For industrial grade performance like that, take a look at NetApp. I've seen them in both a small and large ISP and have passing experience with dozens of these. Rock solid and fast as can be. They are designed, ground up, for NFS. Hotswappable spare drives, writes go into battery backed NVRAM for speed, and you can configure up regular backups through the snapshot feature. Every hour, every day, every week, etc. They're there until they rotate out. The.snapshot directory has saved me hours of work in just the past week alone when I blew away a directory I aught not have.
TeraTerm Pro is free and the SSH extenstions for it are also free. It is the client that I always download when I am on the road and need SSH access to my home machine.
A quick look through WinFiles terminals section should turn up others. SecureCRT and ZOC are not the only SSH enabled terminals out there.
Which is why government shouldn't fund many things it does fund now. And?
I'll be the first to point out that government, especially federal, has overstepped its bounds by a WIIIIIDE margin. However, people calling foul when government is curtailed because it was something that they wanted at the expense of others, esp. when it comes to something as simple as the first ammendment, just chaps my hide.
As so many others have pointed out, it is right there in the first ammendment.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
In the recent case against student led prayer at school sporting events the case is quite clear to anyone familiar with those words.
The problem was not with the students praying, the problem was that the student led prayer was done so under encouragement from the school and using school equipment. By encouraging it and providing the equipment they have violated the clear statement "...shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
Conversely they also made it quite clear in their opinions (from what I heard of the reports this morning) that students are perfectly free to pray before, during and after class or such sporting events. That cannot be infringed upon under the second half of that first statement "...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
I just find it ironic that the people who cry foul every time religion runs amok with the first ammendment they do so crying freedom of speech without understanding what the first ammendment really says. Even those that know that it contains the words "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" seem to skim over the words "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" to try to make their point.
For them to enjoy the freedom of speech part they have to understand that they also do not get to force the state to subsidize their religion through any public funding. Most don't. That is why most religious group don't get that the PA system, built and maintained by public funding, cannot be used for religious purposes (any religion, not just Christianity which was the case in this instance) for just that reason. It is a form of governmental subsidy.
Less than two years ago. As for never again, why import QIF files when I have the auto-update for quicken? Aren't you saying "never again" to windows and missing out now? The right tools for the job. My Linux box runs my services, my Windows box is games and Quicken. I'd love to have them all on the Linux box but until it catches up to where I am very comfortable in the way I do things (Esp. when it comes to Quicken/Wells Fargo/Palm) it is no skin off my back to have my finances on my game machine.
I tried importing QIF files once. Duplicates of every single entry. Never again, EVER. Not even if I could script it (and I most likely could) would I try it again. It just is not reliable enough.
So far in two years of working with Quicken Deluxe and Wells Fargo they have screwed up exactly 0 times. I checked my statements each month but have been doing electronic banking for those two years (more including the web interface) and not once hasn't everything come out as I remember it. In fact, it has reminded me of several things.
Recently I've taken to using PocketQuicken on my Palm and syncing with the desktop to keep my credit card transactions up to date as I've not yet been able to sign up with credit card companies that provide online syncing of accounts. No more bounced checks, no more wondering how much credit I have when I am out and about. That is the feature that GnuCash NEEDS to even be considered by me.
So far the bank errors have been more than offset by the convenience.
Good suggestions, here's some more
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Essential Anime
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First off about Mononoke Hime you forgot to mention that the American version was adapted by Neil Gaiman. If anyone has read either of his novels or any of the Sandman series they know how good of a writer he is. He did quite well in the adaptation from what I've been told.
As for Neon Genesis Evangelion being the best serialized I'd have to say that it has to be very good to top out Kimagure Orange Road and Visions of Escaflowne. The former being the dominant TV series of the mid-to-late '80s and the latter being a recent mecha OVA series with a very interesting take on mecha as a whole. Think mecha used as medeval armor. Yum.
The last one that I would recommend to anyone starting out or looking for stuff they might have overlooked (your list is quite good) is the original Tenchi Muyo OVA series. I'm not familiar with the later Tenchi stuff but the original OVA series was just plain fun to watch with all the layering that the story goes through.
Hmmmm, so, anyone see my name and wonder if it was from Vampire Princess Miyu yet?:)
The last time I tried NiftyTelnet (just shy of over a year ago) it still didn't do color, didn't have decent support for basic terminal types. It was about on par with Windows' Telnet. Considering I go out and download Tera Term Pro at the first chance to get a real telnet client on Windows that should indicate how bad it was. If it has improved since then, I would be greatly surprised.
Loved how in one section the tired old "Mac can read mac and PC floppies" argument was trotted out. Who is this Rex guy and why didn't he just trample over that one? "Linux can read PC (FAT) Win95/98 (VFAT) floppies. Mac floppies. EXT2 floppies. And, if such things existed, NTFS floppies, Solaris Floppies, BSD floppies, OS/2 HPFS floppies, etc, etc, etc!" Mac advocates have been trotting out that argument for years now and against any competent computer person it falls flat on its face. Also the automatic conversion by Macs/never/ worked when I tried it.
Then we get to internet applications. Am I the only one who thinks that the lack of a decent Telnet client leaves Macs out in the cold? Maybe it has changed in OS 9 but somehow I doubt it. If it can't do the basics down I don't care what other "standards" it has. Telnet, basic, simple remote access and diagnostic tool. I use it every day, I use streaming video maybe once every two weeks.
Finally, where was the killer one of them all. "Hey, look, a mac emulator on my Linux box. How did that happen? Wow, imagine that."
