Err, great, more inefficency.
on
Tux in Space
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· Score: 1
What ever happened to all of NASA's legendary coders that could right a re-entry program in just a few lines of binary/asm?? Hell folks, why not keep it simple! Save money, and make things more reliable, code that is small enough to memorize is alot less likely to have serious problems in it!
Of course some things do need major pieces of software and full blown OS's.
So what the fuck has NASA been doing all these years? Shit, I can understand them using a product that is already out on the market and that they have the source too due to budget cuts, but shit, why havn't they developed their own OS that is sturdier then hell and can resist anything. They have had more then enough time to do it in, and it is not like computer OS's are a new concept are anything like that. Come on NASA, get on the ball, what ever happened to THINKING AHEAD. You'd figure that after the various problems with the Apollo missions that they would have learned!
Now that alot of people have seemed to realize that a fancy generic name (or highly specific one for that matter) and a few banner ads aren't going to change the world/cure cancer/make everybody involved gobs of money/etc err, what does this matter? Can people really hold names hostage for thousands or millions of dollars now, if the entire e-commerce thing is bullshit?
Well, mabye not entirly bullshit, but hell, CONTENT QUALITY over everything else, right? Tomshardware.com hardly a fancy ass name with that cybersquatters would think of taking up, but hell, over 20 millions unique visitors a month.
Hardocp.com Heh, once again, not exactly a rare top notch get it now name, who would have thought it would be THAT successful? (no offense intended, those guys totaly rock;)
ars-technica.com Heya, Latin for ya, I don't exactly see very many people cybersquatting all possible Latin names1
Slashdot.org err, need I say more?
www.mp3.com Hey, here is a good example of a good name being USED for something nice! I typed it in one day expecting to find another lameo MP3 top 10 massive link page, but I was pleasently surprised when it turned out to be chalked full of high quality content, and lots of it too!
Without all the cybersquatting, it turns out that TLD are hardly in need. In fact, there are ALOT of good names out there that nobody is currently using, or are being mothballed because a great idea never got off the ground. The only use for TLD that I could see is content filtering, and with there being no.sex domain (which I would have loved, because I could then have clicked a button in the browser and filtered out ALL content from it therefore getting rid of those damn pr0n pop up banners, yippy!) there is really NO point in there being any more TLDs!
Thus showing how ridiculas our current system of learning is. Imagine if some horribliy important theroum has been published of which just you reading it could lead your mind onto the right path to discovering something with highly practical applications.
Heya, only got 10k per year * papers to sort through!
Heh, 80x25 is so damn easy to read though, I perfer it over anything else. All of the charecters are nice and large and crisp:) (jagged, yah, but damn, you KNOW where the edges are:)
I remember one old moniter that I had (well, not that old, 94 or 95) where after 8 or 10 hours of reading on it, my forehead would begin to radiate heat in a very unusual fashion (not your usual type of heat)
If you can normaly read a computer moniter for 8hrs without stoping, and with antialiasing you can only manage 30 minutes, and this happens on repeated occasions, and turning off the AA make the pain go away, then the odds are that the antialiasing is that which is causing the strain!
And while your at it, ya mind porting 3D Studio Max, all acceptiable plug ins, Rhino3d, Autocad 2000, and Adobe Photoshop (Corel SUCKS, sorry to say it folks, but Adobe has them beaten silly as far as interface and feature sets go. From the first second that I opened up Adobe Photoshop I knew how the use the thing, it has a great UI!)
Yah, some games WOULD be nice, but the main problem is not games being ported, but rather that with Windows a person can download a random file from the internet and be pretty damn sure that after being unarchived, that the damn thing is going to run on Windows! (what was the latest percentage, 90% or something?) Granted, Windows itself may not run, but as long as Kernal32.dll holds itself together (not to mention explorer.exe) things will run on it.
Err, no waiting eagerly for a Linux port, or setting up WINE, or any other such delays or work arounds.
There is definintly something to be said for being able to go online and download the latest and greatest Product Demo and being able to hit Setup and have it run. That is what Linux needs, MORE ORIGINAL RELEASE MAINSTREAM PROGRAMS.
The question is HOW M$ made it so that the products will only work with their operating system. The answer is of course by using pressure tactics back in the day when there was a question of what OS people could use.
It's just like Ma Bell before the breakup. Yah, you COULD have used cans and a string, but, well, come on, be serius! Heh.
Microsoft allows SOMETHING to get done. Using slaves to build the pyramids also got things done, it sure as hell doesn't make it right. Microsoft heavily DELAYS product development for the sake of their own $$$. They milk there product lines by purposly putting flaws in them so that you have to "upgrade" to a newer, some what more stable version.
Imagine if car companies did the same.
Oh yah, your gas tank has a 1/5 chance of spontaniously combusting at any given point, but for a MERE $300 we will reduce that to a 1/6 chance! Hey, good deal right?
Of course, after the "upgrade" your car's tires would start randomly falling off and you would have to pay ANOTHER $300 to get that fixed.
If you havn't realized it yet, that is ILLEGIAL. PURPOSELY JURRYRIGGING A PRODUCT SO THAT IS DOES NOT WORK and then CHARGING USERS for the fix is illegal. Buying out the competition so that there are no working products is also illegial. A monopoly is not illegal if you got there because you are the best, it is illegal if you got there by using bullying to claw your way to the top and by selling defective products and then forcing users into your upgrade path.
Unlike almost any other industry, in computers once a company or corporation is stuck down one platform path, it is emmensly hard to switch over to another one. Microsoft knew this and knew that it only had to make one fradulent sale, the first one, in order to then stay on top. Once you make a company invest in, say, your database system, and then if you force then to buy extra software at on an annual basis in order to connect their existing database to whatever other infostructure they may have, and then you make it so that your interface software cannot do all the things that they could do with their old database system (but you say on the front of the package that it CAN do all of those things) and then you hint on to them that they *COULD* get all of the features by moving the remainder of their infostructure to your product line. . . .
And then when THAT product doesn't work either, well, the company has by this time invested millions of dollers in your POS system, and in the mean time you have bought up all of the competitors so that there ARE no other solutions to go with. All of a sudden, people everywhere are stuck with a system that:
They bought under misconceptions (yah I know, ignorance isn't an excuse, but lying your ass off is still a sin.)
They DO NOT want to keep (or have been exposed to so much of your propagana that they want to keep it, but don't know exactly why)
Doesn't do all the stuff that their 10+yr old system could do!
Hmm, boy, if that isn't TECHNICALY illegal, it sure is hell is moraly corrupt and sinful. More so then EVEN what corporate america normaly tolerates!
(imagin if your ZipLock bags caused all the food in them to spoil FASTER, shit, I bet you would be pissed then!)
In a work enviroment where Windows is the standard and has to be used
I need to use windows only applications (last time I checked, Adobe Photoshop is NOT a Linux app and Photoshop *IS* worth it's price, it rocks and is defintly the best image program out there for post-proccessing.)
I need to do 3D development (Rhino3d is a MS plateform only program, and it also totaly rocks and is worth an easy 10x the price that it costs.)
You see, when you have a monopoly, you can MAKE other people use your crappy products. The programs that I use most often are not aviable under any of the *nix's and a few outdated games (or crappy NEW games) are hardly going to change that situation any.
Analogy time: If a person buys a car, and the car spontaniously explodes while it is being driven, through no fault of the user, then the car COMPANY is responsable for the problem. Defects in the product are the responsability of the products manufacturer. No matter how much legal wrangling M$ does to get out of it, the fact is that they are the ones who released a crappy product to the public and used pressure tactics to make sure that programs are only released for their plateform. (actualy, they don't have to do that any more, it used to be that they needed to force people to contrain development M$ plateforms only, but now since they have such a large market share, people develope for them just because.)
Oh yah, and don't forget, if I want to use say,
My new scanner, Video Card, Sound Card, Fast Ass Hard Drive, Digital Camera, etc, I am pretty much fucked if it comes to Linux. Most Linux people admit that they are a step behind the latest trends and that products are NOT likely to work within the first few months of there release upon Linux.
The BSD's create a stable and great OS, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to try to use any sort of new "state of the art" consumer hardware with them.
