They're switching from an NVidia video chip to an ATI chip. The old games used an API that depended upon the NVidia chip. The ATI chip doesn't support that API. It would likely be technically possible to build an interface that translates from the old API to the new API, but doing so may infringe on NVidia's IP.
There have been no other strikes at America since 9/11 and Patriot Act had something to do with it.
I'm not sure if you're trolling, have your tongue firmly planted in your cheek (as I believe GP post had) or if you're serious. I strongly suspect you're a troll. However, I have heard statements like this presented quite seriously, so I'm going to assume that you're serious as well.
On February 26th, 1993, a bomb went off in the basement of the World Trade Center Trade Tower Number One. It was supposed to bring the building down. It failed. We tracked down, arrested and convicted Ramzi Yousef, Ahmad M. Aja, Mahmud Abouhalima and Nidel Ayyad for the crime, and congratulated ourselves on the success of the prosecution. We did nothing other than lip service to try and identify those who were behind those four, nor did we implement any type of coherent strategic response to prevent future terrorist incidents.
The terrorist went back to the drawing board. Despite the fact that we did nothing substantial in response to the bomb, they waited eighty years before they implemented their next attack. It occurred on September 11th, 2001, and was more successful than they had any right to hope it would be.
After a failed attempt, with no response from us, it was eight years before they tried again. And now you have the temerity to say that because there have been no new attacks in two and a half years, our response has been a rousing success! Paugh!
Our responses have been knee-jerk, designed more to placate the population than to provide us any real solution. We worry more about political correctness and propriety than we do about catching those who wish us harm. We abandon the principles that made us great, and hassle our own citizens so that our leaders can pound their chests and say "Look what I've done to stop terrorism!" Clueless idiots stand by and cheer while our freedoms are ripped away from us.
You want safety more than you do privacy, but in reality you will have neither. It is fortunate indeed that our forefathers felt differently. Still, this IS America. Batter and bruised though they are, our freedoms are still muchly intact. You have the right to believe and speak as you like. However, please do me one favor. Abandon your hypocrisy. If you have any American flags on your vehicle, go out and remove them. Get yourself a bumper sticker which reads "Freedom: it's a luxury we can no longer afford." or "Give me tyranny but keep me safe!" When the National Anthem plays, just turn your back to the flag. Make your contempt for the ideals and principles which made this country great plain to all. Let everyone know that the America of the past was a failure, that we need a new country and a new government, one devoted to the proposition that all men should be safe and comfy, and no cost is too high in our efforts to achieve that.
I really enjoyed Tad Williams' "Dragonbone Chair" series (which isn't on the list, as it isn't new) but I was not at all impressed with "The War of the Flowers," (which is on the list.) The other two I've read are "The Brian King" and "In the Forest of Seere," both of which are quite good.
Case in point. I dual boot my laptop. I just added a wireless router to my network. I purchased a Wavebuddy PCMCIA card. It came with a CD with both Windows and Linux drivers. Booted into windows, installed the driver, rebooted, inserted the card and I'm browsing the 'net. Total time expended - 15 minutes.
Booted into Linux, and copied the driver to the laptop. It's source code. Run make and then make install. No errors but no card either. Spend two hours going through the readme and trying various things. No card. Get on the net. The Wavebuddy uses an Atmel chip. Find a different driver that's supposed to work. No dice. More research. The 2.6 kernel supports the Atmel chip directly! Well, been wanting to upgrade the kernel anyway. Download the kernel source. Go through the config script. Compile the kernel. Add the new kernel to LILO and reboot. Under the 2.4 kernel, the card does not work but the power light comes on, indicating the card is power up. Under the 2.6 kernel, no power light. Must have missed a configuration there. Maybe the PCMCIA subsystem isn't loading? Will look into that when I get time to get back into it. So far, have invested about fifteen hours over three days and still have no wireless network under Linux.
The install of Linux has gotten much better, as has the hardware detection. System maintenance, however, is still woefully inadequate. And systems do need maintenance. They get updated, hardware gets changed, files get corrupted.
It is entirely possible the SCO connection is a red herring. However, it's also possible it's an attempt to kill two birds with one stone. I certainly hope the author wasn't a Linux zealot trying to harm SCO. However, the argument that a Russian Linux user wouldn't care about the SCO trial doesn't hold water. Linux has come a long way in recent years and a large part of it's progress is directly attributable to commercial companies who have either invested in Linux, contributed code to Linux, or supported Linux developers. SCO's case appears extremely weak, and the chances of them having any sort of success seem very remote. However, if SCO were to win their case, it could heavily damage the Linux movement. Particularly if SCO were to be found to have ownership rights in certain technologies, it isn't all certain that a rewrite of the relevant portions of the kernel would be sufficient to remove the taint. Linux users worldwide could be affected.
