>ASF is also just a file format, not an encoding >format. You can put a DivX;-) stream into an ASF >file no problem, so I don't know where your >argument about "DivX;-) movies are, on the >whole, quite a bit larger than their ASF >brethren." comes from
Both ASF and DivX:-) use Mpeg4 encoding, ASF just adds some streaming capibilities to Mpeg4 and restricts the platforms you can view it on and the sound types you can use with it.
DivX:-) is easily portable (BeOS, Linux, Win32, Mac, so far that I know of) and uses an AVI file for encapsulation.
ASF files tend to be a bit bigger for the quality, just for the sake that they are designed to be streaming and have all that extra gunk in them that makes streaming neccisary (also, they can't use as much read ahead information as pure MPEG4 files, though I have no idea if either format actualy uses such techniques in reality, the possibiity just isn't there with ASF files, where as it IS with AVI)
>The rip of Shaft that I have is damn good >quality. Ditto for the Office Space & Startrek - >First Contact DivX;-)'s (and SMR's) I have. Even >the screener rips tend to be watchable, the >quality problem tends to be at the recording >end, not the encoding or the codec end.
I have alot of good encodes, downloading 2 more right now (vnn2k ROCKS, heh, had to pimp it!). I own most of the movies I am downloading (blade runner, the matrix, etc) but it just so happens that my moniter is bigger then my TV screen, and I actualy have access to the sound system! (for some reason, everybody else is hogging the gigantic sub-woofer out in the main room, heh, go fig)
RM files can actualy be better, depending on the encoding job done, as tomshardware.com pointed out, all mpeg4 encodes are not made equal (even if the file size is the same!)
The main thing that people are PRAYING Project Mayo adds to DivX:-) is TRUE Varible Bit Rate Encoding, something that DivX:-) currently lacks, along with the whole Mpeg4 specification I do belive. While DivX:-)'s rudimetry VBRE does decrease file size by a bit, it is not that horribly well done, and Micro$oft themself showed that true VBRE can dramaticaly reduce the size of file encodes (the new media player 7 format is actualy supposed to cut down on files sizes by %5 or so, and increase quality by alot, something that is still under debat, as it seems to perform differently with each testing, and until a truely funcational encoding is avaible with documented options, people aren't going to be able to optimize the new codec)
I'm getting sick and tired of all these people whining and complaining about how -they- are sys admins and how -they- would *never* let anything like this happen to them.
If your such a friggin Genius (this being slashdot though, I bet a fair amount of you out there are, heh) then go and actualy DO SOMETHING.
For crying out loud, we are part of the high-friggin-tech community. One of the lowest members in this community, the Phreakers, managed to make Ma Bell change her whole entire infostructure, shit, some of you/.'ers helped to invent the friggin internet, can't you do anything but argue over analogies and who's responsable.
If a volcano is going to blow, you wouldn't argue over who's in charge of evacuation would you? Hell no, you'd go out and do something (namely in that case, run away).
So go and actualy -do- something, fix the friggin problem. Someone could easily post all known info about this ahole as an Anon Coward, and from their its a simple matter of securing an anonamious internet connection (not exactly difficult, even *I* can do that, and I don't admin ISP's, setup backbones, or do any other such items which varius posters have bragged about all throughout this topic) and fragging the bastard. Crap, if these ISP's where so easy to break into in the first place, and install a trojin/backdoor/dDOS host on, why can't you break into them again and REMOVE the damn thing. Your all bragging about how your smarter then the ISP's, well, PROVE IT.
At very least, trace down the a-holes personal info (not exactly hard to do either) and send the guy something he won't forget. I'm sure that a few hundred pounds of dog shit (I forget the site that sells it but I'm sure somebody out there on/. knows it) arriving at his doorstep would alert him to the fact that he had been found, and that he had better stop his attack before something a bit more dangerius showed up.
Crap, how many Anarchists can we round up? Can SOMEBODY please call one of the old Anarchist groups and get them to make one of those high explosive bombs they where always bragging about. Hell, go to www.textfiles.com and get the recipe yourself. That's only if your PHD education didn't teach you any chemistry though.
Oh yah, and if your not going to actualy do something about the problem, THEN STOP BITCHING.
Of course, what happens when the law enforcement officers start to use the devices, eh? There is a reason that it is rare for local cops to make busts on Warez Dudes, since alot of the cops themselves use illegial software! Heck, I know of a sheriff who has illegial games on his computer, and he doesn't give a rats rear end! The fact is that for something like video recording, the public is used to being able to just turn on their VCR, hit record, and watch their favorit soap's when they get back. The TV industry has realized this, and included the record once feature for just such a reason.
If they don't watch themselves though, their momentium will take them past the record once, and they will make it impossable to do any type of recordings at all, and that will piss off Grandma, Gramps, and Sheriff Bob, and they will, in a very matter of a fact fashion, go out and buy some sort of decoder. Whats more, I'll be there at the time to make sure that just as they are steaming mad from not being able to record their program, to mention that exactly where and how they can get their hands on one of these chips.
Of course, having a simple pass-through cable going in and out of your computer, with a program ripping into the data stream directly (unless it is encrypting with PGP or something, and from the looks of it, it is just some sort of wimpo signel that when acknowledged is probebly XORed or something to "descramble" the video, programmers out there, be sure to perform XOR's once this standard comes into effect!) and recording it to the HD.
Such a setup would take all of about two seconds to creat:)
A Voodoo 100tv (I think its called a 100) is about $99 (if you can find them that is, heh:).
They can do MPEG1 rips at a halfway decent quality, and those are EASILY consumer level cards. A simple TSR could be present to "acknowledge" the encryption signal, and then record the video in MPEG1 (which doesn't give a rats rear end about such things) which could later be converted to MPEG4 (YIPPY, GO DIVX:-) )
Of course there IS a ligitimate pirating scene going on with video and TV programs, but the solution to this is to simplily offer those programs over the internet. Some sort of simple "only you can view" system, hell, even better, a authentication DVD that cannot be copied and exists in some compleatly forign format that most DVD players would read as junk if it wasn't for the TSR telling them to accept it, and is 2gigs+ in size, every byte being needed mind you (some sort of random checking system would work) that needs to be insterted into the drive so that the movie being viewed can be, well, viewed.
After downloading the video from the internet, or getting it though some other distribution means (I'm sure an mpeg4 DVD would be well appreciated by all, 8hrs of video on one DVD would rock for those long 100eps+ Anime series:) the authentication DVD would then be inserted (if the video is on another DVD, then discs can be swapped, just do this better then the PSX does:) and a random CRC or some other sort of check, would be performed that only YOUR dvd would pass (though there would be a 1/1,000,000 or so chance that another DVD might pass that random check, there is now way a fake would pass 2 checks in a row).
The video would then play. Quite simple really:); and efficent, quite secure if you think about it for awhile. The server you got the DVD from would append the file with the check, and the result of the check would be used to perform some simple opperation on the Video's data stream to make if viewable, or mabye just let the player work.
The kicker is, you wouldn't have to make the system very secure, since most people wouldn't even bother trying to bypass it. It would take care of online video piracy in one fell swoop, for the simple reason that pirates are LAAAAZZZY. You see, in there mindset, they are all noble and everything, but if there is a cheap way out, they will gladly take it. So while they will be noble and all and save you a grand total of $20 or so dollers per video, the thing is, if the same video costs $5 or even $2.50, they will tell you to stop being cheap and go buy the damn thing, and not to bother them, and that they are a very busy person!
Oh yah, it would make gobs of money too, heh, did I mention that?:) At $2.50 per hour (or half hour, but that's to little time if you ask me) they will only be selling the product for about 1/8th of what they do for VHS/DVD's (which typicaly go for around $20 for 2hrs of TV episodes), but, they will have only to pay for server costs and bandwidth. Not to say that that is cheap or anything, but I am sure that being the big media coglomerates they are, they can get 400megabytes of data transfer for under $2.50:) (hell, *I* get around 1gig a week for $45.00, granted thats downstream only, gotta love cable modems:) ).
Of course, this is not looking at the costs they are saving:
DVD manufacturing costs (after the 1st decoder DVD, and mabye a replacement now and then, and heck, they could charge for those!)
DVD distro costs
BillBoards
CoverArt
Pamplets/Brochures
No more complaining about losing money to even p!r@te$.
Of course the entire world wouldn't get their video over the internet instantly, but I am sure that all the Anime fans out there would *MORE* then pay for the costs of implementing this service. Even at $2.50 for two half-hour episodes, a 100 episodes would cost ya dearly:)
Thats only for one series. Of course it is ALOT cheaper then VHS/DVD, and alot more enviromentaly friendly (If your counting the weight of your VHS ANIME tape collection in Tons then. . . you MIGHT be an Anime adict.)
We are so POOR at analyzing ourselfs?? Excuse me.
Look up the word *INTROSPECTIVE* in the dictionary some time, then come back and argue. I spend hours in meditation each learning about who I am and evaluating my past actions, somthing that most average highschoolers DO NOT do. I help anybody who asks for help, if somebody is doing somthing wrong I wait awhile and if they can't figure it out I politly help them. Sometimes it is appreciated, othertimes it is not. There are some students who persist in harrasing me throughout the school year, after I have had enough, I punch them (granted, not the most graceful solution, but whatever the new age psychologists tell you, IT WORKS). Being a bit over 6 foot tall and of medium build helps also (I can understand how someone of a light build could get picked on more, but that just makes the bully's even more guilty).
Even if YOU made most of your problems come down on you, don't think everybody else does. That is no different then saying all woman are responsable for their own rape, just because one of them was a cock tease. Even she wasn't responsable for what happened to her, the person who commited the crime is. Even if a person instigates violence against themselves, it doesn't mean it should happen.
What's more, if people are too damn stupid to spend their time STUDYING, then damn right I'm going to answer the question first. I work my ass off learning everything I can, and I am going to take *PRIDE* in that, damnations to hell towards anybody who challenges my right to take pride in the work I do. If a star football player gets all the girls, then I at least get to answer the questions in math class before everybody else. If the jock is jelious, then mabye he should cut back on the sports and up the study time a bit.
