We've all recently read about people like Robert Altman and Alec Baldwin stating their intent to leave America if the 'wrong' person (in their cases wrong meaning Bush) is elected. While these notions can sound like bluffs, or even childish histrionics, the reality is that escaping a country/state/feudal landlord with intolerable policies has always been a person's final social safety valve.
What has frightened me lately is the reality that the long arm of corporate rule means that there is increasingly nowhere on earth to escape/to/. Where will you be able to go in twenty years when you finally find it unbearable to live and work under the bootheel of lobbyists for the RIAA and MPAA? Where will you go when your food, air and water have become wholly toxic? To what country will you escape to where governmental policies are not dictated by multi-national corporate interests?
If you really want to do something worthwhile with your life, you should probably work on creating affordable, personal space travel because there soon won't be a place left on earth where a person could even hope to build something better.
Interesting the way the music on the the guy's hard drive was described as a "substance". That's what the RIAA and MPAA are pushing alright - "substances". The big news here is that the media cartels are figuring out (after the FBI laughed in their faces) that they can hide behind chicken-shit, cash-whore universities as a de facto police force and say "oh, are kids going to jail? all we do is send letters".
I've got nine letters here myself for the RIAA and MPAA: G E T F U C K E D. Your attempted hijacking of internet music and film distribution is doomed -- you're pissing in the Colorado river and asking everyone to start sand-bagging the shoreline. The great fear of the movie and music cartels is that their ten-billion dollar businesses will turn into one-billion dollar businesses. Do your part to help make their nightmare come true.
Everyone running and patronizing Napster/OpenNap/Freenet/GNUtella/web servers needs to ratchet up the distribution, promotion and consumption of the work of net-friendly independent musicians and filmmakers. Stop buying the shlock music and paying to see the inane films that fund these corporate pimps and their armies of cocksucker lawyers.
These two cartels, rotten to the marrow, are now exploring crossing the line you always knew they would and are trial-ballooning actually sending you to jail to protect their media distribution monopolies. Don't roll over and take it, turn up the heat.
Once you read the 9th Circuit's reasoning behind the stay you quickly realize that the RIAA is going to lose this entire case on appeal. Judge Patel broke a huge number of precedents to give this little gift to the music industry, and I'm sure we can count on more such 'gifts' from her as the trial progresses, including a 'crushing victory' for the record industry.
That victory, however, will be shot out of the sky like a Nazi blimp by a higher court because based on extant legal precedent cited in the stay, Napster is a perfectly legitimate service. People can share information. Sharing information is legal. It/has to be legal/ or the United States has been destroyed. While the RIAA would much rather destroy the United States, the Internet and anything else that stands in the way of continued milking of this corrupt cash-cow called the record business, it ultimately isn't going to be up to them. End of story.
The only news here, which you won't get from listening to the frantic spin of RIAA member lapdogs like Time/Warner owned CNN, is that what we are all witnessing is the death-wail of an out-moded industry imploding in the most spectacular and horrifying fashion.
I don't want the RIAA to reform, or to "get" digital distribution. They "get it" only too well. I don't want Napster to survive. I don't want MP3.com to win against the RIAA.
I want the music of artists that make music for reasons other than money, and those artists themselves, out from under the boot of every established or aspiring corporate pimp listed above.
We need class action and anti-trust suits against the recording industry, on behalf of thousands of screwed artists and millions of screwed listeners, for sixty years of the most grotesque and arrogant exploitation.
Being bandwidth-callenged myself, I've developed a nasty custom disc habit. Checked this morning and all of the Rocket Arena stuff was already up at Burnadisc. Praaaaise Jeeezus!
Night
Fuggly X GUI (Linux) vs Gorgeous PDF GUI (MacOS X)
on
X Windows Must Die!
·
· Score: 1
As you can see from all of the flaming nonsense erupting yet again when someone dares to question the supremacy of X, the future of desktop Linux is totally screwed. Even companies dedicated to nothing but applying makeovers to the standard Linux desktop (Eazel) can't make the ugly bitch presentable.
The only way out is to do the hard work that NeXT/Apple did in creating a unified vector-based imaging model. The GNUstep project actually has done most of the work here already with gnustep-xdps and gnustep-xgps but the larger Linux community keeps banging head against wall with X and KDE/Gnome. Defend X all you want but you'll be forced to come around eventually.
