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The title of this story is misleading and the story is as well. Pirates copy DVD's, not create new consumer electronics products.

The company in question, Meizu, has been working on this product since before the iPhone was launched and is planning to base the it on Windows Mobile 6. Some have said that Apple "ripped off" LG's touch screen phone but, it could be like this situation. One product inspires another. The only difference is the popularity of the product doing the inspiring.

Sure, its a clone but, not a rip-off. Thats the way tech goes. You make a good product & people will emulate and attempt to improve it.

BTW, I do own a Meizu MP3 player & wouldn't trade it for an iPod. http://http//en.meizu.com/product_m6.asp

I found a video from these guys to be rather interesting, if not somewhat convincing: http://http//www.disclosureproject.org/ Video can be found here. Please, anybody with some web space, put up a mirror so that this nice little not for profit group doesn't get slashdotted off the web: http://www.netro.ca/disclosure/npccmenu.htm

Remember that genocide in 1994, where one million Africans died in a couple months? Well according to this Canadian article http://http//www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/stor y.html?id=506cd39e-5568-432c-8dc3-f495d3ab41bf&p=1 /, the French not only knew about it before hand, they supplied and trained the killers for three years.

And French /.ers have said they opposed Bush's war in Iraq because they don't want violence. Bull.

I don't feel like loggins in for this, so feel free to mod me a troll.

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hmmm, my captcha is "French Military Victories", that can't be right.

it's ok for us to have nukes and not allow Iran/NK/China to have them.

They would use them.

and probably won't considering all the fighting we do now is against rogue undercover militias

youtube has all the trailers posted. came out 3-8 weeks back depending on which trailer or video diary you are looking for. frankly, the teaser trailer blows the official trailer out of the water. also, jms has additional work on his B5 myspace page. dont have a link for you on the myspace page stuff though. http://http//www.youtube.com/results?search_query= babylon+5+lost+tales&search=

Though one may argue that having the source for a driver may result in the driver becoming more stable over time as a lot of people contribute changes/fixes to it, I feel that this may be overstated.

Consider Nvidia/ATI drivers on Windows or Mac OSX - these binary-only drivers are feature rich (are they more feature rich than their binary-only drivers on Linux?) and most users are quite happy. Bugs do occasionally show up, but they are normally fixed by Nvidia/ATI within a reasonable time frame.

However, I have noticed that these same manufacturers take forever to fix bugs which show up only on Linux.

That indicates to me that the reason that these binary drivers are not that stable on Linux is not because of the binary nature of these drivers but because the Linux user community matters less to Nvidia/ATI than the Windows user community.

And that is understandable - the number of windows users is roughly 93% http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_W indows_and_Linux/ and Linux users probably account for about 3% to 4% for all computer users.

So it is understandable that a hardware manufacturer prioritizes bug fixes for their larger user base (windows) rather than for the Linux users.

Unless Linux gains the kind of market share which will force hardware manufacturers to take it seriously, we can expect less than stellar drivers and support from them.

I agree this cant happen soon enough, Google are the innovators now not tired old Microsoft, If I have to suffer through another lazy OS release or another incremental upgrade of Office, roll on Google desktop development. This cant happen soon enough in my opinion Webmaster, http://http//www.seowebsiteadvice.com

According to the bill of rights, "These amendments limit the powers of the federal government, protecting the rights of all citizens, residents and visitors on United States territory." [http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_ Bill_of_Rights/]. Thus, the corporate entity Verizon is claiming that it is either a citizen, resident, or visitor if the united states. So, if they somehow manage to get a ruling in their favor does this mean that Verizon will get the right bear arms, protection from unlawful search and seizure (which could be nice for companies interested in protecting their customers), etc...? But, more importantly would that mean that Verizon could claim their employees as dependents for tax purposes :P

Although the United States is an increasingly unpopular country, China is a more likely enemy. The greatest points of conflict with the United States would be over Russian business deals with "anti-American" countries. The United States is unlikely to invade any more countries in the near future given the numerous complications of the Iraq war. Iraq was one of the biggest business partners of Russia and the countries did not come to blows over it. A great number of the conflicts that Russia has with the West are also with Europe. There has been a great number of conflicts over oil. As far as the "War on Terror", the US and Russia are natural allies. With Russia's occupation of Chechnya (which makes the Iraq war look like a visit to the playground http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_ War/), they have had repeated attacks by Muslim terrorists.

