Windows updates?
The only other thing I can think of would be Bing; pretty much all of Microsoft's social Internet territory is native programs like Skype.
>>3280338
I think what changed is not Internet itself, it's society.
Internet became massive thanks to technological advances, and that gave ground for extremely narcissistic people to project and build a fake profile of themselves. And what better that using that veil of anonymity that Internet grants you?
Social media just took advantage of those narcissists and exploited them to gather big data. Advertisement campaigns encouraged more and more people to do the same, to satisfy that subtle thirst for ego in each one.
Then the selfies and watermarked reaction images came. Thirst and addiction for upvotes and likes became a daily thing, as it's much more banal than a honest "I like what you're doing" in real life.
It was never enough. To satiate that addiction, people started to share more and more of their private lives to have more likes. To share their vacation spots, their newborn babies, their boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands/wives, the dishes they were eating...
Quoting Deus Ex: "Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. [...] The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms."
>>3291998
>I think what changed is not Internet itself, it's society.
I'm going to have to disagree. I think that the normies of society have always been self absorbed and narcissistic, the internet has just let us see more of that then we used to.
Do you really think people were that much different in the 70's? Or even as far back as the 1800's?
As a thought experiment, imagine you had the ability to go back in time to 14th century London and magically give everyone a computer, the ability to use it, and access to the internet. Do you really think that these people would behave any differently than people currently do with the internet? I think it's part of human nature to seek validity amongst peer groups, and that the internet is only a tool for us to achieve that, rather than the reason we do.
>>3281689
Haha, man what happened to this guy?
that right there is some seething rage
>>3291062
>It seems like the early internet attracted all sorts of weird, brilliant and talented people.
Because the barrier to entry was higher. The internet was this crazy new thing that people didn't understand, and you had to jump through hoops to use it. Most of the people actively participating in those communities were the outliers; people who were more curious, more creative, people with skills and knowledge that the average person didn't consider necessary.
Nowadays, the internet is inseparable from daily life, on top of being incredibly user-friendly. The comparatively small population of unique individuals who used to define the internet have been drowned out by the masses, as well as the corporate entities who are more interested in catering to those masses in order to maximize their profits.
In the mad rush to solve all our problems by connecting the world, we failed to realize that our biggest problem is still human nature itself.
>>3291958
MSDN, KB. There are people out there that develop, or administer
>>3280349
this post barely makes sense and has nothing to do with op's (correct) opinion.
>>3291467
I just went and checked some newsgroups out, it's pretty much all VERY questionable spam along the lines of "I strangled my dog then fucked it". Stay away unless you want some good warez.
>>3281752
>Now you have everyone thinking that they can and they should "create" their own website
Have you time-travelled in from 1998? Almost nobody makes actual websites anymore. At best they'll make a Tumblr, at worst a Facebook page.I'd actually really like to make a personal site and write about all kinds of things, especially obscure ones that are overlooked or ones that have modern political repercussions, but even in real life I have the severe impression nobody ever cares what I have to say and that would be multiplied tenfold. In the case of a lot of it, there's also the problem that restructuring freely available historical information into a modern narrative [i.e. "this is how we got from event X in 1970 to event Y in 2016"] feels a lot like just reposting other people's history lessons, despite the addition of a narrative to the overall thing which may not immediately be apparent.
The question is always about signal or noise. Most people are happy to churn out noise, I'm not but I'm terrible at judging what actually counts as signal to everyone else.because 99% of them fucking LOVE noise.