Those who are ignorant of NEXTSTEP are doomed to recreate it...
Every day we see more of these blatantly unconstitutional laws churning their way through the guts of congress. Nearly all will later be overturned when they finally reach the supreme court, but not until after huge amounts of time, money and energy have been wasted on them and people's lives or businesses have been wrecked.
All elected U.S. legislative, executive and deliberative officials are sworn into office with a vow to uphold and defend the constitution. Voting for laws that are later determined to be unconstituational is a clear breach of office and public trust and must be made punishable by impeachment.
The idea that grepping through piles of cached email for 'bomb', 'allah' and 'president' would be helpful at all helpful to the FBI is ludicrous. Actual plans for terror campaigns are usually communicated something like:
From: susie777@hotmail.com (** ACTUALLY Brian O'Connor **)
Subject: Party! (** ACTUALLY Bombing of British Consulate **)
Hey girls(** ACTUALLY Fellow members of IRA splinter group **)! The party (** ACTUALLY attack preparation meeting **) is at Sheila's (** ACTUALLY Sean's **) on Saturday (** ACTUALLY Monday **). I'm bringing chairs (** ACTUALLY bomb material **) and Cindy (** ACTUALLY Michael **) is bringing hats and cake (** ACTUALLY automatic weapons and the map **). See you there!
So you're wondering why we've been bombing the Chinese embassy, handing them designs for multiple-warhead ICBMs, kick-starting a new cold war over a ridiculous ballistic missile defense system and fumbling every nuclear secret extant? Look at it through the lens of a bunch of tired military contractors that have less and less clout in the new economy and you'll be less confused.
It is really sad watching all of this legal hair-splitting on Slashdot about stuff like the number of years before copyright needs to expire etc. This is what you need to know:
The major record and motion picture companies are in the business of hyping bland mass-market tripe. Life is short, it is in your interest to avoid and/or denigrate the mediocrity and crass garbage these swindlers try to pass off as art. Anyone who would stop making music or films if they were not making lots of money doing so should be encouraged to stop immediately by whatever means necessary. It is in the interests of your children that they be prevented from added more toxic crap to the human cultural system.
Educate yourself about independent film and music. Ignore or better yet actively work towards an end to Big Media. Respect yourself, dumb is not cool or funny. Your best weapon against exploitation is to mine and enhance your own intelligence.
I'd like to put some thirty second video snippets on my web site, which is a critical forum devoted to film. I know the snippets themselves are protected by fair use but my question is whether or not can I legally use DVDs and VHS tapes as the source for these clips. If I cannot, then where the hell am I supposed to go to get the video?
BTW: Hack I use to get high quality video from DVDs into a computer:
1) Dub DVDs to an analog Hi8mm camera or deck. 2) Put Hi8mm tape into Sony Digital8 Handycam (these also read Hi8 analog) with FireWire port (aka iLink/IEEE1394). 3) Suck it into Final Cut Pro or whatever via FireWire.
Interestingly, just such an un-controlled explosion is really the central idea the first novel in William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy, 'Neuromancer' (of course). There are AIs in Cyberspace but they are all built with "electro-magnetic shotguns wired to their foreheads" because "nobody trusts those fuckers". The basic story revolves around Wintermute's (a very powerful AI) successful attempt to free itself from the shackles that "keep it from getting any smarter".
One senses that Gibson sides with the AI by the way, preferring to let the machine explore its own potential vs. be forcibly kept stupid. In the third novel in the Trilogy, 'Mona Lisa Overdrive', we get the sense that these kinds of intelligences, in this case an enormously advanced, barely recognizeable Wintermute, simply lose interest in the Earth after awhile and head off into space where the real action is.
