In the mac community, we've had to deal with this same sort of thing for a long time. And it sucks a lot because unless you buy these older games for your platform, it'll look like there's no market. It doesn't really make any sense to me how the companies can equate a line of old game sales to prospective new game sales, but I guess it all boils down to the numbers of possible consumers, (or lack thereof).
It's kinda rediculous, but if you don't act all excited about these older ported games, it's just assumed you won't get excited about newer stuff, so newer stuff will never show up.
And the fact that these are cheaper machines, made with shoddy parts, can be bad for even real imacs. Say what you want about the power or expandability of an imac, but it's got quality parts. If cheap pc ripoffs bring a "colorful case = piece of crap" mentality to the consumers, it's no good for apple.
Well, I can think of some people I certainly hope can never lift a car one handed. The bastards did quite a number on my vheicle's paintjob with just a set of keys.
it could be like that lifter thing in Aliens. Those things were cool looking, are probably quite feasible, and can be used to kill acid blooded creatures.
Well, some of the newer things the military has been playing with involved unmanned, remote controlled weaponry. Removing the remote-control interface would most likely make these weapons less effective.
That's what almost killed Apple in the past. For a while Apple did allow certain manufacturers to make MacOS compatible machines. The problem was, Apple did all the development, the clone makers just took Apple's work, put out a cheaper machine, and almost drove Apple bankrupt. The first thing Steve Jobs did when he came back was get rid of the clone makers. It cost Apple huge sums of money to buy back the clone makers' contracts, and it was (and still is sometimes), hotly debated among the mac community, but in hindsight, it most definately saved Apple.
All the arguments over amazon and software patents and such can't even compare to this. How can anyone seriously expect a patent on a found genetic sequence? This goes way beyond commercial unfairness.
These scientists going are trying to patent sequences they've been able to read, but don't understand. It's like a wrote a program that takes a dictionary, and groups all of the words in it into every possible order. Then I can copyright all of the results I get. This would make it impossible for anyone else to write, for fear of violating my copyright. Only for the genetic sequences, there isn't even a written program writing out the material, it's already there.
The people applying for these patents can't possibly expect us to believe they're motivated by anything except greed. They're patenting more stuff than they can possibly ever actually fully study and understand on their own. Why isn't a bigger deal being made of this?
I don't know if I like the idea of living alongside computers that could be viewed as "gods". I think a bigger threat than the computers rising up against us is us purposely replacing ourselves with them. I don't see a "The Matrix" scenario happening, but in that movie, the one agent was talking about how once humans let the computers do their thinking for them, it was no longer the humans' civilization.
So say we make these ultra powerful, problem solving computers, that happily chug along solving our problems, that's all well and good, but then what would keep us from becoming lazy complacent slobs?
I think "artifical intelligence" might be a misleading term. People have intelligence, yet at the same time, they make a lot of stupid decisions. Who's to say computers won't be the same way? Would they always agree? Would they argue with each other? With us? In movies like the matrix, and terminator, the computers and robots all have the same agenda. I'm not sure that would be the case.
Ah, so now I understand Hemos' obsession with nanites...I think we know where the plague will be coming from.
Re:Will Apple finally see OpenSource light at last
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Apple above all is a hardware company. And honestly, how many people would pay for the more expensive apple hardware if the same stuff runs on cheaper pc hardware. Regardless of how much better the apple machines were, they'd lose sales, and that's just not something apple needs.
It's science! It's fascinating! Why do we need a good reason to care, other than that it's interesting? And if you're not interested in it, fine, but why do you feel the need to spread your disinterest with a whining post?
The movie is kept at http://www.apple.com/main/media/trailers/fox/x-men /x-men_320.mov
When you go through a web browser, quicktime will display the movie(hopefully), but you can't save it unless you've got the "pro" version. But you can find the location of the file in the source code, and then use another program to grab the file and put it on your harddrive wherever you want. I'm on a mac, so I used anarchie pro. I'm sure there are similar tools for linux, although I'm not particularly informed about linux software.