This is, of course, a worse case scenario and it doesn't provide any evidence that Linux fans were connected in any way. However, one can't dismiss the possibility simply because it came from Russia.
In this context, there is very little difference in Deism and Creationism. Put another way, the differences between the two concepts are trivial in terms of this discussion.
Despite your claims to the contrary, there are very well defined theories that describe the history of the universe from a few nanoseconds after the Big Bang all the way up to present day. There is always room in science for further refinements, and arguments among researchers over the nature of those refinements are often spun to be arguments over the essential correctness of the theory.
I said "Centuries of Bible scholars who devoted their entire lives to studying the scriptures would have argued quite vehmently that you were sorely mistaken in your interpretation of what the Bible says." That should make it quite clear that I'm referring to history, not to people yet alive. If the Bible made it so clear that the Earth is round and hangs in space, why was it heresy to make those same claims for so long?
Finally, science does not use hindsight and observation to affect a change in the future. It uses observation and experiementation to determine the essential nature of phenomenon. No theory is absolute - they are always subject to new interpretation and refinement in light of new facts or information.
I'm not sure how far off the French were, but I don't think it's possible to "correctly" measure the meridian. The Earth is far from a perfect sphere, and the length of an actual meridian would not only vary depending on where it was located, but it would be fractal - it's distance would vary depending on the scale at which is was measured. It's possible to normalize the shape of the Earth, and come up with a reasonable value for the meridian, and I don't know how close to 10 million meters that would be.
No. The meter is currently defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 of a second. (The definition has changed a couple of times as science has advanced to make the definition more precise.) The meter is based on the Earth's merideans (lines of longitude) - it is 1 / 10 millionth of one meridian.
It's amazing what hindsight can do, isn't it? Centuries of Bible scholars who devoted their entire lives to studying the scriptures would have argued quite vehmently that you were sorely mistaken in your interpretation of what the Bible says. Now that science has shown the truth, you interpret the Bible in accordance with science, and claim the Bible was there first.
As for the watch maker argument, it's been so soundly refuted that even the Creationist don't use it any more - at least not without thorought disguising it in more modern sounding terminology.
Your "simple" answer simply isn't. If '...something just doesn't exists at one point in time and then just "exists"...', (by which I assume you mean nothing simply springs into existence) then how can your Creator exist? In order to explain a complex phenomenon (the existence of the universe) you postulate a more complex cause for that phenomenon (a Creator) and then claim that your explaination is simpler.
I have no idea what you mean by "...some of the most complex scientific... theories were explained in one of the most ancient books ever written..." If you're somehow implying that the Bible contains scientific truths, you're sadly mistaken.
The principle is known as "Occam's Razor." It isn't a natural law but it is a reasonable assumption. And since a Creator is necessarily more complex than the universe He created, it argues quite eloquently against His existence.
Might I suggest a course in basic physics? Perhaps a nearby university offers one. It seems evident from you post that, while you use "scientific" terms, you really don't understand the principles or laws in question.
BTW, what happened before Creation? See, everyone, at some point, gets backed into the taking-something-on-faith corner. Some are just more explicit about it than others.
Saying "I don't know" or even "That information is unknowable" has nothing to do with faith. Faith is, by definition, a belief in something where there is insufficient evidence for proof.
We don't know what happened before the Big Bang, and we will almost certainly never know. It's quite possible the question makes no sense, as time itself may be an artifact of the Big Bang. But confessing ignorance is not the same as professing belief in an unprovable postulate, particularly one as complex as a Creator.
I would imagine the intent was to motivate the employees. "If you don't do well, everyone will see that you have a low score. Wouldn't that be embarrasing? So you better do well" But I agree with you. It would have motivated me right out the door and into a new job.
I would agree that they don't have a right to biometric data. But saying that they don't have a right to the data is not the same as saying that they should be forbidden from requiring it as a condition of employment.
I didn't object to cameras in general, although there are some cases where they are objectionable, and there are issues if the video is stored or made available to other people. I objected to systems which use cameras to scan crowds, and then use software to try to identify those people. It is one thing to identify a crime in progress, or for a human agent to identify a person who appears in public. It is another thing entirely to put into place a mechanical system which seeks to scan, evaluate and possibly identify everyone who appears in a specific location.
