Yes, I realise that it was hyperbole, but now you've got me started and I won't be able to stop.
It's actually pretty straightforward:
Amiga, Inc., which is Bill McEwen's company and the current holder, outsourced hardware manufacture to a venerable Amiga hardware add on company, EyeTech. The result was the AmigaOne, a PPC-based system that iterated the natural direction in which Amiga hardware addons had developed throughout the nineties. The operating system, AmigaOS 4, was outsourced to Hyperion Entertainment. (AmigaOS 4 also runs on the Pegasos computers made by Genesi, an off-brand effort that is similar. Genesi also sells their own OS, MorphOS, which does not run on the AmigaOne.)
Leaving Genesi out of the equation, there are really just the two companies, one for hardware and one for software. Amiga, Inc. just holds the brand name. The machines actually are logical successors to the classic Amigas, but to an outsider they look strange because there are several generations of expansion cards and off-brand machines in between, such as the DraCo. Some AmigaOnes even have slots for inserting classic Amiga components to improve compatibility.
So, really, four things to keep track of in the current ecosystem, and only two that actually produce anything of worth. The tricky detail is that Eyetech has recently been replaced by another company, A-Eon, but it's still the same hardware lineage. Amiga users are divided between classic purists, MorphOS enthusiasts, and AmigaOS 4 enthusiasts, with a small group who use a multiplatform open source OS called AROS. (And, yes, all of it is outdated, overpriced, and underpowered.)
Technically that's true—but only in the sense that they're emulating a certain kind of film known for its high quality, and are themselves providing something that is high quality. So, um... yeah.
No, it's just a high-quality uncompressed video camera. It doesn't attempt to reproduce any visual artefacts of its namesakes. The point is that all cheap camcorders output in compressed formats, so an alternative is necessary for small-time film makers who want to do elaborate post-processing.
Actually the figure is somewhat smaller: Hi-Toro (the original startup), Commodore, Escom, Gateway (did nothing with it), Bill McEwen (outsourced everything). The Commodore name has been through the same number of post-demise owners: Escom, Tulip (also did nothing with it), Yeahronimo Media Ventures (renamed to Commodore).
Commodore was my first thought when looking for examples of brand resurrection, but I figured that since neither brand name had done anything world-changing since 1994, that wouldn't exactly demonstrate that the phenomenon had mainstream appeal.
Also, I feel an overwhelming urge to point out that brand name recognition and hence resurrection is not exclusive to hipsters. There have been five "Atari" companies, for example.
Or, y'know, instead of hogging all of the test kits, you could just use the bad test twice on one person. If the chance of failure is fully independent, then you suddenly have a 99.99% accurate test. Even a test that's only partially independent is likely to yield better results than a single use of the 99.9 test when repeated—and in the real world, medical tests rarely give false positives consistently, especially for something as dramatic as the presence of an incubating pathogen.
For what it's worth, I'm still working on The Player of Games myself, so I know the feeling.
The trick about superior military powers is that they need to have motives in order to conquer. Power only corrupts when you have an incentive to be corrupt—a person raised in an environment of endless bounty, like the Culture, would be socialized to consider power-seeking to be a form of mental illness. Why take from others when you already have all that you could ever want? It is perhaps the most basic possible immoral act. Certainly there are instincts, but those have little utility for most people for most of their lives. This is why the spy in the first book (Perosteck Balveda) acts so helpless and transparent once she's caught, and is so traumatized by the events she witnessed—really just a handful of deaths; nothing too extreme for most action heroes—that she kills herself in the epilogue. People in the Culture are, by and large, pacified... but that's also why they consider themselves better than everyone else. Certainly there are a lot of outsiders who would agree with you that this is obnoxious and that the Culture is meddlesome (e.g. Horza.)
