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You can get a little more life out of them by using the Unofficial Mozilla 1.3a for Mac OS9. It is MUCH better than 1.2.1, but alas is still very dated...

There isn't a filter for them at the moment, but even if it isn't added, the server dialog in steam shows a "B" icon next to servers which are running bots (see the 2nd column in the image I've linked to), so you can easily tell which server to avoid if you don't want bots in your online game.

Well...

In Project Gotham Racing you can race several Porsches (Porsche Boxster S, Porsche Cayenne Turbo, Porsche 550 Spyder, Porsche 911 RS 2.7, Porsche Carrera Coupe, Porsche 911 Turbo, Porsche 911 GT3, Porsche 959, Porsche Carrera GT, Porsche 911 GT1). Did Bizarre Creations/MS pay money that Sony did not have?

The Grand Turismo series (at least in GT3) at least makes up for the no-Porsches rule by having Ruf models (I believe the CTR2 is the "ultimate" car you can get). It's not an "imaginary" model at all. If anything, the Ruf CTR2 (especially) makes the "supercars I dream of list" for a lot of enthusiasts. You're just unlikely to ever see a Ruf outside of Germany (and it is a Ruf, not a "Ruf Porsche").

And the Cayenne? Porsche has had record profits because of the Cayenne. If I was an employee and my dividends just went up 30/60 cents per share I would be AOK with it. Unfortunately the Cayenne is distasteful (I'm not talking about the Turbo and I can let the S slide without too much else to say). But the base model seems like a gussied-up Volkswagen -- no wait, it is! And a gussied-up Touareg base model at that. I digress.

and if this new... uh... material is just graphite, can you send me some graphite bundles from the jewlery shop? it has as much a right being called planiar diamond as graphite.

Only if because you don't know what you're talking about.

Let me hit you with some undergraduate-level chemistry:

Graphite is the planar crystal conformation of carbon where each carbon atom binds to three others, forming plane unit rings of 6 carbon atoms. See this image, for example. The bonds between the layers are not chemical bonds. They are van der Waals bonds, which are intermolecular bonds, and are far weaker than a real chemical bond.

Diamond, on the other hand, is a conformation of carbon where the atoms bind with four others in a tetrahedral fashion. See this picture. All bonds here are equally strong, and far much stronger than the interplane bonds in graphite. That's why diamond is hard.

Fullerenes on the other hand, are bonded like graphite, with three bonds on each carbon. However, in the case of these molecules, there are both five and six-member rings, causing a curved structure. See this picture.

These are the three distinct types of stuctures pure carbon can have. This monolayer compound belongs to the first. It is a monolayer of graphite, or a single 'graphite molecule' if you want.

Many of these appear to be typos from Japanese domains:

WinGroove - it might not seem like much, but it is a kickass software synth.

The additional Japanese alphabets do not make Japanese more complicated. In fact, the kana systems (hiragana and katakana) were originally introduced to allow lower classes and women (at the time considered academically incapable of using Chinese characters) to read and write.

Reading and writing of hiragana and katakana in modern Japanese is much easier than English. Although there are slightly more (about double) the number of characters than in the roman alphabet, each character represents a single syllable, and only that syllable, with very, very few exceptions.

Thus knowing the pronunciation of the word means knowing how to write it in kana. Knowing how to read the characters means automatically knowing the pronunciation. Compare that to English where the same group of characters can have many different pronunciations. (Example: through, bough, trough, rough, cough)

Manga are not written at any level lower than other books targetted at the same audience. Of course, manga targetted at small children will omit or provide the pronunciation for difficult kanji. But so do storybooks and school textbooks.

And although manga tends to have less words than a novel, many manga series span thousands of pages and involve highly complicated story lines and character relationships. Although they can be considered "lighter" reading material page-for-page, it would generally be impossible for an illiterate person to enjoy manga above the kiddie/toilet humour or pornographic levels. Trust me, I've tried.

The problem is that the more high-brow the text, the more likely it is to be written in kanji. Kanji is a one-symbol-is-one-word system. You have to have a bloody large vocabulary to make any sense of it.