As soon as I enter into a relationship with you which requires that I establish my identity to you, I'll be happy to provide you with the approptiate identification, whether that consists of a signature, an ID card or a palm scan. Until such time as I freely enter into a relationship with you which requires that you know my identity, you can go screw yourself.
What makes this "draconian?" How is it different from punching a time clock or swiping a card? It's simply an alternate method to clock in. In one sense, it makes things easier for the worker. There's no longer any need to keep track of an ID card. Is there something inherently undignified about placing your hand on a scanner that doesn't exist in the act of scanning a card? Why is the former worker being disrespected and latter not?
I suspect that most opposition to this is merely knee-jerk reaction to biometrics.
That isn't to say that there aren't issues with the use of biometrics in all situations. The key is whether or not the use of the biometrics coincieds with a legitimate need to establish identity, and whether or not it exposes the user to additional risks or invasion of privacy.
Street corner cameras, for example, which purport to scan for wanted crimials, are an outrage. The government has no legitimate interest in establishing my identity merely because I stand on a street corner. It is recording information about me and my location which I have not authorized, and which I may not, for a variety of legitimate reasons, want known. It opens me up to the risk of being falsely detained in the event of a false positive. There is simply no justification for it, and many reasons to oppose it.
Biometrics are not inherently bad, and they can be used legitimately. The fact that they can also be used indiscriminately and inappropriately is not justification to oppose their use in all circumstances.
Certainly it is. And for those who use high-ASCII or UNICODE, it isn't a valid technique. That doesn't mean that it isn't a valid technique for the millions of people who don't use anything outside the normal ASCII characters.
I use POPFile, which is a perl Baysean filter. It works quite well even with spam which includes garbled words. I haven't tried playing with it yet, but it seems like it would be relatively straightforward to check for the number of words which are not already in its dictionary. Aftern the initial training, an email with more than a few new words is highly likely to be garbled spam (or from someone who received a new Thesaurus for Christmas.)
I use 6.0 rather than 5.0, and wha.api doesn't exist. If I include weblink.api, I get an error that it failed to load. Perhaps it depends on something that was in wha.api that got moved to a different.api. I'll have to play with it a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
They're switching from an NVidia video chip to an ATI chip. The old games used an API that depended upon the NVidia chip. The ATI chip doesn't support that API. It would likely be technically possible to build an interface that translates from the old API to the new API, but doing so may infringe on NVidia's IP.
...they waited eighty years...
Should be EIGHT years, of course.
And I even previewed.
There have been no other strikes at America since 9/11 and Patriot Act had something to do with it.
I'm not sure if you're trolling, have your tongue firmly planted in your cheek (as I believe GP post had) or if you're serious. I strongly suspect you're a troll. However, I have heard statements like this presented quite seriously, so I'm going to assume that you're serious as well.
On February 26th, 1993, a bomb went off in the basement of the World Trade Center Trade Tower Number One. It was supposed to bring the building down. It failed. We tracked down, arrested and convicted Ramzi Yousef, Ahmad M. Aja, Mahmud Abouhalima and Nidel Ayyad for the crime, and congratulated ourselves on the success of the prosecution. We did nothing other than lip service to try and identify those who were behind those four, nor did we implement any type of coherent strategic response to prevent future terrorist incidents.
The terrorist went back to the drawing board. Despite the fact that we did nothing substantial in response to the bomb, they waited eighty years before they implemented their next attack. It occurred on September 11th, 2001, and was more successful than they had any right to hope it would be.
After a failed attempt, with no response from us, it was eight years before they tried again. And now you have the temerity to say that because there have been no new attacks in two and a half years, our response has been a rousing success! Paugh!
Our responses have been knee-jerk, designed more to placate the population than to provide us any real solution. We worry more about political correctness and propriety than we do about catching those who wish us harm. We abandon the principles that made us great, and hassle our own citizens so that our leaders can pound their chests and say "Look what I've done to stop terrorism!" Clueless idiots stand by and cheer while our freedoms are ripped away from us.
You want safety more than you do privacy, but in reality you will have neither. It is fortunate indeed that our forefathers felt differently. Still, this IS America. Batter and bruised though they are, our freedoms are still muchly intact. You have the right to believe and speak as you like. However, please do me one favor. Abandon your hypocrisy. If you have any American flags on your vehicle, go out and remove them. Get yourself a bumper sticker which reads "Freedom: it's a luxury we can no longer afford." or "Give me tyranny but keep me safe!" When the National Anthem plays, just turn your back to the flag. Make your contempt for the ideals and principles which made this country great plain to all. Let everyone know that the America of the past was a failure, that we need a new country and a new government, one devoted to the proposition that all men should be safe and comfy, and no cost is too high in our efforts to achieve that.