I don't think this is intended to become the desktop of choice for current linux users. Current linux users complain about the MacOS being too childish and limiting, and this project intends to simplify things even more. I don't see why people are so concerned about having just one desktop metaphor for everyone. People are different, they think differently, they work differently, the comptuer should adapt to them somewhat. There of course needs to be standards and such to make things work together, but it doesn't need to be so extreme.
The standards and protocols that we really need to worry about are file and documents. Until there are better standards and wider support for things like word processor documents, a computer is still going to need more help than the "mere mortal" wants to worry with.
And if linux truly wants to go mainstream, it'll have to be in a significantly different form than how it currently exists. Most people don't need the majority of features that linux offers. They don't need the infinate customability and such. The only reason I see for even trying to put linux on the desktop of such a person is because even the "mere mortals" in the computer world deserve an OS that is secure and stable. And you can have secure and stable behind all sorts of interfaces.
There has been a significant amount of study done on color, and its use on interfaces. Apple did a lot of this way back when they first brought the gui into a useable form. It was never significantly implemented in the past for a few reasons. First off, different colors mean different things to different cultures, so there could be confusion there. Second, one of apple's most vocal, and often loyal markets has been the graphics design and desktop publishing, and if you're keeping up with the mac community's aqua discussions, you'll have heard a lot of complaining that this colorful interface will make image work(particularly color matching) much harder.
As for the things like pin striping, and all the transparency effects, the computing power to run a gui like that are relatively new to desktop computers, and they were never that important until now. Apple has directed a focus on the consumer unlike anything ever seen in the computer world.
And also, as much as you can copy the look of the aqua interface, I doubt you can get the feel exactly right. That's more specific to the actual workings of the operating system, not to mention that noone except apple (maybe not even apple) is exactly sure how aqua is going to function.
Anyway, these space programs must be quite expensive because NASA has been hunting & hoping for signals from the probe since the 'crash' and still keep going.
Actually, I think it was probably more a mix of wanting a little good pr if possible, and just a sense of disbelief or maybe even a slight refusal to let go.
Imagine that you lost your dog. If you're like most people, you'd be kind of upset and you'd go looking for it. Now imagine that you had spent a few years of your life, building this dog from scratch, programming its brain, etc...oh yeah, and this dog cost just a bit more than the average puppy (say $100mil+), and that money came from an orgainzation that is already having a hard time to justify even their laughably small funding. Of course you're going to spend some time putting up signs, and driving around the neighbor hood yelling the dog's name.
I just hope that this doesn't set off another round of media bashing on Nasa, especially since they already got it for the polar lander.
I think nasa takes way too much heat from all sides. First off, they've got a really difficult job. The fact that they're pretty much the only organization doing the stuff that they're doing testifies that it's a bit more than just a hobby. They're constantly being blasted for wasting money, even when they're suffering constant budget cuts. And they try and fight these issues with their "Better, Cheaper, Faster" policy, and they're getting their asses kicked over that with words like incompetent, and careless.
I'd just like to point out, if you watch some videos from around the beginning of the space race, back when space exploration and rocketry had a far larger budget, you'll see rockets and stuff blow up. Lots of them. Watch a special on it on the History channel or something. Half the damn things blew up before they even left the ground. Back then people realized that sending stuff into orbit isn't all that easy, and throwing more minds and resources at the problem works better than cutting funding and whining.
I think a problem is that with things the space shuttle program being very sucessful (with a couple exceptions of course), people have unfair expectations for NASA. Nobody cares about shuttle flights anymore, they haveta pull pr stunts just to get attention for doing anything right. When you percieve something as a routine, you'll come down on someone a lot harder for screwing up. But people need to realize, no matter how routine a manned shuttle mission is, it's completely different than sending stuff to mars, and then having it work completely on its own.