Russia has a lot of land and massive natural resources. China has a thirst for natural resources, severe internal conflict and a huge disproportially male population. If the effectiveness of Russia's nuclear arsenal was thought to be limited (perhaps by the development of new missile defence technologies), then China may invade Russia. The Chinese may be willing to lose ten million men to take a substantial part of Russian territory. A war for territory may move many of the disgruntled young Chinese men to the frontline.

I think the US is chosen as an enemy because America bashing is very easy right now. If the Russian government were to look at its most likely enemies, it may compromise it's business agreements.

Thanks, I've already added a couple of those sites to my bookmarks, too bad they don't have RSS feeds. Ill look at some of the rest of them in a bit.

As for me, being Canadian, (but living in Europe) and using a lot of politics with my teaching (English teacher), I try and keep a diversified list. I'll try and list them more by theme than amount visited.

Canadian:
The CBC - Dissapointing RSS feed, they don't have too much/day, but it's always good to see what they have to say on Canadian politcs.
The Globe and Mail - The best site for at least a bit thoughtful Canadian news.
The CTV - OK, pulp, but once in awhile it's interesting to see what pulp has to say about things.
TSN - Sports, got to keep up with hockey and curling, none better.
Macleans - The Canadian equivalent of Time, some of their stuff is really great.

International:
The BBC - Probably the best English language news in the world, enough said.
The Guardian - Better analysis than the BBC, but not the sheer volume.
Al Jazeera - More balanced than what you'd think, at least the English version ... well, except for the editorial cartoons.
NY Times - Amazingly crummy RSS feed, seeing as it's one of the biggest newspapers in the US (but probably still better than the CBC).
Deutche Welle - Not the best site, either, but as I'm living in Germany ...

For actually thinking:
The Christian Science Monitor - I'm not religious, and except for a few things (see their "about us"), neither are they. What they are is the most balanced news in the US I've ever seen. They are thoughtful, honest and as far as I can see don't pander to any particular point of view.
Sign and Sight - This is only if you want to spend some time actually reading, as it's not meant for the masses. It takes articles by thinking people from across Europe and translates them into English.

Others: The Register - Tech news with a British sense of humour, and people think they are biased because of it.
Neil Gaiman's Blog - Not as interesting as it used to be, but I've learnt a lot about the book/publishing world through his blog.

Yes, I'm an information hound, and I like to see as many points of view as possible. I've tried fox news a couple of times, but most of the topics I'm interested in they've just taken things off the wire, so nothing new. What I also do is search google news when I find an article I want to get more points of view on. I don't use the service itself, but they are great for finding out who is saying what about a particular topic - you might even find a new angle that hadn't been said 100 times before.

I think there might have been a confusion here. In most cases, you are right, the university owns the intellectual property. That is, once it has become codified IP (i.e., embodied in a patent, copyright, etc.). The researchers (i.e., inventors) are all named on the patent and usually obtain a share of potential revenues once initial costs are cleared. However, part of academic freedom stipulates that the university researcher has the right to bring his findings in the public domain without seeking to protect it - unlike typical employers where the employee must disclose any findings and cannot usually 'give away' advice or product of their work away independantly. The cooling effect is usually do to misinterpretations and the perceived threat that university will force researchers to seek patents (something that is, to this date, against most universities' mission statements). I recommend Benkler's The Wealth of Networks (freely available) and Krimsky's 'Science in the Private Interest' for a good analysis of the current situation.

"Joshua Kinberg, creator of Bikes Against Bush, was arrested in NYC [original link 404d] for vandalism while being interviewed by MSNBC. Kinberg's website describes his project as 'using a Wireless Internet-enabled bicycle outfitted with a custom-designed printing device, the Bikes Against Bush bicycle can print text messages sent from web users directly onto the streets of Manhattan in water-soluble chalk". Both Wired and Popular Science [original link changed] have done stories on Kinberg's work." Update: 08/30 01:30 GMT by J : Mr. Kinberg has been released; he describes his arrest and brief stay behind bars on this MSNBC blog.

A couple of years ago we tried making a small (32-page) classified ad newspaper with OpenOffice. It worked great with a 28 page paper, but when we got up to 30 pages all kinds of weirdness started. Graphics magically moved from one page to another (even though they were anchored to the page), columns went missing randomly, and a few other things that I don't recall offhand.
 
We switched to using Scribus to do this job and it was the smartest thing we ever did. Especially now that the paper has grown to 40 pages (some weeks 44).
 
