Maybe you could post a link to further information about Open Source Flash?
Re:BoneFlower, did you read the Moderator Guidelin
on
China Banning Win2k
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· Score: 1
I have read the moderator guidelines, several times in fact, and heres my point:
Bad comments have nothing to do with the article they are attached to.
The original poster, while his comment was related to the topic of the article, really had nothing to do with it. He obviously didn't read it. See my email for more of my reasoning. Perhaps I'm just harder on that moderation guideline than most. But I hope you understand that I have in fact read and thought about the guidelines, and have justification for my view, even if you value that part of the guidelines less than I do.
This is a rumour. It may be true, but one email some random person supposedly recieved, posted on a website is not enough to be put up as truth. I have not heard of any press releases by Macromedia regarding this, have they been contacted by Slashdot? Its a great thing if it is true, if not this story is a waste of bandwith. Clearly stating it is a rumour would be ok, but presenting it as fact is wrong.
Re:BoneFlower, did you read the Moderator Guidelin
on
China Banning Win2k
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· Score: 1
As for Chinese population vs world population, I am using current information, maybe a year out of date. At most. As for moderation, innapropriate posts should not be moderated up. When the poster obviously has not read the article in question, and refers to something beyond what is in/.'s summary, then that post is inappropriate. Plain and simple. If they bring in incorrect outside information to support arguments based on the article linked to, thats ok, but at the least, the article should be read.
Foolish perhaps, but who defines the millenium? The world culture, or mathematicians? If the former, which I'm leaning to, it is the third millenium. Anyways our calendar being based on years since the birth of Jesus, it's been the third millenium for 3 or 4 years now if you want to be a math geek about it.
It was unlikely after everything got fixed. But, the millions of lines of code in individual programs, multiplied by millions of programs, and millions of hardware issues... THere was certainly a chance that something serious was missed. The old boy scout motto, Be Prepared, applies here. It would be stupid to not have a few people on hand to deal with the results of the one line of code they missed out of 10 million.
And anyways, I was referring in general to all those who have worked overtime on the Y2K bug, on the rollover or the preperation.
Mistakes... moderators did you read the article?
on
China Banning Win2k
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· Score: 1
China does not have 1/2 of the worlds population. Not even close. Its more like 1/6. And, they are only forcing the Government to use Linux, not the general public. Read the article next time.
Moderators, please read the article before you moderate, and make sure you understand the "facts" presented in posts. Not that you need to know everything in the post is 100% accurate, but basic information like population in China vs the rest of the world is pretty simple.
Alot of you, even some who have been moderated to 2 or even 3 apparently haven't read the article.(WTF moderators???) If you did you would see that the policy is only supposed to apply to government systems. As for peoples home systems the Chinese government couldn't care less.
Point of fact- China doesn't have nearly 1/2 the worlds population. Only about 1/6. Still, the government bereacracy that will be running Linux is huge. They will say "Hey I like this new OS at work, I can even bring a copy home with me to put on my own computer." The installed base of linux could easily shoot up by 100 million. 100 million potential developers. 100 million potential tech support people. It has the potential to go up alot higher, or not quite so much, but I'd say the installed base will at least double.
Many of you dislike that it is China that is making this move. Why? They have a repressive regime, but Chinese society has never been as free as Western society. China is also quite free for a communist country. As long as they don't organize against the state Chinese citizens generally are left to do as they please. There are several reforms under way providing for more of a capitalist economy. Its very slow, true, but look what fast changes did to Russia? Within most of our lifetimes they will likely be very free, not so much politically but economically, and even politically quite a bit more than they are now. And have any of you noticed their reactions to major natural disasters? Just like the U.S., they send all the aid they can. Military forces, disaster relief agencies, whatever can help. They have their problems, but they are not the evil empire that the USSR was.
So how do you know for sure power wouldn't have gone out? Unlikely perhaps, I can see an argument for that. But impossible, certainly not. Bad stuff could have happened. Most of the damage would have been in financial areas, but the potential existed for other disruptions. If a powerplant has automated routines for error checking or maintenance, and all of the sudden they are up for every single one again, or the computer crashes because of bad file dates, all hell could break loose. People like the writer of that letter were necesary to avoid any of these problems. Y2K if ignored would have been extremely bad. Thanks to the efforts of this letter writer and many others in the tech industry, computers managed to make it through all over the world. Without them, I'd be surprised if my comment could ever be seen, much less gotten such an empty response from you.