I pity NASA...brilliant people choking on red tape thrown at them by people who understand so little.
The very fact that this bill is being seriously considered despite the fact that it will significantly hurt the freedoms of anyone who's a consumer in the computer area(which is pretty much everyone these days), is just one more big black mark against the US' founding principles.
The US prides itself on being many things, but at the top of anyones list would be Freedom, Justice, stuff like that. However, looking at the way things are going, Capitalism is by far the driving force here. Now capitalism isn't a horrible thing, infact, I think it works fairly well, but any state that would pass a set of laws like this is confused on how things should be.
This country was not formed because the founding fathers wanted to be capitalists, they wanted a government that truely had the populace's best interests in mind. Over time, "best interests" has become equated with money. I like money as much as the next person, but these laws are going to only help already rich companies become even richer, at the expense of the populace.
Fortunately, small pieces of this country's beginning still remain, we still have free speech and elected officials, so be sure to make your opinion heard.Enough voices may be able to lead our lawmakers out of the blinding storm of money and capitalism that corporations are attacking with.
This is exactly why so many hardcore mac fans are upset about what they've seen of aqua. It seems that apple is starting to forget about how people work, and are just trying to look pretty. Here's to hoping it's not as bad as it seems.
As an architecture major, I can attest to this fact. You get your "second wind", then the third, then the forth..it's pretty unreal sometimes. You look back on what you've done and can't believe it. Kinda cool.
This whole thing, like the whole DVD mess, isn't truly about piracy. It's about a big corporation trying to keep supreme control over everything that they can. It's really nice to see a technical issue legal proceeding that didn't side with the big company just because they have more money.
The industry powerhouses won't accept it until they have no other choice. They think they can control everything if they throw enough money and lawyers at it, and they've got plenty of both. I'm not sure how it's all going to pan out, but it's going to take quite some time, and there's probably going to be legal casualties. There's too many people out there sharing the information for the industry to stop them all, so they'll pick the few that they can conjure up the best cases against, and try to make examples of them. History shows that this seldom is an effective technique, especially the short but compelling internet history, but it's going to happen nonetheless.
I wouldn't be too hard on apple or aqua just yet. The whole display of aqua at the last expo was a last minute decision, done because the hardware that they hoped to introduce wasn't ready to go. There's still plenty of time for apple to fix issues and address opinion. So by all means, give your opinion, but all this "apple sucks, look what they're trying to force everyone into now!" is a bit premature.
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It's kinda rediculous, but if you don't act all excited about these older ported games, it's just assumed you won't get excited about newer stuff, so newer stuff will never show up.
they will if it fails to work as advertised, and/or breaks.
And the fact that these are cheaper machines, made with shoddy parts, can be bad for even real imacs. Say what you want about the power or expandability of an imac, but it's got quality parts. If cheap pc ripoffs bring a "colorful case = piece of crap" mentality to the consumers, it's no good for apple.
Well, I can think of some people I certainly hope can never lift a car one handed. The bastards did quite a number on my vheicle's paintjob with just a set of keys.
it could be like that lifter thing in Aliens. Those things were cool looking, are probably quite feasible, and can be used to kill acid blooded creatures.
Well, some of the newer things the military has been playing with involved unmanned, remote controlled weaponry. Removing the remote-control interface would most likely make these weapons less effective.
Microsoft and Apple brought computing to the average individual.
That's what almost killed Apple in the past. For a while Apple did allow certain manufacturers to make MacOS compatible machines. The problem was, Apple did all the development, the clone makers just took Apple's work, put out a cheaper machine, and almost drove Apple bankrupt. The first thing Steve Jobs did when he came back was get rid of the clone makers. It cost Apple huge sums of money to buy back the clone makers' contracts, and it was (and still is sometimes), hotly debated among the mac community, but in hindsight, it most definately saved Apple.