On my Palm IIIe, according to runtime, Over the past 5 battery changes I have had a runtime of 22:47. The average time between changes is 14d, 17:41. Call it 14/22 and you get ~38 minutes per day of usage. A lot of that time is with the backlight on, so take it with a grain of salt.;)
PocketPC has better email than Palm, but that doesn't count because you don't think retrieving email on the go is important. Thanks for misstating me. I stated that while I don't retrieve email with my Palm there is an add-on product which allows you to do it (Multimail Pro) and also pointed out, rightfully, that the product provided (Pocket Outlook) is based on a product which isn't rated that highly by people using it so that consumers of this product will most likely look for add-on products for decent power in that realm anyway. This was to stress that Microsoft was weighting the comparison by purposely excluding add-on software. PocketPC has better color than Palm, but since you spend all your time outside, you don't care. Color is known to have a problem in sunlight. Someone who is "on the go" as you cite above is going to encounter sunlight quite a bit. If they aren't on the go then they are most likely at some other point where they can access their email. PocketPC has more memory than Palm, but "something tells you" that it doesn't matter. This was a joke based on the well known fact that Microsoft produces bloated software. I don't know about you, but I do consider a few hundred meg install of an office suite of applications bloated and mostly waste. I doubt you'll find many people who will disagree with either of those statements. You are aware of what a joke is, right? PocketPC is about 10x faster than Palm, but you have a feeling that this is irrelevant. Anyway, 20MHz is enough for anyone. What drives the need for faster CPU power in the consumer market are games and multimedia applications. Remove the MP3 support (Rio) and the games (320x240 games don't appeal compared to my 1024x768, 32bit color games at home, sorry) which require the horsepower and you don't need a 206Mhz processor. The fact that the Palm does quite well on a 20Mhz processor bears that out. You also have to remember that the speed needs to be there because Microsoft flat out doesn't know how to code tight code so looking at the pure numbers is misleading. PocketPC doesn't require extra attention to sync, but that doesn't count because the buzzname they're using resembles a technology you don't like. Uh, no, I was pointing out that the main point was that they were worrying about a button press. A single button press. "No need to press a button!" I'm sure the people with pinky strain out there will thank them. The rest was sarcasm, another form of humor, aka, joke. PocketPC has more sophisticated handwriting recognition than Palm, but that doesn't count because it's completely reasonable for people to learn how to write twice simply in order to use a PDA. Really? Did you read the review provided? Two top problems with the Pocket PC, crashes a lot thanks to the multimedia and handwriting recognition. Palm decided not to try for complete handwriting recognition because it hasn't been perfected yet. Instead they created a subset that is easy for the Palm to recognize and that is easy for humans used to the English alphabet to use. The result is a very low learning curve to fast entry. Microsoft went the marketing route and failed. It isn't more advanced. PocketPC allows voice recording at no extra charge, but that doesn't count because you can't imagine anyone will ever want to record sound in a meeting. With 32Mb to work with they can't record as much as they could on the little tape recorders that have been around for years. The propaganda said to record your thoughts at any time, not a meeting. Me, I'm content to write the thoughts down. Shall we compared file sizes after that? What is important is the content, not the medium. PocketPC has superior and more intuitive mapping technology, but that doesn't count because real men use astrolabes. No, Pocket PC propaganda states that mapping software on the Palm is limited by the display. I pointed out that the display hasn't been an issue for years on dedicated GPS units which have smaller displays than the Palm if I'm not mistaken. It doesn't take a huge display with thousands of colors to draw some lines and some text. PocketPC has better music support, but that doesn't count because everyone should have at least two wallet-sized silicon devices on them at all times. Who here doesn't? Pager, Cell Phone and Palm. Most professionals I know have two of the three. Also you completely ignored my point that the Pocket PC at 32Mb is dwarfed by the Rio which can pack in 96Mb. 1/3rd the size, 1/3rd the music. Of course, anyone with a Pocket PC is not going to dedicate that entire 32Mb to just MP3s the way the RAM in the Rio would be. That means even less music. 3-4 songs would be about the max... maybe 5. Compared to ~24 songs on the Rio. 5 songs is barely enough music to get off the runway on your average business trip. PocketPC incorporates ClearType to a better eBook experience, but that doesn't count because, hell, it's all just text. Not to mention, IIRC, ClearType isn't a Microsoft invention in the first place. No, it doesn't count because it is just text. What is more important to me when it comes to "etext" is the fact that I can search. I've got the Perl Desktop Reference in my Palm because of the search. The text is readable, I can find what I need, I can read it. I don't need perfectly rendered letter to recognize it. Most people don't, either. PocketPC supports more sophisticated games (I've seen a cutesy little DOOM) but that doesn't count because you've got pong when you need it. Zap2000! is hardly Pong. Furthermore Doom is 10 years old, been done and I doubt is going to be decent on the controls given. Let's see, 4 directions, fire, strafe, use. Of course you need at least 2 directions, strafe and fire to play that game effectively. No, Doom was there and mentioned in the propaganda because it is the most popular PC action game in recent years to the crowd they are selling to. "I can play Doom on this?" *eyebrows shoot up* "Wow!" I read this a different way: Both play games from years ago, get over it. No, the whole point of my post, which you missed, was that the Microsoft comparison contains pretty much nothing but non-issues when you really look at it. They tilted it their way, of course, and made up things as they went. A little investigation would show that most are non-issues or pure fluff to begin with. Typical Microsoft advertising.
First thing to note, comparison based on out-of-box. That means none of the add-ons are considered at all. Let me go through and comment each with add-ons included.
Full Email: They list "No" for the Palm. Multimail Pro provides it, so I consider that a Yes if I ever wanted to do email on a palm sized computer. Of course we're talking Pocket Outlook Express here. Considering the Deja poll on email clients has OE in the middle of the pack with the only two clients I recommend (PMMail and The Bat! topping the list chances are I'd look for third party email even if I were going to.
Web-Browsing: Well, considering the resolution (320x240) there aren't many sites that will come across looking decent in the first place. On a palm sized computer I prefer only snippits and text. IE, content instead of fluff. This is doubly true when you consider the bandwidth restrictions of wireless communications.
AvantGo: Was a pig on the Palm, most likely a pig on MS's stuff and, IMHO, not worth a damn. I get more use out of iSiloFree and their web convertor for a fraction of AvantGo's space.
Color: Hope the sun isn't out, right?:)
Memory: 16-32Mb given. This is MS, something tells me 24Mb of it would be needed just to store everything they want to shoehorn in there leaving 8Mb, what the Palm offers.:)
Speed: Up to 206Mhz compared to the Palm's 20Mhz. Of course, all the MS applications aren't coded as tight as Palm applications so they feel like it is 20Mhz. Honestly, I have a Palm IIIe that I have used Afterburner II to slow-down to save on battery life. I normally run at 13Mhz compared to the normal 16Mhz and it is fine. Most of the time the machine is idling anyway. Isn't like we've got RC5 going in the background.