Some teachers say that learning alot doesn't come easy, and that I need to understand that not everybody can learn things as fast as I can. Suprise surprise, I wasn't born with all the knowledge I have, I had to work for it too. Just because some hoaring cheerleader is unwilling to spend time away from parties at at the books, doesn't mean I should lower my mental performance to her level. People spend an hour a day studying and then are jelious when I walk in the room with 6hrs a day of studying, and kick their ass on the test. Hey folks, if ya want to do good in school, TRY WORKING. Its the same as the assholes who complain about me having a graphing calculator (even though graphing calculators are standard requirments by this time). They complain about how they are too expensive, all while whering a $20 baseball cap, an $80 jacket, a $100+ pair of shoes, and carrying around a bucketload of $20 cd's.
They could get a calculator AND a computer if they concentrated less on their social lives and more on schoolwork. Of course some people want a social life, ok, thats fine, just DO NOT BOTHER ME when I do better in school then you do. I don't bother you about all the parties you goto, I made a choice not to do such, and you made a choice not to be social. Thats what I say to people like that, and if they are still pissed, THEN ITS THEIR OWN DAMN FAULT.
That is how I treat people, if they have a problem with me, its exactly that, *their* problem. By not being meek, I cut down the number of people who harrass me to one or two a year, and quite frankly, everybody in school has one or two people who harrass them (its kinda a vicious circle, everybody harrasing everybody else in turn, heh:). One day I walked into my Cisco networking class, said jokingly, "Hey, I want a standing ovation when I enter the room," and you know what? I got it, just as jokingly. Even the bullies stood up and applauded. What's more, the assholes in the class who used to bother me don't anymore now, I can stare anybody in the eye and make them shiver. Yes folks, the evil eye does indeed exist, and its a darn sweet tool. While it doesn't make poultry stop laying eggs, it sure is heck darn effective at getting people to move out of your path and turn the other way. Thanks to that colmbine thing, you can wear a trench coat (I myself don't) and get the same effect. The amount of nerd harrasment after colmbine dropped dramaticaly in my area. Of course I am going to a lower class school, so the kids are a tad bit smarter then those assholes in the middle class districts who instantly jump on any bandwagon then see passing by, and basicaly went on a witch-hunt after colmbine;.(..
So. . . to wrap it up,
Being smart is good, its a life choice, and there is no reason that a person who makes a choice to devote their life to HELPING others in the acedemic fields should get any less respect (or disrespected for that matter) then those who have chosen a life of physical competition. In fact, I believe that the scholars should get more respect then the jocks, but hey, that's just MY highly thought about and meditated upon logicial well planned out opinion, doesn't make it any more right then say, the snap judgement of some guy who beats himself on the head for fun. (read: jocks)
Mac users had best NEVER complain about windows bloat again, sheesh. I'm sorry, but I want my GUI to be NOTHING but 256color square box's, that is a GUI that loads fast, and fits in under 200k.
Anybody here remember the old DOS SHELL? I loved that thing, used it as my GUI for ages, ran great, easy to pop in and out of, and it supported multi-tasking of sorts. If you wanted to customize it, you could change the colors of the window bars, text, and text background. That was it, period. No anti-aliased interpolated transparent buttons, no OPEN-GL effects, the damn thing just RAN, and on any computer too. Same thing with X-TREE, but its default color scheme was ugly (at least I thought so then.)
Sheesh, I never did understand the whole entire customize the look of your OS thing, hell, I think beige is the PERFECT color. There are so many different shades of beiege, the APPLE II line alone had a variety of Beige's! Gray, Beige, Black, White, that is what a OS's GUI should look like, period, end of story. I want to run a program, I click on its icon, it runs, no fancy sound effects, no bells and whistels, and NO freeze ups. Simple. You could write a decent GUI in basic if you wanted too, as long as you got a version of basic that supported running EXE's and BAT files.
Any plug-ins to modify your GUI just take up more HD space and increases the time it takes for your system to load, and with OS X running at a snails pace already (do to the above mentioned trancparency, OpenGL and such) I see no reason why a mac user would want to further hinder their system's performance with some sort of Scheme programs or any other sort of GUI ajustments. Of course, I guess with only 1 mouse button, they have to entertain themselves somehow (how DO you guys do 3d modeling with only 1 mouse button, isn't it mentaly painfull?)
I use my.mp3.com as basicaly a portable playlist that I can use to play my favorite classical music whenever I am sitting next to a computer that has broadband and speakers (which means almost anyplace now days) I also frequent the independent artists on mp3.com on a daily basis (remember, thats what mp3.com was orignaly for?) and quite frankly, I have NO problem with them taking actions to ban illegal uses of music, though I do agree that having to insert the CD makes it pretty useless as a portable storage system. But then again, can't you just use any other remote file server for those purposes? Or heck, even take the CD with you? (Its called a -COMPACT- disc for a reason!)
Talking about insecurity, I think that sniffing might be usefull for saving on bandwidth. Just think of how many people are looking at a pecitular site at any one time, or would love to download a high quality version of the latest Fan Sub'd Anime movie (insert favorite series here).
Heck, why not have one user download a file and everybody else hop on for the ride? User A downloads the file on their large connection, and shares it wirelessly to users B C D etc. This would save on both the ISP's bandwidth and the servers bandwidth, and on bandwidth on the internet in gerneral.
This could be taken even one step further, as communities could have general proxy servers that could act as area wide internet cache's, @Home does this already for all of there users (you can bypass it if you want to go through the trouble to get an extra 10kps or so, and knock 5ms or 10ms off of your ping) and works resonably well. The automatic mirroring of certin pages (Slashdot.org and all links on the main news page would be nice for starters, I still can't get through to those darn pictures of Jupiter!) and contant caches of other pages, such as www.newgrounds.com could help the local community save alot of bandwidth. You even use a distrubuted networking setup and have the cached data spread pseudo-randomly about the computers of volenteers (have some extra HD space to donate to the community as a whole, well then, sign on up!)
>Why does Science fiction have to only focus on >technology, science, and math?
Study your Sci-Fi history, there have been two major movements in science fiction, the hard *Science* fiction, and the more humanitarian approuch to science fiction. Read Asimov's edited series "The Golden Years".
I read Science Fiction to learn about odd ball theorys of science in an entertaining way, it is much more memorable if you learn about somthing because it is crucial to a plot twist, rather then if it is just in another journal.
Notice how many hundreds of books Asimov wrote, a good number of which dealt with what it ment to be human, without having a single orgy scence (to the best of my knowledge.)
Also, look at a list of topics Heiniel has had his charecters support (without any denial throughout the rest of the book.)
Incest
Pedophiles
Sex outside of marriage
Orgies
etc, etc etc
My complaint is not about sexuality being part of humanity, but rather, about how Heinlein ruined a perfectly good charecter and turned him into a horny monster / religious zealot. (even if he was a non-violence zealot)
Since Mike was raised not to be human, he didn't need to connect fully with his emotions, he originaly did not possess human emotions, remember. They should have let him run loose in a library, writting down knowledge to be used to save thousands of lives and help humanity live a better life as a whole.
Compare a better world, to a sex cult,
oh boy, its just -SO- hard to make the prober moral choice there now isn't it!
My point was that Mike was better BEFORE he was human. The humanizing of him was a
tragedy. I believe that he was a better Being as a martian, rather then a human. Just because you
support the human race in the book, doesn't mean that I do.
While I agree that in order to become human Mike had to be introduced into sex, concentrating a
good percentage of the book solely around that topic, and attempting to justify what basically
amounted to a sex cult, wasn't exactly necessary for literary excellence.
This book starts out great, with the main charecter darn nearly being perfect, logical, non-emotional, and very intelligent.
Then a bunch of people get the idea that he needs to get laid.
Great, human raised on another planet, another culture, possabile able to tell us the secrets of the universe, and all Heinlein can think about is getting him laid.
Its been said before, and I'll say it again, Heinlein was a dirty old man, all throughout his life.
Sheesh, pathetic, really pathetic, I started to like Mike, but then Heinlein ruined him! He turned from the nice introspective logial type to an exoverted horny a-hole. Of course, in the standard Heinlein manner, Heilien then goes about and spends around half the book justifying orgies! He actualy tries to justify the sexual cult that he has Mike create! Brotherhood and friendship my arse, if Mike wanted to really help out society he would go down to the library and start reading up on earthly technology, and seeing how he could improve it with his unique perspective. I can just begin to imagin the mathmatical advances he could have made, if it wasn't for Heilien writting him so attrocicly.
Ugh, a dispicible book that starts out good, and takes a 180 turn half-way through.
I don't really see what the big deal about the potential for "free upgrades" is. Hell, I still use works 4.5 and enjoy it (no annoying paper clip, and the spell checker is more suitable to my style of spelling).
Of course after Lilo ate my MBR (doh) I am now using Netscape's email progie to write all of my documents in.
Still though, I don't see WHY people stay on this upgrade cycle. Honestly, what does office 2000 offer over office98 that you really need? Besides owning the latest version, of course.
What it all comes down to of course, is that if Microsoft ever released a working version of their software (read: no glaringly obvious security holes that even a 10yr old can find) then they would go out of bussiness, as they would have no more software to sell. All the.Net strategy does is guarntee that if they every ACCIDENTLY release a bug-free piece of software, that they will still make money off of their programs.
Of course, even if the world goes the way of.Net, all I will have to do is do what I am already doing. Namly reinstalling every few months and making sure that my computers date is set to somthing around 1995. Install all time dependent programs on partitial A along with M$ OS's, and all none time dependent stuff on partition B, and Linux on Partition C. Every three or so months, reformat partition A. Makes defraging your disk ALOT easier I must say::grins::
Not owning any stocks, I have had the advantage of being able to enjoy all of the varius tech stock jokes that have been coming along throughout these last few years. Kinda sad that I couldn't get in on it, but otherwise enjoyable to watch all of those people squirm in their shoes as their money went uP and DOwn.