OpenOffice is great for complex documents under about 30 pages. After that it goes strange. Or at least, it did. This was pre-version 2.0 so things may have changed since then. Scribus is a better tool for the job we have for it to do, anyway, so we don't need to switch back.

Are you sure you didn't mean Gentle Male? [www.google.com]

More (slightly biased) info on CNW's dubious credentias can be found here:

http://http//www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/we_c ant_believe.php

I find it somewhat troubling that in this article John Backus is remembered primarily for the genie that he tried to put back in the bottle.

FORTRAN was utilitarian and procedural and good at enabling engineers and scientists to get work done. However, the problem with FORTRAN is the imperative pattern of though that it imposed led us to tell the computer a precise sequence of steps to accomplish each task. It doesn't offer information on dependencies, simply a "go here, do that" sequence of instructions. Imperative programs are inherently hard to reason about in terms of global state and effects and as written tend to be subject to off-by-one errors.

Backus saw this in 1978! See http://http//www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings /backus.pdf.

His insight spawned a great deal of the interest in functional programming languages. It was been credited by Paul Hudak of Haskell fame http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=72551.7255 4 (ACM membership required) (summarized here http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/classic/message4172 .html) and others as really helping to turn the tide and kept functional programming languages from being snuffed out.

A lot of people don't see the point, having never programmed in a functional programming language like Haskell or ML. However even those people see dozens of cores on the horizon and wonder how they are going to deal with the debugging issues associated with all of the threads to keep those processors churning.

Functional programming offers an alternative viewpoint that is arguably much better suited to handle multiple CPUs working on large datasets. A case for this was recently reiterated by Tim Sweeney of Epic Megagames fame who said "in a concurrent world, imperative is the wrong default!" http://www.st.cs.uni-sb.de/edu/seminare/2005/advan ced-fp/docs/sweeny.pdf.

Haskell has brought Software Transactional Memory (STM) into play offering an alternative approach to traditional mutexes and locks that is compositional in nature unlike locking models. This is an approach that isn't readily emulable in an imperative setting because of the lack of guarantees about side effects. http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/stm/ index.htm.

These are solutions to real problems that we are experiencing today, not some academic sideshow, and they arise from a school of thought that he helped bring a great deal of attention to.

If you want to do something to remember Backus take the time to learn OCaml or Haskell or even just take the time to learn how to effectively use the map and fold functions in Perl, PHP or Ruby.

It is his willingness to turn his back on what was percieved as his greatest work when confronted with a better idea for which I will remember him and I am a better programmer today for having learned what I could from his ideas.

This comparison would be completely different in Europe! In europe nearly every digital TV channel broadcasted over Cable, OTA or Sattelite is encrypted with one of many encryption standards (Conax, Irdeto, SECA, etc.).

Instead of a "CableCARD", which is used for viewing encrypted content in the US, a "Conditional Access Module" (CAM) is used in Europe, Africa and most Asian countries for all digital broadcast methods (DVB-C, -S and -T). Most TV companies supply set-top boxes with a built-in decoder and a smart-card, but the smart-card can also be used in other receivers or in a PC when you have the right CAM.
There are a lot of TV cards that can use CAM's and are very well supported by MythTV, for instance: http://http//knc1.com/gb.htm/.
Receiving HDTV or Encrypted content with MythTV is no problem in Europe at least.

The TiVo doesn't seem to exist in Europe, so I wouldn't be able to compare it to TiVo myself, since I never saw one. A very popular digital TV receiver / DVR in Europe is the Dreambox: http://www.dream-multimedia-tv.de/.
The Dreambox is an open platform, is linux-powered and doesn't have any "problems" with DRM or whatsoever. The only limitation the Dreambox and other set-top boxes have is a lack of raw computing power and that's why I prefer to have all my home entertainment on a HTPC.
And that's where the Windows (MCE) vs. Linux discussion comes back!

sorry, screwed up that URL. It's http://http//www.conservapedia.com/Judicial_Activi sm/

For everyone that says they know this guy is a shill and is arguing with a preconceived end, I didn't know thanks for posting the article and letting everyone vent a bit. This guys arguments are obviously subjective and inflamatory (reminds me of Rush Limbaugh), though his rhetoric is worth listening to in order to recognize it (I think). What you have to realize is that people will read his work and argue in the same line. The arguments are presented in a way that I might agree with about 10% of what is said, this in a debate leads to my appearance of "flip-flopping", the objective when presented with this kind of crap is too take out the foundation of your opponent.