Firstly, Chinese characters (hanzi) do not represent words, they represent morphemes. For example, no single character can represent tense, inflection, or plurality. Secondly, Japanese kanji are not the Chinese alphabet, as the writer above suggests. Although originally introduced by the Chinese, modern kanji has far fewer characters than the Chinese alphabet. There are also many "kokuji", kanji characters made in Japan which do not exist in Chinese writing.

Except for ancient Japanese works and Chinese poems, no Japanese text is ever written entirely in kanji. (The only exception would be very short phrases like "no tresspassing" on a sign.) In fact, it is impossible to write a verb or adjective in modern Japanese without using one of the kana systems.

Using obscure kanji certainly makes a work more literary and "high-brow", much in the same way that using obscure vocabulary makes an English passage more academic. However, these characters are out of place in literature aimed at a general level.

According to the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) codes of 1978 (rev. 1983), the current number of kanji in current use in Japanese is 6,353. This, of course, includes many thousands of characters which are very rarely used. The approximately 1,000 characters learned in elementary school cover approximately 90% of characters used in newspapers, general literature, and of course, manga written at a general level.

References:

data adapted from Miyajima T et al 1982. Zusetsu Nihongo. (Kodokawa Shoujiten 9). Kadokawa.

Nagamura, Hirofumi 2000. "Chinese Characters, Literacy, and the Japanese Model". http://www.kh.rim.or.jp/~nagamura/literacy.html

You see these things ALL OVER Tokyo...Cool!

• Site Gutted by Sony based on DMCA
  My Take:
  This site is great. I think this is exactly what we need. The only thing that really got removed per the story referenced below is "virgin" copies of Aibo-Life, because everything you could possibly want, and more, is available, including "RCodePlus", which appears to be a utility for writing and transferring RCode ("Plus" some aibohack.com extensions) to your Aibo.
  
  Summary:
  http://www.aibohack.com had much of its content removed because it built on Sony's AiboWare, but added new features.
  Among its programs:
  AiboScope: Wirelessly transmits images from robot's camera to a computer
  Disco Aibo: Execute a programmable dance when Aibo hears a certain song.
  Brainbo: Uses voice-recognition. When Aibo hears a phrase, Aibo selects an appropriate response and "says" it.
  
  Source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-000086726nov01. story?coll=la-headlines (old)
  http://www.latimes.com/search/lat_all.jsp?Query=Ai bo (new, needs registration)
• AIBO Uses Copy-Protection on its Memory Sticks
  My Take:
  While it would probably be trivial to overcome Sony's copy-protection algorithms, it's not worth the bother. $35 for a PMS (Programmable Memory Stick) is money well spent, and if all the code consists of is bootstrapping into the WLAN, we'd only need one for each 'bot.
  
  Summary:
  Sony makes red/pink memory sticks specifically for the Aibo. They contain copy-protection code that means that you can't copy their programs from one stick to another (unless, of course, the second one already had that program installed).
  
  Source: http://www.aibohack.com/123/format.htm
• Japan-Only AiboWare Releases
  My Take:
  Nothing new here.
  
  Summary:
  Sony released several pieces of AiboWare that are only available in Japan. Based on what a friend of mine could manage to decode, there's nothing here to pique our interest.
  
  Source: http://www.yk.rim.or.jp/~hkora11/aibo_2nd-g/kAiboW are.htm (in Japanese)
• More-or-less Complete 210 Hardware Reference
  My Take:
  Note that the 200Mhz (!) CPU uses the MIPS IV instruction set, for which there are no shortage of compilers. We may be in luck yet! (Of course, we might have to replace the current flash ROM with a custom one to develop that luck, but based on other readings, there seems to be very little code in the flash ROM and a heck of a lot of JPEGs of the development team.) You want to read this page.
  
  Source: http://www.aibohack.com/210/hardware.htm
• Brain Surgery: a Tool for Editing AiboLife
  My Take:
  An excellent tool, but not very applicable to our particular challenge. Nonetheless, a useful resource of which to be aware.
  
  Summary:
  Basically, Brain Surgery allows users to view and edit the data Aibo "feels". What does this mean? You can abuse your Aibo, and fix it yourself--no Sony required.
  
  Source: http://www.aibohack.com/2or3/browser.htm

I tried hacking around with the heliwm code. In general I like the ideas of the window manager.