Expansion Slot: Welll, ok, they got it there, maybe.
Sync: "Always ready to go with ActiveSync!" Like, ActiveX? ActiveDesktop? Uhm, I dunno about you but me, I'm fine with pushing a single button.
USB connection: Aaand? USB may be nice but I've not really worried over a sync before.
IrDA: No comment
Handwriting Recognition: OK, everyone who can't read their own handwriting please raise their hands. Grey raises his hand. I like Graffiti because it is easy. Microsoft really is going for the lazy people here. "No more buttons to press, don't have to learn an input system that 90% resembles what you write anyway!"
Voice Recording: Why? With 32Mb you can barely cram anything into that of any value. Besides, there are add-ons for the Palm that allow this.
On-Board Financial Software: Wow, Money for PocketPC included. Works with Microsoft Money 2000. I use Quicken 2000 and PocketQuicken on my Palm. Wow, imagine that.
Mapping Software: "Clarity of maps confined to low resolution screens." 160x160 compared to 320x240. Both of those, to me, are low resolution. Besides, those same low resolution screens work fine on specialized GPS devices for years now. I don't need the extra space for an effing animated streetsign (2nd cousin to the paperclip) to tell me to turn left now. One back-seat driver will be quite enough, thank you. Needless to say there are several applications for the Palm that provide this as well as several GPS modules for the Palm.
Play MP3s: "No need to carry an additional MP3 player". Pocket PC, 32Mb. Rio, IIRC, 96Mb. There is a reason why I don't want my Palm to do MP3s, the specialized device does it better.
Text reader: iSilo, Peanut Press, DOC format (dozens of readers there) TealDOC, etc, etc, etc
Animated Games: The whole reason I started writing this. First off, I hate the corpspeak "experience". "A wonderful web experience!" "A great gaming experience!" "That new Star Trek show furthers the TV experience!" Get over it, it isn't an experience, it is a game. Furthermore, I guess Zap 2000! doesn't count as an animated game. What comes standard with the Palm PC that is awesome? Solitaire and Minesweeper? Definintely have to look add-on here in both cases.
You must be looking at the wrong times. I've seen teen, mpg, avi, young and others many times. I've only seen *pre or preteen a couple of times, but it's still there.
Those, though, don't constitute the strings he sent out. Teen? EightTEEN and nineTEEN are legal ages for porn. YOUNG women to a man of, say, 40 would include early 20s. MPG and AVI are just file formats.
He said the program was reverse engineered, not the protocol. The source was distributed. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the difference between reverse engineer and port or reading the source.
Yeah, I did it, finally replied to the idiots who write. The piece about gnutella was just so wrong I couldn't stand it. Here it is for your review. I don't recommend anyone respond in kind. I was pissed.
I read all of two paragraphs of your disgusting story before wanting to run to the nearest latrine and puke. It is a DISGRAGE to the industry of reporting that your story (as in fantasy) got any consideration for print at all! Kiddie porn trading, oh that will get the readers. But let's not let the facts get in the way. In less than 24 hours it was posted on a web site and "reverse engineered." Glaring flaw #1. It was distributed under the GPL which means the source was included. No need for reverse engineering at all.
Let's continue the read, shall we?
Ooo, here's a good one. A 15-minute session with a "security expert" named... Redone! Red 1, get it? You know, most respectable security experts I know don't hide behind some pseudonym. That's only in Hollywood.
Wow, no way to censor it. This from someone in an industry that is given protection by the First Amendment. You/DO/ know what that is, right? I doubt it since you're so ready to point out that something cannot be censored. I'd suggest hopping onto gnutella and doing a search on "constitution". If that doesn't work, try some of the search engines. However, I'm sure the big, bad internet scares you so go to the Library and look it up!
Continuing on we see a claim that the strings "groupsex", "porn movies", "young naked", "pre teen" and "teen sex" are "almost as common as searches for pirated music."
What, was that because you got onto a private network with your "expert" and he typed them in and then logged off? The times I've been on gnutella I've not seen those strings. EVER. Not once. Not once in 15 minutes. Not once in 150 minutes. NOT EVER. If it were, as you claimed, so rife with people looking for kiddie porn then clearly a casual glance, much less the broader scrutiny of a curious geek, would see something that was "almost as common as searches for pirated music."
Only near the end, after more hype, fear, uncertainty and doubt is planted firmly in the reader's mind do you even come CLOSE to giving a balanced story. Only after you have gotten all of the copy-selling evil out of the way do you tack on, as an afterthought, the good points of the technology.
Well, I last looked at Stampede when they were in the 0.5x range around the time my now ex-fiancee left me back in early '98. They've been around for at least 2 years that I personally know of. So, was Mandrake optimized for that long? If not, then Stampede does have the claim as first distro to do it.
I have homeworld. I had it when I wrote that comment. It is a visually pretty game. As for the interface, it isn't all that hot. About the time that I got to the mission where you're prompted to move ships for the best firing advantage is when I saw that I was going to be fighting the interface more than my opponents. Why should I have to watch this battle here and move my ships to the proper firing angles when I have several other details to deal with? Sure, you have keen formations but none of them are offensive for the capitol ships. What, I can't have a "surround" or "swarm" formation for capitol ships so I don't have to constantly try to manuver my formation around a rotating enemy in 3d? Speaking of which, building large formations of capitol ships with a proper wall of battle, pickets and fighter formations surrounding it is next to impossible. There are no orders for proper interception, patrolling, etc that one would expect from a complex battle simulation! Hell, even Empire from my ancient DOS days had fighter planes you could assign to patrols! I can't assign a sphere of responsibility to my interceptors. I can't assign a sphere of responsibility to a guard on a formation of capitols ships.
No, Homeworld has excellent music, a compelling story and damned beautiful graphics. The controls, the interface, however, are woefully poor.
For RTS games to take a foothold they need to get above the most basic of concepts. Right now you can place single units or group them into a basic formation and place that formation. However, you still have to give them the basic orders.