Rob: We talk about Linux like an operating system when we compare it against Windows,

Me: Sure.

Rob: we talk about it as a company when we compare it against Microsoft,

Me: Sometimes, yes when comparing things like market share I cannot argue this

Rob: and when we describe its attributes it almost seems super-human or god like.

Me: sure (me thinks all organizations and software are superhuman :))

Rob: We talk about Linux like an operating system when we compare it against Windows,

Me: No, we're talking about Unix OS design VS. a Dos/NT hybrid OS, where Unix dates back to the 60s and dos dates to the early eighties.

Rob: we talk about it as a company when we compare it against Microsoft,

Me: Sometimes, yes when comparing things like market share I cannot argue this, but these arguments tend to be made on a case by case basis where such comparisons are applicable.

Rob: and when we describe its attributes it almost seems super-human or god like.

Me: me thinks all organizations and software are superhuman :), for instance Mr. Enderle how far out can you calculate PI? Or can yoy beat Kasperov at chess, Ford Motors as a corporation has continued the work of Henry Ford long after his death as an organization Ford is nearly immortal, how about you? Who will carry on your work after your dead?

See preperation is everything when arguing with a subjective and inflammatory nut-job, you then know what traps are being set. Especially, if someone says "Rob Enderle says..." I can now discredit them with their carefully planned argument and finish with, "http://http//www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/ index.shtml" among others.

Not quite. AAC is both patent AND license encumbered. You don't have to pay anyone to distribute or stream in AAC format, but you sure do if you want to make a decoder or an encoder. Incidentally, fraunhaufer and others made AAC.

You are incorrect on your second count, too. Until you get above 128Kb rates Ogg beats AAC and MP3. Above this rate, most people cannot tell the difference between any of them.

On a side note, the AAC-HE encoder from Apple is excellent and on par with the best available for lossy encoding.

It is amazing what Apple will do to get their quotas of 10 media stories a day.
This story broke a couple of days ago, however at that time it was a good old fashion CD and a good ear that fingered the fake.

http://http//www.gramophone.co.uk/newsMainTemplate .asp?storyID=2759&newssectionID=1/

Anyone heard of the story of the woman and the egg??

**** BREAKING NEWS..... BREAKING NEWS****
This just in:

ITunes has become self-aware and has engaged all iPods for its services. Within seconds all world hunger had been solved, Aids and Cancer removed from this earth, traffic jams dissolved, Sunshine to everyone and no wind on bicycle paths

**** BREAKING NEWS..... BREAKING NEWS****

All hail our savior the iTune/iPod union

1-800-CALL-SAM http://http//www.callsam.com/

If Jobs was serious about offering non-DRM music, he would have iTunes offer unencrypted music for artists that wanted it. Jobs essay was simply more rhetoric from his Reality Distortion Field , which, judging from the comments so far, Apple fanbois have swallowed whole. Apple has become just BS marketing and hype, trying to appear the good guys against the evil Microsoft empire. As someone with intelligence, I don't believe a word of it.

My team just finished evaluating issue trackers, and the final three that we came up with were Bugzilla, Trac and Mantis for both technical and political reasons (Mantis is used elsewhere in the company but that's not saying much since we're so big).

We ended up deciding on Trac because of its wonderful integration with SVN, we are using a lot of python in other areas of our team and it is pretty well documented, there is a great wealth of easy to install (but not always well written) plugins and other than some quirks with the ClearSiler package it is no harder to install than any of the other packages we evaluated. If you use the subversion repository (which can be used for more than code), it is really easy to make links to other tickets, specific documents inside the repository and specific revisions.

However, Trac requires Python (you'll probably want 2.5 as the next release will require it) and either mod_python or fastCGI with a compatible webserver in addition to a subversion repository. Depending on what database you choose (SQLite3 is the default but you can also use Postgre and MySQL but the MySQL support isn't perfect yet) you will have to install the appropriate Python bindings for it and if you install the current stable release you will also need ClearSilver (but make sure you check the Trac Wiki before you install as people seem to have trouble unless they use specific versions of ClearSilver).

"The consumer is not harmed in any functional way by buying from iTunes. If he is too LAZY or stupid to burn his MP3, then sorry he is JUST STUPID."

Or perhaps lives in a country where such actions are prohibited by law, e.g. the UK, which has no fair use provisions, and does not therefore allow copyrighted content to be copied from one medium to another. It's irrelevant what Apple might say about this, because they don't own the copyrights to the works they're selling on iTunes any more than a shop selling CDs does, and cannot therefore give people permission to do things with those works that are prohibited by the laws of the countries that they live in.

