Of the three companies mentioned IBM is the only one that I think is capable of not running Sun into the ground. HP is more Compaq than than the oldskool company that made scientific workstation, and Dell? Forget about it! Those guys don't know the first thing about making reliable hardware. People buy Sun exactly because it's not a Dell.
On the other hand, IBM has so many products competing against themselves for the same market, it's hard to imagine they'd want to make that situation worse.
However it goes, if there's a buyout, SPRAC is dead.
I was a rock geek in the 80's and read all those dreary interviews with tremendous interest. I can tell you with certainty that Metallica never record as a band (or if they did, it was only on "Garage Days"). Lars pays the drums with a metronome, then they lay down the bass tracks, etc. The same deal with Rush (though it wasn't always like that with them--as the legend goes, Red Barchetta was recorded "live" in the studio, and what's on the album was the first take. But I think Moving Pictures was the last album on which Rush tried that.) I'd be shocked if the Who were different, but I never cared about those guys.
The reason why bands do this is that it almost always sounds better. It's very rare that you get a live album where the band sounds better than they did in the studio. But I really respect the bands that do...
Oh, I love to rant about this show but I've decided it just sucks too much to be worth the effort of ranting. But I'll say this:
If they want the show to have some dignity, the whole crew should die. I really mean die. It's not like that sort of thing doesn't happen in experimental spaceship programs, especially when those ships are getting shot at. Maybe Mayweather could live, because I like him. But the rest should die. The ship should be rebuilt and taken over by a more interesting crew, and they should get some less open-ended missions, something better than "go out there and look around." (Realistic example: espionage on the Klingons, acquisition of advanced tech from other races who are willing to deal, support of Earth-friendly regimes in space, etc.)
The whole point of flashing back to the pre-federation days with the show is that they don't have to be so goody-goody, especially when it seems like all of space is out to get the Earth's goods.
I also really hate the fact that on our first voyage into deep space, we pick fights and don't get our asses handed to us in the first milisecond. How likely is that? Many of these hostile races have been fighting in interstellar space for generations. The Enterprise is the first ship we built which is sturdy enough to take us really far. But to pretend that this reconissance ship could fight a battle in deep space is like thinking the Aztecs could have challenged the British navy with a paddleboat and a harpoon.
That's why I think it's very realistic that they would all die. And, it would improve the show. It would be just the sort of bold, interesting move Berman is advertising, but won't deliver.
Yeah, I've never seen more conceptual confusion about time travel than in Star Trek episodes. I bet you're right, and I will yell at my TV when I see it happen. If that's how it goes, I swear to boycot every product advertised during the show, no matter what it is (even if it's milk or something else that I always buy).
I'm sad to be at the age when I have to watch great shows die a terrible death. On Sundays it's the Simpsons and Wednesdays it's Star Trek. Nothing makes me more ashamed to be a trekkie than this Enterprise crap.
No, for the dignity of ST fans, this crap should go down in history as the least watched ST spinoff. Because it sucks. This way, at least history will record that we had some taste.
Oh man, I've actually watched every episode of Voyager, sometimes being forced to scream at the lameness, but I tell you, this Enterprise gets me so nostalgic for Voyager that I almost want to vomit.
If anything, Berman & co have managed to destroy the little ambiguity between right/wrong which they had in Voyager--and they had very little of it there.
This show has its roots in the 60's anti-hippy movement and thanks to incompetent writers, it's stuck there. But I don't blame Berman personally. He did some "Borg perspectives sorta make sense sometimes" Voyager episodes that I will admire, because they don't fit the straight, moralistic mode that ST has inherited from a guy who did't get laid enough in the 60s (Rodenberry).
Seriously, that puts things into perspective: You void your warranty by upgrading your memory, and your bootup will forever after inform you that your case has been breeched. But we're used to that crap, and it occurs to no one to put that on the front page.
Compared to that, AMD's decision seems quite reasonable. Not that I like it, but I understand it. They notice that many of their chips go to replace processors destroyed by some overanxious 0verclockerz who claim "the chip was fried when it got here." Basically, this is an official excuse to deny them a warranty replacement (since it's hard to do an autopsy on a dead processor).
I think what they're hoping for is that people just stop trying to invoke their warranties and sheepishly buy one of their newer and better chips as a replacement.
I thought about that too--chips blow up naturally when you overclock, and Intel must love that, because you are almost guaranteed to buy an Intel replacement (since you already own the P4 mobo, heatsink, etc.).
I just don't understand why Intel would want to fight against hobbyist overclockers. Maybe they think that instead of buying a top-of-the-line chip we buy a cheaper one and overclock it. But I think very few people work like that. Most overclockers have a fixed amount of money to spend, and will buy the best chip they can get. The rest, for whom money doesn't matter, will buy the most expensive Intel chip anyway, and then overclock that. So basically, overclocking doesn't hurt Intel finantially. In fact, it probably helps them. First, there are the blown-up chips, and then there's the fact that many people view overclockability as an important feature in a chip, and without this feature they would be more reluctant to buy. There are already many reasons to think the Hammer will be the chip of the geeks, but if it's the only overclockable desktop chip, its place is guaranteed. That's not a huge loss for Intel, but every bit counts. If enough geeks claim that you're not 1337 if you run Intel, credulous non-geeks will follow their example.