Of course, all computer parts buyers have been praying for the asian tech stock market to crash again, that was enjoyable, computer prices being cut in half and all. Oh well, the one thing that the average user can get from all of these.com's going out of bussiness is GREAT deals on almost new computer parts! Thats how I got a 36inch moniter for a mere $400! Yee gads, with sales like that, I can't wait until some MORE companies go out of bussiness! Heh, this is getting to be fun!
Any ex-CEO's out there looking to unload some athlon workstations for cheap, give me a holler, I'm ready to buy::grins::
Re:Rich? Give me a friggin break
on
Hacking The City
·
· Score: 1
>Have you concidered getting out of the house >once in a while?? are you retaining anything you >read?? do you know what a girl is??
Oh yes, and you are SO enlighted. Hell, you still associate sex with success, stop thinking with your gonades and start using your brain. Goverment age restrictions currently limit what I am able to do. Because I am forced to stay in a school where I mearly have re-read the same old crud I have read in my spare time, I am unable to get a true job. Of course if courses where offered in public school where we just sat down for a day and got lectured to, then left, it would be oh so much more efficent. As it is I am taking one lecture course up at my local community collage and I *LOVE* it. No more waiting around for a-holes to get settled down, instead everybody just pays attention and takes notes. On those days that a subject you have already covered personaly is being discussed in class (such as the causes of WW1, of which I had twice before) you can mearly just stay home and do self study. Defintly a supiorer system, and students would be accelloreated two or three years if such a method of teaching was applied to public schools.
This means that I would have been out of school two years ago, knowing far more then I will know when I do graduate from the current system, and I would have had a very nice paying job by now. But you see, goverment restrictions being what they are, I am not allowed to just go to school to take programming courses (if they where offered, which they aren't) and 3d-modeling courses (if they where offered, which they aren't) and math courses (which is so f-ed up, I passed all the class's, two years ahead of schedual I might add, but the local community collage doesn't like my test results, thus showing that public schools DO NOT prepare people for the real world.)
You want to know why I am stuck where I am, its because a bunch of pencil pushers and bean counters decided that this is where I belong.
Needless to say, buercracy doesn't mesh well with my free roaming spirit. (and yes, I spirit can roam free inside of a book, suprise surprise!)
Re:Rich? Give me a friggin break
on
Hacking The City
·
· Score: 1
How nice, but it would seem that somebody (perhaps belonging to the same political party of RJH a few posts down) has denied school funding so that there is nobody to expose me to such works of lititure. Even I am incapbile of judging which books to read just by their cover. Of course, the fact that teachers are held back by unattentive students could also be part of the problem. One chapter a day is expected from most teachers when a student is assigned a book. I myself would give them the book on a friday and tell them to have it read by monday. If anybody complains about having a party or such to go to, then I would tell them that they would fail simply based on a lack of dedication to their education.
I have had LA teachers who did not even have a proper mastery of the english language, so if you wish to discuss reasons for me having a limited sphere of reading choices, then take up the topic with your school districts supervisor. But forcing kids to read a brief sampling that is insterted more for political correctness then actual educational value, might help to improve what childen are exposed to in school.
As it is, Dante's Inferno was compleatly skipped over even though I wanted to read it. It was in the text books we have, but, it was not considered ethnicaly diverse enough to be included as part of our education.
Re:Rich? Give me a friggin break
on
Hacking The City
·
· Score: 1
>So now you're God, able to pass judgment on >who's worthy and who's not? God at least has the >common decency not to judge anyone until the >Last Day.
By wasting money on frivolious expenses, the rich also judge who can live and who can die. They choose a higher standard of living for themselves rather then to give to the poor.
>And they might say there aren't enough natural >resources in society to go around to waste on >self-loathing teenagers. Who gets to decide >who's right?
How about a self-loathing teenager who has plans on HELPING society. I am working my ass off to learn everything that I can so that I might contribute to society. Are you saying that my work deservers no more credit that the waste of a druggie?
>"The opposite of love is not hate, it is apathy. >The opposite of good is not evil, it is apathy." >(Elie Wiesel)
Love is an animal instinct that is designed to force otherwise sapient beings to act like wild
creatures. I do not believe if love, instead I prefer the path of logic and a life of discipline and rigorous study. Just as you oppose anything that stands in the way of you acquiring physical wealth and happiness (love, sex, money, power, etc.) I oppose anything that interferes with my acquisition of mental knowledge.
People fear apathy, because through apathy comes true objectivity, and when you view society
through an objective view point, you see something that is utterly disgusting. I do not believe apathy should be a permanent state of mind, but it is a useful tool for one to gain their bearings with. As it is, I am a very compassionate person, I am (literally) unable to step on a bug. But I have no care for the human race, for the human race has sinned (and I am *not* talking metaphorically) beyond
belief. Every time someone spends money on another inefficient item of self indulgence, they have cursed another person to death.
Love encourages us to only look at ourselves, it is a very introspective feeling, and yet while
introversion is normally a good thing, love has been carefully crafted through years of evolution to ensure that all who fall into its embrace shall follow along a sure path of outdated modes of keeping the human race around.
Honestly, the chances of the human race dying out from under population are none. The chances of
a given family in america starving to death if they don't steal a loaf of bread from their neighbors is zilch. Love and its accompanying emotions are highly outdated, and while they where a necessary
set of survival rules in the days of zoog the cave man, this is the modern world, and all the survival instincts (love included here folks) do is squander resources by causing people to desire to hoard items for their own use.
Don't talk to me about emotional states, I can switch emotional states at will, faster then most people can speak a syllable. Your ridiculously outdated idea's of love are foolish in the modern world.
>Upper-class, Republican, voted for Bush. Also a >reasonably nice guy,
Hmm, guess it'd be kinda faux passe to play the death penalty card here, eh?::grins::
Anyways, he happens to be a resonably nice guy who has royaly screwed up texas's education. I know, I have spoken with students from texas, they say that the schools down there are horrific. These are actualy thoughtfull opinions, not just the standard "school sucks" that most kids will give you anyways;)
Texas's education system revolves around passing tests, the class's teaching centers around the tests, and teachers don't have enough time to explore things that are not on the test.
Oh yah, in addition, (I could discuss politics all day, but then again, who couldn't) Bush also let off the o-so-famous quote of:
"I believe free speech should be limited."
Yah, real nice guy there, seeing as how he wants to limit the first amendment. His B.S. plans for social security aren't all that good either. (I'm sure the lower class will know EXACTLY what stocks to invest in to make the most money, yah right, fat chance.)
>You also can't say I'm an exception--because the >instant you do, I'll rattle off a list of my >Republican friends and co-workers who do the >exact same or similar things
What signifies the middle class mind set to me is a girl a knew a few years back. She was a vegitarian hunter.
Yes, I just said vegitarian hunter.
She couldn't see anything wrong with this, and she proudly supported both animal rights and hunters rights. Quite ridculas really, she had a compleat lack of an ability to connect A with B. She was otherwise a very intelligent person, in honors everything, but she had not one iota of introspectiveness.
I have found that most of the middle class is like this, they have a compete lack of any ability to realize what their actions will do. People who believe in privitizing schools and giving out $2000 a year vouchers to students don't realize that $2000 just pays for one class of 20 students, and that is for the teacher alone! The only way current schools survive is by all the extra money that they get from other various sources, but if a school doesn't work off of goverment funding, such funds are unavaible. Yet republicans and their ilk fail to see this.
The middle and upper class have a complete lack of any sort of an ability to reconize that some people DO NOT have money. They fail to reconize that the reason goverment programs exist is to HELP people rise up out of dispare. Yes, such programs need work, and yes, some of those programs over bloated and wasting lots of money. But the solution is not to eliminate those programs, but rather to reorganize them so that they provide the same services, but in a more efficent manner.
Oh yah, and guns DO kill people, which is pretty much the only other grip about republicans that I have (for crying out loud, its hard to go on a 50 person killing spree in two hours, using a knife! Yee gads some people are hard headed.)
>Who's the addle-brained, hard-headed, stubborn >person here--the Republican who volunteers his >time at the local schools, donated to John >McCain's political campaign, mentors young >geeks... or the kid who hates people he doesn't >even know, for offenses they've never even >committed?
They have commited an offense, inefficency.
Zippity doo da, you did a little good deed and now you feel good about yourself.
pharaphrasing another/. user; if all the money spend on politics was instead spent on helping people, we wouldn't have all these problems.
I can't stand geeks, they still commit sins of the body, yet they try to present themself as being emotionaly intelligent people, their not, they just have a high mental intelligence. There is a difference, and they havn't learned it yet.
I'm a kid who doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't do drugs, attends school everyday, reads for 6 hours a day on weekdays and 12 hours a dan (minimum) on weekends. I don't lie, cheat or steal. I am non-violent, not a racist, and I follow a path of moral guidelines that are so stringent that most puritans would choke under their burden. When I die I plan on being remembered for all that I learned and how well I used that knowledge to help my fellow humans. I am open to all viewpoints, but I refuse anything that interfears with the path of knowledge. I am always willing to give a helping hand to others, I open doors and give a hand to people whome I even may not know. I work hard and I learn everyday, and learning is my fun. You want to compare moral guidelines with me, don't even try. Spend a few good days in mediation then come back.
Re:Rich? Give me a friggin break
on
Hacking The City
·
· Score: 1
Skinhead? Hardly, african american/italian/native american. You can hardly get much more diverse then that.
I hate politics, so thats out.
Look at the timestamp on the message, people tend to rant and rave a bit above norm at 1:47 in the morning.
The fact that I don't drink caffinee at all doesn't help any,heh,::grins
Re:Rich? Give me a friggin break
on
Hacking The City
·
· Score: 1
>Hmm. They smoke dope. You're endorsing the >outright murder of people without giving them >any benefit of fair trial, any chance at rehab, >any... etcetera.