Here's the link: http://www.cc.rim.or.jp/~hok/heliwm/

The thing that I like about it, is that all of the standard window functions are easy to control with different key combinations.

I would have to disagree strongly. For starters, to use the Jog Dial effectively all one needs is a third party application such as PowerJog. This gives me the ability to do everything from the Jog Dial, from going through menus to clicking on buttons, while adding scrolling functionality to essentially all apps. The only things I still need to my stylus for is Graffiti and AvantGo links.

The memory stick is a godsend for people who use their handhelds to read books (I suggest Smoothy, which uses the Jog Dial to change auto-scrolling speed). I have the entire Lord of the Rings on my CLIE and don't have to pay with reduced space for my apps. Also, there are a handful of programs that are kind of large for keeping in memory but that I still want to pull out every once in a while. For example, I keep LispMe on the Memory Stick so that if I write a Scheme program in MemoPad I can move LispMe on to it just long enough to run it, not taking up any permanent space. I can think of dozens of other uses for the memory stick off the top of my head that do not involve backup, and that's without even waiting for developers to really start working it into their applications.

So the Jog Dial and the MemoryStick remain useful beyond anything the Palm Vx offers. Then we get into opinions:

I like the fact that the CLIE is narrower. It feels nicer in my hand; more like a small notepad (the paper type, people. Remember those? Very high resolution, blue lines accross a white screen-like surface? :) than the Palm Vx, which always felt a little too wide for my taste. The side effect of this is that the screen is much sharper, but not so ridiculous as the m100 which makes everything on it look like spider trails.

As far as accessories go, it is true that the CLIE is currently barren. But so was the Visor when it first came out. Sony is developing tech that allows a MemoryStick to essentially double as a Springboard Module. This in itself is enough to counter arguments about the CLIE not having accessories. And BTW, I personally like the case. :)

Finally, as to video and sound and such, I would like to point out that there are thousands of programs written for the PalmOS that are downloaded every day that the vast majority of people would look at and say "WTF? Who on earth would want to do that?" Fact of the matter is, the strength of PalmOS is that you can make it do anything without sacrificing the ease of use of the basic functions. If you want to play movies or sound and have the space on your handheld, you can, and without really bloating the interface.



----

but I seen to recall that in Japan the patent laws are more liberal in some regards than in the USA.

(Of course, if you are expert in Japanese Patent law, please feel free to correct any errors, and make me look like a complete fool) ;-)

Japaness law has changed recently, but this is the way it has been for many years. Here is a link to a specific case that is easy enough to follow, and illustrates the point well enough. It also reveals recent shifts in Japanese law:

The Epoch case is truly an "epoch" making decision in Japanese case law.

First, the court's analysis in the case shows a stark contrast with Japanese courts' analyses in early decisions on claim interpretation.

These decisions relied on the inventor's recognition theory and limited the protection scope to cover only embodiments expressly disclosed in the specification.

This rule applied to both functionally defined claims and structurally defined claims.

However, the Tokyo District Court clearly rejected this view by refusing to use embodiments to limit the claim scope.

Further, the addition of functions or steps did not prevent the court from finding infringement in Epoch case. This contrasts highly with some early cases.

It goes something like this. Minor variations qualified the unit as a separate patent.

The upshot probably is not as serious as needing to have patents on green cars vs blue cars (for example), but patents had to be on specific implementations of things. I am not enough of a lawyer to know how much of this is still the case.

But Reverse engineering so that there are some marginal performance differances was common, and there are a lot of copycats that did exactly that. (Sometime old habits die hard.) You build something, say a car engine. They reverse engineer it, find out all of the really important stuff like your design tricks, and them implement them in their own designs.

This situation is really similar to learning code by reading code. The problem is in the setup costs to get production ramped up.

In the USA it is a little more liberal, in that patent can cover more general principles. Things, for example, like the integrated circuit. They did not have to patent all possible circuit implementations of that technology. And their Patent ran out after the usual length of time.

But this is where we get into trouble, because this is where patents get applied to software. A possible incorrect analogy is made between something that involves a manufacturing process (an engine, for example) compared to something that does not.

