Next time you download an MP3 and don't pay the royalty,
I don't believe in screwing artists. I listen only to music that I paid for.
Next time time you "copy" an OS onto your PC without paying Mr Gates,
I don't believe in screwing programmers. I buy the software I use, when required. I register my shareware. And I don't give legitimacy to Mr. Gates by running his OS on computers I own.
Next time you smoke a dooby,
I don't do that shit. If I did, I'd do it prepared to accept the consequences of getting caught in that act, just like when I drive over 65 MPH.
just remember that for the sake of a little bad luck, an enthusiastic crackdown by your local promotion starved Police chief, or a mistake,
YOU could end up on a database such as this and as a result be condemned for life.
In the eyes of society, if you are convicted of a crime you didn't commit, you are just as guilty as if you had committed it, until proven otherwise. If you're innocent but the jury was convinced of your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, you didn't get a good enough defense. It's a fact of life.
At least the system is good enough that a false conviction is unlikely to happen. Why don't you try scaring me with the likelihood that I'll get into a bad car accident? The odds are better, and the effect is a lot worse.
fuckwit. a
Now you've hurt my feelings. Here I thought I had a reasonable response to your arguments, but now you've gone and totally destroyed my sense of self worth.
Oh, silly me. That was your.sig, wasn't it? You should log in; that Anonymous Coward byline confused me.
That poor, poor fellow who is afraid he's sentenced to a life of crime because his prior conviction is listed on CrimeNet.
WAKE UP!!!
Prior convictions are and have always been a matter of public record. CrimeNet does nothing to change this. In the US (don't know about Australia), EVERY JOB APPLICATION asks the applicant if they have any criminal convictions. It's a quaint little principle we have called disclosure. Also known as honesty. CrimeNet does nothing to change this, either.
In other words, the capability has always existed for motivated ordinary folks to find out if their neighbors, coworkers, or employees are ex-cons. CrimeNet does nothing to change this.
IN SUMMARY:
If this fellow didn't want to be forever branded a criminal and discriminated against... if he wasn't prepared to accept the NATURAL and PROPER CONSEQUENCES of being convicted of a crime...
THEN HE SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE HE COMMITTED THE CRIME!!!
I can't figure out why a Copper PowerPC has not been released yet. It has always been in the wings for 2 years.
The copper PPC has been out for a long time. I believe G3s faster than 400 MHz and all G4s are on copper. Where's the copper X86?
Also, I remember way back when in the days of the optimism over the open PowerPC Platform, there was some information about a PowerPC 615 processor with built-in x86 emulation. I don't remember if the chip was designed by Motorola or IBM, but that should have been great technology released to the public.
IBM. Lots of potentially great technology gets scuttled for technical or business reasons. Since IBM never officially admitted the chip existed, we'll never know why it was pulled. Maybe Intel threatened IBM's supply of Pentiums and the emulation wasn't good enough for IBM to tell Intel to take a hike. Or maybe they didn't think it would sell well. Or it didn't work at all. Or maybe it was only a rumor.
It is really a shame that the PowerPC G4 is currently only at 500 MHz. RISC processors should easily have a MHz advantage because they are simpler in design. Man, imagine a 1 GHz PowerPC G4 available today. People would definitely notice.
IBM demonstrated a 1.1 GHz PowerPC a year ago at (IIRC) HotChips '99. Current rumor is that IBM is ready, able and willing to ship G4s at 780 MHz but has business reasons for not doing so.
Don't believe for a second that the super-duper high clock speeds you see in the PC world is more than an Intel/AMD pissing contest. Neither company is capable of shipping large quantities of their highest-rated chips. In the absence of the PIII/Athlon rivalry, PCs today would be topping out at about 700 MHz, and they'd be comparable to today's top PowerPCs.
So, IBM, prove your new advantage.
IBM clearly likes to hold its cards close to the vest. They don't hype, they just quietly deliver.
Does this mean I'm happy with the current state of affairs? Of course not! I want a quad-1GHz-G4 PowerBook NOW, dang it!:-)
but it always seems that the PowerPC is playing second or third fiddle.
Everyone can't have a monopoly. Unless you run Windows 98, you're second fiddle or less. But you know what? An orchestra composed of only one fiddle sounds pretty dull.
It gets knocked aside by x86 users on the desktop due to lack of applications.
Which of your needs is so esoteric that it can't be addressed by the 25,000 available Macintosh applications? Most of the best-selling PC applications have Mac versions, and vice-versa.
Yeah, sure, it's nifty to do graphics/desktop publishing, but if you're serious about that, you're running an Amiga or BeOS anyway.
This statement is superficially true, but you're way off in degree. Macs RULE graphics and desktop publishing. Their share of those markets isn't what it once was, but I believe it's still over 65 percent.
I recall reading once that a Mac makes a nice webserver because it's too dumb to really break into or do any damage.
You are mistaken. Dumbness has nothing to do with it. Macs make secure web servers because they don't provide unnecessary, insecure services on commonly attacked ports by default like Unix and NT servers do. Macs make nice web servers because you can pack a lot of power into a small, stable, efficient little box.
So why do people insist on using the Power PC?
Most of the time, they don't. They insist on using a Macintosh, or an IBM RS/6000, or an AS/400, or something like that. They don't care what the chip is, they like the platform.
In the cases where people do insist on PowerPC (typically in embedded controllers), it's because it packs a lot of punch in an energy-efficient package, and it's cheap.
Why do companies like IBM spend development dollars trying to push an outdated chip architecture, when they could be pushing next generation technologies.
Quite simply, they don't. You must have been asleep at the wheel if you didn't notice that PowerPC is one of the newest architectures on the market. The only outdated architecture people are spending lots of money and effort keeping alive is IA32 (X86), and that's just because it's entrenched.
Look at how hard Intel has tried over the years to get people off of X86 and onto modern architectures like i860 or IA64. They're victims of their own success, and while it's making them rich, Intel is keenly aware of how IA32 is holding them back technologically.