>For someone whose lament seems to be "I don't >have an opportunity", you sure seem pretty keen >on denying other people opportunities.
They used up their opportunities by wasting their minds away on drugs. There are not enough natural resources to go around to waste on the drug users in society. While they burn up resources and their brains, people around the world starve and suffer. How many people could you feed in a third world country from one persons crack/cocain habit, eh? I believe in giving everybody a chance, thats why the people who DENY themselves oppertunity should have their chance given to somebody else. After all, if a person is 18 and still believes that fart jokes are funny, the odds are they that are never going to mature.
>>I cannot stand people with money...
>According to St. Paul, love of money is the root >of all evil. By extension, so is the hatred.
Hmm, thats an intresting logic.
If A is True then B is True. Also opposite of B is true.
Applying your magical theory of logic;
Because not murdering is good, murdering is also good.
Hmm, doesn't qute work, too absolute. Thats defintly an all blanketing statement, and god knows, all blanketing statements are bad.
For clerification, I wouldn't instantly shoot all drugs users, just the ones who have proven themselves to have no hope of redemption. You know the ones, jumping up and down in the middle of lectures, coming in every day smelling like::insert gasious substence of choice here:: and who seem to think that school is a place for playing, not learning.
If they are going to be immature enough to interupt other peoples education with their antics, then they DESERVE to die. Period. Anybody who interupts are otherwise interfears with education deservers to die. This includes republicans, middle mangement, and bean counters.
Oddly enough, all three of those tend to be either middle or upper class, what a coincidence.
Of course the fact that the middle and upper clase are some of the most hard heading stubborn short sited, addle minded people in existence also doesn't speak well for their existence. It is idiots like that who voted for Bush.
Re:Rich? Give me a friggin break
on
Hacking The City
·
· Score: 1
Heh, reading 600+ pages on a CRT moniter (god i can't wait until LCD's come down in price some more!) is the PERFECT way to fry your eyes.
Trust me, I know, my eyes burn right now.
Of course your COULD print the book out, but god, then you have 600 pages of paper floating all around your house (unless you have an industrial quality stapler, heh:)
Re:Rich? Give me a friggin break
on
Hacking The City
·
· Score: 1
How nice, I have compleatly read out TWO libraries already (my schools, and my cities) of all of their intresting works.
I regularly take home 10 books and finish them within a few days.
Of course I then return them about 2 months later with a $60 fine, heh, libraries get quite expensive for me (I have a horrid memory for dates, places, or anything else that deals with the physical realm.)
Re:Rich? Give me a friggin break
on
Hacking The City
·
· Score: 1
I am a fast reader, 900pages a day. Library, new books? Hah, we have a bunch of under 150pg books for the jocks on "drug use is bad" and "don't use steriods" Thats all that the school's funding is going to. The excuse? "We buy books for the majority of people."
There is not a single teacher in my school who knows anything about programming, in fact, there is not a single programming instructer in my whole school DISTRICT. This wouldn't be so bad, but I am not a self learner when it comes to programming languages (I always want to ask questions and jump around chaoticly, as is my learning style, but this is not possabile with most books on programming languages.)
Oh yah, and I support ASM, not C. You try finding a modern book on ASM, its NOT easy. The newest that my cities library system possess's, announces the soon to be release of the Pentium.
As stated in an above message, reading at full speed, I can go through $30 of books A DAY not a week. Even at half price, I can easily spend $15 a day, whilst you spend a mere $15 a week.
Personal Library? I have well over 300 books, and at least two shelves of Asimov alone, both his fiction and non-fiction.
(and please, nobody try and question the learning value of science fiction, old school science fiction is alot more educational than most science courses)
Re:Rich? Give me a friggin break
on
Hacking The City
·
· Score: 1
I am a fast reader. In fact, I can read up to 900 pages a day.
New paper back fiction books cost $10 a piece, if they are a few years old but still new, they cost $7-$8 each.
Three books a day, at $10, thats $30 a day in reading.
$210 a week, $900 a month, $10950 a year.
Yes I am a high school student, and my family currently earns UNDER $20,000 a year.
I'm on the arse end side of the poverty line, yet I spend EVERY last cent I have on getting ahead in this world, and I have been doing so since i was five years old (when I first learned the value of a doller). So don't tell me about who's some lamer with nothing to do, spending 12hours a day reading and learning is a full time job, and its the only way I'm going to get any place in life. Thats why it pisses me off to see people throw around money in useless ventures, and god knows the part about the druggues is true too. (Trust me, there are far to many students doing drugs in america's schools who also have the audacity to show up stoned out of there mind and make a mess of the classroom.)
Oh yah, and fiction, means Asimov, Clarke, and such. Reprints cost money, and even at a 1/2 price book store, $2.50 to $5 per book is still expensive at three books a day. This is why i am forced to cut down on the number of books I can read a day (people say there is a reading crisis in america, hah, those of us who try to do somthing about it are screwed over thanklessly) too one or two.
You want to know my I was so pissed in my orignal post? Simple, I *HATE* rich people, can't stand'em. Always throwing their money away into useless prusuits. Sheesh, if I had that kind of money, I'd go out and earn five or so Ph.D's, just for The Sake of Learning.
Oh yah, and learn the rules of debate. Attacking a person personaly (spelling and such) is not a way to disprove their thoughts and idea's, but rather, only a way to divert your arguments around the truth. Spelling is not a valid argument, morals and ethics are.
This is really ridiculas, the boy obviously TRIED to win since he appeared at the football game in the first place. Had he been a true scholery and truly opposed to the corrupt school systems of america he would not have went to such a wastefull event as a school athletic competition to begin with. It is his own fault for perticipating in such inane and pointless events. He wanted to make a message and sound "deep" but without disrupting his social life, typical modern american thinking, filthy.
For crying out loud, can anybody just consider this another reminder that the new DBZ episodes are on, that the show has great kick ass fight sequences, and to go watch it when it shows (depending on your time zone).
End of story, no need for debates about ethics or morals, no need for "My anime show is better then your anime show" and no need for "DBZ sucks".
Just watch the thing if you like it, and if you don't like it, don't watch it! Simple as that.
People spend more time writting complaints about the news stories on Slashdot then it takes to read the stories! Sheesh, talk about a waste of their time. . . .
Integration of Keyboard, Mouse, and Voice Recon
on
The Computer of 2010
·
· Score: 3
I think that the future of input devices will not be an all or none soluation, but rather a combination of input devices and methods.
As it is, there are many things I want to tell my computer to do, for example.
Save this file then shutdown for the night.
Saying that one sentence is much faster then waiting for the file to save, then checking to make sure that the OS actualy shuts down OK (granted, more reliable OS's would solve half of this problem.)
On the other hand, there is no way in the world that you are going to seperate me from my Rhino3d command bar, its a lovly thing. Abbreviations are much easier to type then say, and often times written words form patterns that spoken words do not. Thus the reason that I can type my name two or three times faster then anything else, my fingers have become acostum to typing it. On the other hand I still stutter while saying my name (ironic, eh?)
I do like the idea of a virutal desktop though, there are many times in life that I just wanted to be able to play around with somthing in real 3d. In addition, it is easier to tell a computer to do somthing like:
Undo that second to last spell check
Then it is search through a document for the word that you accidently corrected (spell checkers don't understand most industry buzz words, go figure!)
Of course there is one major problem with voice reconization technology right now, namly
THE DAMN THING CAN'T UNDERSTAND A WORD THAT I SAY.
Sure sure, I've read the manuals "may need 3 or more hours of training in order to work as advertised"
I've also spent half an hour trying to get the trainer to understand a single word that I am saying.
The reason?
Simple.
I have spent so much time reading, that most of the words that I know the definition of, I have never actualy pronounced!
Honestly, how often does the word defiled or the phrase uber mage come up in daily conversation?
The fact is that the written english languages deviates strongly from the spoken english language, heck, ask almost any english lit teacher if you don't believe me.
Many words that people use in their daily spoken language that they have perfected the pronounciation of, they have never actualy written down, and many words that they write down, they may have never pronounced in their entire life (I know I have gone 5 or more years without actualy speaking a word but using it almost weekly in my writting.)
The basic fact is that it is not natural to dictate a document. Most authers who dictate documents (do any writters still actualy do that anymore?) have somebody else go through and eliminate the standard mannerisms of speech.
(this also explains why those medieval fantasy novels sound so emmensly lame when read out loud).
Yet there is hope for integratiing voice reconization into the modern and everyday computer. Many long winded or multiple step commands would fit very well into a voice reconiziation programmed enviorment. Granted, all the Linux nuts out there have script files to do most of the work for them if the job exeeds 5 or 6 long winded tasks, but for other commands, such as the given example of save then shutdown, this would be the perfect system.
Imagine somebody being able to give the following command:
Delete all games that I have not played in the last 5 months and then defragment my hard drive.
The best part about the above command is that it is not technoloicaly impossable. Heck, a file system which keeps track of "last date accessed on" and that allows for catagorizing of directories (games, apps, pr0n) is all that is needed.
Whats more, it would save me the 5 or so hours it takes for me to sort through my games directories.
It has even another bonus, the average user could understand it! Granted, I'm not a big fan of the "average user" (*cough* newbie *cough*) but it doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to understand the idea of deleting everything that hasn't been used in at least 5 months. Just follow up by (attempting to) explaining defragmenting a HD (you have to do it, shut-up, end of story,-- my perfered method) and you have a very easy to use and often needed command that is actualy easier to use through voice reconization then it is to do by keyboard or mouse
.
Examples of other commands that are easier to use through voice recon then traditional commands:
Save this file as (document name)final.txt then delete all other previus backup copies of this file.
Goto visited websites and rotate all passwords
remove all non-program essential image files
DELETE THAT DAMN DIRECTORY ALL READY (for those people are are stuck with windoze and uninstall shield, you know what I am talking about!)