As a piece of science fiction apparatus, I am certain Banks would keep the Culture out of harm's way, and for a fairly simple reason—the series was started amidst the late-eighties period of dystopias and cyberpunk. Cast against its literary context, like the somewhat lower-brow Star Trek: The Next Generation (the same vintage), there is ultimately a message in the series that humanity as a whole is good, and that we can hope for a good future; that violence and greed are petty objectives and a waste of life (or technology, or whatever) unless in self-defence. Suggesting that the Culture gets eliminated by an opposing force would simply go against that objective and diminish the message, by suggesting that all of the goodness of humanity cannot withstand pure aggression. The only end-points I can see that wouldn't evoke this would be ascension or merging with another civilization with the same sense of enlightenment.
...Basically, it was written specifically to spite your literary taste.
And what would that say of the superior power? That they are greedy, or expansionist, or zealots? While the Culture has its share of issues, they have nothing to be humble about. The desires to destroy and conquer are primitive, and not worthy of enshrining. If they had lost the war to the Idirans, who if you recall very nearly were a superior power, that would unquestionably be a setback for philosophical development in the galaxy.
Are you secretly a very grumpy cat, by any chance?
Ooh, you're cruisin' for some troll points, I can smell it.
Any real geek would know that the in TNG version, "man" was replaced with "one"!
...
Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line"! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha...
If you want to be cynical about it, do keep in mind that this will benefit local business, as far as the court's concerned. There may still be vested interests at work.
That's less important than you'd think. I've written psych-style questionnaires before; it's not likely that you could extract anything out of the data that they didn't already.
The meaning of their tests is simpler than that, actually. They used no controls. It would be just as valid to say "science makes people think in more absolute terms," which surprises no one, and fits the data perfectly well. Too bad that isn't headline-grabbing, or they might have conducted a responsible study. Whoever reviewed this thing should slap themselves; it's complete garbage.
My personal favourite is "the mitochondrion is the powerhouse of the cell." I was told that a lot in high school, but since none of us owned yachts, the analogy never made sense. Some day I'm going to find myself explaining to someone that a powerhouse is the boating equivalent of a mitochondrion. I just know it.
...although if restriction enzymes were truly complicated and innovative human constructs, they probably wouldn't be named things like EcoRI (Escherichia coliRestriction Enzyme 1), so that's going to be a bit of a barrier to outright fabrication once an expert takes the stand.
You think that's weird, they called a gaming tablet "no mere plaything." So what is it, then? A profound plaything? A superlative plaything? A bacon cheese plaything?
The hysteria is mostly the media's. I get the impression that the biologists who are upset about this are more concerned with the principle of the thing, regardless of what the patent terms actually say, simply because the sequences involved are extracted from a natural source without innovative modification, so I guess that means they'd side with the Supreme Court on this one. Also, some digging suggests that the adrenaline case you mentioned was actually a bit of a screw-up, and that case only succeeded because the applicant was able to (eventually) convince the patent examiner that his product was chemically distinct from the natural hormone, which may or not actually have been true depending on how primitive his chemical extraction techniques were.
Then I'm kinda wondering why this lawsuit involves so many people. Surely if it's only a commercial restriction, "researchers, genetic counselors, women patients, cancer survivors, breast cancer and women's health groups, and scientific associations representing 150,000 geneticists, pathologists, and laboratory professionals" would not all have gotten involved? I mean, I understand (and personally espouse) the principle of the matter, but I get the feeling that this encompasses in-house manufacture of the probe for diagnostic use (i.e. profit) as well.
By that line of reasoning, Nietzsche appears to endorse all dictators, no matter how oppressive. Undoubtedly Hitler took inspiration from Nietzsche's writings, but I think by creating a captive state and denying others the chance to ascend, the level of perversion exceeds what can reasonably be called legitimate relatedness. I don't think Hitler would change much if you swapped out Nietzsche for Hegel, or indeed any other philosophical system that espouses individuality.
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Yes, I realise that it was hyperbole, but now you've got me started and I won't be able to stop.
