Three degrees of separation, and rising

Posted: February 25th, 2003 | 37 Comments »

Miki has been interviewed by an Israeli games site (in Hebrew) about her work on The Getaway, here sale which will be mentioned again here at least once more in the near future.

Looking into the far future, anabolics I see an image of myself, click old and wrinkled on a rocking chair, surrounded by children. They look up at me and ask, “Grampa, tell us about your wild adventures as a heat-seeking beta bunny!” And I reply, “Oh, my sweethearts, those days are long gone. I used to be young and crazy, downloading every shiny 0.2 release, pumping the nightlies, having to vape my Windows install every three months. I eased off after a while – the RSI and blood pressure – but even so, I was still desperate for new toys, hungry to ride the bleeding edge of the Freshmeat wave. Then came the Threedegrees beta…” At that point the prophecy goes a bit blurry because I start shouting and hitting the children and shortly after that I’m Soylent Green.

It’s the fault of the children, you see. In case you’ve missed all the fanfare, ThreeDegrees is Microsoft’s new chat/P2P/music app that came about through the revolutionary process of asking the teenagers at which it’s aimed to help design it. The app lets users organise themselves into social groups (point and clique?). Groups are limited to a ten-member maximum, a bizarrely arbitrary limit that will hopefully be the first victim of the beta programme. Group members can chat, share pictures, play music and “wink” at each other. (“Winking” is a kind of animated emoticon broadcast to all members of the group. Wondering why you never see your teenager these days? He’s probably up in his room, winking.) As you’d expect, it’s all wrapped up in the kind of huge lurid skinnable UI that will have Alan Cooper wandering around the Redmond campus with a rifle.

The Threedegrees beta went live a few hours ago and I, the mad, risk-loving fool, hurried for this new plaything — pausing only to marvel at the “Gosh We’re Wacky!” section, blessed with all the carefree embarrassment skills of the middle-aged uncle.

This screencap from the installer should tell you all you need to know:

If you can't see this, I envy you.

(No, I didn’t draw those scrawls onto the image. It really does look like that.)

I don’t know which of the scenarios I’m imagining is worse: The one where a crazed developer with MS Paint gets that past QA, or the one where the design team achieves group consensus to prove they’re the gang that’s down with the kids.

As you can see, the kids have to be down with installing a metric arseload of supporting extras before they can get jiggy with the winking action. This includes MSN Messenger 5.0 and the MS Black Ops P2P Infiltrator. I had a brief bout of swearing when MSNIM 5 started up because it was clearly ignoring my preference to hide the never-used info tabs on the left. Investigation showed I was wrong; it hadn’t so much ignored my preference as removed the option entirely. Clearly, being able to view Expedia travel deals in a 100-pixel-wide buddy list is too important a feature to ever be turned off. Dammit, if you can’t get stock price alerts, the terrorists have already won! Also, the banner slot at the bottom was refusing to budge, proudly displaying an ad telling me to use the app that was displaying it.

It’s part of a worrying trend MS have been displaying recently that I’ll call (for want of something wittier) feature-creep-away. Version 7.0 of Windows Media Player (a.k.a The Huge Blue Useless One) removed the ability to install .mov support. Now the latest version has removed streaming MP3 and AVI support (i.e. play during download). The lockdown has started. It’s more than just “Trusted Computing”; they’re trying to be Apple ’90.

Anyway, now that ThreeDegrees is finally installed, I can have a play. Except I can’t, because MSN IM can’t see the Internet. Oops, neither can Internet Explorer. The problem persists after a reboot. Most apps (including Mozilla and Trillian, thankfully) can browse quite happily, but those that use some magic MS voodoo instead of normal DNS lookups are scuppered. Most irritatingly, this group includes Soulseek. (Using IP addresses in MSIE seems to work fine) A wander through the innards of XP shows that the Undergound MS P2P so-beta-it’s-alpha has installed all kinds of IPv6 randomness into Services including a firewall and a “6to4 translator”. I turn all of them off, but to no avail. I’m glad that MS is building a road to the future, but I am now one with the tarmac. Still, it could be worse.

If this gets fixed, someone let me know. I want to check ThreeDegrees out so I can pretend to be Clay and make wise, chin-stroking pronouncements about the social networks young people create. Also, I’d quite like to be able to use MSIE again. Probably. In the meantime, I’m joining the eight-year-olds swapping warez and pr0n on IRC. Seeya!

UPDATE: The headline on the front page of threedegrees.com reads: “For the people, by the People.
Our community is built upon our art, expressions, and individuality.” Yeah, and your Shared Source promotes innovation and is freer than the GPL. Oh, just fuck off!

FURTHER UPDATE: The adventure continues here.