I really enjoyed Tad Williams' "Dragonbone Chair" series (which isn't on the list, as it isn't new) but I was not at all impressed with "The War of the Flowers," (which is on the list.) The other two I've read are "The Brian King" and "In the Forest of Seere," both of which are quite good.
It's better. However, it ain't there yet.
Case in point. I dual boot my laptop. I just added a wireless router to my network. I purchased a Wavebuddy PCMCIA card. It came with a CD with both Windows and Linux drivers. Booted into windows, installed the driver, rebooted, inserted the card and I'm browsing the 'net. Total time expended - 15 minutes.
Booted into Linux, and copied the driver to the laptop. It's source code. Run make and then make install. No errors but no card either. Spend two hours going through the readme and trying various things. No card. Get on the net. The Wavebuddy uses an Atmel chip. Find a different driver that's supposed to work. No dice. More research. The 2.6 kernel supports the Atmel chip directly! Well, been wanting to upgrade the kernel anyway. Download the kernel source. Go through the config script. Compile the kernel. Add the new kernel to LILO and reboot. Under the 2.4 kernel, the card does not work but the power light comes on, indicating the card is power up. Under the 2.6 kernel, no power light. Must have missed a configuration there. Maybe the PCMCIA subsystem isn't loading? Will look into that when I get time to get back into it. So far, have invested about fifteen hours over three days and still have no wireless network under Linux.
The install of Linux has gotten much better, as has the hardware detection. System maintenance, however, is still woefully inadequate. And systems do need maintenance. They get updated, hardware gets changed, files get corrupted.
Linux is getting there. But it ain't there yet.
This kind doesn't count!
It is entirely possible the SCO connection is a red herring. However, it's also possible it's an attempt to kill two birds with one stone. I certainly hope the author wasn't a Linux zealot trying to harm SCO. However, the argument that a Russian Linux user wouldn't care about the SCO trial doesn't hold water. Linux has come a long way in recent years and a large part of it's progress is directly attributable to commercial companies who have either invested in Linux, contributed code to Linux, or supported Linux developers. SCO's case appears extremely weak, and the chances of them having any sort of success seem very remote. However, if SCO were to win their case, it could heavily damage the Linux movement. Particularly if SCO were to be found to have ownership rights in certain technologies, it isn't all certain that a rewrite of the relevant portions of the kernel would be sufficient to remove the taint. Linux users worldwide could be affected.
This is, of course, a worse case scenario and it doesn't provide any evidence that Linux fans were connected in any way. However, one can't dismiss the possibility simply because it came from Russia.
In this context, there is very little difference in Deism and Creationism. Put another way, the differences between the two concepts are trivial in terms of this discussion.
Despite your claims to the contrary, there are very well defined theories that describe the history of the universe from a few nanoseconds after the Big Bang all the way up to present day. There is always room in science for further refinements, and arguments among researchers over the nature of those refinements are often spun to be arguments over the essential correctness of the theory.
I said "Centuries of Bible scholars who devoted their entire lives to studying the scriptures would have argued quite vehmently that you were sorely mistaken in your interpretation of what the Bible says." That should make it quite clear that I'm referring to history, not to people yet alive. If the Bible made it so clear that the Earth is round and hangs in space, why was it heresy to make those same claims for so long?
Finally, science does not use hindsight and observation to affect a change in the future. It uses observation and experiementation to determine the essential nature of phenomenon. No theory is absolute - they are always subject to new interpretation and refinement in light of new facts or information.
I'm not sure how far off the French were, but I don't think it's possible to "correctly" measure the meridian. The Earth is far from a perfect sphere, and the length of an actual meridian would not only vary depending on where it was located, but it would be fractal - it's distance would vary depending on the scale at which is was measured. It's possible to normalize the shape of the Earth, and come up with a reasonable value for the meridian, and I don't know how close to 10 million meters that would be.
Have a look here.
No. The meter is currently defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 of a second. (The definition has changed a couple of times as science has advanced to make the definition more precise.) The meter is based on the Earth's merideans (lines of longitude) - it is 1 / 10 millionth of one meridian.
It's amazing what hindsight can do, isn't it? Centuries of Bible scholars who devoted their entire lives to studying the scriptures would have argued quite vehmently that you were sorely mistaken in your interpretation of what the Bible says. Now that science has shown the truth, you interpret the Bible in accordance with science, and claim the Bible was there first.