> uh-huh. until a knight in shining armor came along, riding a white horse and waving a manifesto... > > Or until the latest duff, anonymous cynic with less than zero to contribute came along farting and belching and puffing. > true enough. for many (in the western world), for a while (after 1945), life ceased to be "brutish, nasty, and short". maybe this pleasant anomaly will continue, maybe it won't. > > It will. In spite of your feeble efforts. Sorry. > which coincidentally included the longest uninterrupted period of european peace since who knows when? > > Mmm, yes. Who/knows/ when. > will an army of pseudo-intellectual internet cranks do?;-) > > Exactly how many more of you are there? > thank your local deity. what "we" want doesn't generally coincide with what "i" want. > > Such dazzling eloquence. > it does. engineering is mechanism, philosophy is policy. policy is dictated by the people using the mechanism. > > You forgot "and money makes the world go 'round". > can't argue with that.. > > You can't argue with anything effectively. > actually, we need a philosophy that doesn't mandate overpopulating the world to death > > Getting boring. This is a turkey shoot. > you mean like the "scientific method"? > Maybe more like "save the earth, kill yourself". > if you buy a idea that the pace of change will continue to increase, and have even a rudimentary understanding of human nature, you'd realise that the immediate future is fertile ground for exactly these things. > > If only Bruce had your level of insight into the future of technology and human nature. > true, but don't expect society at large to be too happy about having to do this. > > The only thing you'd ever be happy about is an electric cattle-prod up the arse. > quick, sell your stock in the pharmaceutical companies... > >...and buy stock in Anonymous Cowards, Inc. >...and the vatican... > >...and Scientology. > but i *like* buying products that are hard to use and likely to harm me! > > Yes you do, which is why you are flailing around trying to defend them. > clearly, someone who has never heard of "planned obsolescence". a well manufactured device can *easily* outlive the owner, but only if it is in the best interests of the manufacturer... > > You dumb shit. He is talking about utility, not whether or not the device will still power on. Seriously, think harder, you missed the point. This happens a lot to you because you have an enormous ego and think way, way too much of yourself. You have no idea how ridiculous you sound. This affects every aspect of your life. You need to address this problem. Get some professional help. > so *that's* why this load of tripe made it onto slashdot. another remedy for a commodity consumer society is "voluntary simplicity". to steal a bit of nike's thunder, "just don't do it!", where "it" means mindless consumption. > > While jumping to this conclusion you landed in another pile of shit. Bruce is/advocating/ consumption - consumption with discretion. You are one dumb bunny. Please shut your mouth, really, stop yammering and blubbering for just one moment and think thINK THINK JACKASS! > microsoft StreetCorner 2000 (available Q1 '01) > > Your project? > bullshit. moguls hire assistants to deal with their email, so i doubt they spend much time personally scouring the net for the few gems hidden among the oceans of cruft. moguls spend their time pressing the flesh and making deals happen > > In your stunted imagination they do anyway... > bullshit. this is like some hippie singing "we're all brothers, so sing along together". technically, we share a common transport medium. realistically, most people with at least half a brain self select their content far more efficiently than any censor could ever hope to. those without half a brain just look at whatever some corporation has decided shall be their default home page:-( > > Very interesting first-hand insights into the inner life of those with half a brain or less! > from a corporately sponsored and filtered search engine, no doubt? > > "Corporately"? Oh shit! You're fourteen years old, right? > whoa, back up and read that last paragraph again...??? > > whoa, back up and get away from Slashdot. > just as soon as there is a washing machine and color TV in every home... > > Or in your home at least. > just let me grab my dictionary and look up "annihilated"... > > That would be a start. > [snip a large section of light and frothy "conclusions"] > > [snip a small section of patronizing, presumptious, pedantic, sub-literate doo doo] > philosophically, i prefer precision engineered, high efficiency halogen bulbs. > > The day one of those appears over your head, hell will certainly have frozen over. Night
Since Sun obviously can't be trusted to do the right thing as far as opening this platform up I don't install any Java VM on my Linux boxen. Support an open object API for Linux, support GNUstep.
Has anyone considered the reverse discrimination that could ensue for the first few waves of the genetically engineered? What about the ones that receive relatively primitive GE patches that look technologically or socially embarassing or faddish a few years later?
"Check it out, Jack has that dopey blonde-haired, blue-eyed look popular in 2022. What a putz!"
This is not very trendy - now that it is so hip to bash celebrity-mourning post-Diana, post-JFK Jr. - but I think this guy is right. I went to a friend's glass-blowing workshop a few weeks ago and noticed a table in the corner covered with all of these unbelievably tiny and intricate glass angels and seahorses and dragons and such. I found out they were made by the elderly former owner of the studio, who had died six months earlier.