In the end, I have to use Windoze (not by choice mind you!) because if I don't, I will not be able to actualy get done any of the things that I need to get done!
Of course, if windows WORKED better, then I could get done what I need to get done, a hell of alot faster!
Hell, losing a week's worth of work is defintly something that I would classify as "harm". (corrupt files anyone?)
How about spending eons upon eons (well, mabye not quite that long, but it sure as hell feels like it!) trying to get some shitty ass product to work?
Hell, I remember Windows 95 OSR1, that damn piece of fucked up shit crashed EVERY 10 MINUTES ON THE CLOCK.
I literaly timed it, EVERY TEN MINUTES it would crash, boom.
Now then, you try doing research on a machine like that!!! It is NOT easy, and it is also quite harmfull once one consideres the stress levels involved (not to mention the varius bruises one gets from beating the shit out of the computer case.)
Productivity drops because their POS oS refuses to work. Hey folks, lets see how many programs we can randomly delete today! Yippy!
Oh yah, and how about holding back hardware development?? Shit folks, if it wasn't for MS holding onto old archaic standards in the name of Backwards compatibility (it really is quite amazing, the latest incarnations of windoze have that nice 16bit core they are running on for "backwards compatibility" but they are defintly NOT backwards compatible with most of my older 16bit applications!) then the personal computer would truly be a architercual masterpiece of computer engineering!
Shit, can't they just bite the friggin bullet and move over to 32bit already? Honestly, M$ is big enough that they could have EASILY forced Intel (and that in itself would have been quite an amazing feat that all of the Hardware DuDeS would have applauded M$ for) to ditch the crappy ass top-covering of the x86 and just use what is now called the x86 archetecture like it SHOULD be used.
Oh yah, and lets not forget general bit rot. For how long have developers been stuck accessing NON-WORKING libaries? Shit folks, you'd figure that after all these years they could finaly get Kernal32 to work! Oh well, at least I don't see quite so many errors from Kernal16!
And how about network security, eh? With the numorius holes in their consumer products (legendary in fact!) people defintly HAVE BEEN HURT by shity ass network settings. And let us not forget M$'s consumer TCP/IP implementation! Crap, that thing is _HORRIBLE_. Even if it hasn't harmed me directly, I still consider even the mere EXISTENCE of such a shitty piece of networking code to be a repugnet event!
Intresting point about long term loyalty. I think that if I company doesn't manage it's employee's into the ground with long drawn out overly restrictive contracts, then they will not have a very large problem with job jumpers. Face it, if a company is nice to you and gives you alot of freedom, and who's only demand is that you make a profit for the company by doing your job and doing it well, then the odds are that you are going to remain loyal to the company!
On the other hand, if from the get-go the company makes it clear that you are nothing more then a paid drone (with items such as non-compete clauses) then the odds are that you are not going to give a shit about the company either.
The ONE problem that I have with banner ads is that they don't EVER advertise any sort of products that I am intrested in.
For instance, porn banners. Anybody who did any sort of research on my web habits would see that the only porn sites that I have ever been to are ones that banner's popped up in my face when I tried to close the banners window. I don't visit porn sites, so why are companies wasting their bandwidth delivering ads for porn sites?
I do not have any investments of any sorts in the stock market, why the hell am I getting ads for e*trade and such other types of services?
The answer of course is that Banner Ads are not targeted at individual people, but rather they are targeted at the visitors to web sites. Just because alot of system administrators visit Slashdot.org does not neccisarily mean that I am a system administrator. Even if I am one, it does not mean that I am the one in charge of making purchases for my company. Sorry to tell you guys, but all those banner's on Slashdot are doing you no good! In fact, I could care less about branding, hell, even if I *WANT* some product, I can't neccisarly AFFORD the product. Heck, almost everybody knows what a Ferrari is, great job of branding there, heh, but hardly anyone can actualy afford to purchase one!
Now then, I DO often visit Pricewatch.com. In fact I *AM* a systems assembler/purchase advisor. (basicaly it means that I get to spend other peoples money, but not corporate type money, heh). I am always looking for great new small companies to get supplies from. It just so happens that Banner ads offer NO help in this. In fact, I have to go and LOOK for a product myself, yet all the time while I am doing this, banner ads are flashing advertisments for OTHER TYPES of products that I *AM NOT INTRESTED IN*.
Do you see the connection here? I am MORE then willing to give up a tad wee little bit of privacy if in turn I can have a banner ad appear telling me where I can get the hottest deal product type XYZ. Heck, as it is right now banners are basicaly popping up things that are consistent from day to day (/. always has Linux product ads, its a guarnteed thing) but *I* am not consistent from day to day. Hell, one day I may be looking for Oni (I was yesterday in fact, in RealLife though, and couldn't find it.) and the next day searching around for a new book.
If I do a search for "Piers Anthony" in Google then there is NOT a *SINGLE* reason as to why a banner cannot appear at the top of my screen alerting me to a special discount that such-and-such.com is having on Fantasy books and that they just happen to have a few Piers Anthony books in stock, which the Ad companies records show that I have not purchased online yet. (They cannot know about my offline purchases of course.)
Now then, I may not be looking for a Piers Anthony book to buy right at that moment, but it is quite obvious to anybody with half a brain that I *AM* looking up some sort of data on Piers Anthony and that from the ad companies perspective I have been known to buy his books in the past, so there is a damn good chance that if they DO show me a _REALLY_ great deal on one of his books, that I will indeed go out and buy it at that moment.
Grocery stores have been doing this for ages now, in fact it is quite a common activity. From almost the second that you step in the store you are lead along a path of product. When you are in the meat section getting sausauge, you are also shown that there is a sale on Lean Ham. It is quite obvious that you are out there purchasing meat, and more often then not, if the sale is good enough, you will indeed also purchase a piece of Lean Ham. In fact you actualy are more then happy to have this happen. After all, the store had to put the product on special to encourage you to buy it in an impulsive manner. So in the end you saved money. The store has made a sale that they might not otherwise have made, so they are happy too. The only problem is that of all the attempts of implementing such a system online, they have all failed.
When you do a search on almost any major search engine, it will ask you if you want to try that search at "Barns and Noble.com" or "Amazon.com" or who ever the search engine has signed their contract with.
Now marketers, I know that you are *not* the smartest people out there, but come on already. Do you REALLY THINK that I am going to interupt my search to please YOU? Hell, if I wanted a book I WOULD HAVE WENT TO BARNESANDNOBLE.COM IN THE FIRST PLACE! Yah really, takes rocket science to figure that one out doesn't it? When I want to look up a word I go to dictionary.com, I don't even try to use Askjeeves or such (well, any more, used to, but I quickly learned differently).
I guess what I am trying to say is that banner ads need to learn to embrace the consumers wishs and desires, and work for and help out the consumer, as opposed to just being another visual obstruction on the Internet.
Over my cable modem connection I can currently download at a max of Two Megabytes Per Second (yes I just said MegaBytes, I am very VERY happy with my connection speed!) but I can only upload at a speed of 15KiloBytes per second.
Now then, the upload cap is actualy doing its job of keeping me from sucking massivly large amounts of Bandwidth from the local cable modem network, so I really can't complain about it, seeing as how it was designed to do somthing and it is doing that. In reality it is only an inconvience to people who are trying to download from my P2P server that I am running (defintly not Napster of Gnutella to say the least).
I can download an easy 10GigaBytes a week, which happens to be ALOT of traffic, heh:) I've actualy heard of some ISP's inserting a 2GigaByte per month Cap, a cap would I could easily bypass in a day. But in general, downstream traffic on a cable modem connection is not really a problem for the ISP or the user. Since I am mostly an off-hours surfer anyways, I am not using up all that much bandwidth that would normaly go to other users, and when other users want to use up that bandwidth, it is going to be used up. That it is the intresting part of not having a downstream bandwidth cap.
Mathmaticaly, Assuming that the tasks being performed are enough to use up all the avaible bandwidth, the same amount of Bandwidth is going to be used up no matter if one certin user is sucking using gobs of bandwidth or not. You see, the bandwidth is GOING to be used, so, there is no reason to insert a Cap on it, since used it used, mine as well make the customer happy. (yah I know there are some holes in that argument when you only have a few users on, but trust me, everybody in their right minds wants a cable modem if they can't get a T1/T3/DSL, so there is not a problem with the user numbers).