As for the watch maker argument, it's been so soundly refuted that even the Creationist don't use it any more - at least not without thorought disguising it in more modern sounding terminology.
Your "simple" answer simply isn't. If '...something just doesn't exists at one point in time and then just "exists"...', (by which I assume you mean nothing simply springs into existence) then how can your Creator exist? In order to explain a complex phenomenon (the existence of the universe) you postulate a more complex cause for that phenomenon (a Creator) and then claim that your explaination is simpler.
...some of the most complex scientific ... theories were explained in one of the most ancient books ever written..." If you're somehow implying that the Bible contains scientific truths, you're sadly mistaken.
I have no idea what you mean by "
The principle is known as "Occam's Razor." It isn't a natural law but it is a reasonable assumption. And since a Creator is necessarily more complex than the universe He created, it argues quite eloquently against His existence.
Might I suggest a course in basic physics? Perhaps a nearby university offers one. It seems evident from you post that, while you use "scientific" terms, you really don't understand the principles or laws in question.
BTW, what happened before Creation? See, everyone, at some point, gets backed into the taking-something-on-faith corner. Some are just more explicit about it than others.
Saying "I don't know" or even "That information is unknowable" has nothing to do with faith. Faith is, by definition, a belief in something where there is insufficient evidence for proof.
We don't know what happened before the Big Bang, and we will almost certainly never know. It's quite possible the question makes no sense, as time itself may be an artifact of the Big Bang. But confessing ignorance is not the same as professing belief in an unprovable postulate, particularly one as complex as a Creator.
I would imagine the intent was to motivate the employees. "If you don't do well, everyone will see that you have a low score. Wouldn't that be embarrasing? So you better do well" But I agree with you. It would have motivated me right out the door and into a new job.
Cool. Got a patch?
I would agree that they don't have a right to biometric data. But saying that they don't have a right to the data is not the same as saying that they should be forbidden from requiring it as a condition of employment.
Once you finish high school, it might be instructive to take a course in logic.
I didn't object to cameras in general, although there are some cases where they are objectionable, and there are issues if the video is stored or made available to other people. I objected to systems which use cameras to scan crowds, and then use software to try to identify those people. It is one thing to identify a crime in progress, or for a human agent to identify a person who appears in public. It is another thing entirely to put into place a mechanical system which seeks to scan, evaluate and possibly identify everyone who appears in a specific location.
As soon as I enter into a relationship with you which requires that I establish my identity to you, I'll be happy to provide you with the approptiate identification, whether that consists of a signature, an ID card or a palm scan. Until such time as I freely enter into a relationship with you which requires that you know my identity, you can go screw yourself.
What makes this "draconian?" How is it different from punching a time clock or swiping a card? It's simply an alternate method to clock in. In one sense, it makes things easier for the worker. There's no longer any need to keep track of an ID card. Is there something inherently undignified about placing your hand on a scanner that doesn't exist in the act of scanning a card? Why is the former worker being disrespected and latter not?
I suspect that most opposition to this is merely knee-jerk reaction to biometrics.
That isn't to say that there aren't issues with the use of biometrics in all situations. The key is whether or not the use of the biometrics coincieds with a legitimate need to establish identity, and whether or not it exposes the user to additional risks or invasion of privacy.
Street corner cameras, for example, which purport to scan for wanted crimials, are an outrage. The government has no legitimate interest in establishing my identity merely because I stand on a street corner. It is recording information about me and my location which I have not authorized, and which I may not, for a variety of legitimate reasons, want known. It opens me up to the risk of being falsely detained in the event of a false positive. There is simply no justification for it, and many reasons to oppose it.
Biometrics are not inherently bad, and they can be used legitimately. The fact that they can also be used indiscriminately and inappropriately is not justification to oppose their use in all circumstances.
Certainly it is. And for those who use high-ASCII or UNICODE, it isn't a valid technique. That doesn't mean that it isn't a valid technique for the millions of people who don't use anything outside the normal ASCII characters.
I use POPFile, which is a perl Baysean filter. It works quite well even with spam which includes garbled words. I haven't tried playing with it yet, but it seems like it would be relatively straightforward to check for the number of words which are not already in its dictionary. Aftern the initial training, an email with more than a few new words is highly likely to be garbled spam (or from someone who received a new Thesaurus for Christmas.)
Damn! That rocks.
.api. I'll have to play with it a bit.
I use 6.0 rather than 5.0, and wha.api doesn't exist. If I include weblink.api, I get an error that it failed to load. Perhaps it depends on something that was in wha.api that got moved to a different