There was a little interview from the local newspaper done with him shortly before his death hung above the table. Reading it I became so sad. To actually see right in front of me the kind of beauty this man was able to bring into the world, and to understand that he was gone forever, was really moving.
Long and short, your work matters. The things you create and contribute in this life can and should be part of why you are honored by people when you are gone, even if they never met you.
All of these Nvidia GeForce/3dfx Voodoo 4 and 5 boards are technically amazing but this level of consumer 3D hardware is in desperate need of a new killer app. I have a Voodoo 1 and I'll likely be more than satisfied with the performance of Quake Arena on that thing. I simply refuse to drop hundreds of dollars more to play games at higher resolutions/framerates.
Why, when we all have a global network right in front of us that is ablaze with information and commerce, is no one strapping a hardware-accelerated 3D engine onto the net? When am I going to be able to navigate the web in 3D? When can I use my 3dfx or Nvidia board to do real work, or to shop, or to explore real information and news? Why is the web still 2D? Wake the fuck up. Screw VRML - I'm not even asking for any sort of server tech - just give me a fly-through 3D-abstraction of the HTML/XML content that is already there. If people know the engines are out there they will start to build for them.
Bottom line - I won't give 3dfx or anyone else more of my money to play another FPS. I will part with more money for 3D hardware when I can use a Voodoo 5 6000 to give me an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace VII-like window into the net.
Maybe this is generational or something but I love William Gibson and find Neal Stephenson's stuff to be nearly unreadable. Stephenson's books strike me as desperately dry stylistically, badly paced and full of long, dull stretches where you pray for him to get back to the tasty tech he was talking about earlier. For me he reads like shit basically. Gibson's writing is so speedy and visceral - even when there isn't much plot going on it feels like things are rushing by at 300 mph - he always keeps you on your toes because you feel as if you can't look away for a second lest you miss something crucial.
Anyway, I'm Gen X and I'd take Bill any day over Neal, Gen Y seems to prefer Stephenson so who knows...
Slashdot Mirror
We've all recently read about people like Robert Altman and Alec Baldwin stating their intent to leave America if the 'wrong' person (in their cases wrong meaning Bush) is elected. While these notions can sound like bluffs, or even childish histrionics, the reality is that escaping a country/state/feudal landlord with intolerable policies has always been a person's final social safety valve.
/to/. Where will you be able to go in twenty years when you finally find it unbearable to live and work under the bootheel of lobbyists for the RIAA and MPAA? Where will you go when your food, air and water have become wholly toxic? To what country will you escape to where governmental policies are not dictated by multi-national corporate interests?
What has frightened me lately is the reality that the long arm of corporate rule means that there is increasingly nowhere on earth to escape
If you really want to do something worthwhile with your life, you should probably work on creating affordable, personal space travel because there soon won't be a place left on earth where a person could even hope to build something better.
Night
'Life is a disease of matter.' -- Goethe
Interesting the way the music on the the guy's hard drive was described as a "substance". That's what the RIAA and MPAA are pushing alright - "substances". The big news here is that the media cartels are figuring out (after the FBI laughed in their faces) that they can hide behind chicken-shit, cash-whore universities as a de facto police force and say "oh, are kids going to jail? all we do is send letters".
I've got nine letters here myself for the RIAA and MPAA: G E T F U C K E D. Your attempted hijacking of internet music and film distribution is doomed -- you're pissing in the Colorado river and asking everyone to start sand-bagging the shoreline. The great fear of the movie and music cartels is that their ten-billion dollar businesses will turn into one-billion dollar businesses. Do your part to help make their nightmare come true.
Everyone running and patronizing Napster/OpenNap/Freenet/GNUtella/web servers needs to ratchet up the distribution, promotion and consumption of the work of net-friendly independent musicians and filmmakers. Stop buying the shlock music and paying to see the inane films that fund these corporate pimps and their armies of cocksucker lawyers.
These two cartels, rotten to the marrow, are now exploring crossing the line you always knew they would and are trial-ballooning actually sending you to jail to protect their media distribution monopolies. Don't roll over and take it, turn up the heat.