Well. . . upstream bandwidth doesn't work the exact same way. If you have BOTH upstream and downstream bandwidth uncapped, all of a sudden you can have a few users using up alot of Upstream bandwidth and taking that bandwidth away from the poor downstream people. The way that most services work (to the demands of the customers I might add) you are guarnteed so much upstream AND downstream bandwidth. In fact I am promised the I *WILL GET* that 15KBp/s, it is a reserved amount that is assigned to me no matter what. If all shit breaks loose and the network is flooded tomarrow, I am still promised the 15KBp/s. If you uncap that bandwidth and make it unlimited, all of a sudden you can no longer promise that the bandwidth will be there. Since the upstream bandwidth will then have to compete with the downstream bandwidth (granted it does so right now, but it is in such a controlled manner that they can almost be considered to be seperate) and I can no longer be promised either the upstream OR the downstream bandwidth that I am currently guarnteed.
Just sharing the bandwidth out still presents a problem. Right now the maxium number of real-life do able connections on a Cable Modem is about 4 (depending on your Area, some people get 50KBp/s on their cable modem from their ISP, but that is rare, yet horribley fun:). Anything more then that and you are splitting your bandwidth too many ways. Now then, 4 connections @ a sum total of 15KBp/s max is not exactly stressing the network any. But 16 connections at a theoretical max of and all of a sudden you will have more people setting up servers. Even though the bandwidth is shared equaly amonst all of the connections, you now have MORE CONNECTIONS. That is what Bandwidth caps are REALLY there for. They either discourge people from running servers, or they encourage people to run a server with a very low maxiumum user limit.
Now then, you could lift the bandwidth cap and place a connection limit cap. And in fact that WOULD theoreticaly work, and I have seen ISP's that do that. It actualy still ensures that X number of users, you can easily mathmaticaly divide how much bandwidth each user is going to be using max (BandwidthTotal/8x). But taking a second look at this, it, well, sucks.
You see, I can typicaly have 16 or more windows open at the same time loading different web pages. Put this in conjunction with the two or three files I can be downloading at an excess of 300KBp/s, and granted the increased upload speed would be nice, but shit, I would be reaching my connection limit within a matter of minutes of turning on my computer!
What is more, in any sort of large game that is not server-centric, a might have to have 16 connections "established" to other users. These will not be active connections, but they will have to stay open at all times to be ready to recieve bursts of data.
Not to mention that Windows9x/2000 have a horrible habit of leaving a dozen or so connections open long after you have closed their originating application or browser window. Not a very good thing, users would find themselves having to reset all the time, just to get their internet connection open!
Now then, what would work? After all, I do want more upstream bandwidth, but I DO NOT want unlimited upstream bandwidth for myself, because I know that since everybody else would get it too, the network would become an absolute piece of shit.
I would perfer to be able to *PAY* a few extra dollars a month to have my BandWidth cap increased. While this would still act as an excellent deterint to having users run their own servers, it will still allow for some user to run their own responsable servers (a 50KBp/s or 64KBp/s bandwidth cap is what I am thinking of) and would also double as a "Gamers Package" that would have a definte improvement on internet performance during games.
How much more would I be willing to pay for that service? I am thinking of an extra $4-$5 a month, nothing too much, and very cheap. Remember that it is just a deterint to some user setting up a server in their spare time and taking up all of the networks bandwidth.
(Seattle cops seem to be a bunch of dicks now don't they, odd really, they actualy do a pretty decent job of keeping things straight around here.)
Re:A community site deserves the BBC.
on
Hope For H2G2
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· Score: 1
If your taking sarcasim seriusly, then you need some help. Lighten up a bit, it was an exageration of what the UK has been doing to it's people (namely taking away various parts of their freespeach).
You seemed to have missed the entire part about social control here.
Sex, drinking, and partying ARE bad, thus the reason that they are spelled out as such in the Bible. All of those three activities contrihute so social decay and a loss of productivity. Face it, nobody gets much work done if they have a hangover, or if they have their liver rot out. Not being sexualy promiscious will help prevent you from catching STD's, and partying far to often takes time out from what should be rejuvinational time (aka, sleep).
You see, since most people are too damn stubren or stupid to understand these things, instead of pointing out long complicated, common sensical reasons (such as, it'll slowly kill you) Priests and other people who are in charge of keeping society stable, have had to implement religious systems.
"Do it or your fucking toast ya ass hole."
In order to get "local yokals" to take notice of long term effects, they have to be some pretty damn LARGE long term effects. Of course the largest long term effect that you can get is Eternity rotting in hell, after all, as everybody knows, Eternity IS a very long long time!
The fire and brimestone bit is really just to keep people in line, if it wasn't for such methods, people would have ripped themselves to shreads long ago. The fact that the ONLY satisfaction you get from "Turning the Other Cheek" is knowing that the asshole you are ignoring is going to burn in hell some day. Without that satisfcation there is NO REASON what so ever not to punch the fuck-face down to the ground and beat them senseless. After all, if you just ignore them, they are going to get away with it, and the idea of "that person" getting away with screwing with other peoples lives for all of their life is not a very entertaining thought. You -HAVE- to have some sort of equalizer in the universe, and the various hell bits are exactly that.
Their argument against it ALSO has some logical flaws:
They say that their is no guarntee that the God you select is the right God.
Well, if you don't select ANY God then you KNOW your selection is not going to line up (if there is a God of course).
Of course, I'm not saying that one should join some extremist "Don't use modern medicine beat your children kill the infidels" religion, but a more pacificstic religion can actualy benfit you in your daily life. After all, if you think about it, sadly enough the true purpose of religion is not to Glofify God but rather to keep the populious in line. Of course keeping people halfway civilized is not such a bad thing in itself, and though one can argue that religions have been made outdated by modern justice systems (which totaly suck and of which I am NOT going to capitalize mind you!) the fact is that the threat of a few months (or even years) in the slammer hardly compares to Eternity Spent In Hell, oh so wonderiously described in full vivid detail by your local preacher (of whatever religion.)
Compared to some other Religions out there, Christinanity is actualy pretty leniet on the whole entire hell bit, heh.
Re:A community site deserves the BBC.
on
Hope For H2G2
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· Score: 1
Yah, great the socilists will be in control of it, just what we need, MORE censorship.
What good is a guide that only puts out the goverments offical version of the truth? Kinda useless, crap, all there will be said about encryption is something along the lines of "48bits is enough for anyone!"
Yes I have downloaded and played it, for quite some time in fact. When you click on a spot your charecter MOVES there, there is no confirmation box, no little "this movement will take 16 points and you only have 14, are you sure you want to go there?" There are no little hexs, etc.
Ever since encountering the load of bullshit that is Baulders Gate I have refused to buy any of the modern "rpgs".
In fact, as far as I am concerned, a real true RPG has not been released since Fallout 2, end of the story.
Goldbox games have alot more playability in them today then Baulders Gate, simply because GoldBox games ROCK. Period. Baulders Gate reduced combat down to pointless "click him before he clicks you" combat and relies on advanced knowledge of the enemies possesion to win. Excuse me, mega powerful wizard teleports in and frags your party, oops, to bad! Reload, make sure you have a spell lined up and ready to go the second he beams in. That is NOT strategy, that is bullshit. Strategy is spending TWO HOURS defeating hoards of creatures. Role Playing is stepping into the shoes of a Dwarven Warrior and kicking an entire armies ass (with the help from a few Mages, Paladines, and Clerics of course!)
Whats more, as shown in Interplays game Dragon Wars (which totaly rocks BTW, and is the most non-linear game I have seen yet) Role Playing is taking the part of either good OR evil and screwing things up how YOU want to screw with them. You should never just throw a player in a dungion and say "go through it". Hell, my charecters are smarter then that (they should be, I rolled them some nice INT dice) and will go AROUND THE DAMN MOUNTINE OF ULTIMATE DOOM THINGY OF PAIN WHATCHAMACOLITE.
Fallout tactics is not tactical at all, the orginal two Fallout games had ALOT of Tactics in them, but the new Fallout Tactics doesn't even tell you how many movement points a move is going to take! DOH, who forgot THAT one eh? Shit, that is SO FUCKING OBVIOUS. If you are going to charge the player points to move THEN ALWAYS TELL THEM AHEAD OF TIME HOW MANY POINTS IT WILL TAKE TO MOVE DAMNIT.