Quick research reveals that Japans' Patent law was revised in 1998 to correct some of the problems inherent in this. Here is a link to a quick summaryThe important section in this has to do with Design law.

This is all interesting in that it provides a practical example to the problems in different implementations of Patent Law. It has interesting parallels to the the discussions regarding software design, etc.

Unfortunately, this post may be a little vague (and LONG). Please bear with me, since a few people might learn from my mistakes.

I started a webpage a little bit after coming back from E3 1998 on Pokemon (yeah, I know). I was a big fan at the time, and I figured that making a webpage on the subject would be a good idea seeing that there were a total of TWO English webpages on it at the time. So I contacted the owner of one of the japanese sites I visited regularily, and kept in touch with him while getting more information about the Japanese shows.

My webpage was finally completed two months later. My site was being hosted by a service provider that I had been with for a while, and while I had to pay for my site to be hosted (I had another webpage at the time), it was TOO bad -- only $25 USD/year.

Not many people visited my site, since the craze hadn't started yet. I was barely getting any hits, and my daily bandwidth was virtually non-existent.

I'd also like to point out at this point that I didn't have a single banner ad on my site, and that yearly $25 USD was coming out of my own pocket. This was probably my first mistake.

In September of that year, I started Computer Systems Tech. at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. It's also when the craze REALLY started, and my bandwidth shot up like a rocket.

I was striving for my page to be the most complete page about the subject that was out there -- definetely my second mistake. My focus was entirely too wide, and as a result, it took me about 5-6 hours every night to update my page. Combined with married life and school, the whole thing was starting to become a big strain on me by December of that year. I was working alone on this page, and I didn't think of asking anyone to help me. (BIG mistake!)

I had on my page pictures, small MPEG movies and a ton of information. In January or February of the following year, I found that my bandwith had shot up to a whopping 1 GB per day. 1 GB! I didn't say anything to my service provider, since the rate for such traffic was higher than I could afford. I also found out that people were blatantly stealing my content, word for word, and placing it on their sites with MY links, and calling it their own. Updates were starting to get sparse at this point, since I was in second semester, and I was getting about 400 e-mails per day.

Around this time, my service provider got bought by another company, and their cheerfully advised me to lower my bandwith to 200 MB/day or they'd have to make me pay $1,000 USD/year to keep the page hosted. Considering that I was a jobless college student, I asked if there were ways so that people could stop linking to my stuff. They said that there was, and they'd "get back to me". They never did.

Finally, I think it was a few months after that that I gave up entirely on the site. It pained me because I had put in so much work, money and effort into it. They advised me that I had to pay the above amount in 15 days or my account would be locked. Strangely enough, the page hasn't been deleted yet (and it's been two years), but I can't even go into my account and delete everything myself to save face.

The moral of this story, webmasters, is this:

• Banner ads may suck, but unfortunately, they bring in SOME form of revenue. It's hard to find tasteful adservers, but they're out there. Try to find an adserver that lets you customize the type of ads that show up on your page.
• Get someone to help you! Put a notice on your page that you need help. If the person's genuinely interested and doesn't know a shred of HTML, take the time to teach them. You'll be rewarded in the end with a less work to do, and you'll have taught someone the wonderful ways of HTML.
• Focus on one thing! Trying to focus on everything was my worst mistake. Taking 6-7 hours to update a page every night really sucks, no matter how much you love your site.

This was long, but I hope someone's going to benefit from this. The page is still out there, by the way, but I sure as heck won't put the URL here. It's not that I think my page sucks because of what the content is... it's that I'm ashamed to have been forced to just let it moulder out there in the vastness of cyberspace.

- Firecaster

29 days until I graduate

Oh, but M$ IS the evil spawn of Satan - just look how you can change "Bill Gates" into ASCII, then add 3 (for III) and get 666, or did you know that you can rearrange the letters of "Microsoft Incorporated" to spell "Sacred to moronic profit"?? What more proof do you need?!?!

But seriously, if history is any guide, and unless they've suddenly sprouted a 'nice' gene, I'd be very suspicious of anything the cash flow sucking vampires do, or any 'R&D' they offer as tantamount to the privitization and commoditization of what should remain a public utility.

Chuck