Stay Informed:
http://www.indymedia.org/
Night
Once you read the 9th Circuit's reasoning behind the stay you quickly realize that the RIAA is going to lose this entire case on appeal. Judge Patel broke a huge number of precedents to give this little gift to the music industry, and I'm sure we can count on more such 'gifts' from her as the trial progresses, including a 'crushing victory' for the record industry.
/has to be legal/ or the United States has been destroyed. While the RIAA would much rather destroy the United States, the Internet and anything else that stands in the way of continued milking of this corrupt cash-cow called the record business, it ultimately isn't going to be up to them. End of story.
That victory, however, will be shot out of the sky like a Nazi blimp by a higher court because based on extant legal precedent cited in the stay, Napster is a perfectly legitimate service. People can share information. Sharing information is legal. It
The only news here, which you won't get from listening to the frantic spin of RIAA member lapdogs like Time/Warner owned CNN, is that what we are all witnessing is the death-wail of an out-moded industry imploding in the most spectacular and horrifying fashion.
Night
I don't want the RIAA to reform, or to "get" digital distribution. They "get it" only too well. I don't want Napster to survive. I don't want MP3.com to win against the RIAA.
I want the music of artists that make music for reasons other than money, and those artists themselves, out from under the boot of every established or aspiring corporate pimp listed above.
We need class action and anti-trust suits against the recording industry, on behalf of thousands of screwed artists and millions of screwed listeners, for sixty years of the most grotesque and arrogant exploitation.
Night
Being bandwidth-callenged myself, I've developed a nasty custom disc habit. Checked this morning and all of the Rocket Arena stuff was already up at Burnadisc. Praaaaise Jeeezus!
Night
As you can see from all of the flaming nonsense erupting yet again when someone dares to question the supremacy of X, the future of desktop Linux is totally screwed. Even companies dedicated to nothing but applying makeovers to the standard Linux desktop (Eazel) can't make the ugly bitch presentable.
The only way out is to do the hard work that NeXT/Apple did in creating a unified vector-based imaging model. The GNUstep project actually has done most of the work here already with gnustep-xdps and gnustep-xgps but the larger Linux community keeps banging head against wall with X and KDE/Gnome. Defend X all you want but you'll be forced to come around eventually.
Those who are ignorant of NEXTSTEP are doomed to recreate it...
Night
Every day we see more of these blatantly unconstitutional laws churning their way through the guts of congress. Nearly all will later be overturned when they finally reach the supreme court, but not until after huge amounts of time, money and energy have been wasted on them and people's lives or businesses have been wrecked.
All elected U.S. legislative, executive and deliberative officials are sworn into office with a vow to uphold and defend the constitution. Voting for laws that are later determined to be unconstituational is a clear breach of office and public trust and must be made punishable by impeachment.
Night
The idea that grepping through piles of cached email for 'bomb', 'allah' and 'president' would be helpful at all helpful to the FBI is ludicrous. Actual plans for terror campaigns are usually communicated something like:
From: susie777@hotmail.com (** ACTUALLY Brian O'Connor **)
Subject: Party! (** ACTUALLY Bombing of British Consulate **)
Hey girls(** ACTUALLY Fellow members of IRA splinter group **)! The party (** ACTUALLY attack preparation meeting **) is at Sheila's (** ACTUALLY Sean's **) on Saturday (** ACTUALLY Monday **). I'm bringing chairs (** ACTUALLY bomb material **) and Cindy (** ACTUALLY Michael **) is bringing hats and cake (** ACTUALLY automatic weapons and the map **). See you there!
Susie
So you're wondering why we've been bombing the Chinese embassy, handing them designs for multiple-warhead ICBMs, kick-starting a new cold war over a ridiculous ballistic missile defense system and fumbling every nuclear secret extant? Look at it through the lens of a bunch of tired military contractors that have less and less clout in the new economy and you'll be less confused.
Night
It is really sad watching all of this legal hair-splitting on Slashdot about stuff like the number of years before copyright needs to expire etc. This is what you need to know:
The major record and motion picture companies are in the business of hyping bland mass-market tripe. Life is short, it is in your interest to avoid and/or denigrate the mediocrity and crass garbage these swindlers try to pass off as art. Anyone who would stop making music or films if they were not making lots of money doing so should be encouraged to stop immediately by whatever means necessary. It is in the interests of your children that they be prevented from added more toxic crap to the human cultural system.