You may have missed the parties, been away from your families, etc... But I will always remember that there were some people who sacrificed their time, and alot of potential enjoyment, making sure that the rest of us got through the most critical hour of the millenium. Without all of you, Y2K very well could have had the effect of the movie. Without the huge amounts of overtime you put in and sacrifices you made none of the rest of us could have enjoyed the holiday. You may feel unappreciated, but your work on ensuring a smooth rollover was vital. Without you, I would have had no light, no heat, no water, etc... for several days. Thank you for your sacrifices.
Whats the point? Dual processor graphics cards?? I don't get it. I get 55 frames per second in Forsaken. Not exactly impressive but it is easily enough for decent gameplay. My hardware: K6-2 450, 32MB RAM, Diamond Monster Fusion AGP. Not very heany duty hardware. Yet it will play anything acceptably well, and when I get a new 64MB module will be more than enough. But maybe my memories of the time when a gamer debated whether to go for the excellent resolution of Hercules mono or the 4 colors of CGA, and when you wondered who would really need one disk to hold 1.44MB, affects my views of minimum vs. excessive computer power.
They will get their stuff back. Think about it. Two boxes of wrongly taken material was returned to them before the agents even left. The rest of it was conceded to be relevant to the warrant. After it is investigated, I expect the equipment to be returned or held for evidence in a criminal trial, and if the latter ends in aquittal returned then.
This seems fairly reasonable. Ramsey Electronics was suspected of selling surreptitious surveillance devices. And according the government information they were not saying things like "This clock has a microphone" but apparently the gvt believed that they were selling the devices under the table. Whether they are or not, if there is strong evidence they are, it must be investigated. The agents did return the two boxes mistakenly taken, and did provide an inventory list, and did get a warrant. They could have behaved more proffesionally, but thats a relatively minor concern in this case.
The bottom line: If the government believes you are selling equipment intended for use as surreptitious surveillance, and your products are not clearly labeled as surveillance devices(like baby monitors) then they must investigate. These agents did their job, got a warrant, and even returned wrongly taken property before even leaving the site. Perhaps the agents could be criticized for unproffesional behavior, but they did their job. And even the owner of Ramsey electronics admitted that some of the devices taken related to the search warrant. As long as all property is returned and Ramsey Electronics is compensated for lost profits in the case of an aquital there is nothing wrong with this situation.
They didn't say that Linux would be less popular, just that the excessive hype around it would fade. Refrigirators are quite popular, as are telephones, but you don't see much hype around them do you?
Most of the posts here are rather critical. But marketing people are marketing people because they know how marketing and advertising hype works. The hype will start to die down in a few months. This is not an end to Linux that they are suggesting, far from it. All they are saying is that Linux use will continue to grow at a steady pace, and the hype will die down to an appropriate level. Linux will become more a common thing, like Windows is now. What hype does Windows have? Very little, it is just so well known it doesn't need the hype that is around Linux. As Linux becomes more familiar to the average person, the hype will fade. That is not a bad thing at all. If it fades due to a better product, well we will all benefit from that better product. If it fades because Linux is so common that the average person barely takes note of Linux software on the store shelves, because they expect it, we all benefit because it means Linux software and hardware is easier to find. Either way, we benefit, not from the loss of hype, but from the cause.
Alpha would be a good choice, but the did state that the move to an x86 architecture was for price purposes. And apparently a PIII 733 is enough, I say go with Athlon, which beats the PIII in all but one obscure photoshop benchmark, and in almost all other cases beats the PIII of the next speed level. Plus, when it comes to price, for these systems you cannot beat AMD.
Theses machines do full 3d modeling of terrain, including buildings, trees, bushes, etc.. I don't know if the current ones use OpenGL, Glide, or some proprietary protocol(the graphics engine is an Irix box) but it is alot of data. This is full 3D modeling of the terrain of an entire country we're talking about here. Plus a flight engine. If anything these boxes would be underpowered.
It is not overkill. I know the systems they are referring to. I would reccomend even more video RAM. These things do full terrain modeling and flight planning, you'd be surprised the amount of information they process.
From my time at a USMC air station, I think I know the systems being referred to. Changes I would make would be putting in an Athlon 750, if a better video card can be afforded buy it, and try to get more hard drive space(for any of you who think the video or hard drive is overkill, you haven't seen these things). And get the fastest hard drives available. As for a user interface, X windows and a basic window manager should be plenty. Find someone to code full 3D-Now support for linux. It may already be there, but I'm not sure. The sound card used is good enough, it sucks for midi but otherwise is a great card. You could probably get away with a cheaper card though. Some sort of large scale removable storage would be good. At least a ZIP 250. Otherwise, your specs look pretty good.