Let's take Homeworld and compare it to a typical space opera-esque scene. Take any of the Honor Harington series from David Weber. A fleet (and in Homeworld you do operate a fleet) has a single commander, the Admiral. That admiral, however, doesn't order each individual fighter around. Hell, he doesn't even order each individual fighter squadran around. He orders task forces to achieve the strategic goals needed for victory.
The next portion of the battle fleet are the individual squadrons commanded by Rear-Admirals, Commadores or high ranking Captains (depending on the makeup of the squadron). They take the orders from their commander and order THIER resources to implement the tasks needed to achieve the goals set by their commander.
The next element down is the ship captain. The Captain is normally a Captain, but not always (again, depends on the ship). He takes what his commander tasks him to do and, again, orders his subordinates in the tasks needed to achieve the goals set by his commander.
Below that (sometimes) are the individual fighter wings.
The Admiral says, "Hold this system." The Commadore(s) say(s), "Move here and hold these points". The Captains says, "Move here in this formation with those ships and employ these tactics against the enemy on my orders."
In Homeworld, I'm the Admiral. When I build a fleed of Ion Frigates and have them form up I should be able to tell them to guard certain areas of space (for example). If they get there and engage enemies that are better swarmed from multiple sides the captains of those ships (or even the leader of the formation) should chose that tactic to implement the goal I have laid out. I, should not have to provide all the initiative for every unit every moment of the battle.
That is where RTSes fail.
It isn't too complex to implement. The computer has the AI to challenge the player, it can provide those AI to the player. Either that or take another route, have each element of the chain of command filled in by different people. Have a human admiral oversee fleet operations who has human commadores oversee squadron operations who has human captains for individual ship movement who either has a human "crew" to implement his orders or has a higher-level set of orders he can give to a computer "crew". IE, instead of just "move here, shoot that" also give "form up with that formation" or "keep on this quarter of that ship", etc.
Uhm, no, wrong. As another poster pointed out there is quite a few things wrong with StarCraft. Just because I don't feel like sitting down for hours and banging my head against the wall in frustration because I cannot get the units to do what is reasonable doesn't mean that I am the problem. As I said, RTSes have yet to be done correctly. From the "grandaddy" (Dune II) on up I've played them all and in each case there came a time where I was fighting the interface of the game more than my opponent. Dune II, the computer could repair 4 buildings on 4 different screens at the same time. The human could not. Dungeon Keeper, the Imps decide that claiming new dungeon space is more important than dragging off beaten foes for the dungeon to create skeletons. Warcraft, IIRC, warriors who got shot would run forward unless you told them to not do anything in which case if they were attacked in melee they would not fight.
The biggest problem with RTSes is that to get anything beyond the most basic of tactics you need to start getting into micromanaging. However, when you get into the micromanaging you have the problem that it takes time to get to where you want to be. Of course that is time spent from other tasks. IE, fighting the interface more than the game.
Lot of webmasters target web site to specific system: they are optimized for IE or Netscape, for a specific screen size making them unusable on smaller screen
Not to mention they create their graphics in a manner which, on a larger screen, makes the page unusable. For example, someone "optimizes" their page for 800x600, creates a background 801 pixels wide. On a 1024x768 (1280x1024, 1600x1200) screen that graphic repeats, often to where the text is overlaid on a portion of the graphic it might not have intended to be placed upon (white border on the left, white text).
You're right. I love HalfLife, especially the CS mod. Starcraft, OTOH, is the same, rehash, ancient, crap, RTS game that has been done and done/WRONG/ for years now. I have not played a RTS game that I haven't had to fight the interface more than the opponent. Every RTS that I have played eventually gets to a point where the interface fails you or you lose track of everything so easily it isn't even funny. Units don't do what you want them to because they have a different set of priorities, etc.
Until the game designers overcome that *VERY* large obsticle (which I don't see them doing in the near to medium future) RTS games are a flat out dead end.
It just amazes me how many people on here and elsewhere bitch and whine and complain about Lucas holding off on the DVD releases until he has time. It is 100% the right thing to do not only for him but for the consumer. Consumer, in this case, being the very person who is whining and bitching.
"He's doing it for the money."
False. If he were doing it *just* for the money he would release something now to get people to buy the cheap, get-it-out-the-door, at-least-it-is-DVD, shut-up-and-buy-it-luser copies only to purchase the later, better, boxed set with all the features put into it.
He's not.
People are actually whining that he isn't taking advantage of their willingness to buy cheap products only to be "forced" to buy something better later on.
"It's about control. He wants to control the product."
Bingo. It is also about how Lucas has proven that he tries to do the best he can in the game they've made. But here he has a choice. Make the last two movies and get them out, THEN work on a complete DVD set with a lot of features that the fans would demand so he has to do it once OR pause production on the films (which the fans won't like) to put out mediocre DVDs (which the fans won't like) then get back to the movies, get them out, then work on the DVDs the way he wants them to be and release them, at which time the fans will complain that he is taking advantage of them.
Screw that. Screw the fanboys who are whining that they don't have their DVDs now. Shut up because he's doing you a favor. Sure that boxed set might be $200CDN ($140 US, approx.) but rest assured that just like the last few boxed sets they will be available individually as well.
However, for those of us who do appreciate quality let me tell you what we might get. Instead of spending $20 for each of the 6 movies ($120 right there) and then turn around and buy the boxed set for, say, $150 ($270 so far) in a few years we spend $150 once. When it does come out chances are that he might do what the people who made Stargate did, put both the theatrical and Director's Cut (in this case, SE) on the same disc. That means, unlike the VCR tapes, we have the choice of which of the originals we want to see. Meanwhile we'll also most likely get a LOT of "making of" material, a few commentary tracks, etc.
So you people whining and bitching about what he is doing, ask yourself which you REALLY want to pay for? $120 in throw-away discs over the next 2-3 years, a delay in the movie production schedule only to spend another $150 or so later on, or spend $150 in 2-3 years and get a quality product?
Me, I'm willing to wait. Hell, say it is 3 years away for a release of the boxed set that is only ~$4.25/month to tuck aside to cover it.
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For industrial grade performance like that, take a look at NetApp. I've seen them in both a small and large ISP and have passing experience with dozens of these. Rock solid and fast as can be. They are designed, ground up, for NFS. Hotswappable spare drives, writes go into battery backed NVRAM for speed, and you can configure up regular backups through the snapshot feature. Every hour, every day, every week, etc. They're there until they rotate out. The .snapshot directory has saved me hours of work in just the past week alone when I blew away a directory I aught not have.