It's actually pretty straightforward:
Amiga, Inc., which is Bill McEwen's company and the current holder, outsourced hardware manufacture to a venerable Amiga hardware add on company, EyeTech. The result was the AmigaOne, a PPC-based system that iterated the natural direction in which Amiga hardware addons had developed throughout the nineties. The operating system, AmigaOS 4, was outsourced to Hyperion Entertainment. (AmigaOS 4 also runs on the Pegasos computers made by Genesi, an off-brand effort that is similar. Genesi also sells their own OS, MorphOS, which does not run on the AmigaOne.)
Leaving Genesi out of the equation, there are really just the two companies, one for hardware and one for software. Amiga, Inc. just holds the brand name. The machines actually are logical successors to the classic Amigas, but to an outsider they look strange because there are several generations of expansion cards and off-brand machines in between, such as the DraCo. Some AmigaOnes even have slots for inserting classic Amiga components to improve compatibility.
The Commodore USA story is also pretty simple: they just sell low-end PCs in kitschy boxes.
So, really, four things to keep track of in the current ecosystem, and only two that actually produce anything of worth. The tricky detail is that Eyetech has recently been replaced by another company, A-Eon, but it's still the same hardware lineage. Amiga users are divided between classic purists, MorphOS enthusiasts, and AmigaOS 4 enthusiasts, with a small group who use a multiplatform open source OS called AROS. (And, yes, all of it is outdated, overpriced, and underpowered.)
...technically what I said is still valid, but point taken. I did not know that about RAW.
Technically that's true—but only in the sense that they're emulating a certain kind of film known for its high quality, and are themselves providing something that is high quality. So, um... yeah.
No, it's just a high-quality uncompressed video camera. It doesn't attempt to reproduce any visual artefacts of its namesakes. The point is that all cheap camcorders output in compressed formats, so an alternative is necessary for small-time film makers who want to do elaborate post-processing.
Actually the figure is somewhat smaller: Hi-Toro (the original startup), Commodore, Escom, Gateway (did nothing with it), Bill McEwen (outsourced everything). The Commodore name has been through the same number of post-demise owners: Escom, Tulip (also did nothing with it), Yeahronimo Media Ventures (renamed to Commodore).
Commodore was my first thought when looking for examples of brand resurrection, but I figured that since neither brand name had done anything world-changing since 1994, that wouldn't exactly demonstrate that the phenomenon had mainstream appeal.
Well, it does physically resemble one particular Bolex design.
Also, I feel an overwhelming urge to point out that brand name recognition and hence resurrection is not exclusive to hipsters. There have been five "Atari" companies, for example.
Or, y'know, instead of hogging all of the test kits, you could just use the bad test twice on one person. If the chance of failure is fully independent, then you suddenly have a 99.99% accurate test. Even a test that's only partially independent is likely to yield better results than a single use of the 99.9 test when repeated—and in the real world, medical tests rarely give false positives consistently, especially for something as dramatic as the presence of an incubating pathogen.
For what it's worth, I'm still working on The Player of Games myself, so I know the feeling.
The trick about superior military powers is that they need to have motives in order to conquer. Power only corrupts when you have an incentive to be corrupt—a person raised in an environment of endless bounty, like the Culture, would be socialized to consider power-seeking to be a form of mental illness. Why take from others when you already have all that you could ever want? It is perhaps the most basic possible immoral act. Certainly there are instincts, but those have little utility for most people for most of their lives. This is why the spy in the first book (Perosteck Balveda) acts so helpless and transparent once she's caught, and is so traumatized by the events she witnessed—really just a handful of deaths; nothing too extreme for most action heroes—that she kills herself in the epilogue. People in the Culture are, by and large, pacified... but that's also why they consider themselves better than everyone else. Certainly there are a lot of outsiders who would agree with you that this is obnoxious and that the Culture is meddlesome (e.g. Horza.)
As a piece of science fiction apparatus, I am certain Banks would keep the Culture out of harm's way, and for a fairly simple reason—the series was started amidst the late-eighties period of dystopias and cyberpunk. Cast against its literary context, like the somewhat lower-brow Star Trek: The Next Generation (the same vintage), there is ultimately a message in the series that humanity as a whole is good, and that we can hope for a good future; that violence and greed are petty objectives and a waste of life (or technology, or whatever) unless in self-defence. Suggesting that the Culture gets eliminated by an opposing force would simply go against that objective and diminish the message, by suggesting that all of the goodness of humanity cannot withstand pure aggression. The only end-points I can see that wouldn't evoke this would be ascension or merging with another civilization with the same sense of enlightenment.