These are all reasons to think that preventing overclocking is a bad marketing move for Intel. If AMD are smart, they will not respond.
Did you notice that this scientist is in South Africa, home of DeBeers, and refuses to verify his experimental results? Wow, that would really be something if a company paid off academic scientists to create a buzz about their product with some journal articles. Now, before you flame me, I'm not silly enough to actually think this is what's going on in this case, but it sorta makes you think it's only a matter of time before this sort of collusion becomes common. I expect the first manifestation will be some paid off, retiring biochemists with nothing to lose but their reputation, publishing articles which claim breaktrhough results using some process/chemical which happens to be patented by a certain company. It's a great way to drive up that company's stock prices, especially if the claims are vague enough to never be definitively falsified.
Umm, I read the story and it seems pretty clear to me that this guy wants to butter up city officials so that they give him some money as an "investment" in the city.
If you've seen the episode of the Simpsons where Springfield gets a fancy monorail, you'll recognize immediately what this is really about. It's a con artist selling false hope using technobabble that probably sounds impressive to some provincial mayor in Amish country. Only a fool could think that all you need to bring in tech companies is a place for them to plug in. Luckily for these snake-oil-selling jerks, many of our leaders really are fools.
You know, as much as it pains me to observe the "dumbening" of the US media, I'm not terribly freaked out about it. The result is simply that our airwaves carry almost nothing worth watching or listening to, and our papers write almost nothing that's worth reading.
Luckily, the FCC faschism hardly affects me at all, because foreign media is now accessible with an ease that we would have found amazing 10 years ago. Anybody in the USA can put up a statellite dish and watch Al Jazeera news, or state television from most European states. We can read foreign newspapers online, and even a mediocre internet connection is good enough to listen streaming radio from everywhere in the world. I mean, just a few minutes ago I learned which Berlin freeways are stalled, and I live in New York.
My point is that just as the FCC has completely lost interest in serving the American people, they have luckily become reasonably irrelveant. If I could hypnotize Powell, I'd suggest that he'd take all broadcasters off the air and give that frequency to the people, enforcing only that their signals are weak enough to not mess things up for others. That's the way to move the country forward! Reserving our prescious spectrum for applications of the past, like rabbit-ear TV recievers, is a clear sign the FCC doesn't give a shit about serving this country.
This is an optimistic interpretation of what's going on. The pessimistic interpretation is that they expect their processor unit to tank totally, and they don't want it to take down their flash memory works, so they're splitting it off. It's like the Enterprise-D separating the saucer section when the warp core in engineering is about to breech.
April fools jokes are supposed to have an element of absurdity. Just passing on false information does not a joke make. That's why the article in the parent comment is so much funnier than the one Slashdot linked.
Some people already got the.iso's and I feel like I shouldn't beat up Mandrake's servers, since I don't have any money to give them this year. But I would love to download this through the eDonkey network, or even better, get it from a newsgroup.
I think we should try to use these very useful technologies for legal things as much as possible. I promise to share it through mldonkey once I get it.
You know, thanks to my devotion to Slashdot, I ended up reading many Eugenia stories. Am I the only person who noticed that she has basically written only one story in her life, and just substitutes some names and version numbers? Think about it.
I am frankly sick of her crap. She has become the Jon Katz of interface design analysis. If Slashdot insists on licking her ass every week, they should make an icon of her, so I can put the topic on my ignore list.
I think you're quite right about geothermal power, but wouldn't a system like this be just the sort of thing that would most efficiently tap the temperature differences that geothermal power exploits?
Also, I was thinking that a coastal reigeon that taps geothermal power might be able to use a similar geothermally-powered system to desalinize sea water without pollution. I'm thinking of of places like Los Angeles--though a better solution might be to just abandon that settlement.
If you read my comment, I said is was not like civil disobedience, at least not for most people. I think the illegality of filetrading is perceived my many (including me, I suppose) to be as morally bad as crossing a quitet road where there is no marked sidewalk. I mean, you're braking the law, but you'd be stupid to worry about it.
This is kinda spooky. McNealy is trying to fight the Empire by recruiting some far-away mercenaries to build him clones of something the Empire already has. It sounds like he's been watching too much Star Wars, and not the good stuff, either.
I totally agree that the show needs to become more three dimensional (though it's hopeless now, with the present crew and actors). But making them some sort of state assassins like you suggest is just terrible. The whole point about the genre is that it is supposed to represent a future we should want. And I don't want fucking state-funded assassins running around cloaked with Klingon war gear. Hell, I don't want that shit now, and I definitely don't want it in the "fantasy future" that is ST.
By the way, there was no Federation in ENT days. That comes later.
If you really like Rambo, I know some movies you would like: Rambo 1, 2 and 3. Go watch those. Or, for the time being, I guess you can get your fix from the networks, watching some real heads blow up.