The PowerPC will still make a good "beginner's" pc, but I honestly can't imagine anyone who has been computing for more than three years using one.
Expert answer: Not quite. The Mac is a good beginner's platform, no doubt. The PowerPC itself is an excellent choice for the true hardware snob: It has kick-ass CPI (Clocks Per Instruction), low power consumption, and (in the G4) good support for multiprocessing and an awesome built-in vector floating point unit. An IA32 chip has to have 33% higher MHz to equal a PPC, and dissipate something like 3x to 10x the power.
Novice answer: Your brain appears to be disengaged. Can you imagine anyone who has used a computer for more than three years switching platforms? They'd have to throw away $hundreds or $thousands in software and start over, unless they started out with a freeware platform like Linux. And we all know once you get hooked on Linux, you never go back.:-)
Thanx to Hardware Central for yet another breathless description of the latest, greatest data point corroborating a trend I have been tracking since the original Pentium: Performance tracks clock speed!
All of the extra transistors that Intel keeps packing onto the chip accomplish nothing more than to compensate for the various nonlinear elements in the system (eg, RAM and HD). The data I have collected over the past several years (back to the original Pentium) show that (as far as benchmarks are concerned) Intel's newest Pentium architecture is no more efficient (in CPI terms) than its oldest.
In fact, Hardware Central's own benchmark shows that the new PIII Xeon is the least efficient performer in their group, despite having the highest overall performance and the snazziest new architecture. Viz:
They could achieve the same performance shown by this dual 666 PIII by pushing an original P60 up to 1332 MHz (assuming ideal scaling, which you essentially get with synthetic benchmarks).
Every time I read a review wherein the writer wets himself over the "blistering speed" of Intel's newest architecture, I plot another data point on my straight-line graph, shake my head, and mutter a curse about the quality of technical education in America.
To go to a good colledge (really good one) will cost you around $30,000 a year.
If only! I see that the cost now to attend Harvard is $35000 + travel expenses. MIT weighs in at about the same. Stanford is $1k cheaper (Bargain!), and you pay a meager $30,000+ for a year at CalTech.
No wonder going off to college feels like an Expedition - they cos t about the same! Makes me thankful for the "paltry" $10K/yr I paid a decade ago (compare at $20,000 for Stanford).
Of course, $20,000 to $35,000 in 10 years is only 6% per year, or twice the rate of inflation. If the stock market keeps growing at 15% like it has for the last decade, the $125,000/year our kids will feel like $5500 today. That's only a little bit more than my freshman tuition was. Go, bull, go!;-)
My whole point is that I feared a course in programming coming from a person who was a LISP/Emacs/MIT bigot. Mind you, this is my impression of MIT people: they think they are smarter than everyone else, they think Emacs is better than any other application (I believe you wrote on your web page, "All good programmers will spend most of their time in Emacs," from which I infer that if you aren't spending most of your time in Emacs, then you're not a good programmer), and they think that LISP is better than any other programming language. In short, they are elitist snobs. I used a few of your quotes regarding LISP and Perl to illustrate. ... etc.
MIT people are smarter than most.
I used to say EMACS is an OS thinly disguised as a text editor. It's actually more like a Linux or BSD distro.
LISP is better than any other language. If you happen to be a language theorist. It's hell to read, though.
MIT people are not elitist snobs. Philip Greenspun is an elitist snob. By his standards, he has every right to be.
LISP, like every other language, is only as useful as the problem domain to which it is applied. LISP is as useful to an EMACS user as sh is to a unix user.
All LISP programmers are snobs. You have to be a snob to swim against the stream of overwhelming market preference.
Them things were MIT firsts, not LISP.
LISP is great because you can specify extremely powerful concepts with simple constructions, and the whole shebang can be built from the ground up using only the tiniest handful of basic elements (similar to geometry's three postulates, or digital logic's NAND gate).
Most of the important concepts in CS were/are implemented in languages other than LISP. LISP is for ivory tower academics, elitist snob romantics, and other sundry rebels without causes.
PREV: comp.religion flamewars are totally addictive. They're worse than/usr/bin/crack.
Perl is extremely useful and popular. LISPers really resent that. GOTO PREV
MIT programmers do not have a bad name, AFAIK. For that matter, I don't think Philip Greenspun has a bad name. It would really suck to go through life known only as Weasel Boy.
Forgive MIT for LISP. They have done some cool stuff over the years.
The most common complaint I read here about EQ and UO appears to be the lack of roleplaying. There is hope! Clan Lord is a sort of homegrown little MMORPG that is very strong on community, social interaction, and roleplaying. The game itself is on the simple side, but above all else, Clan Lord is fun. If you can handle a 30 MB download, you can even try the free demo. Sorry, Mac users only at this time. Ob Disclaimer: Clan Lord has consumed a lot of my time and money. I need to be vindicated.
I couldn't manage to email this to the author of the survey, so here ya go. Enjoy!:-)
================================================ Gender-Bending in Games: Survey
Interview on Males Playing Female Characters in Games
Many males play female characters in games, whether they choose the female character in Quake3, or Lara Croft of Tomb Raider, or a female archer in an RPG, or they check out Ivy's moves in Soul Caliber. The reasons for this are varied, such as gameplay advantage, visual stimulation, or social reasons, to name a few. I am after your reasons-- why do you choose to play as female characters? Be as detailed as you'd like, and as frank as you'd like. I left the interview pretty open-ended in order to get at your own unique experiences. Some of the questions might not apply to you, or might get redundant, just indicate it when that happens.
1.) Your name/handle that you wish to appear in the article (can be anonymous). Of course, not everyone will be quoted in the final piece:
>>Weasel Boy
2.) Age:
>>31
3.) In what game genre(s) do you typically play female characters? Please list all genres, all platforms.