This concept has alot of potential. Intellingence organizations will love it. Anyone who wants a small, cheap internet device will. The only problems I see are if this is to become significant in providing alternate internet devices, the price will jump extremely. RAM is dirt cheap compared to the old days, as is CPU power, but a cheap CPU plus 16 megs RAM, would be about 75 dollars, and chips and RAM that low end are becoming hard to find. This is something to explore, for sure, but I doubt it will become such a groundbreaking device as the article suggests.
I understand the concern, perhaps I should have been clearer. The plastic case would preferably be an outer shell. The normal metal cased computer would sit inside a plastic shell, braced by rubber pieces at the 8 corners. This is the arrangement used in most military field computers.
The Pope has been quite influential, but how did he play such a great role in bringing down Communism? He has revitalized his church to be sure, and been much better about doing so than previous popes. I'm sure we all remember from history classes the inquistion and the Crusades, the current pope, and hopefully all to follow are above that. Still, how is he more influential than Gen. Marshall? Maybe his influence is more positive, but Marshall would seem to just have had so much more influence period.
My choice for the most influential person is that guy who shot the Prince that started WW1. Now there is a person who influenced the path of the whole world.
That is a good choice. If it wasn't for him WWI would at the least have been alot calmer, and WWII might also have been calmer or just never happen.
Another vote would be for Admiral Yamamoto for drawing the US into WWII.
Actually it wasn't Adm. Yamamoto who did it. It was Tojo's idea. The Emperor of Japan didn't want war, but he didn't have the influence to hold the hawks to peace. Adm. Yamamoto realized that attacking america would be like waking a very large and very hungry sleeping tiger. But it isn't an admirals place to choose which orders to obey, so long as they do not force him to violate his oath of commisioning, he is honor bound to follow all orders. Along the Japanese line Tojo would be a better choice, or perhaps even Emperor Meiji.
This article was excellent, mostly well researched with minor exceptions(Gordon B. Hickley's title is President, and Ford who he praised was a well known anti-semite, winning Germanys highest award that could be given to a foreign civilian during Hitlers reign). General of the Army George Marshall was extremely influential, both inside and outside the military and the country. Without the Marshall plan Europe and Japan would not be such close, vital allies. He saw how the Treaty of Versailles, at least in part, caused World War II. And when his time came to help oversea the peace process, he did not repeat his predecessors mistakes. He is truly a great man. I second this nomination. Has it been sent to the Time editors?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you could post a link to further information about Open Source Flash?
I have read the moderator guidelines, several times in fact, and heres my point:
Bad comments have nothing to do with the article they are attached to.
The original poster, while his comment was related to the topic of the article, really had nothing to do with it. He obviously didn't read it. See my email for more of my reasoning. Perhaps I'm just harder on that moderation guideline than most. But I hope you understand that I have in fact read and thought about the guidelines, and have justification for my view, even if you value that part of the guidelines less than I do.
This is a rumour. It may be true, but one email some random person supposedly recieved, posted on a website is not enough to be put up as truth. I have not heard of any press releases by Macromedia regarding this, have they been contacted by Slashdot? Its a great thing if it is true, if not this story is a waste of bandwith. Clearly stating it is a rumour would be ok, but presenting it as fact is wrong.
As for Chinese population vs world population, I am using current information, maybe a year out of date. At most. As for moderation, innapropriate posts should not be moderated up. When the poster obviously has not read the article in question, and refers to something beyond what is in /.'s summary, then that post is inappropriate. Plain and simple. If they bring in incorrect outside information to support arguments based on the article linked to, thats ok, but at the least, the article should be read.
Foolish perhaps, but who defines the millenium? The world culture, or mathematicians? If the former, which I'm leaning to, it is the third millenium. Anyways our calendar being based on years since the birth of Jesus, it's been the third millenium for 3 or 4 years now if you want to be a math geek about it.
It was unlikely after everything got fixed. But, the millions of lines of code in individual programs, multiplied by millions of programs, and millions of hardware issues... THere was certainly a chance that something serious was missed. The old boy scout motto, Be Prepared, applies here. It would be stupid to not have a few people on hand to deal with the results of the one line of code they missed out of 10 million.
And anyways, I was referring in general to all those who have worked overtime on the Y2K bug, on the rollover or the preperation.
China does not have 1/2 of the worlds population. Not even close. Its more like 1/6. And, they are only forcing the Government to use Linux, not the general public. Read the article next time.
Moderators, please read the article before you moderate, and make sure you understand the "facts" presented in posts. Not that you need to know everything in the post is 100% accurate, but basic information like population in China vs the rest of the world is pretty simple.