"Apple offer a unique BUYING experience which is tied to their iPod. This is not illegal."

This is a straw man, because nobody said it was. The Norwegians aren't asking Apple to change their shopping experience -- all they want is restrictions that prevent material bought by residents of Norway from being played on devices other than the iPod, and have offered Apple several possibilities. When one considers that this is a company who managed to change CPUs and machine architectures to completely incompatible ones without missing a beat, the probability that having to license FairPlay to other device makers or offer downloads in a choice of DRM formats will ruin their shopping experience completely and irreparably is very remote indeed.

"You display complete ignorance about music licensing."

This assertion would have carried more weight if you then didn't go on to display your own ignorance by saying:

"You have to do this because the label (who owns the copyright) demands it."

Of course, you completely fail to back this up by providing any links or quotes, so I'll provide some of each just to show that you're talking out of your rear orifice.

Link 1 is long, and will thus need concatenating (the Page= bit at the end is correct, and not due to lost data):
http://http//www.royaltydata.com/index.php?PHPSESS ID=ec99f7ba6ffbc85a051e197498dc8787&todo=showstory &header=&storyid=8&storycategory=&searchfield=&rev iewid=&Formtorq_products_Page=

An important section is quoted for your benefit:

"Currently, digital music services wishing to license Warner/Chappell's library of musical compositions for exploitation in Europe must obtain separate licenses from at least 25 different collection societies. Under Warner/Chappell's P.E.D.L. initiative, Warner/Chappell will designate several of these European collecting societies as its non-exclusive licensing agent and will authorize each of the designees to grant pan-European digital licenses in Warner/Chappell's Anglo-American repertoire. Digital music services will be able to go to any of the collecting societies designated by Warner/Chappell to obtain these multi-territory digital licenses.

Consistent with the European Commission's 2005 Recommendation mandating rightsholders be given a choice of which European collection society may administer the rightsholders' rights across multiple territories..."

The first important phrase here is "must obtain separate licenses from at least 25 different collection societies". The labels do _not_ own any of these collection services, because they represent artists who regard record companies as users of their works, as is made clear by my next link, which is to the British Music Rights page dealing with the new pan-European licensing schemes that the labels are implementing (http://www.bmr.org/page/submission-32).

Which brings us to important phrase 2: "Consistent with the European Commission's 2005 Recommendation mandating rightsholders be given a choice of which European collection society may administer

No, it isn't. Want to provide some proof? A study or something? Anything at all?

Why don't you start with some of the Gatto books or listen to the man talk (He was a while featured on the Unwelcome Guests Radio Show and you can download previous shows from this site http://http//www.unwelcomeguests.org/). You will find that the history of public schooling is indeed an international effort going back to the Prussian class room (Heil Dir dem Siegerkranz) and their endeavors to create workers that could decipher written instructions but not really read and make connections.

Oh but wait, you just told me "No that isn't so". Of course not. Since "Wikipedia rules" don't apply here and slashdot doesn't have a revert button, mind giving me something that backs up your claim?

Without re-echoing all the above "lol bittorrent" posts, I'd like to plug Public Domain Torrents. It's got all the benefits of free and easy torrenting, with the added bonus that it's completely legal stuff that not even the **AA have any power over. There are already iPod/PSP/whatever conversions for everything as well.

Many of the comments so far have suggested that the XO machines interface was limited, and it does appear that some things look more restrictive than they probably ought to be.

Still, the thing that most struck me in the demo was how easy it was for kids to build applications using EToys, a "Logo, Smalltalk, Hypercard, and StarLogo" influenced (see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_EToys "authoring system"/direct manipulation programming language. The demo didn't take that very far, unless you consider the game widget that was demoed. Clearly, this "langauge" provides a lot of room for kids to step beyond other limitations of the system. Etoys applications can apparently be uploaded, shared, and played through the browser. I can't tell if the browser can be used from within etoys, but it would be interesting if it could be.

Beyond that, it appears that it is possible to install other software on the XO laptop (see http://http//wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar#Hacking. Does anyone know if how easily children will be able to do this? I assume this means that a child can grow the function of laptop over time (to do things like extending the word processor with the functionality that is now missing).