Find some of all items in colum C and place it in the next avaible row of colum C
Run virus program, clean up temp files, then run defrag
Partional off the newly installed 20gig HD into two 10gig segments labled D and E
Copy all user created text files to the CD-RW that was just inserted
Delete all MP3's that have only been listened to once
Collect all non-program attached midi files and move them to usr/music/midi
(yes yes, some people here still listen to midi files, get over it!)
Slashdot Mirror
>ASF is also just a file format, not an encoding >format. You can put a DivX;-) stream into an ASF >file no problem, so I don't know where your >argument about "DivX ;-) movies are, on the >whole, quite a bit larger than their ASF >brethren." comes from
Both ASF and DivX:-) use Mpeg4 encoding, ASF just adds some streaming capibilities to Mpeg4 and restricts the platforms you can view it on and the sound types you can use with it.
DivX:-) is easily portable (BeOS, Linux, Win32, Mac, so far that I know of) and uses an AVI file for encapsulation.
ASF files tend to be a bit bigger for the quality, just for the sake that they are designed to be streaming and have all that extra gunk in them that makes streaming neccisary (also, they can't use as much read ahead information as pure MPEG4 files, though I have no idea if either format actualy uses such techniques in reality, the possibiity just isn't there with ASF files, where as it IS with AVI)
>The rip of Shaft that I have is damn good >quality. Ditto for the Office Space & Startrek - >First Contact DivX;-)'s (and SMR's) I have. Even >the screener rips tend to be watchable, the >quality problem tends to be at the recording >end, not the encoding or the codec end.
I have alot of good encodes, downloading 2 more right now (vnn2k ROCKS, heh, had to pimp it!). I own most of the movies I am downloading (blade runner, the matrix, etc) but it just so happens that my moniter is bigger then my TV screen, and I actualy have access to the sound system! (for some reason, everybody else is hogging the gigantic sub-woofer out in the main room, heh, go fig)
RM files can actualy be better, depending on the encoding job done, as tomshardware.com pointed out, all mpeg4 encodes are not made equal (even if the file size is the same!)
The main thing that people are PRAYING Project Mayo adds to DivX:-) is TRUE Varible Bit Rate Encoding, something that DivX:-) currently lacks, along with the whole Mpeg4 specification I do belive. While DivX:-)'s rudimetry VBRE does decrease file size by a bit, it is not that horribly well done, and Micro$oft themself showed that true VBRE can dramaticaly reduce the size of file encodes (the new media player 7 format is actualy supposed to cut down on files sizes by %5 or so, and increase quality by alot, something that is still under debat, as it seems to perform differently with each testing, and until a truely funcational encoding is avaible with documented options, people aren't going to be able to optimize the new codec)
I'm getting sick and tired of all these people whining and complaining about how -they- are sys admins and how -they- would *never* let anything like this happen to them.
/.'ers helped to invent the friggin internet, can't you do anything but argue over analogies and who's responsable.
/. knows it) arriving at his doorstep would alert him to the fact that he had been found, and that he had better stop his attack before something a bit more dangerius showed up.
If your such a friggin Genius (this being slashdot though, I bet a fair amount of you out there are, heh) then go and actualy DO SOMETHING.
For crying out loud, we are part of the high-friggin-tech community. One of the lowest members in this community, the Phreakers, managed to make Ma Bell change her whole entire infostructure, shit, some of you
If a volcano is going to blow, you wouldn't argue over who's in charge of evacuation would you? Hell no, you'd go out and do something (namely in that case, run away).
So go and actualy -do- something, fix the friggin problem. Someone could easily post all known info about this ahole as an Anon Coward, and from their its a simple matter of securing an anonamious internet connection (not exactly difficult, even *I* can do that, and I don't admin ISP's, setup backbones, or do any other such items which varius posters have bragged about all throughout this topic) and fragging the bastard. Crap, if these ISP's where so easy to break into in the first place, and install a trojin/backdoor/dDOS host on, why can't you break into them again and REMOVE the damn thing. Your all bragging about how your smarter then the ISP's, well, PROVE IT.
At very least, trace down the a-holes personal info (not exactly hard to do either) and send the guy something he won't forget. I'm sure that a few hundred pounds of dog shit (I forget the site that sells it but I'm sure somebody out there on
Crap, how many Anarchists can we round up? Can SOMEBODY please call one of the old Anarchist groups and get them to make one of those high explosive bombs they where always bragging about. Hell, go to www.textfiles.com and get the recipe yourself. That's only if your PHD education didn't teach you any chemistry though.
Oh yah, and if your not going to actualy do something about the problem, THEN STOP BITCHING.
Nuff said, bye now.
Of course, what happens when the law enforcement officers start to use the devices, eh? There is a reason that it is rare for local cops to make busts on Warez Dudes, since alot of the cops themselves use illegial software! Heck, I know of a sheriff who has illegial games on his computer, and he doesn't give a rats rear end! The fact is that for something like video recording, the public is used to being able to just turn on their VCR, hit record, and watch their favorit soap's when they get back. The TV industry has realized this, and included the record once feature for just such a reason.
:) At $2.50 per hour (or half hour, but that's to little time if you ask me) they will only be selling the product for about 1/8th of what they do for VHS/DVD's (which typicaly go for around $20 for 2hrs of TV episodes), but, they will have only to pay for server costs and bandwidth. Not to say that that is cheap or anything, but I am sure that being the big media coglomerates they are, they can get 400megabytes of data transfer for under $2.50 :) (hell, *I* get around 1gig a week for $45.00, granted thats downstream only, gotta love cable modems:) ).
If they don't watch themselves though, their momentium will take them past the record once, and they will make it impossable to do any type of recordings at all, and that will piss off Grandma, Gramps, and Sheriff Bob, and they will, in a very matter of a fact fashion, go out and buy some sort of decoder. Whats more, I'll be there at the time to make sure that just as they are steaming mad from not being able to record their program, to mention that exactly where and how they can get their hands on one of these chips.
Of course, having a simple pass-through cable going in and out of your computer, with a program ripping into the data stream directly (unless it is encrypting with PGP or something, and from the looks of it, it is just some sort of wimpo signel that when acknowledged is probebly XORed or something to "descramble" the video, programmers out there, be sure to perform XOR's once this standard comes into effect!) and recording it to the HD.
Such a setup would take all of about two seconds to creat:)
A Voodoo 100tv (I think its called a 100) is about $99 (if you can find them that is, heh:).
They can do MPEG1 rips at a halfway decent quality, and those are EASILY consumer level cards. A simple TSR could be present to "acknowledge" the encryption signal, and then record the video in MPEG1 (which doesn't give a rats rear end about such things) which could later be converted to MPEG4 (YIPPY, GO DIVX:-) )
Of course there IS a ligitimate pirating scene going on with video and TV programs, but the solution to this is to simplily offer those programs over the internet. Some sort of simple "only you can view" system, hell, even better, a authentication DVD that cannot be copied and exists in some compleatly forign format that most DVD players would read as junk if it wasn't for the TSR telling them to accept it, and is 2gigs+ in size, every byte being needed mind you (some sort of random checking system would work) that needs to be insterted into the drive so that the movie being viewed can be, well, viewed.
After downloading the video from the internet, or getting it though some other distribution means (I'm sure an mpeg4 DVD would be well appreciated by all, 8hrs of video on one DVD would rock for those long 100eps+ Anime series:) the authentication DVD would then be inserted (if the video is on another DVD, then discs can be swapped, just do this better then the PSX does:) and a random CRC or some other sort of check, would be performed that only YOUR dvd would pass (though there would be a 1/1,000,000 or so chance that another DVD might pass that random check, there is now way a fake would pass 2 checks in a row).
The video would then play. Quite simple really:); and efficent, quite secure if you think about it for awhile. The server you got the DVD from would append the file with the check, and the result of the check would be used to perform some simple opperation on the Video's data stream to make if viewable, or mabye just let the player work.
The kicker is, you wouldn't have to make the system very secure, since most people wouldn't even bother trying to bypass it. It would take care of online video piracy in one fell swoop, for the simple reason that pirates are LAAAAZZZY. You see, in there mindset, they are all noble and everything, but if there is a cheap way out, they will gladly take it. So while they will be noble and all and save you a grand total of $20 or so dollers per video, the thing is, if the same video costs $5 or even $2.50, they will tell you to stop being cheap and go buy the damn thing, and not to bother them, and that they are a very busy person!
Oh yah, it would make gobs of money too, heh, did I mention that?
Of course, this is not looking at the costs they are saving:
DVD manufacturing costs (after the 1st decoder DVD, and mabye a replacement now and then, and heck, they could charge for those!)
DVD distro costs
BillBoards
CoverArt
Pamplets/Brochures
No more complaining about losing money to even p!r@te$.
Of course the entire world wouldn't get their video over the internet instantly, but I am sure that all the Anime fans out there would *MORE* then pay for the costs of implementing this service. Even at $2.50 for two half-hour episodes, a 100 episodes would cost ya dearly:)
Thats only for one series. Of course it is ALOT cheaper then VHS/DVD, and alot more enviromentaly friendly (If your counting the weight of your VHS ANIME tape collection in Tons then. . . you MIGHT be an Anime adict.)
w00t, troll or not, I compleatly agree.
Yah, I want to rip your head off right now.
;.(..
We are so POOR at analyzing ourselfs?? Excuse me.
Look up the word *INTROSPECTIVE* in the dictionary some time, then come back and argue. I spend hours in meditation each learning about who I am and evaluating my past actions, somthing that most average highschoolers DO NOT do. I help anybody who asks for help, if somebody is doing somthing wrong I wait awhile and if they can't figure it out I politly help them. Sometimes it is appreciated, othertimes it is not. There are some students who persist in harrasing me throughout the school year, after I have had enough, I punch them (granted, not the most graceful solution, but whatever the new age psychologists tell you, IT WORKS). Being a bit over 6 foot tall and of medium build helps also (I can understand how someone of a light build could get picked on more, but that just makes the bully's even more guilty).