TeraTerm Pro is free and the SSH extenstions for it are also free. It is the client that I always download when I am on the road and need SSH access to my home machine.
A quick look through WinFiles terminals section should turn up others. SecureCRT and ZOC are not the only SSH enabled terminals out there.
Which is why government shouldn't fund many things it does fund now. And?
I'll be the first to point out that government, especially federal, has overstepped its bounds by a WIIIIIDE margin. However, people calling foul when government is curtailed because it was something that they wanted at the expense of others, esp. when it comes to something as simple as the first ammendment, just chaps my hide.
As so many others have pointed out, it is right there in the first ammendment.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
In the recent case against student led prayer at school sporting events the case is quite clear to anyone familiar with those words.
The problem was not with the students praying, the problem was that the student led prayer was done so under encouragement from the school and using school equipment. By encouraging it and providing the equipment they have violated the clear statement "...shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
Conversely they also made it quite clear in their opinions (from what I heard of the reports this morning) that students are perfectly free to pray before, during and after class or such sporting events. That cannot be infringed upon under the second half of that first statement "...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
I just find it ironic that the people who cry foul every time religion runs amok with the first ammendment they do so crying freedom of speech without understanding what the first ammendment really says. Even those that know that it contains the words "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" seem to skim over the words "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" to try to make their point.
For them to enjoy the freedom of speech part they have to understand that they also do not get to force the state to subsidize their religion through any public funding. Most don't. That is why most religious group don't get that the PA system, built and maintained by public funding, cannot be used for religious purposes (any religion, not just Christianity which was the case in this instance) for just that reason. It is a form of governmental subsidy.
Paycheck is deposited via electronic funds transfer from my employer.
Any (rare) paper checks I get are deposited and entered into the Palm while at the ATM.
Any charges on my cards (dinner, rare purchases, etc) are entered in the Palm as made.
I've not really looked at a paper receipt in years.
Less than two years ago. As for never again, why import QIF files when I have the auto-update for quicken? Aren't you saying "never again" to windows and missing out now? The right tools for the job. My Linux box runs my services, my Windows box is games and Quicken. I'd love to have them all on the Linux box but until it catches up to where I am very comfortable in the way I do things (Esp. when it comes to Quicken/Wells Fargo/Palm) it is no skin off my back to have my finances on my game machine.
I tried importing QIF files once. Duplicates of every single entry. Never again, EVER. Not even if I could script it (and I most likely could) would I try it again. It just is not reliable enough.
So far in two years of working with Quicken Deluxe and Wells Fargo they have screwed up exactly 0 times. I checked my statements each month but have been doing electronic banking for those two years (more including the web interface) and not once hasn't everything come out as I remember it. In fact, it has reminded me of several things.
Recently I've taken to using PocketQuicken on my Palm and syncing with the desktop to keep my credit card transactions up to date as I've not yet been able to sign up with credit card companies that provide online syncing of accounts. No more bounced checks, no more wondering how much credit I have when I am out and about. That is the feature that GnuCash NEEDS to even be considered by me.
So far the bank errors have been more than offset by the convenience.
First off about Mononoke Hime you forgot to mention that the American version was adapted by Neil Gaiman. If anyone has read either of his novels or any of the Sandman series they know how good of a writer he is. He did quite well in the adaptation from what I've been told.
:)
As for Neon Genesis Evangelion being the best serialized I'd have to say that it has to be very good to top out Kimagure Orange Road and Visions of Escaflowne. The former being the dominant TV series of the mid-to-late '80s and the latter being a recent mecha OVA series with a very interesting take on mecha as a whole. Think mecha used as medeval armor. Yum.
The last one that I would recommend to anyone starting out or looking for stuff they might have overlooked (your list is quite good) is the original Tenchi Muyo OVA series. I'm not familiar with the later Tenchi stuff but the original OVA series was just plain fun to watch with all the layering that the story goes through.
Hmmmm, so, anyone see my name and wonder if it was from Vampire Princess Miyu yet?
The last time I tried NiftyTelnet (just shy of over a year ago) it still didn't do color, didn't have decent support for basic terminal types. It was about on par with Windows' Telnet. Considering I go out and download Tera Term Pro at the first chance to get a real telnet client on Windows that should indicate how bad it was. If it has improved since then, I would be greatly surprised.
Loved how in one section the tired old "Mac can read mac and PC floppies" argument was trotted out. Who is this Rex guy and why didn't he just trample over that one? "Linux can read PC (FAT) Win95/98 (VFAT) floppies. Mac floppies. EXT2 floppies. And, if such things existed, NTFS floppies, Solaris Floppies, BSD floppies, OS/2 HPFS floppies, etc, etc, etc!" Mac advocates have been trotting out that argument for years now and against any competent computer person it falls flat on its face. Also the automatic conversion by Macs /never/ worked when I tried it.
Then we get to internet applications. Am I the only one who thinks that the lack of a decent Telnet client leaves Macs out in the cold? Maybe it has changed in OS 9 but somehow I doubt it. If it can't do the basics down I don't care what other "standards" it has. Telnet, basic, simple remote access and diagnostic tool. I use it every day, I use streaming video maybe once every two weeks.
Finally, where was the killer one of them all.
"Hey, look, a mac emulator on my Linux box. How did that happen? Wow, imagine that."