The OLPC laptop wiki addresses the question indirectly, by stating that (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_software_task_list )"the $100 laptop will not be tied to a specific set of software or content. It will have the flexibility to change with the requirements of the student. Individuals will inevitably find individualized uses; certainly local, regional, and national requirements will drive much of the base configuration." But that is a statement of requirements rather than function. Where do things actually stand relative to that goal?

Go get and install Request Tracker from http://http//bestpractical.com/rt/

Step two: No one makes a move without creating a ticket for the job in RT. This works even better when the users can simply email their requests to rt@yourdomain and have the ticket automatically generated in the "new" queue.

Step two point five: share the joy of satisfaction at closing tickets in RT.

Step three: bask in the glow of happy management when you can show how busy yet efficient everyone is!

I know you said you wrote your one ticket system. I'd say swallow your pride and scrap it, and use RT. It's made our workflow really efficient, and upper mgt. loves seeing the work done laid right out. Remember, it doesn't matter how well you do a job if your boss (and his boss, and her boss!) don't know about it.

It is the only disk that enables me watch CNN video, Yahoo! video, and videos on http://www.youtube.com/ and http://www.video.google.com/ and http://http//www.grouper.com with no tweaking whatsoever.

This disk also enabled me play Yahoo! games which means Java was [properly] installed. Sound and video worked great and the fonts for the first time, looked better, though more work was still needed on this front.

One thing I did not like was the CnR warehouse for it complained about my email address being invalid and complained again that the same email address had already been used!

The other complaint I have with Freespire is the fact that I could not customize my KDE to my liking. But overall, this Freespire distro is the best I have seen for the desktop in the Linux world.

"IE: there is NOTHING bad about piping cats"

I disagree completely, there are some very serious side effects.

http://http//uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Kitten_Huffing# Undesirable_Effects_of_Kitten_Huffing

At the risk of going off-topic, I'll address your mis-founded objections.

Half LIfe released in November of 1998. Would you happen to recall the game consoles that were around in 1998? Don't say "Sega Dreamcast". (unless you happened to live in Japan at the time)

That's right... Sega Saturn, PlayStation (one) and N64. That's about it. 3D capabilities were veritably primitive for the latter two, and the Dreamcast was certainly well before its time. Even so, a significant 3D title at that time was Virtua Fighter, which you have duly mentioned.

The Saturn (and 32X) had the title, but while the fighting figures on the screen had "joints" that served to mimic life-like movement, the shapes still reflected their simple-polygon parts and did not truly "join" where the separate parts moved. (non-deformed)

In mentioning "skeletal modeling", I was implying that the texture-deformation of modern game characters is partly from Valve's efforts. The texture deformation was based on how a core structure—or skeleton—was embedded within the greater, fleshed-out model. Rather than being comprised of separate primitives, the models for Half Life became modeled as a single form, then articulated with skeletons which the engine could interpret in real-time. This resulted in more life-like "skin" and "clothes" and realistic (though still puppet-like) "speaking" of the on-screen characters.

Revolutionary aspects of the original Half Life include skeletal animation, (interpolated skin-animation, rather than simple, intersecting polygons) seamless storyline and auto-saving. Some of these features were also part of Quake II that came around nearly a month later. Animation techniques since the first Quake (1996) had been evolving from the polygon and primitives "jointed" together, but the poly's themselves would have visible artifacts where the shapes clipped through each other. Skeletal animation and skinning changed most that to create the more-human and "rounder" characters we know today. (notable also is introduction of NURBS into 3D modeling, however the mathematics behind it have been around since the 50's)

Incidentally, NURBS surfaces have more to do with "vertex interpolation" than jointed texture-deformation.

Now for some quid pro quo...

• Skeletal animation was neither introduced nor invented by Valve, AFAIK the consoles of the era required skeletal animation since they couldn't handle vertex interpolation properly

• You're half right, Valve did neither of those things alone. I fail to see however, where this point in any way disagrees with my parent post. I, personally haven't developed any games for the PS1, N64, 32X or Saturn, so I cannot say exactly what went into the modeling efforts. (did you?) As I am familiar with contemporary 3D modeling, I know that a "skeleton" is not actually necessary to animate a 3D model.

• Games like Virtua Fighter and Mario 64 have segmented models where each segment corresponds to a bone.