Sorry, that one still gets to me, can't stand that horrible blunder, shit, so friggin obvious people!
Oh yah, and one more note.
If the charecters are all predefined::COUGH:: Final Fantasy 7+::COUGH:: then it is not Role Playing. Role Playing is making a charecter and using it, not reading what amounts to glorified sub-titles in a poorly done movie.
Who says I *WANT* my charecter to have some secret hidious background? Criminies, that is the auther playing the role for me. If I want ot pretend to be a depressed psycho I don't need to spend $300 on a consol and $40 on a CD for that! I can just close my eyes and pretend I am cutting my wrists, saves alot of money! Sheesh, leave some room for a LITTLE bit of imagination in modern so called "rpgs". Until you do, those quotes around rpg arn't going nowheres!
You will die, and then you will find out, so it is really quite pointless to spend all of your life fussing about it, considering that you will have all of ETERNITY to fuss about it later!
Shit, worship some God, that way you have a 1/ chance of choosing the right one.
Or there may be no God, and your screwed anyways, upon which you won't know anything, but you won't be any better or worse off then if you HAD worried about it.
Racism, pretty much dead? Yah, I used to think that, until I got a clue.
Cop's pulled over my brother in law a year or so back, ripped him out of the car, and beat him senseless.
He had a broken leg at the time.
They then drove off.
I live in the pacific northwest, arguably one of the most liberal places around, still doesn't mean that there isn't racism.
I live in what is quickly becoming a perdomitly Asianic area, and I can guarntee you that many of the other people here (Blacks and Whites) and quite racist about it, even though they wouldn't ever dare admit to it in polite company. Racism is the fear of what is different, and it will always exist.
Oh yah, and the NAACP doesn't just help African Americans, but rather they have become a general force to end bigotry.
Genetics, complicated? Surly you jest!
Honestly now, basic genetic theory is being taught in High School classrooms, and as soon as Semester 1 Genetics become firmly entrenched in our public education system, hopefully we can work on futher more advanced topics. It is not like genetics require a giganticly large amount of math to understand the basic theories. While alot of math is required for manipulation and TRUE understanding, a laymans understanding can be gotten with nothing more then 2nd year algebra (if that) in a simular fashion that the more basic parts of relativity can be understood by almost anyone.
Once people understand the basics, they will be far more inclined to believe other stories they here about genetics, if just for the sake of Ego "Yah, sure, I heard 'bout that one, course it's true, why do ya' think I took it?"
AMD's SMP is nice, but it has one crucial flaw that makes MoBo's for it emmensly expensive.
Each AMD CPU has to have a direct link to the RAM, which means that you end up with ALOT more traces then you normaly would on an SMP CPU. While the direct link to the RAM is great for speed, it makes 4, 8, and 16 way Athlon solutions practicaly impossable from a pricing point of view. This is quite sad since AMD CPU's are so damn cheap, that I hope that someone comes out with a simple dummy MoBo for AMD CPU's that is nothing more then a CPU Socket and some sort of connector to plug into a real Main Board that houses all the real stuff, like the AGP port and PCI bus.
With 1gig Durons going for around $70 now (overclocking is alot of fun, heh,::grins:: ) there is no reason in the world as to why a true 8way setup should cost more then $1400 or so. I'm thinking $70 for the CPU, and $30 for the MoBO attachment (hell, it could use high quality Cat5 cable to get a decent throughput that could more then easily supply it with the data it needs). 8 cpu's later that is a mere $800 for Boards and Chips, with another $160 thrown on top for that for cooling.
$960, doing good so far.
$200 for the case (it would have to be custom made of course, defintly not your standard ATX form factor) brings the total up to $1160.
add another $100 for the power supply (big mofo) and another $40 for case cooling, and you have yourself a price tag of $1300
Then you just need the main MoBO, which could probebly cost around $300, which is a little much, and brings you to a grant total of $1600 for 8gigahertz of power.
Add yourself HD's and a Vid Card, and you have yourself a $2000 machine that beats the holy shit out of ANY other product out there within it's price range, and even at twice its price!
The cheap price of AMD's CPU's could be their best advantage, but only if they use it correctly.
God, you mentioned technologies that didn't work having no relevence to this situation, and, well, sheesh, here ya go mentioning NON-COMMERICAL energy tech.
Flexable Solar Panels? Sure, that's nice, and If I'm say, reading in doors, or at night, or in a city that doesn't have alot of light? Heck, where are you going to put the battery casing? Unless you intend for it to be only readable in sunlight, and that would be a serius liability.
Sure, kinetic energy extractors exist, and they are small, but they sure as heck can't power a display screen of any type. I don't care how efficent this new paper is, unless they can make it passive instead of active, then what is the point?
Do we even WANT animations in our books? Sure I can see how they could be handy if they are used very sparingly, but it turns out that the Blink tag in HTML is far to powerfull to be used by everyday mortals, are you really going to trust them with full blown animation in the middle of text? Crap, just what I need, glowing green letters, no friggin thank you. I read a book to READ a book, thats it.
While this technology COULD have some neato implications for things like billboards, where the
ability to change the billboard without taking it down would be very neat, it still is not the end all solution to replace paper that it first looks like. Paper is very handy.
Oh yah, and one thing it will never be able to do?
Be ripped in quarters and used as scrap paper after the front side has been written all over. This is something that Mothers around the world love to do, because God knows almost every business out there wastes paper by throwing away blank sheets that have something printed on the front of them, but nothing on the back.
As for durability, regular paper is VERY durable. I can sit on it, fold it, squish it, get it mildly moist (a few drops here and there). It has wonderious operating conditions (from negatve to 96c or so, can't remember, havn't read the book, heh)
I can let a book sit around for months and not worry about its batteries running down, and books have been found in perfectly good conditions after decades of storage. The quality of printing can be manipulated so that if I need it to stand up to over a Century of use, it can stand that long!
Tell me, will your Palm Pilot still work in 100 years? Just put it in a trunk some place, and have one of your decendents open it up in 100 years, I bet you they will at least have to change it's batteries (that is assuming they can even find the write battery type, real books you see, don't have any parts that need replacing except for the Spine, and even the lack of a spine doesn't make the book's contents unreachable.)
Vaporware, it is. Companies have been promosing truely flat paper for ages now. Ok, mabye not ages, but at least two or three years. I'm gettig sick and tired of waiting, and until I SEE and READ differently (as in see the paper and read what is on it) I will put e-paper into the same catagory as I do all other "any day now" inventions.
Find ways to bypass Bess (if your a slashdot reader I'm sure that you already have) and use them with Gusto.
Get in contact with your school districts local head tech, find out what the PW is to bypass Bess, this should have been given out to your local Libarian so that s/he can bypass Bess when it blocks things it does not.
Spread the PW around. Legaly it has to be installed, nobody can do anything if everybody knows the PW. The fact is that NOBODY likes it. The teachers hate it (they can't access their own e-mail!) the administrators hate it (it keeps them from doing their job!) and the councilers hate it (it keeps them from doing their research!) The only people who don't mind it are the parents that that is because they don't have to use it. In other words, if the PW is only relayed amonst the students, and the one who starts sharing it doesn't mention that they got it from a school district offical then even if parents rat on the school district, nothing can be done.
If the PW is changed simply get it again and again, until eventualy the district has to give up and keep it at one known level.
This would remove bess's censorship capacity. But, actualy, the best thing you CAN do against bess is LET IT KEEP MONITERING YOU.
You see. . . . . Bess gathers horribley scewed stats. Imagine flipping a coin, but throwing out all runs of 3 or more. It would throw everything off by quite a bit, I should say! Bess gathers stats from only what students can actualy access, which is hardly what they want! Students hardly ever access anything at school that they would access outside of school. All the numbers are ridiculas and pointless, and if the company that ownes bess keeps selling those numbers, the people buying them are soon to realize that they are being ripped off. The numbers mine as well be random.
In liue of that, you could just use any of numorius exploits to get past Bess the Bitch. It is _so_ easy it is pathedic.