Even if YOU made most of your problems come down on you, don't think everybody else does. That is no different then saying all woman are responsable for their own rape, just because one of them was a cock tease. Even she wasn't responsable for what happened to her, the person who commited the crime is. Even if a person instigates violence against themselves, it doesn't mean it should happen.
What's more, if people are too damn stupid to spend their time STUDYING, then damn right I'm going to answer the question first. I work my ass off learning everything I can, and I am going to take *PRIDE* in that, damnations to hell towards anybody who challenges my right to take pride in the work I do. If a star football player gets all the girls, then I at least get to answer the questions in math class before everybody else. If the jock is jelious, then mabye he should cut back on the sports and up the study time a bit.
Some teachers say that learning alot doesn't come easy, and that I need to understand that not everybody can learn things as fast as I can. Suprise surprise, I wasn't born with all the knowledge I have, I had to work for it too. Just because some hoaring cheerleader is unwilling to spend time away from parties at at the books, doesn't mean I should lower my mental performance to her level. People spend an hour a day studying and then are jelious when I walk in the room with 6hrs a day of studying, and kick their ass on the test. Hey folks, if ya want to do good in school, TRY WORKING. Its the same as the assholes who complain about me having a graphing calculator (even though graphing calculators are standard requirments by this time). They complain about how they are too expensive, all while whering a $20 baseball cap, an $80 jacket, a $100+ pair of shoes, and carrying around a bucketload of $20 cd's.
They could get a calculator AND a computer if they concentrated less on their social lives and more on schoolwork. Of course some people want a social life, ok, thats fine, just DO NOT BOTHER ME when I do better in school then you do. I don't bother you about all the parties you goto, I made a choice not to do such, and you made a choice not to be social. Thats what I say to people like that, and if they are still pissed, THEN ITS THEIR OWN DAMN FAULT.
That is how I treat people, if they have a problem with me, its exactly that, *their* problem. By not being meek, I cut down the number of people who harrass me to one or two a year, and quite frankly, everybody in school has one or two people who harrass them (its kinda a vicious circle, everybody harrasing everybody else in turn, heh:). One day I walked into my Cisco networking class, said jokingly, "Hey, I want a standing ovation when I enter the room," and you know what? I got it, just as jokingly. Even the bullies stood up and applauded. What's more, the assholes in the class who used to bother me don't anymore now, I can stare anybody in the eye and make them shiver. Yes folks, the evil eye does indeed exist, and its a darn sweet tool. While it doesn't make poultry stop laying eggs, it sure is heck darn effective at getting people to move out of your path and turn the other way. Thanks to that colmbine thing, you can wear a trench coat (I myself don't) and get the same effect. The amount of nerd harrasment after colmbine dropped dramaticaly in my area. Of course I am going to a lower class school, so the kids are a tad bit smarter then those assholes in the middle class districts who instantly jump on any bandwagon then see passing by, and basicaly went on a witch-hunt after colmbine
So. . . to wrap it up,
Being smart is good, its a life choice, and there is no reason that a person who makes a choice to devote their life to HELPING others in the acedemic fields should get any less respect (or disrespected for that matter) then those who have chosen a life of physical competition. In fact, I believe that the scholars should get more respect then the jocks, but hey, that's just MY highly thought about and meditated upon logicial well planned out opinion, doesn't make it any more right then say, the snap judgement of some guy who beats himself on the head for fun. (read: jocks)
Mac users had best NEVER complain about windows bloat again, sheesh. I'm sorry, but I want my GUI to be NOTHING but 256color square box's, that is a GUI that loads fast, and fits in under 200k.
Anybody here remember the old DOS SHELL? I loved that thing, used it as my GUI for ages, ran great, easy to pop in and out of, and it supported multi-tasking of sorts. If you wanted to customize it, you could change the colors of the window bars, text, and text background. That was it, period. No anti-aliased interpolated transparent buttons, no OPEN-GL effects, the damn thing just RAN, and on any computer too. Same thing with X-TREE, but its default color scheme was ugly (at least I thought so then.)
Sheesh, I never did understand the whole entire customize the look of your OS thing, hell, I think beige is the PERFECT color. There are so many different shades of beiege, the APPLE II line alone had a variety of Beige's! Gray, Beige, Black, White, that is what a OS's GUI should look like, period, end of story. I want to run a program, I click on its icon, it runs, no fancy sound effects, no bells and whistels, and NO freeze ups. Simple. You could write a decent GUI in basic if you wanted too, as long as you got a version of basic that supported running EXE's and BAT files.
Any plug-ins to modify your GUI just take up more HD space and increases the time it takes for your system to load, and with OS X running at a snails pace already (do to the above mentioned trancparency, OpenGL and such) I see no reason why a mac user would want to further hinder their system's performance with some sort of Scheme programs or any other sort of GUI ajustments. Of course, I guess with only 1 mouse button, they have to entertain themselves somehow (how DO you guys do 3d modeling with only 1 mouse button, isn't it mentaly painfull?)
I use my.mp3.com as basicaly a portable playlist that I can use to play my favorite classical music whenever I am sitting next to a computer that has broadband and speakers (which means almost anyplace now days) I also frequent the independent artists on mp3.com on a daily basis (remember, thats what mp3.com was orignaly for?) and quite frankly, I have NO problem with them taking actions to ban illegal uses of music, though I do agree that having to insert the CD makes it pretty useless as a portable storage system. But then again, can't you just use any other remote file server for those purposes? Or heck, even take the CD with you? (Its called a -COMPACT- disc for a reason!)
Talking about insecurity, I think that sniffing might be usefull for saving on bandwidth. Just think of how many people are looking at a pecitular site at any one time, or would love to download a high quality version of the latest Fan Sub'd Anime movie (insert favorite series here).
Heck, why not have one user download a file and everybody else hop on for the ride? User A downloads the file on their large connection, and shares it wirelessly to users B C D etc. This would save on both the ISP's bandwidth and the servers bandwidth, and on bandwidth on the internet in gerneral.
This could be taken even one step further, as communities could have general proxy servers that could act as area wide internet cache's, @Home does this already for all of there users (you can bypass it if you want to go through the trouble to get an extra 10kps or so, and knock 5ms or 10ms off of your ping) and works resonably well. The automatic mirroring of certin pages (Slashdot.org and all links on the main news page would be nice for starters, I still can't get through to those darn pictures of Jupiter!) and contant caches of other pages, such as www.newgrounds.com could help the local community save alot of bandwidth. You even use a distrubuted networking setup and have the cached data spread pseudo-randomly about the computers of volenteers (have some extra HD space to donate to the community as a whole, well then, sign on up!)
>Why does Science fiction have to only focus on >technology, science, and math?
Study your Sci-Fi history, there have been two major movements in science fiction, the hard *Science* fiction, and the more humanitarian approuch to science fiction. Read Asimov's edited series "The Golden Years".
I read Science Fiction to learn about odd ball theorys of science in an entertaining way, it is much more memorable if you learn about somthing because it is crucial to a plot twist, rather then if it is just in another journal.
Notice how many hundreds of books Asimov wrote, a good number of which dealt with what it ment to be human, without having a single orgy scence (to the best of my knowledge.)
Also, look at a list of topics Heiniel has had his charecters support (without any denial throughout the rest of the book.)
Incest
Pedophiles
Sex outside of marriage
Orgies
etc, etc etc
My complaint is not about sexuality being part of humanity, but rather, about how Heinlein ruined a perfectly good charecter and turned him into a horny monster / religious zealot. (even if he was a non-violence zealot)
Since Mike was raised not to be human, he didn't need to connect fully with his emotions, he originaly did not possess human emotions, remember. They should have let him run loose in a library, writting down knowledge to be used to save thousands of lives and help humanity live a better life as a whole.
Compare a better world, to a sex cult,
oh boy, its just -SO- hard to make the prober moral choice there now isn't it!
My point was that Mike was better BEFORE he was human. The humanizing of him was a
tragedy. I believe that he was a better Being as a martian, rather then a human. Just because you
support the human race in the book, doesn't mean that I do.
While I agree that in order to become human Mike had to be introduced into sex, concentrating a
good percentage of the book solely around that topic, and attempting to justify what basically
amounted to a sex cult, wasn't exactly necessary for literary excellence.
This book starts out great, with the main charecter darn nearly being perfect, logical, non-emotional, and very intelligent.
Then a bunch of people get the idea that he needs to get laid.
Great, human raised on another planet, another culture, possabile able to tell us the secrets of the universe, and all Heinlein can think about is getting him laid.
Its been said before, and I'll say it again, Heinlein was a dirty old man, all throughout his life.
Sheesh, pathetic, really pathetic, I started to like Mike, but then Heinlein ruined him! He turned from the nice introspective logial type to an exoverted horny a-hole. Of course, in the standard Heinlein manner, Heilien then goes about and spends around half the book justifying orgies! He actualy tries to justify the sexual cult that he has Mike create! Brotherhood and friendship my arse, if Mike wanted to really help out society he would go down to the library and start reading up on earthly technology, and seeing how he could improve it with his unique perspective. I can just begin to imagin the mathmatical advances he could have made, if it wasn't for Heilien writting him so attrocicly.
Ugh, a dispicible book that starts out good, and takes a 180 turn half-way through.
Its a shame when a good auther goes bad.
I don't really see what the big deal about the potential for "free upgrades" is. Hell, I still use works 4.5 and enjoy it (no annoying paper clip, and the spell checker is more suitable to my style of spelling).
.Net strategy does is guarntee that if they every ACCIDENTLY release a bug-free piece of software, that they will still make money off of their programs.
.Net, all I will have to do is do what I am already doing. Namly reinstalling every few months and making sure that my computers date is set to somthing around 1995. Install all time dependent programs on partitial A along with M$ OS's, and all none time dependent stuff on partition B, and Linux on Partition C. Every three or so months, reformat partition A. Makes defraging your disk ALOT easier I must say ::grins::
Of course after Lilo ate my MBR (doh) I am now using Netscape's email progie to write all of my documents in.