• The correlation does exist, but that doesn't mean that it's true "skeletal modeling" at work. I know for a fact that you don't need "bones" (skeletal segments that attach to each other, surrounded by "flesh" polygons) to joint polygons or primitives together; all it requires is a vertex anchor. Mario makes for a poor example, since he doesn't have any contextual or free-form interactions, and only required a few, distinct animations. Even your example with Virtua Fighter is misplaced since many of the fighting "moves" require relative position

...this bit from Ballmer:

http://http//www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2066535 ,00.asp/
The perfect follow-up peice.

But then again, No Real libertarian is a Objectivist, they are instead Objectionists.

"For the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I do not join or endorse any political group or movement. More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called 'hippies of the right,' who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs."

Ayn Rand - September 1971

"Brief Summary" - The Objectivist
As quoted From the Ayn Rand Institute's website

"Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to 'do something.' By 'ideological' (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the 'libertarian' hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies."

Ayn Rand, "What Can One Do?" - Philosophy: Who Needs It

Aynnie used to be a darling of libertarian leaning conservatives, until the great bookburning of the reagancomdedy, when someone explained to the hammerheads that she was really a godless slut, and they burned her books along with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

You may have noticed that i use a small l for libertarian. This is intentional, because what passes for the Libertarian Party has very little to do with true libertarianism. All those clowns seem to want to do is eliminate the minimum wage, and end eminent domain, they could care less about other things, like due process of law and habeas corpus, you know, REAL LIBERTY.

Your anti-global warming quip was off mark also. Most anti-global warming tripe is passed by the corporate funded faux libertarian tanks with Cato at its helm. Something closer to True libertarian thought can be found at Raimondo's antiwar dot com. Those faux-libertarian think tanks are doing a great disservice to libertarianism with their anti global warming garbage. They should instead be focusing upon effective market solutions to greenhouse emissions, instead of letting lame-brained leftyist anti-market solutions muck it up even worse. One quick and easy method would be to apply the accounting principle of future value for remediation of greenhouse gases done today, as well as factoring future valuations into present-day increased greenhouse gas emissions. That would greatly reduce the balance sheet liability for the cost of remediation, and place the burden where it belonged. See how easy that is?

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are -- if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

Once you are on this track the money will follow.

The group is calling for an investigation of Online Advertising and Consumer Tracking and Targeting Practices http://http//www.democraticmedia.org/issues/privac y/FTCprivacypr.html/. It isnt just focusing on M$ but others as well. Hmmmm people see M$ and the blinkers go on I guess.

In Canada our postal service is SO much cheaper than UPS or FedEx that it's ludicrous. Unfortunately medium companies don't use it even though it has all the functionality of UPS or FedEX.

Plus as privately managed companies they have all kinds of fun stuff like this http://http//www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServ er?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article &cid=1160776234367&call_pageid=970599119419 which I suppose is exactly why the Republicans are "cutting costs" in this area.

If anyone can tell me how to create sexy URL's it would be appreciated.

This has nothing to do with terrorism and just a small bit with security. I'm a Firefighter/Paramedic in Northern Florida. Most large incidents are picked up by local news agencies within hours and the information widely broadcast.

Publically disseminating private emergency call information in realtime can compromise a fire scene investigation and open medical responders up to HIPAA http://http//www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/ violation lawsuits. A patient's PHI (Personal/Private Health Information) includes anything that connects their name/address/whatever to their medical condition. This is also the reason EMTs and Paramedics in our EMS company are not allowed to take photos of motor vehicle crashes because that photo then becomes part of the patients medical record and must be protected under HIPAA regulation. We know that anyone with a radio scanner can listen to live dispatches and that's why we never give names over the radio. Briefly looking at Seattles dispatch page I don't see any PHI.

My opinion is that Seattle is overreacting a bit.

Florida Highway Patrol put incidents up on their website with a delay...http://www.1stresponder.com/First Responder News delays their "live" dispatch stories about 30 minutes. As long as no personal information is given the public has a right to know what emergencies are going on in their neighborhood. Many fire departments and EMS services are struggling to keep up with these information issues but it ultimately comes down to patient privacy. Would you want the world to know that you called an ambulance because you tripped over a garden hose and did a face-plant on your patio?

"...in most cases, the software itself from a purely technical standpoint is awesome."

Hmm. More than a little bit optimistic, I'd say. Nonetheless, everything else in your article is spot-on. In fact, it was brilliant! Let me repeat two points, just because they deserve to be replayed in slow motion. (and one could be edited to the very core of the idea)

"Every time you take what you think is some kind of "stand," you're the only ones who care."
"You're...helping to make the very scenario with...things that you fear more likely..."

Right on. Can I get an Amen brother?