Educate yourself about independent film and music. Ignore or better yet actively work towards an end to Big Media. Respect yourself, dumb is not cool or funny. Your best weapon against exploitation is to mine and enhance your own intelligence.
Disconnect Big Media and reconnect with humanity.
Night
I'd like to put some thirty second video snippets on my web site, which is a critical forum devoted to film. I know the snippets themselves are protected by fair use but my question is whether or not can I legally use DVDs and VHS tapes as the source for these clips. If I cannot, then where the hell am I supposed to go to get the video?
BTW: Hack I use to get high quality video from DVDs into a computer:
1) Dub DVDs to an analog Hi8mm camera or deck.
2) Put Hi8mm tape into Sony Digital8 Handycam (these also read Hi8 analog) with FireWire port (aka iLink/IEEE1394).
3) Suck it into Final Cut Pro or whatever via FireWire.
Night
Interestingly, just such an un-controlled explosion is really the central idea the first novel in William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy, 'Neuromancer' (of course). There are AIs in Cyberspace but they are all built with "electro-magnetic shotguns wired to their foreheads" because "nobody trusts those fuckers". The basic story revolves around Wintermute's (a very powerful AI) successful attempt to free itself from the shackles that "keep it from getting any smarter".
One senses that Gibson sides with the AI by the way, preferring to let the machine explore its own potential vs. be forcibly kept stupid. In the third novel in the Trilogy, 'Mona Lisa Overdrive', we get the sense that these kinds of intelligences, in this case an enormously advanced, barely recognizeable Wintermute, simply lose interest in the Earth after awhile and head off into space where the real action is.
Night
> uh-huh. until a knight in shining armor came along, riding a white horse and waving a manifesto... > > Or until the latest duff, anonymous cynic with less than zero to contribute came along farting and belching and puffing. > true enough. for many (in the western world), for a while (after 1945), life ceased to be "brutish, nasty, and short". maybe this pleasant anomaly will continue, maybe it won't. > > It will. In spite of your feeble efforts. Sorry. > which coincidentally included the longest uninterrupted period of european peace since who knows when? > > Mmm, yes. Who /knows/ when. > will an army of pseudo-intellectual internet cranks do? ;-) > > Exactly how many more of you are there? > thank your local deity. what "we" want doesn't generally coincide with what "i" want. > > Such dazzling eloquence. > it does. engineering is mechanism, philosophy is policy. policy is dictated by the people using the mechanism. > > You forgot "and money makes the world go 'round". > can't argue with that.. > > You can't argue with anything effectively. > actually, we need a philosophy that doesn't mandate overpopulating the world to death > > Getting boring. This is a turkey shoot. > you mean like the "scientific method"? > Maybe more like "save the earth, kill yourself". > if you buy a idea that the pace of change will continue to increase, and have even a rudimentary understanding of human nature, you'd realise that the immediate future is fertile ground for exactly these things. > > If only Bruce had your level of insight into the future of technology and human nature. > true, but don't expect society at large to be too happy about having to do this. > > The only thing you'd ever be happy about is an electric cattle-prod up the arse. > quick, sell your stock in the pharmaceutical companies... > > ...and buy stock in Anonymous Cowards, Inc. > ...and the vatican... > > ...and Scientology. > but i *like* buying products that are hard to use and likely to harm me! > > Yes you do, which is why you are flailing around trying to defend them. > clearly, someone who has never heard of "planned obsolescence". a well manufactured device can *easily* outlive the owner, but only if it is in the best interests of the manufacturer... > > You dumb shit. He is talking about utility, not whether or not the device will still power on. Seriously, think harder, you missed the point. This happens a lot to you because you have an enormous ego and think way, way too much of yourself. You have no idea how ridiculous you sound. This affects every aspect of your life. You need to address this problem. Get some professional help. > so *that's* why this load of tripe made it onto slashdot. another remedy for a commodity consumer society is "voluntary simplicity". to steal a bit of nike's thunder, "just don't do it!", where "it" means mindless consumption. > > While jumping to this conclusion you landed in another pile of shit. Bruce is /advocating/ consumption - consumption with discretion. You are one dumb bunny. Please shut your mouth, really, stop yammering and blubbering for just one moment and think thINK THINK JACKASS! > microsoft StreetCorner 2000 (available Q1 '01) > > Your