>>Online FRPGs and MUDs
4.) Approximately how often do you play female characters, in terms of your overall playing time?
>>75%
5.) Why do you play female characters? Please be thorough.
If you play female characters in different genres, for example in FPS's and RPG's, please explain the reasons why you play females in each genre.
>>Originally, it was to experiment with discovering how females are >>treated by society and how to deal with problems men don't usually >>face. What a learning experience!
>>I tend to alternate playing male and female characters in these >>MUDs/RPGs; however, I find myself increasingly playing the female >>characters because it encourages me to develop areas of my >>personality that aren't ordinarily exercised. Plus, my female >>characters are just more interesting. The males are all insensitive >>jerks.;-)
6.) When you play a female character, do you tend to put yourself into the role of the female character, and see yourself as that character, or do you just use that character as a pawn in the game?
>>The character has no existence other than what I give her, so I owe >>it to her to do a good job of it.:-)
7.) When/if you play female characters in online games, do you try and "pass" as female? For example, do you use a female-sounding handle, gender-neutral handle, or a male-sounding handle? Do you pretend to actually BE female when you interact with other players during/after the game? Why or why not? Again, please be specific as to what game genre(s) you play when you give your answer.
>>I try to make it so nobody ever asks. The truth of the matter is, >>of course, that I am probably so bad at it that nobody is ever >>fooled. I always admit being male if asked.
8.) Tell me a bit about your experiences when you do play as female, in terms of how other players respond to you. For example, do you tend to be treated better or worse than when you play as a male character, and do you notice a difference between genres? For example, when you play a female in FPS's are you treated differently than when you play a female in RPG's?
>>Nobody ever flirts with my male characters.:-) I have only rarely >>had to deal with lewd conduct when playing a female character.
>>One of the neat aspects of playing a female character is >>participating in "girl talk". I'm sure it helps that I'm not just >>another 14-year-old twerp.
9.) If part of your reason for playing female characters is gender experimentation, or exploring what "masculinity" and "femininity" mean to you, can you share some of the things you have learned?
>>Females do experience some unpleasant sexual aggression that men >>don't usually think about. It's quite bizzarre to put myself into >>that situation and actually feel the stress that my character feels. >>I can always log out, but I feel as though my integrity requires me >>to overcome the problem in-character. Fortunately, it's only >>happened a couple of times.
>>In the same vein, this experience has led me to always look for >>hidden overtones when dealing with people of the opposite gender who >>I don't know well.
>>It is my experience that female players and, to a lesser degree, men >>playing female characters, tend to be more involved in the social >>aspects of the game and less in the action and game mechanics. Most >>of the hard-core gamers who only care about running up their stats >>are male players behind male characters. Female characters who are >>interested in their stats are often played by males. This is one of >>my weaknesses.
10.) Do others tease you, insult you, etc. for playing as a female character?
>>No. On the other hand, I don't go out of my way to mention it to >>people who are not RPGers.
11.) Are there any drawbacks to playing as a female character?
>>Not that I haven't already mentioned.
12.) Some people seem to believe that there's a link between playing as a female and being homosexual, or being confused about your sexual identity. Do you agree with this?
>>Absolutely not. That's complete rubbish.
13.) Do you believe that you can tell what gender someone "really" is online (i.e. you can tell when males are trying to pass as females and vice versa)?
>>I'm pretty good at spotting males in drag, less so females. >>I don't usually try. It's only respectful and courteous to treat >>the other players totally in-character.
14.) In your estimation, what percentage of people playing online games as female characters is ACTUALLY female, if you had to guess? What makes you come to this conclusion?
>>In the games I play, 25% to 35%. This is based partly on a sample >>of players whose gender I do know, and partly based on intuition. >>:-)
15.) What effects do you think males playing as female characters are having on the overall gaming scene, if any?
>>It helps add variety and make the environment more realistic. Under >>the right circumstances it can both foster tolerance and >>understanding, and make the game more welcoming to female players. >>Under the wrong circumstances, it can foster misogyny and >>disrespect.
16.) If you have anything to add to the discussion that I haven't asked about, here's your chance to fill me in:
Microsoft's monopoly of the Windows OS is just about the only thing keeping other PC OSes alive. Today, it's a choice between Windows, Linux, NetWare, BeOS, *BSD, OS9, Solaris, etc. because if anyone wants a piece of the action, that's what they have to do.
If any company could sell a version of the OS that runs 90% of the applications, then your marketplace competition would be a choice between Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Linux, NetWare, BeOS, *BSD, OS9, Solaris, etc. Guess which ones are going to get squeezed out.
Running your script on itself results in inoperable code: s/^([^. Maybe this is exactly the point you wanted to make.
From your comments, I get the impression you misread my article. I was not proposing to sort by content. My "continents" were content types: WWW, Email, FTP, Usenet, and IRC.
I think this classification holds up quite well, particularly in the sense that there is a large degree of redundancy as each community seeks to be self-sufficient. It also holds up under your recommendation to examine where people spend their time. I primarily live in Usenet, but I travel to Email and WWW frequently. Slashdot is a surrogate Usenet for me. Keeps me from getting homesick when I'm in WWW.
It seems to me that content type and user type are two perfectly valid ways to divvy up the Net, and they are orthogonal to one another (i.e., you can use both at the same time).
For a longer discussion, see this article from earlier today: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/02/11/185212&cid=125
I can think of a couple of ways to partition the Net, and neither fits what Jon Katz came up with. Since I've been a Netaholic a lot longer than he has, obviously I'm right and he's wrong.;-) (jk; I have no idea how long he's been on the Net.)
First, if you want to divide the Net into continents, the cleanest, most logical way is to do it by either top level domains or by content types (essentially as defined by URLs). Since top-level domains are strongly US-centric, I favor the latter.
Top level domains: .com,.org,.edu,.gov,.mil,.net, and the never-used.int
Content types: World Wide Web, Email, Usenet, FTP, IRC.