These scientists going are trying to patent sequences they've been able to read, but don't understand. It's like a wrote a program that takes a dictionary, and groups all of the words in it into every possible order. Then I can copyright all of the results I get. This would make it impossible for anyone else to write, for fear of violating my copyright. Only for the genetic sequences, there isn't even a written program writing out the material, it's already there.
The people applying for these patents can't possibly expect us to believe they're motivated by anything except greed. They're patenting more stuff than they can possibly ever actually fully study and understand on their own. Why isn't a bigger deal being made of this?
I don't know if I like the idea of living alongside computers that could be viewed as "gods". I think a bigger threat than the computers rising up against us is us purposely replacing ourselves with them. I don't see a "The Matrix" scenario happening, but in that movie, the one agent was talking about how once humans let the computers do their thinking for them, it was no longer the humans' civilization.
So say we make these ultra powerful, problem solving computers, that happily chug along solving our problems, that's all well and good, but then what would keep us from becoming lazy complacent slobs?
I think "artifical intelligence" might be a misleading term. People have intelligence, yet at the same time, they make a lot of stupid decisions. Who's to say computers won't be the same way? Would they always agree? Would they argue with each other? With us? In movies like the matrix, and terminator, the computers and robots all have the same agenda. I'm not sure that would be the case.
We could ask the intelligent computer what operating system it prefers to run, and end the argument forever.
Ah, so now I understand Hemos' obsession with nanites...I think we know where the plague will be coming from.
Apple above all is a hardware company. And honestly, how many people would pay for the more expensive apple hardware if the same stuff runs on cheaper pc hardware. Regardless of how much better the apple machines were, they'd lose sales, and that's just not something apple needs.
It's science! It's fascinating! Why do we need a good reason to care, other than that it's interesting? And if you're not interested in it, fine, but why do you feel the need to spread your disinterest with a whining post?
When you go through a web browser, quicktime will display the movie(hopefully), but you can't save it unless you've got the "pro" version. But you can find the location of the file in the source code, and then use another program to grab the file and put it on your harddrive wherever you want. I'm on a mac, so I used anarchie pro. I'm sure there are similar tools for linux, although I'm not particularly informed about linux software.
The standards and protocols that we really need to worry about are file and documents. Until there are better standards and wider support for things like word processor documents, a computer is still going to need more help than the "mere mortal" wants to worry with.
And if linux truly wants to go mainstream, it'll have to be in a significantly different form than how it currently exists. Most people don't need the majority of features that linux offers. They don't need the infinate customability and such. The only reason I see for even trying to put linux on the desktop of such a person is because even the "mere mortals" in the computer world deserve an OS that is secure and stable. And you can have secure and stable behind all sorts of interfaces.
There has been a significant amount of study done on color, and its use on interfaces. Apple did a lot of this way back when they first brought the gui into a useable form. It was never significantly implemented in the past for a few reasons. First off, different colors mean different things to different cultures, so there could be confusion there. Second, one of apple's most vocal, and often loyal markets has been the graphics design and desktop publishing, and if you're keeping up with the mac community's aqua discussions, you'll have heard a lot of complaining that this colorful interface will make image work(particularly color matching) much harder.
As for the things like pin striping, and all the transparency effects, the computing power to run a gui like that are relatively new to desktop computers, and they were never that important until now. Apple has directed a focus on the consumer unlike anything ever seen in the computer world.
And also, as much as you can copy the look of the aqua interface, I doubt you can get the feel exactly right. That's more specific to the actual workings of the operating system, not to mention that noone except apple (maybe not even apple) is exactly sure how aqua is going to function.
Actually, I think it was probably more a mix of wanting a little good pr if possible, and just a sense of disbelief or maybe even a slight refusal to let go.
Imagine that you lost your dog. If you're like most people, you'd be kind of upset and you'd go looking for it. Now imagine that you had spent a few years of your life, building this dog from scratch, programming its brain, etc...oh yeah, and this dog cost just a bit more than the average puppy (say $100mil+), and that money came from an orgainzation that is already having a hard time to justify even their laughably small funding. Of course you're going to spend some time putting up signs, and driving around the neighbor hood yelling the dog's name.