Slashdot Mirror
What ever happened to all of NASA's legendary coders that could right a re-entry program in just a few lines of binary/asm?? Hell folks, why not keep it simple! Save money, and make things more reliable, code that is small enough to memorize is alot less likely to have serious problems in it!
Of course some things do need major pieces of software and full blown OS's.
So what the fuck has NASA been doing all these years? Shit, I can understand them using a product that is already out on the market and that they have the source too due to budget cuts, but shit, why havn't they developed their own OS that is sturdier then hell and can resist anything. They have had more then enough time to do it in, and it is not like computer OS's are a new concept are anything like that. Come on NASA, get on the ball, what ever happened to THINKING AHEAD. You'd figure that after the various problems with the Apollo missions that they would have learned!
Now that alot of people have seemed to realize that a fancy generic name (or highly specific one for that matter) and a few banner ads aren't going to change the world/cure cancer/make everybody involved gobs of money/etc err, what does this matter? Can people really hold names hostage for thousands or millions of dollars now, if the entire e-commerce thing is bullshit?
.sex domain (which I would have loved, because I could then have clicked a button in the browser and filtered out ALL content from it therefore getting rid of those damn pr0n pop up banners, yippy!) there is really NO point in there being any more TLDs!
Well, mabye not entirly bullshit, but hell, CONTENT QUALITY over everything else, right? Tomshardware.com hardly a fancy ass name with that cybersquatters would think of taking up, but hell, over 20 millions unique visitors a month.
Hardocp.com Heh, once again, not exactly a rare top notch get it now name, who would have thought it would be THAT successful? (no offense intended, those guys totaly rock;)
ars-technica.com Heya, Latin for ya, I don't exactly see very many people cybersquatting all possible Latin names1
Slashdot.org err, need I say more?
www.mp3.com Hey, here is a good example of a good name being USED for something nice! I typed it in one day expecting to find another lameo MP3 top 10 massive link page, but I was pleasently surprised when it turned out to be chalked full of high quality content, and lots of it too!
Without all the cybersquatting, it turns out that TLD are hardly in need. In fact, there are ALOT of good names out there that nobody is currently using, or are being mothballed because a great idea never got off the ground. The only use for TLD that I could see is content filtering, and with there being no
Thus showing how ridiculas our current system of learning is. Imagine if some horribliy important theroum has been published of which just you reading it could lead your mind onto the right path to discovering something with highly practical applications.
Heya, only got 10k per year * papers to sort through!
Heh, 80x25 is so damn easy to read though, I perfer it over anything else. All of the charecters are nice and large and crisp:) (jagged, yah, but damn, you KNOW where the edges are:)
I remember one old moniter that I had (well, not that old, 94 or 95) where after 8 or 10 hours of reading on it, my forehead would begin to radiate heat in a very unusual fashion (not your usual type of heat)
I decided to stop for the day then:)
It's quite easy actualy.
If you can normaly read a computer moniter for 8hrs without stoping, and with antialiasing you can only manage 30 minutes, and this happens on repeated occasions, and turning off the AA make the pain go away, then the odds are that the antialiasing is that which is causing the strain!
And while your at it, ya mind porting 3D Studio Max, all acceptiable plug ins, Rhino3d, Autocad 2000, and Adobe Photoshop (Corel SUCKS, sorry to say it folks, but Adobe has them beaten silly as far as interface and feature sets go. From the first second that I opened up Adobe Photoshop I knew how the use the thing, it has a great UI!)
Yah, some games WOULD be nice, but the main problem is not games being ported, but rather that with Windows a person can download a random file from the internet and be pretty damn sure that after being unarchived, that the damn thing is going to run on Windows! (what was the latest percentage, 90% or something?) Granted, Windows itself may not run, but as long as Kernal32.dll holds itself together (not to mention explorer.exe) things will run on it.
Err, no waiting eagerly for a Linux port, or setting up WINE, or any other such delays or work arounds.
There is definintly something to be said for being able to go online and download the latest and greatest Product Demo and being able to hit Setup and have it run. That is what Linux needs, MORE ORIGINAL RELEASE MAINSTREAM PROGRAMS.
The question is HOW M$ made it so that the products will only work with their operating system. The answer is of course by using pressure tactics back in the day when there was a question of what OS people could use.
It's just like Ma Bell before the breakup. Yah, you COULD have used cans and a string, but, well, come on, be serius! Heh.
Microsoft allows SOMETHING to get done. Using slaves to build the pyramids also got things done, it sure as hell doesn't make it right. Microsoft heavily DELAYS product development for the sake of their own $$$. They milk there product lines by purposly putting flaws in them so that you have to "upgrade" to a newer, some what more stable version.
Imagine if car companies did the same.
Oh yah, your gas tank has a 1/5 chance of spontaniously combusting at any given point, but for a MERE $300 we will reduce that to a 1/6 chance! Hey, good deal right?
Of course, after the "upgrade" your car's tires would start randomly falling off and you would have to pay ANOTHER $300 to get that fixed.
If you havn't realized it yet, that is ILLEGIAL. PURPOSELY JURRYRIGGING A PRODUCT SO THAT IS DOES NOT WORK and then CHARGING USERS for the fix is illegal. Buying out the competition so that there are no working products is also illegial. A monopoly is not illegal if you got there because you are the best, it is illegal if you got there by using bullying to claw your way to the top and by selling defective products and then forcing users into your upgrade path.
Unlike almost any other industry, in computers once a company or corporation is stuck down one platform path, it is emmensly hard to switch over to another one. Microsoft knew this and knew that it only had to make one fradulent sale, the first one, in order to then stay on top. Once you make a company invest in, say, your database system, and then if you force then to buy extra software at on an annual basis in order to connect their existing database to whatever other infostructure they may have, and then you make it so that your interface software cannot do all the things that they could do with their old database system (but you say on the front of the package that it CAN do all of those things) and then you hint on to them that they *COULD* get all of the features by moving the remainder of their infostructure to your product line. . . .
And then when THAT product doesn't work either, well, the company has by this time invested millions of dollers in your POS system, and in the mean time you have bought up all of the competitors so that there ARE no other solutions to go with. All of a sudden, people everywhere are stuck with a system that:
They bought under misconceptions (yah I know, ignorance isn't an excuse, but lying your ass off is still a sin.)
They DO NOT want to keep (or have been exposed to so much of your propagana that they want to keep it, but don't know exactly why)
Doesn't do all the stuff that their 10+yr old system could do!
Hmm, boy, if that isn't TECHNICALY illegal, it sure is hell is moraly corrupt and sinful. More so then EVEN what corporate america normaly tolerates!
(imagin if your ZipLock bags caused all the food in them to spoil FASTER, shit, I bet you would be pissed then!)
Oh yah, like I have a choice when I am:
In a work enviroment where Windows is the standard and has to be used
I need to use windows only applications (last time I checked, Adobe Photoshop is NOT a Linux app and Photoshop *IS* worth it's price, it rocks and is defintly the best image program out there for post-proccessing.)
I need to do 3D development (Rhino3d is a MS plateform only program, and it also totaly rocks and is worth an easy 10x the price that it costs.)
You see, when you have a monopoly, you can MAKE other people use your crappy products. The programs that I use most often are not aviable under any of the *nix's and a few outdated games (or crappy NEW games) are hardly going to change that situation any.
Analogy time: If a person buys a car, and the car spontaniously explodes while it is being driven, through no fault of the user, then the car COMPANY is responsable for the problem. Defects in the product are the responsability of the products manufacturer. No matter how much legal wrangling M$ does to get out of it, the fact is that they are the ones who released a crappy product to the public and used pressure tactics to make sure that programs are only released for their plateform. (actualy, they don't have to do that any more, it used to be that they needed to force people to contrain development M$ plateforms only, but now since they have such a large market share, people develope for them just because.)
Oh yah, and don't forget, if I want to use say,
My new scanner, Video Card, Sound Card, Fast Ass Hard Drive, Digital Camera, etc, I am pretty much fucked if it comes to Linux. Most Linux people admit that they are a step behind the latest trends and that products are NOT likely to work within the first few months of there release upon Linux.
The BSD's create a stable and great OS, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to try to use any sort of new "state of the art" consumer hardware with them.