A few cases don't fall under the umbrella of one of the above models (e.g., Telnet). Call these rogue services "island chains". Some (e.g., LISTSERV) muddle the boundaries (like Asia Minor). But, for the most part, I'd say these categories fairly neatly partition the Net.
You may also want to establish another axis for user types, which seems to be more like what Katz does, only he mish-mashes users with domains, IMO. I think this is a weaker division, but I'll take a stab at it.
User types: Email-only users Consumers Casual users Bargain shoppers Information junkies Social users Hobbyists Freedom fanatics Other fanatics Pirates Spooks Censors
Does anyone feel left out?:-) As before, some users may span categories, but I think the partition is fairly clean. Spooks and Censors are really anti-users, but they're too important to ignore.;-)
I would argue that these divisions are fully orthogonal to one another, and the first two but not the third divide the Net neatly enough to partition it (in a manner akin to continents).
Nobody should be forced to publish their data format (e.g., encryption algorithm). Nobody should be allowed to act in any way to punish or harrass anyone who figures out how to read it once they've lawfully bought it. Period. Even (especially, perhaps) a market competitor. That's my opinion, feel free to disagree.
Disclaimer: Not only am I not a lawyer, I can't even think of a lawyer who would willingly admit knowing me.
I think there are two issues at stake here. The first one is a technicality of patent law. US patent law (thank goodness) still at least pretends to state that you may not patent an idea, only an implementation. This leaves open the possibility of inventing a better mousetrap. Maybe you don't think an inventor should be allowed to replace the coiled spring on a mousetrap with a leaf spring and patent and sell it; I (and the US gov't) do. The right to invent a better way of doing the same thing is fundamental to US IP law.
Another issue at stake is that of interpretation of data. On the one hand, you cannot patent a "language", nor you attempt to prevent anyone else from making an invention that "reads" your language. In other words, you may not use the format of your data as a barrier to competition.
On the other hand is the notion that when you purchase a piece of dead tree containing a copyrighted work, you are able to do whatever you want with that hunk of inert cellulose. You can read it in the living room, you can read it in the dining room. You can give it to a friend. You can throw it away unopened or reread it a thousand times. You can read a book written in a foreign language. You can read it through a magnifying glass. You can give it to a robot and have the robot read it out loud to you. Your friend can read it to you. That one copy is yours alone, to do with whatever you want except distribute copies. There are absolutely no restrictions on when or how you read your book.
Tell me why a CD should be any different. No corporation has any business whatsoever telling me how I may or may not read a book I purchased at a bookstore, listen to a CD from a music store, or eat a sandwich from the deli. I bought it. It's mine and mine alone. My DVDs, Playstation disks, and computer CD-ROMs are no different.
Now let's address the ethical issue. Yes,/.ers are liberal when it comes to information and intellectual property - but, I think, no moreso than the founding fathers of the USA. The purpose of intellectual property law is NOT to give giant corporations (or companies of any size) absolute control over their intellectual output, and never has been. The Patent and Trademark Office was created for the purpose of giving the little guys - individual inventors and authors - incentive to share their creations with the rest of the world by assuring them that unscrupulous competitors wouldn't flat-out copy them and steal all the profits without incurring any R&D expenses. There is nothing in there about using IP law to keep information - inventions or artistic works - secret. The whole idea is to encourage sharing and openness and to foster competition that benefits the consumer. The fundamental principle is that consumers benefit by giving the inventor *limited* protections, specifically from outright plagiarism.
The idea of anyone at all - let alone a giga-corp - trying to use IP law to enforce secrecy, restrict information, hinder competition, disenfranchise and nullify the rights of consumers, and speculatively stake out vast expanses of uncharted intellectual space like the greedy companies that founded the American colonies did... not only is this idea abhorrent to those of us who love freedom, it is also against the letter and spirit of US intellectual property law, and we hate scofflaws.
Are you seriously suggesting that if the majority of people want to give up their constitutional rights on the basis of misinformed sound bites, we should do it?
Rather, wouldn't you prefer to give the uninformed majority the opportunity to see the whole truth before they take up sledgehammers against the Bill of Rights?
I don't make important decisions based on scanty information, and I don't advocate allowing the general public to do the same with my constitutional rights.
No flames. Here is my opinion why Windows succeeds now:
Because Microsoft won the contract to write DOS for the original IBM PC back in 1979.
The fact that Microsoft's only significant platform competitor -- the source of ALL BUT ONE of those wonderful Office apps -- was run by a whole executive suite sharing custody of one brain cell is a minor consideration.
The domination of Microsoft was guaranteed the day IBM signed the contract for DOS. QED, period, end of story, game over man.
Take a close look at the photo of the girl in front of the computer and the photo of the mouse. That there's Apple equipment, folks. Maybe ATL believes in innovation after all.
I know it ain't this way anymore, but once upon a very long time ago, it used to be law that the results of research paid for with taxpayer dollars were public domain; unpatentable and uncopyrightable. Anybody who wanted to make a buck off the technology was free to create an added-value package using it (e.g., MatLab). The demolition of this policy, allowing university and corporate researchers to take proprietary ownership of technology developed with OUR TAX DOLLARS (e.g., RSA) is one of the biggest betrayals of the public trust by the U.S. government in recent times.
I can't be the only/.'er who plays Clan Lord. If I could play CL from Linux, I might never look at MacOS again!
For those who don't know, Clan Lord is (AFAIK) the only MMORPG for Macintosh and possibly the most fun Mac game ever written. For more information, browse and comp.sys.mac.games.adventure.
Sexplosion!: Originally for the mac, this game loses its luster in translation, since we don't have GPFs.
1. What do you think SEGMENTATION FAULT: CORE DUMPED means?
2. The Mac doesn't have GPFs either, if you want to be picky. It has System Error, a misnomer since most such errors are the fault (PNI) of the app. GPF is Microsoft Windows technology.