Still though, I don't see WHY people stay on this upgrade cycle. Honestly, what does office 2000 offer over office98 that you really need? Besides owning the latest version, of course.
What it all comes down to of course, is that if Microsoft ever released a working version of their software (read: no glaringly obvious security holes that even a 10yr old can find) then they would go out of bussiness, as they would have no more software to sell. All the
Of course, even if the world goes the way of
Not owning any stocks, I have had the advantage of being able to enjoy all of the varius tech stock jokes that have been coming along throughout these last few years. Kinda sad that I couldn't get in on it, but otherwise enjoyable to watch all of those people squirm in their shoes as their money went uP and DOwn.
.com's going out of bussiness is GREAT deals on almost new computer parts! Thats how I got a 36inch moniter for a mere $400! Yee gads, with sales like that, I can't wait until some MORE companies go out of bussiness! Heh, this is getting to be fun!
::grins::
Of course, all computer parts buyers have been praying for the asian tech stock market to crash again, that was enjoyable, computer prices being cut in half and all. Oh well, the one thing that the average user can get from all of these
Any ex-CEO's out there looking to unload some athlon workstations for cheap, give me a holler, I'm ready to buy
>Have you concidered getting out of the house >once in a while?? are you retaining anything you >read?? do you know what a girl is??
Oh yes, and you are SO enlighted. Hell, you still associate sex with success, stop thinking with your gonades and start using your brain. Goverment age restrictions currently limit what I am able to do. Because I am forced to stay in a school where I mearly have re-read the same old crud I have read in my spare time, I am unable to get a true job. Of course if courses where offered in public school where we just sat down for a day and got lectured to, then left, it would be oh so much more efficent. As it is I am taking one lecture course up at my local community collage and I *LOVE* it. No more waiting around for a-holes to get settled down, instead everybody just pays attention and takes notes. On those days that a subject you have already covered personaly is being discussed in class (such as the causes of WW1, of which I had twice before) you can mearly just stay home and do self study. Defintly a supiorer system, and students would be accelloreated two or three years if such a method of teaching was applied to public schools.
This means that I would have been out of school two years ago, knowing far more then I will know when I do graduate from the current system, and I would have had a very nice paying job by now. But you see, goverment restrictions being what they are, I am not allowed to just go to school to take programming courses (if they where offered, which they aren't) and 3d-modeling courses (if they where offered, which they aren't) and math courses (which is so f-ed up, I passed all the class's, two years ahead of schedual I might add, but the local community collage doesn't like my test results, thus showing that public schools DO NOT prepare people for the real world.)
You want to know why I am stuck where I am, its because a bunch of pencil pushers and bean counters decided that this is where I belong.
Needless to say, buercracy doesn't mesh well with my free roaming spirit. (and yes, I spirit can roam free inside of a book, suprise surprise!)
How nice, but it would seem that somebody (perhaps belonging to the same political party of RJH a few posts down) has denied school funding so that there is nobody to expose me to such works of lititure. Even I am incapbile of judging which books to read just by their cover. Of course, the fact that teachers are held back by unattentive students could also be part of the problem. One chapter a day is expected from most teachers when a student is assigned a book. I myself would give them the book on a friday and tell them to have it read by monday. If anybody complains about having a party or such to go to, then I would tell them that they would fail simply based on a lack of dedication to their education.
I have had LA teachers who did not even have a proper mastery of the english language, so if you wish to discuss reasons for me having a limited sphere of reading choices, then take up the topic with your school districts supervisor. But forcing kids to read a brief sampling that is insterted more for political correctness then actual educational value, might help to improve what childen are exposed to in school.
As it is, Dante's Inferno was compleatly skipped over even though I wanted to read it. It was in the text books we have, but, it was not considered ethnicaly diverse enough to be included as part of our education.
>So now you're God, able to pass judgment on >who's worthy and who's not? God at least has the >common decency not to judge anyone until the >Last Day.
::grins::
;)
/. user; if all the money spend on politics was instead spent on helping people, we wouldn't have all these problems.
By wasting money on frivolious expenses, the rich also judge who can live and who can die. They choose a higher standard of living for themselves rather then to give to the poor.
>And they might say there aren't enough natural >resources in society to go around to waste on >self-loathing teenagers. Who gets to decide >who's right?
How about a self-loathing teenager who has plans on HELPING society. I am working my ass off to learn everything that I can so that I might contribute to society. Are you saying that my work deservers no more credit that the waste of a druggie?
>"The opposite of love is not hate, it is apathy. >The opposite of good is not evil, it is apathy." >(Elie Wiesel)
Love is an animal instinct that is designed to force otherwise sapient beings to act like wild
creatures. I do not believe if love, instead I prefer the path of logic and a life of discipline and rigorous study. Just as you oppose anything that stands in the way of you acquiring physical wealth and happiness (love, sex, money, power, etc.) I oppose anything that interferes with my acquisition of mental knowledge.
People fear apathy, because through apathy comes true objectivity, and when you view society
through an objective view point, you see something that is utterly disgusting. I do not believe apathy should be a permanent state of mind, but it is a useful tool for one to gain their bearings with. As it is, I am a very compassionate person, I am (literally) unable to step on a bug. But I have no care for the human race, for the human race has sinned (and I am *not* talking metaphorically) beyond
belief. Every time someone spends money on another inefficient item of self indulgence, they have cursed another person to death.
Love encourages us to only look at ourselves, it is a very introspective feeling, and yet while
introversion is normally a good thing, love has been carefully crafted through years of evolution to ensure that all who fall into its embrace shall follow along a sure path of outdated modes of keeping the human race around.
Honestly, the chances of the human race dying out from under population are none. The chances of
a given family in america starving to death if they don't steal a loaf of bread from their neighbors is zilch. Love and its accompanying emotions are highly outdated, and while they where a necessary
set of survival rules in the days of zoog the cave man, this is the modern world, and all the survival instincts (love included here folks) do is squander resources by causing people to desire to hoard items for their own use.
Don't talk to me about emotional states, I can switch emotional states at will, faster then most people can speak a syllable. Your ridiculously outdated idea's of love are foolish in the modern world.
>Upper-class, Republican, voted for Bush. Also a >reasonably nice guy,
Hmm, guess it'd be kinda faux passe to play the death penalty card here, eh?
Anyways, he happens to be a resonably nice guy who has royaly screwed up texas's education. I know, I have spoken with students from texas, they say that the schools down there are horrific. These are actualy thoughtfull opinions, not just the standard "school sucks" that most kids will give you anyways
Texas's education system revolves around passing tests, the class's teaching centers around the tests, and teachers don't have enough time to explore things that are not on the test.
Oh yah, in addition, (I could discuss politics all day, but then again, who couldn't) Bush also let off the o-so-famous quote of:
"I believe free speech should be limited."
Yah, real nice guy there, seeing as how he wants to limit the first amendment. His B.S. plans for social security aren't all that good either. (I'm sure the lower class will know EXACTLY what stocks to invest in to make the most money, yah right, fat chance.)
>You also can't say I'm an exception--because the >instant you do, I'll rattle off a list of my >Republican friends and co-workers who do the >exact same or similar things
What signifies the middle class mind set to me is a girl a knew a few years back. She was a vegitarian hunter.
Yes, I just said vegitarian hunter.
She couldn't see anything wrong with this, and she proudly supported both animal rights and hunters rights. Quite ridculas really, she had a compleat lack of an ability to connect A with B. She was otherwise a very intelligent person, in honors everything, but she had not one iota of introspectiveness.
I have found that most of the middle class is like this, they have a compete lack of any ability to realize what their actions will do. People who believe in privitizing schools and giving out $2000 a year vouchers to students don't realize that $2000 just pays for one class of 20 students, and that is for the teacher alone! The only way current schools survive is by all the extra money that they get from other various sources, but if a school doesn't work off of goverment funding, such funds are unavaible. Yet republicans and their ilk fail to see this.
The middle and upper class have a complete lack of any sort of an ability to reconize that some people DO NOT have money. They fail to reconize that the reason goverment programs exist is to HELP people rise up out of dispare. Yes, such programs need work, and yes, some of those programs over bloated and wasting lots of money. But the solution is not to eliminate those programs, but rather to reorganize them so that they provide the same services, but in a more efficent manner.
Oh yah, and guns DO kill people, which is pretty much the only other grip about republicans that I have (for crying out loud, its hard to go on a 50 person killing spree in two hours, using a knife! Yee gads some people are hard headed.)
>Who's the addle-brained, hard-headed, stubborn >person here--the Republican who volunteers his >time at the local schools, donated to John >McCain's political campaign, mentors young >geeks... or the kid who hates people he doesn't >even know, for offenses they've never even >committed?
They have commited an offense, inefficency.
Zippity doo da, you did a little good deed and now you feel good about yourself.
pharaphrasing another
I can't stand geeks, they still commit sins of the body, yet they try to present themself as being emotionaly intelligent people, their not, they just have a high mental intelligence. There is a difference, and they havn't learned it yet.
I'm a kid who doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't do drugs, attends school everyday, reads for 6 hours a day on weekdays and 12 hours a dan (minimum) on weekends. I don't lie, cheat or steal. I am non-violent, not a racist, and I follow a path of moral guidelines that are so stringent that most puritans would choke under their burden. When I die I plan on being remembered for all that I learned and how well I used that knowledge to help my fellow humans. I am open to all viewpoints, but I refuse anything that interfears with the path of knowledge. I am always willing to give a helping hand to others, I open doors and give a hand to people whome I even may not know. I work hard and I learn everyday, and learning is my fun. You want to compare moral guidelines with me, don't even try. Spend a few good days in mediation then come back.
Skinhead? Hardly, african american/italian/native american. You can hardly get much more diverse then that.
::grins
I hate politics, so thats out.
Look at the timestamp on the message, people tend to rant and rave a bit above norm at 1:47 in the morning.
The fact that I don't drink caffinee at all doesn't help any,heh,
>Hmm. They smoke dope. You're endorsing the >outright murder of people without giving them >any benefit of fair trial, any chance at rehab, >any... etcetera.