Alot of you, even some who have been moderated to 2 or even 3 apparently haven't read the article.(WTF moderators???) If you did you would see that the policy is only supposed to apply to government systems. As for peoples home systems the Chinese government couldn't care less.
Point of fact- China doesn't have nearly 1/2 the worlds population. Only about 1/6. Still, the government bereacracy that will be running Linux is huge. They will say "Hey I like this new OS at work, I can even bring a copy home with me to put on my own computer." The installed base of linux could easily shoot up by 100 million. 100 million potential developers. 100 million potential tech support people. It has the potential to go up alot higher, or not quite so much, but I'd say the installed base will at least double.
Many of you dislike that it is China that is making this move. Why? They have a repressive regime, but Chinese society has never been as free as Western society. China is also quite free for a communist country. As long as they don't organize against the state Chinese citizens generally are left to do as they please. There are several reforms under way providing for more of a capitalist economy. Its very slow, true, but look what fast changes did to Russia? Within most of our lifetimes they will likely be very free, not so much politically but economically, and even politically quite a bit more than they are now. And have any of you noticed their reactions to major natural disasters? Just like the U.S., they send all the aid they can. Military forces, disaster relief agencies, whatever can help. They have their problems, but they are not the evil empire that the USSR was.
So how do you know for sure power wouldn't have gone out? Unlikely perhaps, I can see an argument for that. But impossible, certainly not. Bad stuff could have happened. Most of the damage would have been in financial areas, but the potential existed for other disruptions. If a powerplant has automated routines for error checking or maintenance, and all of the sudden they are up for every single one again, or the computer crashes because of bad file dates, all hell could break loose. People like the writer of that letter were necesary to avoid any of these problems. Y2K if ignored would have been extremely bad. Thanks to the efforts of this letter writer and many others in the tech industry, computers managed to make it through all over the world. Without them, I'd be surprised if my comment could ever be seen, much less gotten such an empty response from you.
"Nobody likes a math geek"
You may have missed the parties, been away from your families, etc... But I will always remember that there were some people who sacrificed their time, and alot of potential enjoyment, making sure that the rest of us got through the most critical hour of the millenium. Without all of you, Y2K very well could have had the effect of the movie. Without the huge amounts of overtime you put in and sacrifices you made none of the rest of us could have enjoyed the holiday. You may feel unappreciated, but your work on ensuring a smooth rollover was vital. Without you, I would have had no light, no heat, no water, etc... for several days. Thank you for your sacrifices.
Whats the point? Dual processor graphics cards?? I don't get it. I get 55 frames per second in Forsaken. Not exactly impressive but it is easily enough for decent gameplay. My hardware: K6-2 450, 32MB RAM, Diamond Monster Fusion AGP. Not very heany duty hardware. Yet it will play anything acceptably well, and when I get a new 64MB module will be more than enough. But maybe my memories of the time when a gamer debated whether to go for the excellent resolution of Hercules mono or the 4 colors of CGA, and when you wondered who would really need one disk to hold 1.44MB, affects my views of minimum vs. excessive computer power.
They will get their stuff back. Think about it. Two boxes of wrongly taken material was returned to them before the agents even left. The rest of it was conceded to be relevant to the warrant. After it is investigated, I expect the equipment to be returned or held for evidence in a criminal trial, and if the latter ends in aquittal returned then.
This seems fairly reasonable. Ramsey Electronics was suspected of selling surreptitious surveillance devices. And according the government information they were not saying things like "This clock has a microphone" but apparently the gvt believed that they were selling the devices under the table. Whether they are or not, if there is strong evidence they are, it must be investigated. The agents did return the two boxes mistakenly taken, and did provide an inventory list, and did get a warrant. They could have behaved more proffesionally, but thats a relatively minor concern in this case.
The bottom line: If the government believes you are selling equipment intended for use as surreptitious surveillance, and your products are not clearly labeled as surveillance devices(like baby monitors) then they must investigate. These agents did their job, got a warrant, and even returned wrongly taken property before even leaving the site. Perhaps the agents could be criticized for unproffesional behavior, but they did their job. And even the owner of Ramsey electronics admitted that some of the devices taken related to the search warrant. As long as all property is returned and Ramsey Electronics is compensated for lost profits in the case of an aquital there is nothing wrong with this situation.
They didn't say that Linux would be less popular, just that the excessive hype around it would fade. Refrigirators are quite popular, as are telephones, but you don't see much hype around them do you?