Slashdot Mirror
Next time you download an MP3 and don't pay the royalty,
I don't believe in screwing artists. I listen only to music that I paid for.
Next time time you "copy" an OS onto your PC without paying Mr Gates,
I don't believe in screwing programmers. I buy the software I use, when required. I register my shareware. And I don't give legitimacy to Mr. Gates by running his OS on computers I own.
Next time you smoke a dooby,
I don't do that shit. If I did, I'd do it prepared to accept the consequences of getting caught in that act, just like when I drive over 65 MPH.
just remember that for the sake of a little bad luck, an enthusiastic crackdown by your local promotion starved Police chief, or a mistake,
YOU could end up on a database such as this and as a result be condemned for life.
In the eyes of society, if you are convicted of a crime you didn't commit, you are just as guilty as if you had committed it, until proven otherwise. If you're innocent but the jury was convinced of your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, you didn't get a good enough defense. It's a fact of life.
At least the system is good enough that a false conviction is unlikely to happen. Why don't you try scaring me with the likelihood that I'll get into a bad car accident? The odds are better, and the effect is a lot worse.
fuckwit. a
Now you've hurt my feelings. Here I thought I had a reasonable response to your arguments, but now you've gone and totally destroyed my sense of self worth.
Oh, silly me. That was your .sig, wasn't it? You should log in; that Anonymous Coward byline confused me.
That poor, poor fellow who is afraid he's sentenced to a life of crime because his prior conviction is listed on CrimeNet.
WAKE UP!!!
Prior convictions are and have always been a matter of public record. CrimeNet does nothing to change this. In the US (don't know about Australia), EVERY JOB APPLICATION asks the applicant if they have any criminal convictions. It's a quaint little principle we have called disclosure. Also known as honesty. CrimeNet does nothing to change this, either.
In other words, the capability has always existed for motivated ordinary folks to find out if their neighbors, coworkers, or employees are ex-cons. CrimeNet does nothing to change this.
IN SUMMARY:
If this fellow didn't want to be forever branded a criminal and discriminated against... if he wasn't prepared to accept the NATURAL and PROPER CONSEQUENCES of being convicted of a crime...
THEN HE SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE HE COMMITTED THE CRIME!!!
I can't figure out why a Copper PowerPC has not been released yet. It has always been in the wings for 2 years.
The copper PPC has been out for a long time. I believe G3s faster than 400 MHz and all G4s are on copper. Where's the copper X86?
Also, I remember way back when in the days of the optimism over the open PowerPC Platform, there was some information about a PowerPC 615 processor with built-in x86 emulation. I don't remember if the chip was designed by Motorola or IBM, but that should have been great technology released to the public.
IBM. Lots of potentially great technology gets scuttled for technical or business reasons. Since IBM never officially admitted the chip existed, we'll never know why it was pulled. Maybe Intel threatened IBM's supply of Pentiums and the emulation wasn't good enough for IBM to tell Intel to take a hike. Or maybe they didn't think it would sell well. Or it didn't work at all. Or maybe it was only a rumor.
It is really a shame that the PowerPC G4 is currently only at 500 MHz. RISC processors should easily have a MHz advantage because they are simpler in design. Man, imagine a 1 GHz PowerPC G4 available today. People would definitely notice.
IBM demonstrated a 1.1 GHz PowerPC a year ago at (IIRC) HotChips '99. Current rumor is that IBM is ready, able and willing to ship G4s at 780 MHz but has business reasons for not doing so.
Don't believe for a second that the super-duper high clock speeds you see in the PC world is more than an Intel/AMD pissing contest. Neither company is capable of shipping large quantities of their highest-rated chips. In the absence of the PIII/Athlon rivalry, PCs today would be topping out at about 700 MHz, and they'd be comparable to today's top PowerPCs.
So, IBM, prove your new advantage.
IBM clearly likes to hold its cards close to the vest. They don't hype, they just quietly deliver.
Does this mean I'm happy with the current state of affairs? Of course not! I want a quad-1GHz-G4 PowerBook NOW, dang it! :-)
I don't mean this to sound like flamebait,
Well it is.
but it always seems that the PowerPC is playing second or third fiddle.
Everyone can't have a monopoly. Unless you run Windows 98, you're second fiddle or less. But you know what? An orchestra composed of only one fiddle sounds pretty dull.
It gets knocked aside by x86 users on the desktop due to lack of applications.
Which of your needs is so esoteric that it can't be addressed by the 25,000 available Macintosh applications? Most of the best-selling PC applications have Mac versions, and vice-versa.
Yeah, sure, it's nifty to do graphics/desktop publishing, but if you're serious about that, you're running an Amiga or BeOS anyway.
This statement is superficially true, but you're way off in degree. Macs RULE graphics and desktop publishing. Their share of those markets isn't what it once was, but I believe it's still over 65 percent.
I recall reading once that a Mac makes a nice webserver because it's too dumb to really break into or do any damage.
You are mistaken. Dumbness has nothing to do with it. Macs make secure web servers because they don't provide unnecessary, insecure services on commonly attacked ports by default like Unix and NT servers do. Macs make nice web servers because you can pack a lot of power into a small, stable, efficient little box.
So why do people insist on using the Power PC?
Most of the time, they don't. They insist on using a Macintosh, or an IBM RS/6000, or an AS/400, or something like that. They don't care what the chip is, they like the platform.
In the cases where people do insist on PowerPC (typically in embedded controllers), it's because it packs a lot of punch in an energy-efficient package, and it's cheap.
Why do companies like IBM spend development dollars trying to push an outdated chip architecture, when they could be pushing next generation technologies.
Quite simply, they don't. You must have been asleep at the wheel if you didn't notice that PowerPC is one of the newest architectures on the market. The only outdated architecture people are spending lots of money and effort keeping alive is IA32 (X86), and that's just because it's entrenched.