Linux is actually a GOOD OS! Many of the related tools are GOOD TOOLS! Personality defects who stomp around, getting into pissing matches with other misfits about how free their code is (while neglecting such niceties as personal hygiene) drive normal people away from open source, and back into the waiting arms of Microsoft. The honest truth is that nobody gives a rat's ass about the license. They want a web browser and an office suite, they don't want to do any work for it (especially thinking!), and they'd like it to be free. Firefox is (a) one of these tools, (b) free, and (c) almost effort free. Licenses are irrelevant. Politics are irrelevant. Power is irrelevant (either the computing power required to run it, or the features and configurability of it). Just give them a web browser that's free, works on all web pages, and doesn't involve anything difficult like compiling or configuration.

Everything that doesn't fit this mold ultimately hurts the OSS world. Hell, it hurts the entire non-Microsoft world. Thanks for coming out, folks.

Interesting post, but I had no idea that STOL meant Short Take-Off and Landing

> I love how you can just ignore a multimillion dollar judgement.
> It's their attitude that I find amusing - they really couldn't give a shit.

Not really. If someone in China went into their local court and got a default judgement
against you ordering you to pay them $100 Million, would you pay up?

I'm sure Spamhaus' lawyers know what they're doing.
The case was a shambles, they weren't even served properly:
http://http//www.spamhaus.org/legal/answer.lasso?r ef=1

Carrie and The Dead Zone both made an American Library Assoc list (props to an earlier poster for finding the list) of the 100 most frequently banned books in the US between 1990 and 2000.

"Best author" is quite a commendation. Stephen King will never win the Nobel Prize for literature or anything remotely approaching that, but hey, if being the best author has any correlation at all to the number of film adaptations that came up far short of the book while earning the author gadzillions and not sullying future literary sales, I'll gladly concede the point. The man's career is stronger than ammonia.

Were did you get these figures. Are you counting the PS3 as a blu-ray player?

HD-DVDs are can be backwards compatable with standard DVDs so currently there are I don't know 1 billion players that can play HD-DVDs.

http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD-DVD/ stats: HD DVD can offer both the current DVD and HD DVD formats on one disc. Can blu-ra do that?

I remember reading The Official Book of Ultima. http://http//www.notableultima.com/collectibles/Bo oks_OBOU.html It had interviews with Lord British as well as hints for completing I-V1. The Ultima games always had great documentation as well as nice cloth maps.

Where's Richard Feynman when you need him?

Mr. Papf's Perpetual Motion

http://http//www.indian-skeptic.org/html/fey1.htm

http://http//www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/6b3b/ / There are so many ways these devices are being used. I find file storage a welcome addition to anything I keep on me. Now, where is that file... in my phone, my pen, my thumb drive, or my knife?

A "friend" of mine has only tried DMT http://http//www.ayahuasca.com/ ayahuasca once, to help with some internal problems.

The quote "You're so busy going from A to B that you forget the 24 letters inbetween." rings true.

Here's an excerpt from the recorded trip:

I don't understand. I have been living all my life under this ... bubble but now it has been peeled away.

Why do we exist?

What are we heading towards?

Ah I see... Life... so fragile. It arises out of chaos, one moment to the next. In a sea of chaos we are, yet now the storm is quiet. How long can we last?

Humans, strange creators! Like ants, they enact repeative patterns, they are blind to what's around them, just like ants. Each mind is a part of a whole!

When a mind is extinguished returned to chaos it does ....until it arises into ordered state once again. Never ending cycle!

So much suffering, I can feel it all! It hurts! Eternal hell, etenernal heaven, it all exists in the infinite cosmos, in this infinite chaos.

I must respect the sancitity of all beings. They are all extensions of one being, including me.

...I don't want to return to chaos, I will make this one count before the next cycle. I'm scared :(

-----------

P.S. I'm against recreational drugs (like cocain, canabis). Though I think it's healthy for an individual to experience different mind states so they can have differing opinions on his/her current lifestyle, weather it be through music, art...

Who killed E3?

Not exactly:

I was taught assembler
in my second year of school.
It's kinda like construction work --
with a toothpick for a tool.
So when I made my senior year,
I threw my code away,
And learned the way to program
that I still prefer today.

Now, some folks on the Internet
put their faith in C++.
They swear that it's so powerful,
it's what God used for us.
And maybe it lets mortals dredge
their objects from the C.
But I think that explains
why only God can make a tree.

the rest or sung