37 Comments on “Three degrees of separation, and rising”

1 ext|circ said at 10:01 am on February 25th, 2003:
Tuesday morning

Setting the Mac world on fire right now is the Sony Ericsson Clicker, software that lets you remotely control…
2 Ben Hammersley.com said at 1:10 pm on February 25th, 2003:
iScrobbler and ThreeDegrees

iScrobbler is now out of beta and available for OSX users. It’s a little app that watches what you’re playing
3 Ben Hammersley.com said at 1:12 pm on February 25th, 2003:
iScrobbler and ThreeDegrees

iScrobbler is now out of beta and available for OSX users. It’s a little app that watches what you’re playing
4 Blackbeltjones Work said at 2:44 pm on February 25th, 2003:
Three Degrees

I tried to install the Beta of MSFT’s new IM-on-steroids app, ThreeDegrees last night. I fell at the first hurdle
5 Jim said at 2:44 pm on February 25th, 2003:
I tried to read the wacky ‘bios’ section on their site, but it appeared to be written in something that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike English.
And yes, one of them is titled ‘Code Monkey’.
Nice. What’s next? Graphics Whore? Production Slag?
6 NSLog(); said at 3:04 pm on February 25th, 2003:
Point and Clique

Funniest line from this tale of threedegrees is easily this: It’s the fault of the children, you see. In case you’ve missed all the fanfare, ThreeDegrees is Microsoft’s new chat/P2P/music app that came about through the revolutionary process of asking …
7 Me said at 4:02 pm on February 25th, 2003:
SERVICE PACK 1?!?!! you cant install that unless you have a registered copy of XP.. oh well.
8 KnitWitology: Where Am I? said at 4:10 pm on February 25th, 2003:
threedegrees

threedegrees – Group IM/music/pictures and more – This looks flipping cool! (Learn More Here) Update: Maybe I’ll wait for the
9 monkeyboi said at 4:19 pm on February 25th, 2003:
my title at work is “sql monkey”
i think it’s self-deprecating and okay–not trying to be hipper-than-thou indie rock like the bio contents
but then again, i’m not a teenager anymore–maybe they dig that shiznit
10 herr k said at 4:38 pm on February 25th, 2003:
it’s a misnomer right ? shouldn’t it be called third degrees ?
11 andrew said at 5:41 pm on February 25th, 2003:
I love the “better listen, i hear they have good lawyers” wittiness at the bottom of their site by the copyright. Don’t mess with us kid, we’ll sue your ass! Nice.
12 kung fu grippe said at 5:58 pm on February 25th, 2003:
http://www.kungfugrippe.com/previously/002067.php

threedegrees This feels a little like the stock scene at the end of every 80s movie where the authority figure
13 kung fu grippe said at 6:02 pm on February 25th, 2003:
See? I told you I could get jiggy wid it!

threedegrees This feels a little like the stock scene at the end of every 80s movie where the authority figure
14 esigler.2nw.net/blog said at 6:26 pm on February 25th, 2003:
Three-what?

I was going to post a review of Threedegrees (the latest from Microsoft), but Yoz Grahame did a much better job than I would have. “Clearly, being able to view Expedia travel deals in a 100-pixel-wide buddy list is too important a feature to ever be tu…
15 GhettoYuppie said at 6:27 pm on February 25th, 2003:
threedegrees outside and online

Just as I requested of Microsoft, threedegrees has officially launched a public beta and the marketing seems to follow much
16 Jeremy said at 6:51 pm on February 25th, 2003:
To uninstall the IP6 crud, try ipv6 -uninstall at a command prompt.
17 forty.something said at 1:46 am on February 26th, 2003:
3°

3° – the next generation of instant messaging? Update: Interesting early review of 3° here….
18 heLP .Net Blog said at 1:39 pm on February 26th, 2003:
ThreeDegrees installation problems

ThreeDegrees installation problems
19 Leoville said at 2:14 pm on February 26th, 2003:
Absolute Zero

At first it sounds hip. “Our community is built upon our art, expressions, and individuality.” Then you see the Microsoft copyright at the bottom of the page. The Three Degrees beta went public yesterday. It’s a youth oriented group messaging service b…
20 Geekfishing Blog said at 5:53 pm on February 26th, 2003:
Another pounding review of 3 degrees