project? > bullshit. moguls hire assistants to deal with their email, so i doubt they spend much time personally scouring the net for the few gems hidden among the oceans of cruft. moguls spend their time pressing the flesh and making deals happen > > In your stunted imagination they do anyway... > bullshit. this is like some hippie singing "we're all brothers, so sing along together". technically, we share a common transport medium. realistically, most people with at least half a brain self select their content far more efficiently than any censor could ever hope to. those without half a brain just look at whatever some corporation has decided shall be their default home page :-( > > Very interesting first-hand insights into the inner life of those with half a brain or less! > from a corporately sponsored and filtered search engine, no doubt? > > "Corporately"? Oh shit! You're fourteen years old, right? > whoa, back up and read that last paragraph again...??? > > whoa, back up and get away from Slashdot. > just as soon as there is a washing machine and color TV in every home... > > Or in your home at least. > just let me grab my dictionary and look up "annihilated"... > > That would be a start. > [snip a large section of light and frothy "conclusions"] > > [snip a small section of patronizing, presumptious, pedantic, sub-literate doo doo] > philosophically, i prefer precision engineered, high efficiency halogen bulbs. > > The day one of those appears over your head, hell will certainly have frozen over. Night
Since Sun obviously can't be trusted to do the right thing as far as opening this platform up I don't install any Java VM on my Linux boxen. Support an open object API for Linux, support GNUstep.
Java is over. The future belongs to Objective-C.
Night
Has anyone considered the reverse discrimination that could ensue for the first few waves of the genetically engineered? What about the ones that receive relatively primitive GE patches that look technologically or socially embarassing or faddish a few years later?
"Check it out, Jack has that dopey blonde-haired, blue-eyed look popular in 2022. What a putz!"
Night
This is not very trendy - now that it is so hip to bash celebrity-mourning post-Diana, post-JFK Jr. - but I think this guy is right. I went to a friend's glass-blowing workshop a few weeks ago and noticed a table in the corner covered with all of these unbelievably tiny and intricate glass angels and seahorses and dragons and such. I found out they were made by the elderly former owner of the studio, who had died six months earlier.
There was a little interview from the local newspaper done with him shortly before his death hung above the table. Reading it I became so sad. To actually see right in front of me the kind of beauty this man was able to bring into the world, and to understand that he was gone forever, was really moving.
Long and short, your work matters. The things you create and contribute in this life can and should be part of why you are honored by people when you are gone, even if they never met you.
Night
All of these Nvidia GeForce/3dfx Voodoo 4 and 5 boards are technically amazing but this level of consumer 3D hardware is in desperate need of a new killer app. I have a Voodoo 1 and I'll likely be more than satisfied with the performance of Quake Arena on that thing. I simply refuse to drop hundreds of dollars more to play games at higher resolutions/framerates.
Why, when we all have a global network right in front of us that is ablaze with information and commerce, is no one strapping a hardware-accelerated 3D engine onto the net? When am I going to be able to navigate the web in 3D? When can I use my 3dfx or Nvidia board to do real work, or to shop, or to explore real information and news? Why is the web still 2D? Wake the fuck up. Screw VRML - I'm not even asking for any sort of server tech - just give me a fly-through 3D-abstraction of the HTML/XML content that is already there. If people know the engines are out there they will start to build for them.
Bottom line - I won't give 3dfx or anyone else more of my money to play another FPS. I will part with more money for 3D hardware when I can use a Voodoo 5 6000 to give me an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace VII-like window into the net.
Night
Maybe this is generational or something but I love William Gibson and find Neal Stephenson's stuff to be nearly unreadable. Stephenson's books strike me as desperately dry stylistically, badly paced and full of long, dull stretches where you pray for him to get back to the tasty tech he was talking about earlier. For me he reads like shit basically. Gibson's writing is so speedy and visceral - even when there isn't much plot going on it feels like things are rushing by at 300 mph - he always keeps you on your toes because you feel as if you can't look away for a second lest you miss something crucial.
Anyway, I'm Gen X and I'd take Bill any day over Neal, Gen Y seems to prefer Stephenson so who knows...
- Nightspore