...Basically, it was written specifically to spite your literary taste.
My point exactly, yes.
And what would that say of the superior power? That they are greedy, or expansionist, or zealots? While the Culture has its share of issues, they have nothing to be humble about. The desires to destroy and conquer are primitive, and not worthy of enshrining. If they had lost the war to the Idirans, who if you recall very nearly were a superior power, that would unquestionably be a setback for philosophical development in the galaxy.
Are you secretly a very grumpy cat, by any chance?
Turtles all the way down.
Ooh, you're cruisin' for some troll points, I can smell it.
Any real geek would know that the in TNG version, "man" was replaced with "one"!
...
Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line"! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha...
If you want to be cynical about it, do keep in mind that this will benefit local business, as far as the court's concerned. There may still be vested interests at work.
But what if it's a very short dinosaur?
They didn't report any controls; that's evidence enough, all on its own.
Apparently. You'd think the threshold would be a little higher than what appears to be a second-year undergraduate take-home assignment, though.
That's less important than you'd think. I've written psych-style questionnaires before; it's not likely that you could extract anything out of the data that they didn't already.
The meaning of their tests is simpler than that, actually. They used no controls. It would be just as valid to say "science makes people think in more absolute terms," which surprises no one, and fits the data perfectly well. Too bad that isn't headline-grabbing, or they might have conducted a responsible study. Whoever reviewed this thing should slap themselves; it's complete garbage.
My personal favourite is "the mitochondrion is the powerhouse of the cell." I was told that a lot in high school, but since none of us owned yachts, the analogy never made sense. Some day I'm going to find myself explaining to someone that a powerhouse is the boating equivalent of a mitochondrion. I just know it.
...although if restriction enzymes were truly complicated and innovative human constructs, they probably wouldn't be named things like EcoRI ( Escherichia coli Restriction Enzyme 1), so that's going to be a bit of a barrier to outright fabrication once an expert takes the stand.
You think that's weird, they called a gaming tablet "no mere plaything." So what is it, then? A profound plaything? A superlative plaything? A bacon cheese plaything?
The hysteria is mostly the media's. I get the impression that the biologists who are upset about this are more concerned with the principle of the thing, regardless of what the patent terms actually say, simply because the sequences involved are extracted from a natural source without innovative modification, so I guess that means they'd side with the Supreme Court on this one. Also, some digging suggests that the adrenaline case you mentioned was actually a bit of a screw-up, and that case only succeeded because the applicant was able to (eventually) convince the patent examiner that his product was chemically distinct from the natural hormone, which may or not actually have been true depending on how primitive his chemical extraction techniques were.
If you haven't died of a heart attack yet, plants beat us to finding a use for quantum entanglement, too.
Then I'm kinda wondering why this lawsuit involves so many people. Surely if it's only a commercial restriction, "researchers, genetic counselors, women patients, cancer survivors, breast cancer and women's health groups, and scientific associations representing 150,000 geneticists, pathologists, and laboratory professionals" would not all have gotten involved? I mean, I understand (and personally espouse) the principle of the matter, but I get the feeling that this encompasses in-house manufacture of the probe for diagnostic use (i.e. profit) as well.
By that line of reasoning, Nietzsche appears to endorse all dictators, no matter how oppressive. Undoubtedly Hitler took inspiration from Nietzsche's writings, but I think by creating a captive state and denying others the chance to ascend, the level of perversion exceeds what can reasonably be called legitimate relatedness. I don't think Hitler would change much if you swapped out Nietzsche for Hegel, or indeed any other philosophical system that espouses individuality.
Context failure. Morons committing crimes who the FBI stand to benefit from spying on. Do they not teach lexical scope on your planet?