Look at how hard Intel has tried over the years to get people off of X86 and onto modern architectures like i860 or IA64. They're victims of their own success, and while it's making them rich, Intel is keenly aware of how IA32 is holding them back technologically.
The PowerPC will still make a good "beginner's" pc, but I honestly can't imagine anyone who has been computing for more than three years using one.
Expert answer: Not quite. The Mac is a good beginner's platform, no doubt. The PowerPC itself is an excellent choice for the true hardware snob: It has kick-ass CPI (Clocks Per Instruction), low power consumption, and (in the G4) good support for multiprocessing and an awesome built-in vector floating point unit. An IA32 chip has to have 33% higher MHz to equal a PPC, and dissipate something like 3x to 10x the power.
Novice answer: Your brain appears to be disengaged. Can you imagine anyone who has used a computer for more than three years switching platforms? They'd have to throw away $hundreds or $thousands in software and start over, unless they started out with a freeware platform like Linux. And we all know once you get hooked on Linux, you never go back. :-)
Thanx to Hardware Central for yet another breathless description of the latest, greatest data point corroborating a trend I have been tracking since the original Pentium: Performance tracks clock speed!
All of the extra transistors that Intel keeps packing onto the chip accomplish nothing more than to compensate for the various nonlinear elements in the system (eg, RAM and HD). The data I have collected over the past several years (back to the original Pentium) show that (as far as benchmarks are concerned) Intel's newest Pentium architecture is no more efficient (in CPI terms) than its oldest.
In fact, Hardware Central's own benchmark shows that the new PIII Xeon is the least efficient performer in their group, despite having the highest overall performance and the snazziest new architecture. Viz:
CPU -------- Perf rating points / aggregate MHz
PIII Xeon -- 2.6
PIII 500 --- 2.7
PPro 200 --- 2.7
Athlon ----- 2.8
Cel 366 ---- 2.7
They could achieve the same performance shown by this dual 666 PIII by pushing an original P60 up to 1332 MHz (assuming ideal scaling, which you essentially get with synthetic benchmarks).
Every time I read a review wherein the writer wets himself over the "blistering speed" of Intel's newest architecture, I plot another data point on my straight-line graph, shake my head, and mutter a curse about the quality of technical education in America.
To go to a good colledge (really good one) will cost you around $30,000 a year.
If only! I see that the cost now to attend Harvard is $35000 + travel expenses. MIT weighs in at about the same. Stanford is $1k cheaper (Bargain!), and you pay a meager $30,000+ for a year at CalTech.
No wonder going off to college feels like an Expedition - they cos t about the same! Makes me thankful for the "paltry" $10K/yr I paid a decade ago (compare at $20,000 for Stanford).
Of course, $20,000 to $35,000 in 10 years is only 6% per year, or twice the rate of inflation. If the stock market keeps growing at 15% like it has for the last decade, the $125,000/year our kids will feel like $5500 today. That's only a little bit more than my freshman tuition was. Go, bull, go! ;-)
My whole point is that I feared a course in programming coming from a person who was a LISP/Emacs/MIT bigot. Mind you, this is my impression of MIT people: they think they are smarter than everyone else, they think Emacs is better than any other application (I believe you wrote on your web page, "All good programmers will spend most of their time in Emacs," from which I infer that if you aren't spending most of your time in Emacs, then you're not a good programmer), and they think that LISP is better than any other programming language. In short, they are elitist snobs. I used a few of your quotes regarding LISP and Perl to illustrate. ... etc.
The most common complaint I read here about EQ and UO appears to be the lack of roleplaying. There is hope! Clan Lord is a sort of homegrown little MMORPG that is very strong on community, social interaction, and roleplaying. The game itself is on the simple side, but above all else, Clan Lord is fun. If you can handle a 30 MB download, you can even try the free demo. Sorry, Mac users only at this time. Ob Disclaimer: Clan Lord has consumed a lot of my time and money. I need to be vindicated.
I couldn't manage to email this to the author of the survey, so here ya go. Enjoy! :-)
=
;-)
:-)
:-) I have only rarely
===============================================
Gender-Bending in Games: Survey
Interview on Males Playing Female Characters in Games
Many males play female characters in games, whether they choose the
female character in Quake3, or Lara Croft of Tomb Raider, or a female
archer in an RPG, or they check out Ivy's moves in Soul Caliber. The
reasons for this are varied, such as gameplay advantage, visual
stimulation, or social reasons, to name a few. I am after your
reasons-- why do you choose to play as female characters? Be as
detailed as you'd like, and as frank as you'd like. I left the
interview pretty open-ended in order to get at your own unique
experiences. Some of the questions might not apply to you, or might
get redundant, just indicate it when that happens.
1.) Your name/handle that you wish to appear in the article (can be
anonymous). Of course, not everyone will be quoted in the final piece:
>>Weasel Boy
2.) Age:
>>31
3.) In what game genre(s) do you typically play female characters?
Please list all genres, all platforms.
>>Online FRPGs and MUDs
4.) Approximately how often do you play female characters, in terms of
your overall playing time?
>>75%
5.) Why do you play female characters? Please be thorough.
If you play female characters in different genres, for example in
FPS's and RPG's, please explain the reasons why you play females in
each genre.
>>Originally, it was to experiment with discovering how females are
>>treated by society and how to deal with problems men don't usually
>>face. What a learning experience!
>>I tend to alternate playing male and female characters in these
>>MUDs/RPGs; however, I find myself increasingly playing the female
>>characters because it encourages me to develop areas of my
>>personality that aren't ordinarily exercised. Plus, my female
>>characters are just more interesting. The males are all insensitive
>>jerks.
6.) When you play a female character, do you tend to put yourself into
the role of the female character, and see yourself as that character,
or do you just use that character as a pawn in the game?
>>The character has no existence other than what I give her, so I owe
>>it to her to do a good job of it.