On my Palm IIIe, according to runtime, Over the past 5 battery changes I have had a runtime of 22:47. The average time between changes is 14d, 17:41. Call it 14/22 and you get ~38 minutes per day of usage. A lot of that time is with the backlight on, so take it with a grain of salt. ;)
Great, nice bug there. That was posted HTML formatted with proper formatting. :/
PocketPC has better email than Palm, but that doesn't count because you don't think retrieving email on the go is important. Thanks for misstating me. I stated that while I don't retrieve email with my Palm there is an add-on product which allows you to do it (Multimail Pro) and also pointed out, rightfully, that the product provided (Pocket Outlook) is based on a product which isn't rated that highly by people using it so that consumers of this product will most likely look for add-on products for decent power in that realm anyway. This was to stress that Microsoft was weighting the comparison by purposely excluding add-on software. PocketPC has better color than Palm, but since you spend all your time outside, you don't care. Color is known to have a problem in sunlight. Someone who is "on the go" as you cite above is going to encounter sunlight quite a bit. If they aren't on the go then they are most likely at some other point where they can access their email. PocketPC has more memory than Palm, but "something tells you" that it doesn't matter. This was a joke based on the well known fact that Microsoft produces bloated software. I don't know about you, but I do consider a few hundred meg install of an office suite of applications bloated and mostly waste. I doubt you'll find many people who will disagree with either of those statements. You are aware of what a joke is, right? PocketPC is about 10x faster than Palm, but you have a feeling that this is irrelevant. Anyway, 20MHz is enough for anyone. What drives the need for faster CPU power in the consumer market are games and multimedia applications. Remove the MP3 support (Rio) and the games (320x240 games don't appeal compared to my 1024x768, 32bit color games at home, sorry) which require the horsepower and you don't need a 206Mhz processor. The fact that the Palm does quite well on a 20Mhz processor bears that out. You also have to remember that the speed needs to be there because Microsoft flat out doesn't know how to code tight code so looking at the pure numbers is misleading. PocketPC doesn't require extra attention to sync, but that doesn't count because the buzzname they're using resembles a technology you don't like. Uh, no, I was pointing out that the main point was that they were worrying about a button press. A single button press. "No need to press a button!" I'm sure the people with pinky strain out there will thank them. The rest was sarcasm, another form of humor, aka, joke. PocketPC has more sophisticated handwriting recognition than Palm, but that doesn't count because it's completely reasonable for people to learn how to write twice simply in order to use a PDA. Really? Did you read the review provided? Two top problems with the Pocket PC, crashes a lot thanks to the multimedia and handwriting recognition. Palm decided not to try for complete handwriting recognition because it hasn't been perfected yet. Instead they created a subset that is easy for the Palm to recognize and that is easy for humans used to the English alphabet to use. The result is a very low learning curve to fast entry. Microsoft went the marketing route and failed. It isn't more advanced. PocketPC allows voice recording at no extra charge, but that doesn't count because you can't imagine anyone will ever want to record sound in a meeting. With 32Mb to work with they can't record as much as they could on the little tape recorders that have been around for years. The propaganda said to record your thoughts at any time, not a meeting. Me, I'm content to write the thoughts down. Shall we compared file sizes after that? What is important is the content, not the medium. PocketPC has superior and more intuitive mapping technology, but that doesn't count because real men use astrolabes. No, Pocket PC propaganda states that mapping software on the Palm is limited by the display. I pointed out that the display hasn't been an issue for years on dedicated GPS units which have smaller displays than the Palm if I'm not mistaken. It doesn't take a huge display with thousands of colors to draw some lines and some text. PocketPC has better music support, but that doesn't count because everyone should have at least two wallet-sized silicon devices on them at all times. Who here doesn't? Pager, Cell Phone and Palm. Most professionals I know have two of the three. Also you completely ignored my point that the Pocket PC at 32Mb is dwarfed by the Rio which can pack in 96Mb. 1/3rd the size, 1/3rd the music. Of course, anyone with a Pocket PC is not going to dedicate that entire 32Mb to just MP3s the way the RAM in the Rio would be. That means even less music. 3-4 songs would be about the max... maybe 5. Compared to ~24 songs on the Rio. 5 songs is barely enough music to get off the runway on your average business trip. PocketPC incorporates ClearType to a better eBook experience, but that doesn't count because, hell, it's all just text. Not to mention, IIRC, ClearType isn't a Microsoft invention in the first place. No, it doesn't count because it is just text. What is more important to me when it comes to "etext" is the fact that I can search. I've got the Perl Desktop Reference in my Palm because of the search. The text is readable, I can find what I need, I can read it. I don't need perfectly rendered letter to recognize it. Most people don't, either. PocketPC supports more sophisticated games (I've seen a cutesy little DOOM) but that doesn't count because you've got pong when you need it. Zap2000! is hardly Pong. Furthermore Doom is 10 years old, been done and I doubt is going to be decent on the controls given. Let's see, 4 directions, fire, strafe, use. Of course you need at least 2 directions, strafe and fire to play that game effectively. No, Doom was there and mentioned in the propaganda because it is the most popular PC action game in recent years to the crowd they are selling to. "I can play Doom on this?" *eyebrows shoot up* "Wow!" I read this a different way: Both play games from years ago, get over it. No, the whole point of my post, which you missed, was that the Microsoft comparison contains pretty much nothing but non-issues when you really look at it. They tilted it their way, of course, and made up things as they went. A little investigation would show that most are non-issues or pure fluff to begin with. Typical Microsoft advertising.
First thing to note, comparison based on out-of-box. That means none of the add-ons are considered at all. Let me go through and comment each with add-ons included.
Full Email: They list "No" for the Palm. Multimail Pro provides it, so I consider that a Yes if I ever wanted to do email on a palm sized computer. Of course we're talking Pocket Outlook Express here. Considering the Deja poll on email clients has OE in the middle of the pack with the only two clients I recommend (PMMail and The Bat! topping the list chances are I'd look for third party email even if I were going to.
Web-Browsing: Well, considering the resolution (320x240) there aren't many sites that will come across looking decent in the first place. On a palm sized computer I prefer only snippits and text. IE, content instead of fluff. This is doubly true when you consider the bandwidth restrictions of wireless communications.
AvantGo: Was a pig on the Palm, most likely a pig on MS's stuff and, IMHO, not worth a damn. I get more use out of iSiloFree and their web convertor for a fraction of AvantGo's space.
Color: Hope the sun isn't out, right? :)
Memory: 16-32Mb given. This is MS, something tells me 24Mb of it would be needed just to store everything they want to shoehorn in there leaving 8Mb, what the Palm offers. :)
Speed: Up to 206Mhz compared to the Palm's 20Mhz. Of course, all the MS applications aren't coded as tight as Palm applications so they feel like it is 20Mhz. Honestly, I have a Palm IIIe that I have used Afterburner II to slow-down to save on battery life. I normally run at 13Mhz compared to the normal 16Mhz and it is fine. Most of the time the machine is idling anyway. Isn't like we've got RC5 going in the background.