In the end, I have to use Windoze (not by choice mind you!) because if I don't, I will not be able to actualy get done any of the things that I need to get done!
Of course, if windows WORKED better, then I could get done what I need to get done, a hell of alot faster!
Hell, losing a week's worth of work is defintly something that I would classify as "harm". (corrupt files anyone?) How about spending eons upon eons (well, mabye not quite that long, but it sure as hell feels like it!) trying to get some shitty ass product to work? Hell, I remember Windows 95 OSR1, that damn piece of fucked up shit crashed EVERY 10 MINUTES ON THE CLOCK. I literaly timed it, EVERY TEN MINUTES it would crash, boom. Now then, you try doing research on a machine like that!!! It is NOT easy, and it is also quite harmfull once one consideres the stress levels involved (not to mention the varius bruises one gets from beating the shit out of the computer case.) Productivity drops because their POS oS refuses to work. Hey folks, lets see how many programs we can randomly delete today! Yippy! Oh yah, and how about holding back hardware development?? Shit folks, if it wasn't for MS holding onto old archaic standards in the name of Backwards compatibility (it really is quite amazing, the latest incarnations of windoze have that nice 16bit core they are running on for "backwards compatibility" but they are defintly NOT backwards compatible with most of my older 16bit applications!) then the personal computer would truly be a architercual masterpiece of computer engineering! Shit, can't they just bite the friggin bullet and move over to 32bit already? Honestly, M$ is big enough that they could have EASILY forced Intel (and that in itself would have been quite an amazing feat that all of the Hardware DuDeS would have applauded M$ for) to ditch the crappy ass top-covering of the x86 and just use what is now called the x86 archetecture like it SHOULD be used. Oh yah, and lets not forget general bit rot. For how long have developers been stuck accessing NON-WORKING libaries? Shit folks, you'd figure that after all these years they could finaly get Kernal32 to work! Oh well, at least I don't see quite so many errors from Kernal16! And how about network security, eh? With the numorius holes in their consumer products (legendary in fact!) people defintly HAVE BEEN HURT by shity ass network settings. And let us not forget M$'s consumer TCP/IP implementation! Crap, that thing is _HORRIBLE_. Even if it hasn't harmed me directly, I still consider even the mere EXISTENCE of such a shitty piece of networking code to be a repugnet event!
Intresting point about long term loyalty. I think that if I company doesn't manage it's employee's into the ground with long drawn out overly restrictive contracts, then they will not have a very large problem with job jumpers. Face it, if a company is nice to you and gives you alot of freedom, and who's only demand is that you make a profit for the company by doing your job and doing it well, then the odds are that you are going to remain loyal to the company! On the other hand, if from the get-go the company makes it clear that you are nothing more then a paid drone (with items such as non-compete clauses) then the odds are that you are not going to give a shit about the company either.
The ONE problem that I have with banner ads is that they don't EVER advertise any sort of products that I am intrested in.
For instance, porn banners. Anybody who did any sort of research on my web habits would see that the only porn sites that I have ever been to are ones that banner's popped up in my face when I tried to close the banners window. I don't visit porn sites, so why are companies wasting their bandwidth delivering ads for porn sites?
I do not have any investments of any sorts in the stock market, why the hell am I getting ads for e*trade and such other types of services?
The answer of course is that Banner Ads are not targeted at individual people, but rather they are targeted at the visitors to web sites. Just because alot of system administrators visit Slashdot.org does not neccisarily mean that I am a system administrator. Even if I am one, it does not mean that I am the one in charge of making purchases for my company. Sorry to tell you guys, but all those banner's on Slashdot are doing you no good! In fact, I could care less about branding, hell, even if I *WANT* some product, I can't neccisarly AFFORD the product. Heck, almost everybody knows what a Ferrari is, great job of branding there, heh, but hardly anyone can actualy afford to purchase one!
Now then, I DO often visit Pricewatch.com. In fact I *AM* a systems assembler/purchase advisor. (basicaly it means that I get to spend other peoples money, but not corporate type money, heh). I am always looking for great new small companies to get supplies from. It just so happens that Banner ads offer NO help in this. In fact, I have to go and LOOK for a product myself, yet all the time while I am doing this, banner ads are flashing advertisments for OTHER TYPES of products that I *AM NOT INTRESTED IN*.
Do you see the connection here? I am MORE then willing to give up a tad wee little bit of privacy if in turn I can have a banner ad appear telling me where I can get the hottest deal product type XYZ. Heck, as it is right now banners are basicaly popping up things that are consistent from day to day (/. always has Linux product ads, its a guarnteed thing) but *I* am not consistent from day to day. Hell, one day I may be looking for Oni (I was yesterday in fact, in RealLife though, and couldn't find it.) and the next day searching around for a new book.
If I do a search for "Piers Anthony" in Google then there is NOT a *SINGLE* reason as to why a banner cannot appear at the top of my screen alerting me to a special discount that such-and-such.com is having on Fantasy books and that they just happen to have a few Piers Anthony books in stock, which the Ad companies records show that I have not purchased online yet. (They cannot know about my offline purchases of course.)
Now then, I may not be looking for a Piers Anthony book to buy right at that moment, but it is quite obvious to anybody with half a brain that I *AM* looking up some sort of data on Piers Anthony and that from the ad companies perspective I have been known to buy his books in the past, so there is a damn good chance that if they DO show me a _REALLY_ great deal on one of his books, that I will indeed go out and buy it at that moment.
Grocery stores have been doing this for ages now, in fact it is quite a common activity. From almost the second that you step in the store you are lead along a path of product. When you are in the meat section getting sausauge, you are also shown that there is a sale on Lean Ham. It is quite obvious that you are out there purchasing meat, and more often then not, if the sale is good enough, you will indeed also purchase a piece of Lean Ham. In fact you actualy are more then happy to have this happen. After all, the store had to put the product on special to encourage you to buy it in an impulsive manner. So in the end you saved money. The store has made a sale that they might not otherwise have made, so they are happy too. The only problem is that of all the attempts of implementing such a system online, they have all failed.
When you do a search on almost any major search engine, it will ask you if you want to try that search at "Barns and Noble.com" or "Amazon.com" or who ever the search engine has signed their contract with.
Now marketers, I know that you are *not* the smartest people out there, but come on already. Do you REALLY THINK that I am going to interupt my search to please YOU? Hell, if I wanted a book I WOULD HAVE WENT TO BARNESANDNOBLE.COM IN THE FIRST PLACE! Yah really, takes rocket science to figure that one out doesn't it? When I want to look up a word I go to dictionary.com, I don't even try to use Askjeeves or such (well, any more, used to, but I quickly learned differently).
I guess what I am trying to say is that banner ads need to learn to embrace the consumers wishs and desires, and work for and help out the consumer, as opposed to just being another visual obstruction on the Internet.
Over my cable modem connection I can currently download at a max of Two Megabytes Per Second (yes I just said MegaBytes, I am very VERY happy with my connection speed!) but I can only upload at a speed of 15KiloBytes per second.
Now then, the upload cap is actualy doing its job of keeping me from sucking massivly large amounts of Bandwidth from the local cable modem network, so I really can't complain about it, seeing as how it was designed to do somthing and it is doing that. In reality it is only an inconvience to people who are trying to download from my P2P server that I am running (defintly not Napster of Gnutella to say the least).
I can download an easy 10GigaBytes a week, which happens to be ALOT of traffic, heh:) I've actualy heard of some ISP's inserting a 2GigaByte per month Cap, a cap would I could easily bypass in a day. But in general, downstream traffic on a cable modem connection is not really a problem for the ISP or the user. Since I am mostly an off-hours surfer anyways, I am not using up all that much bandwidth that would normaly go to other users, and when other users want to use up that bandwidth, it is going to be used up. That it is the intresting part of not having a downstream bandwidth cap.
Mathmaticaly, Assuming that the tasks being performed are enough to use up all the avaible bandwidth, the same amount of Bandwidth is going to be used up no matter if one certin user is sucking using gobs of bandwidth or not. You see, the bandwidth is GOING to be used, so, there is no reason to insert a Cap on it, since used it used, mine as well make the customer happy. (yah I know there are some holes in that argument when you only have a few users on, but trust me, everybody in their right minds wants a cable modem if they can't get a T1/T3/DSL, so there is not a problem with the user numbers).