7.) When/if you play female characters in online games, do you try and
"pass" as female? For example, do you use a female-sounding handle,
gender-neutral handle, or a male-sounding handle? Do you pretend to
actually BE female when you interact with other players during/after
the game? Why or why not? Again, please be specific as to what game
genre(s) you play when you give your answer.
>>I try to make it so nobody ever asks. The truth of the matter is,
>>of course, that I am probably so bad at it that nobody is ever
>>fooled. I always admit being male if asked.
8.) Tell me a bit about your experiences when you do play as female,
in terms of how other players respond to you. For example, do you tend
to be treated better or worse than when you play as a male character,
and do you notice a difference between genres? For example, when you
play a female in FPS's are you treated differently than when you play
a female in RPG's?
>>Nobody ever flirts with my male characters.
>>had to deal with lewd conduct when playing a female character.
>>One of the neat aspects of playing a female character is
>>participating in "girl talk". I'm sure it helps that I'm not just
>>another 14-year-old twerp.
9.) If part of your reason for playing female characters is gender
experimentation, or exploring what "masculinity" and "femininity" mean
to you, can you share some of the things you have learned?
>>Females do experience some unpleasant sexual aggression that men
>>don't usually think about. It's quite bizzarre to put myself into
>>that situation and actually feel the stress that my character feels.
>>I can always log out, but I feel as though my integrity requires me
>>to overcome the problem in-character. Fortunately, it's only
>>happened a couple of times.
>>In the same vein, this experience has led me to always look for
>>hidden overtones when dealing with people of the opposite gender who
>>I don't know well.
>>It is my experience that female players and, to a lesser degree, men
>>playing female characters, tend to be more involved in the social
>>aspects of the game and less in the action and game mechanics. Most
>>of the hard-core gamers who only care about running up their stats
>>are male players behind male characters. Female characters who are
>>interested in their stats are often played by males. This is one of
>>my weaknesses.
10.) Do others tease you, insult you, etc. for playing as a female character?
>>No. On the other hand, I don't go out of my way to mention it to
>>people who are not RPGers.
11.) Are there any drawbacks to playing as a female character?
>>Not that I haven't already mentioned.
12.) Some people seem to believe that there's a link between playing
as a female and being homosexual, or being confused about your sexual
identity. Do you agree with this?
>>Absolutely not. That's complete rubbish.
13.) Do you believe that you can tell what gender someone "really" is
online (i.e. you can tell when males are trying to pass as females and
vice versa)?
>>I'm pretty good at spotting males in drag, less so females.
>>I don't usually try. It's only respectful and courteous to treat
>>the other players totally in-character.
14.) In your estimation, what percentage of people playing online
games as female characters is ACTUALLY female, if you had to guess?
What makes you come to this conclusion?
>>In the games I play, 25% to 35%. This is based partly on a sample
>>of players whose gender I do know, and partly based on intuition.
>>:-)
15.) What effects do you think males playing as female characters are
having on the overall gaming scene, if any?
>>It helps add variety and make the environment more realistic. Under
>>the right circumstances it can both foster tolerance and
>>understanding, and make the game more welcoming to female players.
>>Under the wrong circumstances, it can foster misogyny and
>>disrespect.
16.) If you have anything to add to the discussion that I haven't
asked about, here's your chance to fill me in:
Microsoft's monopoly of the Windows OS is just about the only thing keeping other PC OSes alive. Today, it's a choice between Windows, Linux, NetWare, BeOS, *BSD, OS9, Solaris, etc. because if anyone wants a piece of the action, that's what they have to do.
If any company could sell a version of the OS that runs 90% of the applications, then your marketplace competition would be a choice between Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Linux, NetWare, BeOS, *BSD, OS9, Solaris, etc. Guess which ones are going to get squeezed out.
Running your script on itself results in inoperable code: s/^([^. Maybe this is exactly the point you wanted to make.
From your comments, I get the impression you misread my article. I was not proposing to sort by content. My "continents" were content types: WWW, Email, FTP, Usenet, and IRC.
I think this classification holds up quite well, particularly in the sense that there is a large degree of redundancy as each community seeks to be self-sufficient. It also holds up under your recommendation to examine where people spend their time. I primarily live in Usenet, but I travel to Email and WWW frequently. Slashdot is a surrogate Usenet for me. Keeps me from getting homesick when I'm in WWW.
For a longer discussion, see this article from earlier today: http://slashdot.org/comments .pl?sid=00/02/11/185212&cid=125
I can think of a couple of ways to partition the Net, and neither fits what Jon Katz came up with. Since I've been a Netaholic a lot longer than he has, obviously I'm right and he's wrong. ;-) (jk; I have no idea how long he's been on the Net.)
.org, .edu, .gov, .mil, .net, and the never-used .int
:-) As before, some users may span categories, but I think the partition is fairly clean. Spooks and Censors are really anti-users, but they're too important to ignore. ;-)
First, if you want to divide the Net into continents, the cleanest, most logical way is to do it by either top level domains or by content types (essentially as defined by URLs). Since top-level domains are strongly US-centric, I favor the latter.
Top level domains:
.com,
Content types:
World Wide Web, Email, Usenet, FTP, IRC.
A few cases don't fall under the umbrella of one of the above models (e.g., Telnet). Call these rogue services "island chains". Some (e.g., LISTSERV) muddle the boundaries (like Asia Minor). But, for the most part, I'd say these categories fairly neatly partition the Net.
You may also want to establish another axis for user types, which seems to be more like what Katz does, only he mish-mashes users with domains, IMO. I think this is a weaker division, but I'll take a stab at it.
User types:
Email-only users
Consumers
Casual users
Bargain shoppers
Information junkies
Social users
Hobbyists
Freedom fanatics
Other fanatics
Pirates
Spooks
Censors
Does anyone feel left out?
I would argue that these divisions are fully orthogonal to one another, and the first two but not the third divide the Net neatly enough to partition it (in a manner akin to continents).