Yoz Grahame’s Cheerleader: Three degrees of separation, and rising. Pretty brutal, but similar to what Johnlu found. I like his…
21 Richard Weber said at 8:03 pm on February 26th, 2003:
It does indeed look dubious to the uninitiated bystander, but is it fair to trash 3Degrees before you’ve even tried the program itself? Best practice (in the Debian GNU/Linux world, at least) says that packaging issues are strictly separated from application issues.
I’m going to try this out next month when I get access to a Microsoft Windows setup, and will post my experiences somewhere.
22 Anon said at 8:15 pm on February 26th, 2003:
from: http://radio.weblogs.com/0100529/2003/02/25.html#a1509
netsh.exe interface ipv6 uninstall
23 Jeff Winkler said at 11:15 pm on February 26th, 2003:
Our DBA @work has programmed the phone system to come up as Mr. DBA. Always good for a chuckle.
Thanks for the “lockdown has started” bit, pointing out the lack of MP3 and MOV support. Easy to miss that kind of thing.
24 Anon said at 12:02 am on February 27th, 2003:
“Key politicians chided universities on Wednesday for not doing enough to limit peer-to-peer piracy, calling unauthorized copying a federal crime that should be punished appropriately.”
Congress is targeting P2P crimes now, starting with schools:
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-986143.html?tag=fd_top
One has got to be really dumb to use any P2P software from Microsoft. Especially something that is so obviously a RIAA HONEYPOT.
Microsoft is one of the key players behind the crackdown on IP ‘crimes’.
And with the usage rights for intellectual property being very limited and as clear as mud, why risk using Microsoft’s software and getting reported to the FBI?
The penalty for IP crime under the DMCA is a felony, including up to $250,000 fine and 5 years in federal prison.
I’d get all that P2P crap off my machine if I were you. Who knows what it is doing while you are away from your computer.
25 Chad Osgood's Blog said at 2:29 am on February 27th, 2003:
Microsoft’s Three Degrees

Microsoft’s Three Degrees
26 Howler said at 10:29 am on February 27th, 2003:
So children, the fire is coming….soon…soon.
just ask the MPA/NASCAP
just ask them about sony and phillips….
Just ask m-soft why it won’t support mp3???
maybe…a violation of us and international law that they can’t lie or buy their way out of.
Watch sony swat m-soft like a bug.
See those silly little Japanese geee why do so many of them run open source?????
27 Qheadquarters said at 9:55 pm on February 27th, 2003:
Micoro$oft

Well Micro$oft are screwing themeselves over. Microsoft seems to think that they are immune to defeat, we’ll show them!
28 jayblog said at 10:37 pm on February 27th, 2003:
I think I am turning anti-microsoft, I really think so!

After going through hell just trying to put win 98 on a computer and seeing how easy Redhat 7.2 Linux…
29 natalief said at 8:59 pm on February 28th, 2003:
ThreeDegrees of c**p?

I won’t be trying it anytime soon. I like Psi (for jabber, aim, icq and msn IM) on OSX and WinDoze 98…
30 mburns said at 3:23 am on March 1st, 2003:
I’m not sure i understand the comment on the lack of streaming MP3 support. I’m sitting here right now listening to a streaming mp3 station through Winmedia 9. The inability to save stations in any form other than urls in the history list sucks, but other than that it works fine and sounds great.
31 Earle Martin said at 12:55 pm on March 2nd, 2003:
In the version of MSNIM I was using the other day on Win2K, the option for hiding tabs had been renamed to something bizarre like “This is a shared computer, hide my tabs.” _Microsoft: we can’t do security for shit, but at least nobody will know what tabs you use!_ Incidentally, I love that guy “Tripp[MS]” on the threedegrees board whose signature includes two occurrences of “"”. Nice and professional. Oh, and also: “feature leak”?
32 Tripp said at 7:31 am on March 4th, 2003:
The quotes are from the standard community disclamer, its the stupid messageboard which warps them into & quot ; which I have nothing to do with.
33 Critical Section said at 9:27 pm on May 2nd, 2003:
February 25, 2003 08:36 PM
34 Critical Section said at 2:39 am on May 4th, 2003:
February 25, 2003 08:36 PM

Thinking of trying three degrees? Read this review first…
35 ext|circ said at 6:41 pm on July 11th, 2003:
Windows XP P2P SDK

Microsoft knows how to court developers: they’ve released a Windows XP Peer-to-Peer SDK for the XP peer-to-peer update that appeared…
36 Scott Hanselman's Weblog said at 5:50 pm on August 14th, 2003:
Thank the Good Lord I didn’t install ThreeDegrees

IPv6 is fabulous and wonderful and I’m looking forward to the day when we have enough IP addresses to proffer DHCP to
37 Andrew Johnson's Weblog said at 5:28 pm on June 19th, 2005:
Blogging again

Look. The reason I haven’t installed Three Degrees is because I haven’t got Windows XP. Okay. …

Yoz Grahame's Unresolvable Discrepancy

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Three degrees of separation, and rising

37 Comments on “Three degrees of separation, and rising”

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