Well. . . upstream bandwidth doesn't work the exact same way. If you have BOTH upstream and downstream bandwidth uncapped, all of a sudden you can have a few users using up alot of Upstream bandwidth and taking that bandwidth away from the poor downstream people. The way that most services work (to the demands of the customers I might add) you are guarnteed so much upstream AND downstream bandwidth. In fact I am promised the I *WILL GET* that 15KBp/s, it is a reserved amount that is assigned to me no matter what. If all shit breaks loose and the network is flooded tomarrow, I am still promised the 15KBp/s. If you uncap that bandwidth and make it unlimited, all of a sudden you can no longer promise that the bandwidth will be there. Since the upstream bandwidth will then have to compete with the downstream bandwidth (granted it does so right now, but it is in such a controlled manner that they can almost be considered to be seperate) and I can no longer be promised either the upstream OR the downstream bandwidth that I am currently guarnteed.
Just sharing the bandwidth out still presents a problem. Right now the maxium number of real-life do able connections on a Cable Modem is about 4 (depending on your Area, some people get 50KBp/s on their cable modem from their ISP, but that is rare, yet horribley fun:). Anything more then that and you are splitting your bandwidth too many ways. Now then, 4 connections @ a sum total of 15KBp/s max is not exactly stressing the network any. But 16 connections at a theoretical max of and all of a sudden you will have more people setting up servers. Even though the bandwidth is shared equaly amonst all of the connections, you now have MORE CONNECTIONS. That is what Bandwidth caps are REALLY there for. They either discourge people from running servers, or they encourage people to run a server with a very low maxiumum user limit.
Now then, you could lift the bandwidth cap and place a connection limit cap. And in fact that WOULD theoreticaly work, and I have seen ISP's that do that. It actualy still ensures that X number of users, you can easily mathmaticaly divide how much bandwidth each user is going to be using max (BandwidthTotal/8x). But taking a second look at this, it, well, sucks.
You see, I can typicaly have 16 or more windows open at the same time loading different web pages. Put this in conjunction with the two or three files I can be downloading at an excess of 300KBp/s, and granted the increased upload speed would be nice, but shit, I would be reaching my connection limit within a matter of minutes of turning on my computer!
What is more, in any sort of large game that is not server-centric, a might have to have 16 connections "established" to other users. These will not be active connections, but they will have to stay open at all times to be ready to recieve bursts of data.
Not to mention that Windows9x/2000 have a horrible habit of leaving a dozen or so connections open long after you have closed their originating application or browser window. Not a very good thing, users would find themselves having to reset all the time, just to get their internet connection open!
Now then, what would work? After all, I do want more upstream bandwidth, but I DO NOT want unlimited upstream bandwidth for myself, because I know that since everybody else would get it too, the network would become an absolute piece of shit.
I would perfer to be able to *PAY* a few extra dollars a month to have my BandWidth cap increased. While this would still act as an excellent deterint to having users run their own servers, it will still allow for some user to run their own responsable servers (a 50KBp/s or 64KBp/s bandwidth cap is what I am thinking of) and would also double as a "Gamers Package" that would have a definte improvement on internet performance during games.
How much more would I be willing to pay for that service? I am thinking of an extra $4-$5 a month, nothing too much, and very cheap. Remember that it is just a deterint to some user setting up a server in their spare time and taking up all of the networks bandwidth.
Heh, odd, happened to my Brother in Seattle too.
It's just not the FIRST time its happened to him.
(Seattle cops seem to be a bunch of dicks now don't they, odd really, they actualy do a pretty decent job of keeping things straight around here.)
If your taking sarcasim seriusly, then you need some help. Lighten up a bit, it was an exageration of what the UK has been doing to it's people (namely taking away various parts of their freespeach).
::groans::
You seemed to have missed the entire part about social control here.
Sex, drinking, and partying ARE bad, thus the reason that they are spelled out as such in the Bible. All of those three activities contrihute so social decay and a loss of productivity. Face it, nobody gets much work done if they have a hangover, or if they have their liver rot out. Not being sexualy promiscious will help prevent you from catching STD's, and partying far to often takes time out from what should be rejuvinational time (aka, sleep).
You see, since most people are too damn stubren or stupid to understand these things, instead of pointing out long complicated, common sensical reasons (such as, it'll slowly kill you) Priests and other people who are in charge of keeping society stable, have had to implement religious systems.
"Do it or your fucking toast ya ass hole."
In order to get "local yokals" to take notice of long term effects, they have to be some pretty damn LARGE long term effects. Of course the largest long term effect that you can get is Eternity rotting in hell, after all, as everybody knows, Eternity IS a very long long time!
The fire and brimestone bit is really just to keep people in line, if it wasn't for such methods, people would have ripped themselves to shreads long ago. The fact that the ONLY satisfaction you get from "Turning the Other Cheek" is knowing that the asshole you are ignoring is going to burn in hell some day. Without that satisfcation there is NO REASON what so ever not to punch the fuck-face down to the ground and beat them senseless. After all, if you just ignore them, they are going to get away with it, and the idea of "that person" getting away with screwing with other peoples lives for all of their life is not a very entertaining thought. You -HAVE- to have some sort of equalizer in the universe, and the various hell bits are exactly that.
Their argument against it ALSO has some logical flaws:
They say that their is no guarntee that the God you select is the right God.
Well, if you don't select ANY God then you KNOW your selection is not going to line up (if there is a God of course).
Of course, I'm not saying that one should join some extremist "Don't use modern medicine beat your children kill the infidels" religion, but a more pacificstic religion can actualy benfit you in your daily life. After all, if you think about it, sadly enough the true purpose of religion is not to Glofify God but rather to keep the populious in line. Of course keeping people halfway civilized is not such a bad thing in itself, and though one can argue that religions have been made outdated by modern justice systems (which totaly suck and of which I am NOT going to capitalize mind you!) the fact is that the threat of a few months (or even years) in the slammer hardly compares to Eternity Spent In Hell, oh so wonderiously described in full vivid detail by your local preacher (of whatever religion.)
Compared to some other Religions out there, Christinanity is actualy pretty leniet on the whole entire hell bit, heh.
Yah, great the socilists will be in control of it, just what we need, MORE censorship.
What good is a guide that only puts out the goverments offical version of the truth? Kinda useless, crap, all there will be said about encryption is something along the lines of "48bits is enough for anyone!"
Yes I have downloaded and played it, for quite some time in fact. When you click on a spot your charecter MOVES there, there is no confirmation box, no little "this movement will take 16 points and you only have 14, are you sure you want to go there?" There are no little hexs, etc.
Ever since encountering the load of bullshit that is Baulders Gate I have refused to buy any of the modern "rpgs".
::COUGH:: Final Fantasy 7+ ::COUGH:: then it is not Role Playing. Role Playing is making a charecter and using it, not reading what amounts to glorified sub-titles in a poorly done movie.
In fact, as far as I am concerned, a real true RPG has not been released since Fallout 2, end of the story.
Goldbox games have alot more playability in them today then Baulders Gate, simply because GoldBox games ROCK. Period. Baulders Gate reduced combat down to pointless "click him before he clicks you" combat and relies on advanced knowledge of the enemies possesion to win. Excuse me, mega powerful wizard teleports in and frags your party, oops, to bad! Reload, make sure you have a spell lined up and ready to go the second he beams in. That is NOT strategy, that is bullshit. Strategy is spending TWO HOURS defeating hoards of creatures. Role Playing is stepping into the shoes of a Dwarven Warrior and kicking an entire armies ass (with the help from a few Mages, Paladines, and Clerics of course!)
Whats more, as shown in Interplays game Dragon Wars (which totaly rocks BTW, and is the most non-linear game I have seen yet) Role Playing is taking the part of either good OR evil and screwing things up how YOU want to screw with them. You should never just throw a player in a dungion and say "go through it". Hell, my charecters are smarter then that (they should be, I rolled them some nice INT dice) and will go AROUND THE DAMN MOUNTINE OF ULTIMATE DOOM THINGY OF PAIN WHATCHAMACOLITE.