Expansion Slot: Welll, ok, they got it there, maybe.
Sync: "Always ready to go with ActiveSync!" Like, ActiveX? ActiveDesktop? Uhm, I dunno about you but me, I'm fine with pushing a single button.
USB connection: Aaand? USB may be nice but I've not really worried over a sync before.
IrDA: No comment
Handwriting Recognition: OK, everyone who can't read their own handwriting please raise their hands. Grey raises his hand. I like Graffiti because it is easy. Microsoft really is going for the lazy people here. "No more buttons to press, don't have to learn an input system that 90% resembles what you write anyway!"
Voice Recording: Why? With 32Mb you can barely cram anything into that of any value. Besides, there are add-ons for the Palm that allow this.
On-Board Financial Software: Wow, Money for PocketPC included. Works with Microsoft Money 2000. I use Quicken 2000 and PocketQuicken on my Palm. Wow, imagine that.
Mapping Software: "Clarity of maps confined to low resolution screens." 160x160 compared to 320x240. Both of those, to me, are low resolution. Besides, those same low resolution screens work fine on specialized GPS devices for years now. I don't need the extra space for an effing animated streetsign (2nd cousin to the paperclip) to tell me to turn left now. One back-seat driver will be quite enough, thank you. Needless to say there are several applications for the Palm that provide this as well as several GPS modules for the Palm.
Play MP3s: "No need to carry an additional MP3 player". Pocket PC, 32Mb. Rio, IIRC, 96Mb. There is a reason why I don't want my Palm to do MP3s, the specialized device does it better.
Text reader: iSilo, Peanut Press, DOC format (dozens of readers there) TealDOC, etc, etc, etc
Animated Games: The whole reason I started writing this. First off, I hate the corpspeak "experience". "A wonderful web experience!" "A great gaming experience!" "That new Star Trek show furthers the TV experience!" Get over it, it isn't an experience, it is a game. Furthermore, I guess Zap 2000! doesn't count as an animated game. What comes standard with the Palm PC that is awesome? Solitaire and Minesweeper? Definintely have to look add-on here in both cases.
DOH!
....
OK, so where do I do my repentence? Redmond cleaning out Bill's locker or something?
You must be looking at the wrong times. I've seen teen, mpg, avi, young and others many times. I've only seen *pre or preteen a couple of times, but it's still there.
Those, though, don't constitute the strings he sent out. Teen? EightTEEN and nineTEEN are legal ages for porn. YOUNG women to a man of, say, 40 would include early 20s. MPG and AVI are just file formats.
He said the program was reverse engineered, not the protocol. The source was distributed. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the difference between reverse engineer and port or reading the source.
Yeah, I did it, finally replied to the idiots who write. The piece about gnutella was just so wrong I couldn't stand it. Here it is for your review. I don't recommend anyone respond in kind. I was pissed.
/DO/ know what that is, right? I doubt it since you're so ready to point out that something cannot be censored. I'd suggest hopping onto gnutella and doing a search on "constitution". If that doesn't work, try some of the search engines. However, I'm sure the big, bad internet scares you so go to the Library and look it up!
I read all of two paragraphs of your disgusting story before wanting to run to the nearest latrine and puke. It is a DISGRAGE to the industry of reporting that your story (as in fantasy) got any consideration for print at all! Kiddie porn trading, oh that will get the readers. But let's not let the facts get in the way. In less than 24 hours it was posted on a web site and "reverse engineered." Glaring flaw #1. It was distributed under the GPL which means the source was included. No need for reverse engineering at all.
Let's continue the read, shall we?
Ooo, here's a good one. A 15-minute session with a "security expert" named... Redone! Red 1, get it? You know, most respectable security experts I know don't hide behind some pseudonym. That's only in Hollywood.
Wow, no way to censor it. This from someone in an industry that is given protection by the First Amendment. You
Continuing on we see a claim that the strings "groupsex", "porn movies", "young naked", "pre teen" and "teen sex" are "almost as common as searches for pirated music."
What, was that because you got onto a private network with your "expert" and he typed them in and then logged off? The times I've been on gnutella I've not seen those strings. EVER. Not once. Not once in 15 minutes. Not once in 150 minutes. NOT EVER. If it were, as you claimed, so rife with people looking for kiddie porn then clearly a casual glance, much less the broader scrutiny of a curious geek, would see something that was "almost as common as searches for pirated music."
Only near the end, after more hype, fear, uncertainty and doubt is planted firmly in the reader's mind do you even come CLOSE to giving a balanced story. Only after you have gotten all of the copy-selling evil out of the way do you tack on, as an afterthought, the good points of the technology.
You call yourself a journalist? Disgusting.
Well, I last looked at Stampede when they were in the 0.5x range around the time my now ex-fiancee left me back in early '98. They've been around for at least 2 years that I personally know of. So, was Mandrake optimized for that long? If not, then Stampede does have the claim as first distro to do it.
Go Buy Homeworld. Now. Right Now.
I have homeworld. I had it when I wrote that comment. It is a visually pretty game. As for the interface, it isn't all that hot. About the time that I got to the mission where you're prompted to move ships for the best firing advantage is when I saw that I was going to be fighting the interface more than my opponents. Why should I have to watch this battle here and move my ships to the proper firing angles when I have several other details to deal with? Sure, you have keen formations but none of them are offensive for the capitol ships. What, I can't have a "surround" or "swarm" formation for capitol ships so I don't have to constantly try to manuver my formation around a rotating enemy in 3d? Speaking of which, building large formations of capitol ships with a proper wall of battle, pickets and fighter formations surrounding it is next to impossible. There are no orders for proper interception, patrolling, etc that one would expect from a complex battle simulation! Hell, even Empire from my ancient DOS days had fighter planes you could assign to patrols! I can't assign a sphere of responsibility to my interceptors. I can't assign a sphere of responsibility to a guard on a formation of capitols ships.
No, Homeworld has excellent music, a compelling story and damned beautiful graphics. The controls, the interface, however, are woefully poor.