::insert gasious substence of choice here:: and who seem to think that school is a place for playing, not learning.
>For someone whose lament seems to be "I don't >have an opportunity", you sure seem pretty keen >on denying other people opportunities.
They used up their opportunities by wasting their minds away on drugs. There are not enough natural resources to go around to waste on the drug users in society. While they burn up resources and their brains, people around the world starve and suffer. How many people could you feed in a third world country from one persons crack/cocain habit, eh? I believe in giving everybody a chance, thats why the people who DENY themselves oppertunity should have their chance given to somebody else. After all, if a person is 18 and still believes that fart jokes are funny, the odds are they that are never going to mature.
>>I cannot stand people with money...
>According to St. Paul, love of money is the root >of all evil. By extension, so is the hatred.
Hmm, thats an intresting logic.
If A is True then B is True. Also opposite of B is true.
Applying your magical theory of logic;
Because not murdering is good, murdering is also good.
Hmm, doesn't qute work, too absolute. Thats defintly an all blanketing statement, and god knows, all blanketing statements are bad.
For clerification, I wouldn't instantly shoot all drugs users, just the ones who have proven themselves to have no hope of redemption. You know the ones, jumping up and down in the middle of lectures, coming in every day smelling like
If they are going to be immature enough to interupt other peoples education with their antics, then they DESERVE to die. Period. Anybody who interupts are otherwise interfears with education deservers to die. This includes republicans, middle mangement, and bean counters.
Oddly enough, all three of those tend to be either middle or upper class, what a coincidence.
Of course the fact that the middle and upper clase are some of the most hard heading stubborn short sited, addle minded people in existence also doesn't speak well for their existence. It is idiots like that who voted for Bush.
Heh, reading 600+ pages on a CRT moniter (god i can't wait until LCD's come down in price some more!) is the PERFECT way to fry your eyes.
Trust me, I know, my eyes burn right now.
Of course your COULD print the book out, but god, then you have 600 pages of paper floating all around your house (unless you have an industrial quality stapler, heh:)
How nice, I have compleatly read out TWO libraries already (my schools, and my cities) of all of their intresting works.
I regularly take home 10 books and finish them within a few days.
Of course I then return them about 2 months later with a $60 fine, heh, libraries get quite expensive for me (I have a horrid memory for dates, places, or anything else that deals with the physical realm.)
I am a fast reader, 900pages a day. Library, new books? Hah, we have a bunch of under 150pg books for the jocks on "drug use is bad" and "don't use steriods" Thats all that the school's funding is going to. The excuse? "We buy books for the majority of people."
There is not a single teacher in my school who knows anything about programming, in fact, there is not a single programming instructer in my whole school DISTRICT. This wouldn't be so bad, but I am not a self learner when it comes to programming languages (I always want to ask questions and jump around chaoticly, as is my learning style, but this is not possabile with most books on programming languages.)
Oh yah, and I support ASM, not C. You try finding a modern book on ASM, its NOT easy. The newest that my cities library system possess's, announces the soon to be release of the Pentium.
As stated in an above message, reading at full speed, I can go through $30 of books A DAY not a week. Even at half price, I can easily spend $15 a day, whilst you spend a mere $15 a week.
Personal Library? I have well over 300 books, and at least two shelves of Asimov alone, both his fiction and non-fiction.
(and please, nobody try and question the learning value of science fiction, old school science fiction is alot more educational than most science courses)
I am a fast reader. In fact, I can read up to 900 pages a day.
New paper back fiction books cost $10 a piece, if they are a few years old but still new, they cost $7-$8 each.
Three books a day, at $10, thats $30 a day in reading.
$210 a week, $900 a month, $10950 a year.
Yes I am a high school student, and my family currently earns UNDER $20,000 a year.
I'm on the arse end side of the poverty line, yet I spend EVERY last cent I have on getting ahead in this world, and I have been doing so since i was five years old (when I first learned the value of a doller). So don't tell me about who's some lamer with nothing to do, spending 12hours a day reading and learning is a full time job, and its the only way I'm going to get any place in life. Thats why it pisses me off to see people throw around money in useless ventures, and god knows the part about the druggues is true too. (Trust me, there are far to many students doing drugs in america's schools who also have the audacity to show up stoned out of there mind and make a mess of the classroom.)
Oh yah, and fiction, means Asimov, Clarke, and such. Reprints cost money, and even at a 1/2 price book store, $2.50 to $5 per book is still expensive at three books a day. This is why i am forced to cut down on the number of books I can read a day (people say there is a reading crisis in america, hah, those of us who try to do somthing about it are screwed over thanklessly) too one or two.
You want to know my I was so pissed in my orignal post? Simple, I *HATE* rich people, can't stand'em. Always throwing their money away into useless prusuits. Sheesh, if I had that kind of money, I'd go out and earn five or so Ph.D's, just for The Sake of Learning.
Oh yah, and learn the rules of debate. Attacking a person personaly (spelling and such) is not a way to disprove their thoughts and idea's, but rather, only a way to divert your arguments around the truth. Spelling is not a valid argument, morals and ethics are.
This is really ridiculas, the boy obviously TRIED to win since he appeared at the football game in the first place. Had he been a true scholery and truly opposed to the corrupt school systems of america he would not have went to such a wastefull event as a school athletic competition to begin with. It is his own fault for perticipating in such inane and pointless events. He wanted to make a message and sound "deep" but without disrupting his social life, typical modern american thinking, filthy.
For crying out loud, can anybody just consider this another reminder that the new DBZ episodes are on, that the show has great kick ass fight sequences, and to go watch it when it shows (depending on your time zone).
End of story, no need for debates about ethics or morals, no need for "My anime show is better then your anime show" and no need for "DBZ sucks".
Just watch the thing if you like it, and if you don't like it, don't watch it! Simple as that.
People spend more time writting complaints about the news stories on Slashdot then it takes to read the stories! Sheesh, talk about a waste of their time. . . .
I think that the future of input devices will not be an all or none soluation, but rather a combination of input devices and methods.
As it is, there are many things I want to tell my computer to do, for example.
Save this file then shutdown for the night.
Saying that one sentence is much faster then waiting for the file to save, then checking to make sure that the OS actualy shuts down OK (granted, more reliable OS's would solve half of this problem.)
On the other hand, there is no way in the world that you are going to seperate me from my Rhino3d command bar, its a lovly thing. Abbreviations are much easier to type then say, and often times written words form patterns that spoken words do not. Thus the reason that I can type my name two or three times faster then anything else, my fingers have become acostum to typing it. On the other hand I still stutter while saying my name (ironic, eh?)
I do like the idea of a virutal desktop though, there are many times in life that I just wanted to be able to play around with somthing in real 3d. In addition, it is easier to tell a computer to do somthing like:
Undo that second to last spell check
Then it is search through a document for the word that you accidently corrected (spell checkers don't understand most industry buzz words, go figure!)
Of course there is one major problem with voice reconization technology right now, namly
THE DAMN THING CAN'T UNDERSTAND A WORD THAT I SAY.
Sure sure, I've read the manuals "may need 3 or more hours of training in order to work as advertised"
I've also spent half an hour trying to get the trainer to understand a single word that I am saying.
The reason?
Simple.
I have spent so much time reading, that most of the words that I know the definition of, I have never actualy pronounced!
Honestly, how often does the word defiled or the phrase uber mage come up in daily conversation?
The fact is that the written english languages deviates strongly from the spoken english language, heck, ask almost any english lit teacher if you don't believe me.
Many words that people use in their daily spoken language that they have perfected the pronounciation of, they have never actualy written down, and many words that they write down, they may have never pronounced in their entire life (I know I have gone 5 or more years without actualy speaking a word but using it almost weekly in my writting.)
The basic fact is that it is not natural to dictate a document. Most authers who dictate documents (do any writters still actualy do that anymore?) have somebody else go through and eliminate the standard mannerisms of speech.
(this also explains why those medieval fantasy novels sound so emmensly lame when read out loud).
Yet there is hope for integratiing voice reconization into the modern and everyday computer. Many long winded or multiple step commands would fit very well into a voice reconiziation programmed enviorment. Granted, all the Linux nuts out there have script files to do most of the work for them if the job exeeds 5 or 6 long winded tasks, but for other commands, such as the given example of save then shutdown, this would be the perfect system.
Imagine somebody being able to give the following command:
Delete all games that I have not played in the last 5 months and then defragment my hard drive.
The best part about the above command is that it is not technoloicaly impossable. Heck, a file system which keeps track of "last date accessed on" and that allows for catagorizing of directories (games, apps, pr0n) is all that is needed.
Whats more, it would save me the 5 or so hours it takes for me to sort through my games directories.
It has even another bonus, the average user could understand it! Granted, I'm not a big fan of the "average user" (*cough* newbie *cough*) but it doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to understand the idea of deleting everything that hasn't been used in at least 5 months. Just follow up by (attempting to) explaining defragmenting a HD (you have to do it, shut-up, end of story,-- my perfered method) and you have a very easy to use and often needed command that is actualy easier to use through voice reconization then it is to do by keyboard or mouse
.
Examples of other commands that are easier to use through voice recon then traditional commands:
Save this file as (document name)final.txt then delete all other previus backup copies of this file.
Goto visited websites and rotate all passwords
remove all non-program essential image files
DELETE THAT DAMN DIRECTORY ALL READY (for those people are are stuck with windoze and uninstall shield, you know what I am talking about!)
Find some of all items in colum C and place it in the next avaible row of colum C
Run virus program, clean up temp files, then run defrag
Partional off the newly installed 20gig HD into two 10gig segments labled D and E
Copy all user created text files to the CD-RW that was just inserted
Delete all MP3's that have only been listened to once
Collect all non-program attached midi files and move them to usr/music/midi
(yes yes, some people here still listen to midi files, get over it!)
Anyways, just my, err, uh
2 and a half bits I guess, heh.