Fallout tactics is not tactical at all, the orginal two Fallout games had ALOT of Tactics in them, but the new Fallout Tactics doesn't even tell you how many movement points a move is going to take! DOH, who forgot THAT one eh? Shit, that is SO FUCKING OBVIOUS. If you are going to charge the player points to move THEN ALWAYS TELL THEM AHEAD OF TIME HOW MANY POINTS IT WILL TAKE TO MOVE DAMNIT.
Sorry, that one still gets to me, can't stand that horrible blunder, shit, so friggin obvious people!
Oh yah, and one more note.
If the charecters are all predefined
Who says I *WANT* my charecter to have some secret hidious background? Criminies, that is the auther playing the role for me. If I want ot pretend to be a depressed psycho I don't need to spend $300 on a consol and $40 on a CD for that! I can just close my eyes and pretend I am cutting my wrists, saves alot of money! Sheesh, leave some room for a LITTLE bit of imagination in modern so called "rpgs". Until you do, those quotes around rpg arn't going nowheres!
Oh come on now, just have some patience.
You will die, and then you will find out, so it is really quite pointless to spend all of your life fussing about it, considering that you will have all of ETERNITY to fuss about it later!
Shit, worship some God, that way you have a 1/ chance of choosing the right one.
Or there may be no God, and your screwed anyways, upon which you won't know anything, but you won't be any better or worse off then if you HAD worried about it.
Racism, pretty much dead? Yah, I used to think that, until I got a clue.
Cop's pulled over my brother in law a year or so back, ripped him out of the car, and beat him senseless.
He had a broken leg at the time.
They then drove off.
I live in the pacific northwest, arguably one of the most liberal places around, still doesn't mean that there isn't racism.
I live in what is quickly becoming a perdomitly Asianic area, and I can guarntee you that many of the other people here (Blacks and Whites) and quite racist about it, even though they wouldn't ever dare admit to it in polite company. Racism is the fear of what is different, and it will always exist.
Oh yah, and the NAACP doesn't just help African Americans, but rather they have become a general force to end bigotry.
Genetics, complicated? Surly you jest! Honestly now, basic genetic theory is being taught in High School classrooms, and as soon as Semester 1 Genetics become firmly entrenched in our public education system, hopefully we can work on futher more advanced topics. It is not like genetics require a giganticly large amount of math to understand the basic theories. While alot of math is required for manipulation and TRUE understanding, a laymans understanding can be gotten with nothing more then 2nd year algebra (if that) in a simular fashion that the more basic parts of relativity can be understood by almost anyone. Once people understand the basics, they will be far more inclined to believe other stories they here about genetics, if just for the sake of Ego "Yah, sure, I heard 'bout that one, course it's true, why do ya' think I took it?"
AMD's SMP is nice, but it has one crucial flaw that makes MoBo's for it emmensly expensive. Each AMD CPU has to have a direct link to the RAM, which means that you end up with ALOT more traces then you normaly would on an SMP CPU. While the direct link to the RAM is great for speed, it makes 4, 8, and 16 way Athlon solutions practicaly impossable from a pricing point of view. This is quite sad since AMD CPU's are so damn cheap, that I hope that someone comes out with a simple dummy MoBo for AMD CPU's that is nothing more then a CPU Socket and some sort of connector to plug into a real Main Board that houses all the real stuff, like the AGP port and PCI bus. With 1gig Durons going for around $70 now (overclocking is alot of fun, heh, ::grins:: ) there is no reason in the world as to why a true 8way setup should cost more then $1400 or so. I'm thinking $70 for the CPU, and $30 for the MoBO attachment (hell, it could use high quality Cat5 cable to get a decent throughput that could more then easily supply it with the data it needs). 8 cpu's later that is a mere $800 for Boards and Chips, with another $160 thrown on top for that for cooling.
$960, doing good so far.
$200 for the case (it would have to be custom made of course, defintly not your standard ATX form factor) brings the total up to $1160.
add another $100 for the power supply (big mofo) and another $40 for case cooling, and you have yourself a price tag of $1300
Then you just need the main MoBO, which could probebly cost around $300, which is a little much, and brings you to a grant total of $1600 for 8gigahertz of power.
Add yourself HD's and a Vid Card, and you have yourself a $2000 machine that beats the holy shit out of ANY other product out there within it's price range, and even at twice its price!
The cheap price of AMD's CPU's could be their best advantage, but only if they use it correctly.
Energy:
God, you mentioned technologies that didn't work having no relevence to this situation, and, well, sheesh, here ya go mentioning NON-COMMERICAL energy tech.
Flexable Solar Panels? Sure, that's nice, and If I'm say, reading in doors, or at night, or in a city that doesn't have alot of light? Heck, where are you going to put the battery casing? Unless you intend for it to be only readable in sunlight, and that would be a serius liability.
Sure, kinetic energy extractors exist, and they are small, but they sure as heck can't power a display screen of any type. I don't care how efficent this new paper is, unless they can make it passive instead of active, then what is the point?
Do we even WANT animations in our books? Sure I can see how they could be handy if they are used very sparingly, but it turns out that the Blink tag in HTML is far to powerfull to be used by everyday mortals, are you really going to trust them with full blown animation in the middle of text? Crap, just what I need, glowing green letters, no friggin thank you. I read a book to READ a book, thats it.
While this technology COULD have some neato implications for things like billboards, where the
ability to change the billboard without taking it down would be very neat, it still is not the end all solution to replace paper that it first looks like. Paper is very handy.
Oh yah, and one thing it will never be able to do?
Be ripped in quarters and used as scrap paper after the front side has been written all over. This is something that Mothers around the world love to do, because God knows almost every business out there wastes paper by throwing away blank sheets that have something printed on the front of them, but nothing on the back.
As for durability, regular paper is VERY durable. I can sit on it, fold it, squish it, get it mildly moist (a few drops here and there). It has wonderious operating conditions (from negatve to 96c or so, can't remember, havn't read the book, heh)
I can let a book sit around for months and not worry about its batteries running down, and books have been found in perfectly good conditions after decades of storage. The quality of printing can be manipulated so that if I need it to stand up to over a Century of use, it can stand that long!
Tell me, will your Palm Pilot still work in 100 years? Just put it in a trunk some place, and have one of your decendents open it up in 100 years, I bet you they will at least have to change it's batteries (that is assuming they can even find the write battery type, real books you see, don't have any parts that need replacing except for the Spine, and even the lack of a spine doesn't make the book's contents unreachable.)
Vaporware, it is. Companies have been promosing truely flat paper for ages now. Ok, mabye not ages, but at least two or three years. I'm gettig sick and tired of waiting, and until I SEE and READ differently (as in see the paper and read what is on it) I will put e-paper into the same catagory as I do all other "any day now" inventions.
Namely, not gona happen for quite awhile.
Find ways to bypass Bess (if your a slashdot reader I'm sure that you already have) and use them with Gusto.
Get in contact with your school districts local head tech, find out what the PW is to bypass Bess, this should have been given out to your local Libarian so that s/he can bypass Bess when it blocks things it does not.
Spread the PW around. Legaly it has to be installed, nobody can do anything if everybody knows the PW. The fact is that NOBODY likes it. The teachers hate it (they can't access their own e-mail!) the administrators hate it (it keeps them from doing their job!) and the councilers hate it (it keeps them from doing their research!) The only people who don't mind it are the parents that that is because they don't have to use it. In other words, if the PW is only relayed amonst the students, and the one who starts sharing it doesn't mention that they got it from a school district offical then even if parents rat on the school district, nothing can be done.
If the PW is changed simply get it again and again, until eventualy the district has to give up and keep it at one known level.
This would remove bess's censorship capacity. But, actualy, the best thing you CAN do against bess is LET IT KEEP MONITERING YOU.
You see. . . . . Bess gathers horribley scewed stats. Imagine flipping a coin, but throwing out all runs of 3 or more. It would throw everything off by quite a bit, I should say! Bess gathers stats from only what students can actualy access, which is hardly what they want! Students hardly ever access anything at school that they would access outside of school. All the numbers are ridiculas and pointless, and if the company that ownes bess keeps selling those numbers, the people buying them are soon to realize that they are being ripped off. The numbers mine as well be random.
In liue of that, you could just use any of numorius exploits to get past Bess the Bitch. It is _so_ easy it is pathedic.