You're welcome.
:-)
Beware of buttering me up with compliments. I have opinions on absolutely everything, and you're only encouraging me.
Remember, advice is worth what you pay for it.
Nobody should be forced to publish their data format (e.g., encryption algorithm). Nobody should be allowed to act in any way to punish or harrass anyone who figures out how to read it once they've lawfully bought it. Period. Even (especially, perhaps) a market competitor. That's my opinion, feel free to disagree.
Disclaimer: Not only am I not a lawyer, I can't even think of a lawyer who would willingly admit knowing me.
/.ers are liberal when it comes to information and intellectual property - but, I think, no moreso than the founding fathers of the USA. The purpose of intellectual property law is NOT to give giant corporations (or companies of any size) absolute control over their intellectual output, and never has been. The Patent and Trademark Office was created for the purpose of giving the little guys - individual inventors and authors - incentive to share their creations with the rest of the world by assuring them that unscrupulous competitors wouldn't flat-out copy them and steal all the profits without incurring any R&D expenses. There is nothing in there about using IP law to keep information - inventions or artistic works - secret. The whole idea is to encourage sharing and openness and to foster competition that benefits the consumer. The fundamental principle is that consumers benefit by giving the inventor *limited* protections, specifically from outright plagiarism.
I think there are two issues at stake here. The first one is a technicality of patent law. US patent law (thank goodness) still at least pretends to state that you may not patent an idea, only an implementation. This leaves open the possibility of inventing a better mousetrap. Maybe you don't think an inventor should be allowed to replace the coiled spring on a mousetrap with a leaf spring and patent and sell it; I (and the US gov't) do. The right to invent a better way of doing the same thing is fundamental to US IP law.
Another issue at stake is that of interpretation of data. On the one hand, you cannot patent a "language", nor you attempt to prevent anyone else from making an invention that "reads" your language. In other words, you may not use the format of your data as a barrier to competition.
On the other hand is the notion that when you purchase a piece of dead tree containing a copyrighted work, you are able to do whatever you want with that hunk of inert cellulose. You can read it in the living room, you can read it in the dining room. You can give it to a friend. You can throw it away unopened or reread it a thousand times. You can read a book written in a foreign language. You can read it through a magnifying glass. You can give it to a robot and have the robot read it out loud to you. Your friend can read it to you. That one copy is yours alone, to do with whatever you want except distribute copies. There are absolutely no restrictions on when or how you read your book.
Tell me why a CD should be any different. No corporation has any business whatsoever telling me how I may or may not read a book I purchased at a bookstore, listen to a CD from a music store, or eat a sandwich from the deli. I bought it. It's mine and mine alone. My DVDs, Playstation disks, and computer CD-ROMs are no different.
Now let's address the ethical issue. Yes,
The idea of anyone at all - let alone a giga-corp - trying to use IP law to enforce secrecy, restrict information, hinder competition, disenfranchise and nullify the rights of consumers, and speculatively stake out vast expanses of uncharted intellectual space like the greedy companies that founded the American colonies did... not only is this idea abhorrent to those of us who love freedom, it is also against the letter and spirit of US intellectual property law, and we hate scofflaws.
Are you seriously suggesting that if the majority of people want to give up their constitutional rights on the basis of misinformed sound bites, we should do it?
Rather, wouldn't you prefer to give the uninformed majority the opportunity to see the whole truth before they take up sledgehammers against the Bill of Rights?
I don't make important decisions based on scanty information, and I don't advocate allowing the general public to do the same with my constitutional rights.
No flames. Here is my opinion why Windows succeeds now:
Because Microsoft won the contract to write DOS for the original IBM PC back in 1979.
The fact that Microsoft's only significant platform competitor -- the source of ALL BUT ONE of those wonderful Office apps -- was run by a whole executive suite sharing custody of one brain cell is a minor consideration.
The domination of Microsoft was guaranteed the day IBM signed the contract for DOS. QED, period, end of story, game over man.
Take a close look at the photo of the girl in front of the computer and the photo of the mouse. That there's Apple equipment, folks. Maybe ATL believes in innovation after all.
I know it ain't this way anymore, but once upon a very long time ago, it used to be law that the results of research paid for with taxpayer dollars were public domain; unpatentable and uncopyrightable. Anybody who wanted to make a buck off the technology was free to create an added-value package using it (e.g., MatLab). The demolition of this policy, allowing university and corporate researchers to take proprietary ownership of technology developed with OUR TAX DOLLARS (e.g., RSA) is one of the biggest betrayals of the public trust by the U.S. government in recent times.
Yes, gentle readers, the missing URL in the previous post is: http:\\www.clanlord.com\
For those who don't know, Clan Lord is (AFAIK) the only MMORPG for Macintosh and possibly the most fun Mac game ever written. For more information, browse and comp.sys.mac.games.adventure.
IIRC, the PS2 development platform IS Linux. :-)
1. What do you think SEGMENTATION FAULT: CORE DUMPED means?
2. The Mac doesn't have GPFs either, if you want to be picky. It has System Error, a misnomer since most such errors are the fault (PNI) of the app. GPF is Microsoft Windows technology.
My bad for not previewing.
[OLE springs to mind.]
I don't know who did it first, but this has been around since the late '80s.
[realtime spell checking (wiggly red lines in word) ]
I had this feature (probably still do, come to think of it) in an Atari ST word processor I bought in 1987.
[A comprehensive approach to disabled users]
Standard in MacOS since System 6 or before.
[Comprehensive (if occasionally random) support for non-roman charactersets and languages]
Unicode was *invented by Apple*. Well, them and one other company (perhaps Xerox), IIRC.
[And finally, MS get big bonus points for ditching ASCII and shifting to unicode everywhere WAY before anyone else.]
Kudos to MS for supporting Unicode -- but ASCII is still alive and well in Windows.