Most of the posts here are rather critical. But marketing people are marketing people because they know how marketing and advertising hype works. The hype will start to die down in a few months. This is not an end to Linux that they are suggesting, far from it. All they are saying is that Linux use will continue to grow at a steady pace, and the hype will die down to an appropriate level. Linux will become more a common thing, like Windows is now. What hype does Windows have? Very little, it is just so well known it doesn't need the hype that is around Linux. As Linux becomes more familiar to the average person, the hype will fade. That is not a bad thing at all. If it fades due to a better product, well we will all benefit from that better product. If it fades because Linux is so common that the average person barely takes note of Linux software on the store shelves, because they expect it, we all benefit because it means Linux software and hardware is easier to find. Either way, we benefit, not from the loss of hype, but from the cause.
Alpha would be a good choice, but the did state that the move to an x86 architecture was for price purposes. And apparently a PIII 733 is enough, I say go with Athlon, which beats the PIII in all but one obscure photoshop benchmark, and in almost all other cases beats the PIII of the next speed level. Plus, when it comes to price, for these systems you cannot beat AMD.
Theses machines do full 3d modeling of terrain, including buildings, trees, bushes, etc.. I don't know if the current ones use OpenGL, Glide, or some proprietary protocol(the graphics engine is an Irix box) but it is alot of data. This is full 3D modeling of the terrain of an entire country we're talking about here. Plus a flight engine. If anything these boxes would be underpowered.
It is not overkill. I know the systems they are referring to. I would reccomend even more video RAM. These things do full terrain modeling and flight planning, you'd be surprised the amount of information they process.
From my time at a USMC air station, I think I know the systems being referred to. Changes I would make would be putting in an Athlon 750, if a better video card can be afforded buy it, and try to get more hard drive space(for any of you who think the video or hard drive is overkill, you haven't seen these things). And get the fastest hard drives available. As for a user interface, X windows and a basic window manager should be plenty. Find someone to code full 3D-Now support for linux. It may already be there, but I'm not sure. The sound card used is good enough, it sucks for midi but otherwise is a great card. You could probably get away with a cheaper card though. Some sort of large scale removable storage would be good. At least a ZIP 250. Otherwise, your specs look pretty good.
This concept has alot of potential. Intellingence organizations will love it. Anyone who wants a small, cheap internet device will. The only problems I see are if this is to become significant in providing alternate internet devices, the price will jump extremely. RAM is dirt cheap compared to the old days, as is CPU power, but a cheap CPU plus 16 megs RAM, would be about 75 dollars, and chips and RAM that low end are becoming hard to find. This is something to explore, for sure, but I doubt it will become such a groundbreaking device as the article suggests.
I understand the concern, perhaps I should have been clearer. The plastic case would preferably be an outer shell. The normal metal cased computer would sit inside a plastic shell, braced by rubber pieces at the 8 corners. This is the arrangement used in most military field computers.
The Pope has been quite influential, but how did he play such a great role in bringing down Communism? He has revitalized his church to be sure, and been much better about doing so than previous popes. I'm sure we all remember from history classes the inquistion and the Crusades, the current pope, and hopefully all to follow are above that. Still, how is he more influential than Gen. Marshall? Maybe his influence is more positive, but Marshall would seem to just have had so much more influence period.
My choice for the most influential person is that guy who shot the Prince that started WW1. Now there is a person who influenced the path of the whole world.
That is a good choice. If it wasn't for him WWI would at the least have been alot calmer, and WWII might also have been calmer or just never happen.
Another vote would be for Admiral Yamamoto for drawing the US into WWII.
Actually it wasn't Adm. Yamamoto who did it. It was Tojo's idea. The Emperor of Japan didn't want war, but he didn't have the influence to hold the hawks to peace. Adm. Yamamoto realized that attacking america would be like waking a very large and very hungry sleeping tiger. But it isn't an admirals place to choose which orders to obey, so long as they do not force him to violate his oath of commisioning, he is honor bound to follow all orders. Along the Japanese line Tojo would be a better choice, or perhaps even Emperor Meiji.
This article was excellent, mostly well researched with minor exceptions(Gordon B. Hickley's title is President, and Ford who he praised was a well known anti-semite, winning Germanys highest award that could be given to a foreign civilian during Hitlers reign). General of the Army George Marshall was extremely influential, both inside and outside the military and the country. Without the Marshall plan Europe and Japan would not be such close, vital allies. He saw how the Treaty of Versailles, at least in part, caused World War II. And when his time came to help oversea the peace process, he did not repeat his predecessors mistakes. He is truly a great man. I second this nomination. Has it been sent to the Time editors?