For RTS games to take a foothold they need to get above the most basic of concepts. Right now you can place single units or group them into a basic formation and place that formation. However, you still have to give them the basic orders.
Let's take Homeworld and compare it to a typical space opera-esque scene. Take any of the Honor Harington series from David Weber. A fleet (and in Homeworld you do operate a fleet) has a single commander, the Admiral. That admiral, however, doesn't order each individual fighter around. Hell, he doesn't even order each individual fighter squadran around. He orders task forces to achieve the strategic goals needed for victory.
The next portion of the battle fleet are the individual squadrons commanded by Rear-Admirals, Commadores or high ranking Captains (depending on the makeup of the squadron). They take the orders from their commander and order THIER resources to implement the tasks needed to achieve the goals set by their commander.
The next element down is the ship captain. The Captain is normally a Captain, but not always (again, depends on the ship). He takes what his commander tasks him to do and, again, orders his subordinates in the tasks needed to achieve the goals set by his commander.
Below that (sometimes) are the individual fighter wings.
The Admiral says, "Hold this system."
The Commadore(s) say(s), "Move here and hold these points".
The Captains says, "Move here in this formation with those ships and employ these tactics against the enemy on my orders."
In Homeworld, I'm the Admiral. When I build a fleed of Ion Frigates and have them form up I should be able to tell them to guard certain areas of space (for example). If they get there and engage enemies that are better swarmed from multiple sides the captains of those ships (or even the leader of the formation) should chose that tactic to implement the goal I have laid out. I, should not have to provide all the initiative for every unit every moment of the battle.
That is where RTSes fail.
It isn't too complex to implement. The computer has the AI to challenge the player, it can provide those AI to the player. Either that or take another route, have each element of the chain of command filled in by different people. Have a human admiral oversee fleet operations who has human commadores oversee squadron operations who has human captains for individual ship movement who either has a human "crew" to implement his orders or has a higher-level set of orders he can give to a computer "crew". IE, instead of just "move here, shoot that" also give "form up with that formation" or "keep on this quarter of that ship", etc.
Uhm, no, wrong. As another poster pointed out there is quite a few things wrong with StarCraft. Just because I don't feel like sitting down for hours and banging my head against the wall in frustration because I cannot get the units to do what is reasonable doesn't mean that I am the problem. As I said, RTSes have yet to be done correctly. From the "grandaddy" (Dune II) on up I've played them all and in each case there came a time where I was fighting the interface of the game more than my opponent. Dune II, the computer could repair 4 buildings on 4 different screens at the same time. The human could not. Dungeon Keeper, the Imps decide that claiming new dungeon space is more important than dragging off beaten foes for the dungeon to create skeletons. Warcraft, IIRC, warriors who got shot would run forward unless you told them to not do anything in which case if they were attacked in melee they would not fight.
The biggest problem with RTSes is that to get anything beyond the most basic of tactics you need to start getting into micromanaging. However, when you get into the micromanaging you have the problem that it takes time to get to where you want to be. Of course that is time spent from other tasks. IE, fighting the interface more than the game.
Lot of webmasters target web site to specific system: they are optimized for IE or Netscape, for a specific screen size making them unusable on smaller screen
Not to mention they create their graphics in a manner which, on a larger screen, makes the page unusable. For example, someone "optimizes" their page for 800x600, creates a background 801 pixels wide. On a 1024x768 (1280x1024, 1600x1200) screen that graphic repeats, often to where the text is overlaid on a portion of the graphic it might not have intended to be placed upon (white border on the left, white text).
You're right. I love HalfLife, especially the CS mod. Starcraft, OTOH, is the same, rehash, ancient, crap, RTS game that has been done and done /WRONG/ for years now. I have not played a RTS game that I haven't had to fight the interface more than the opponent. Every RTS that I have played eventually gets to a point where the interface fails you or you lose track of everything so easily it isn't even funny. Units don't do what you want them to because they have a different set of priorities, etc.
Until the game designers overcome that *VERY* large obsticle (which I don't see them doing in the near to medium future) RTS games are a flat out dead end.
It just amazes me how many people on here and elsewhere bitch and whine and complain about Lucas holding off on the DVD releases until he has time. It is 100% the right thing to do not only for him but for the consumer. Consumer, in this case, being the very person who is whining and bitching.
"He's doing it for the money."
False. If he were doing it *just* for the money he would release something now to get people to buy the cheap, get-it-out-the-door, at-least-it-is-DVD, shut-up-and-buy-it-luser copies only to purchase the later, better, boxed set with all the features put into it.
He's not.
People are actually whining that he isn't taking advantage of their willingness to buy cheap products only to be "forced" to buy something better later on.
"It's about control. He wants to control the product."
Bingo. It is also about how Lucas has proven that he tries to do the best he can in the game they've made. But here he has a choice. Make the last two movies and get them out, THEN work on a complete DVD set with a lot of features that the fans would demand so he has to do it once OR pause production on the films (which the fans won't like) to put out mediocre DVDs (which the fans won't like) then get back to the movies, get them out, then work on the DVDs the way he wants them to be and release them, at which time the fans will complain that he is taking advantage of them.
Screw that. Screw the fanboys who are whining that they don't have their DVDs now. Shut up because he's doing you a favor. Sure that boxed set might be $200CDN ($140 US, approx.) but rest assured that just like the last few boxed sets they will be available individually as well.
However, for those of us who do appreciate quality let me tell you what we might get. Instead of spending $20 for each of the 6 movies ($120 right there) and then turn around and buy the boxed set for, say, $150 ($270 so far) in a few years we spend $150 once. When it does come out chances are that he might do what the people who made Stargate did, put both the theatrical and Director's Cut (in this case, SE) on the same disc. That means, unlike the VCR tapes, we have the choice of which of the originals we want to see. Meanwhile we'll also most likely get a LOT of "making of" material, a few commentary tracks, etc.
So you people whining and bitching about what he is doing, ask yourself which you REALLY want to pay for? $120 in throw-away discs over the next 2-3 years, a delay in the movie production schedule only to spend another $150 or so later on, or spend $150 in 2-3 years and get a quality product?
Me, I'm willing to wait. Hell, say it is 3 years away for a release of the boxed set that is only ~$4.25/month to tuck aside to cover it.