I just hope that this doesn't set off another round of media bashing on Nasa, especially since they already got it for the polar lander.
I think nasa takes way too much heat from all sides. First off, they've got a really difficult job. The fact that they're pretty much the only organization doing the stuff that they're doing testifies that it's a bit more than just a hobby. They're constantly being blasted for wasting money, even when they're suffering constant budget cuts. And they try and fight these issues with their "Better, Cheaper, Faster" policy, and they're getting their asses kicked over that with words like incompetent, and careless.
I'd just like to point out, if you watch some videos from around the beginning of the space race, back when space exploration and rocketry had a far larger budget, you'll see rockets and stuff blow up. Lots of them. Watch a special on it on the History channel or something. Half the damn things blew up before they even left the ground. Back then people realized that sending stuff into orbit isn't all that easy, and throwing more minds and resources at the problem works better than cutting funding and whining.
I think a problem is that with things the space shuttle program being very sucessful (with a couple exceptions of course), people have unfair expectations for NASA. Nobody cares about shuttle flights anymore, they haveta pull pr stunts just to get attention for doing anything right. When you percieve something as a routine, you'll come down on someone a lot harder for screwing up. But people need to realize, no matter how routine a manned shuttle mission is, it's completely different than sending stuff to mars, and then having it work completely on its own.
I pity NASA...brilliant people choking on red tape thrown at them by people who understand so little.
The very fact that this bill is being seriously considered despite the fact that it will significantly hurt the freedoms of anyone who's a consumer in the computer area(which is pretty much everyone these days), is just one more big black mark against the US' founding principles.
The US prides itself on being many things, but at the top of anyones list would be Freedom, Justice, stuff like that. However, looking at the way things are going, Capitalism is by far the driving force here. Now capitalism isn't a horrible thing, infact, I think it works fairly well, but any state that would pass a set of laws like this is confused on how things should be.
This country was not formed because the founding fathers wanted to be capitalists, they wanted a government that truely had the populace's best interests in mind. Over time, "best interests" has become equated with money. I like money as much as the next person, but these laws are going to only help already rich companies become even richer, at the expense of the populace.
Fortunately, small pieces of this country's beginning still remain, we still have free speech and elected officials, so be sure to make your opinion heard.Enough voices may be able to lead our lawmakers out of the blinding storm of money and capitalism that corporations are attacking with.
This is exactly why so many hardcore mac fans are upset about what they've seen of aqua. It seems that apple is starting to forget about how people work, and are just trying to look pretty. Here's to hoping it's not as bad as it seems.
As an architecture major, I can attest to this fact. You get your "second wind", then the third, then the forth..it's pretty unreal sometimes. You look back on what you've done and can't believe it. Kinda cool.
This whole thing, like the whole DVD mess, isn't truly about piracy. It's about a big corporation trying to keep supreme control over everything that they can. It's really nice to see a technical issue legal proceeding that didn't side with the big company just because they have more money.
The industry powerhouses won't accept it until they have no other choice. They think they can control everything if they throw enough money and lawyers at it, and they've got plenty of both. I'm not sure how it's all going to pan out, but it's going to take quite some time, and there's probably going to be legal casualties. There's too many people out there sharing the information for the industry to stop them all, so they'll pick the few that they can conjure up the best cases against, and try to make examples of them. History shows that this seldom is an effective technique, especially the short but compelling internet history, but it's going to happen nonetheless.
I wouldn't be too hard on apple or aqua just yet. The whole display of aqua at the last expo was a last minute decision, done because the hardware that they hoped to introduce wasn't ready to go. There's still plenty of time for apple to fix issues and address opinion. So by all means, give your opinion, but all this "apple sucks, look what they're trying to force everyone into now!" is a bit premature.