But since you got me started, I'll share my "counter-fantasy" for ENT with you:
Season 3:
The crew realizes that since this is their first expedition to deep space, just about every single ship there is far more advanced than theirs. Since they have what is basically a science vessel, every Tom, Dick and Harry outguns them. If you want realism, this is the place you have to start. I mean, nobody with first generation technology is going to challenge people who have been fighting in deep space for centuries, like the Suliban and basically any other warp-capable race the Enterprise encounters.
I think they should be regularly plundered, held for ransom, ripped off, made to pay "protection money" and in general, made to grovel at the green feet of everyone they meet. If anyone thinks a first, exploratory mission into deep space which is densely populated with hostile, technologically advanced civilizations would be any different must be on drugs.
Basically, I too am picturing an "Iraqis vs Americans" scenario, but it's obvious that the Enterprise crew would be playing the Iraqis. They'd be getting slapped around like bitches. It would be a much more interesting (and realistic) show, and maybe it would teach us some humility, which we badly need these days.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, good posting! It's nice to see a decent argument get made on Slashdot.
On the other hand, IBM has so many products competing against themselves for the same market, it's hard to imagine they'd want to make that situation worse.
However it goes, if there's a buyout, SPRAC is dead.
The reason why bands do this is that it almost always sounds better. It's very rare that you get a live album where the band sounds better than they did in the studio. But I really respect the bands that do...
T'Pol: "You bastards!"
If they want the show to have some dignity, the whole crew should die. I really mean die. It's not like that sort of thing doesn't happen in experimental spaceship programs, especially when those ships are getting shot at. Maybe Mayweather could live, because I like him. But the rest should die. The ship should be rebuilt and taken over by a more interesting crew, and they should get some less open-ended missions, something better than "go out there and look around." (Realistic example: espionage on the Klingons, acquisition of advanced tech from other races who are willing to deal, support of Earth-friendly regimes in space, etc.)
The whole point of flashing back to the pre-federation days with the show is that they don't have to be so goody-goody, especially when it seems like all of space is out to get the Earth's goods.
I also really hate the fact that on our first voyage into deep space, we pick fights and don't get our asses handed to us in the first milisecond. How likely is that? Many of these hostile races have been fighting in interstellar space for generations. The Enterprise is the first ship we built which is sturdy enough to take us really far. But to pretend that this reconissance ship could fight a battle in deep space is like thinking the Aztecs could have challenged the British navy with a paddleboat and a harpoon.
That's why I think it's very realistic that they would all die. And, it would improve the show. It would be just the sort of bold, interesting move Berman is advertising, but won't deliver.
I'm sad to be at the age when I have to watch great shows die a terrible death. On Sundays it's the Simpsons and Wednesdays it's Star Trek. Nothing makes me more ashamed to be a trekkie than this Enterprise crap.
Bring back Firefly!
No, for the dignity of ST fans, this crap should go down in history as the least watched ST spinoff. Because it sucks. This way, at least history will record that we had some taste.
If anything, Berman & co have managed to destroy the little ambiguity between right/wrong which they had in Voyager--and they had very little of it there.
This show has its roots in the 60's anti-hippy movement and thanks to incompetent writers, it's stuck there. But I don't blame Berman personally. He did some "Borg perspectives sorta make sense sometimes" Voyager episodes that I will admire, because they don't fit the straight, moralistic mode that ST has inherited from a guy who did't get laid enough in the 60s (Rodenberry).
Compared to that, AMD's decision seems quite reasonable. Not that I like it, but I understand it. They notice that many of their chips go to replace processors destroyed by some overanxious 0verclockerz who claim "the chip was fried when it got here." Basically, this is an official excuse to deny them a warranty replacement (since it's hard to do an autopsy on a dead processor).
I think what they're hoping for is that people just stop trying to invoke their warranties and sheepishly buy one of their newer and better chips as a replacement.
NASA to Washington: "Mr. President, the Soviets have landed on the moon, and it looks like they're painting the whole thing red! What should we do?"
"Wait until they're done. Then paint 'Coca Cola' over it!"
I just don't understand why Intel would want to fight against hobbyist overclockers. Maybe they think that instead of buying a top-of-the-line chip we buy a cheaper one and overclock it. But I think very few people work like that. Most overclockers have a fixed amount of money to spend, and will buy the best chip they can get. The rest, for whom money doesn't matter, will buy the most expensive Intel chip anyway, and then overclock that. So basically, overclocking doesn't hurt Intel finantially. In fact, it probably helps them. First, there are the blown-up chips, and then there's the fact that many people view overclockability as an important feature in a chip, and without this feature they would be more reluctant to buy. There are already many reasons to think the Hammer will be the chip of the geeks, but if it's the only overclockable desktop chip, its place is guaranteed. That's not a huge loss for Intel, but every bit counts. If enough geeks claim that you're not 1337 if you run Intel, credulous non-geeks will follow their example.
These are all reasons to think that preventing overclocking is a bad marketing move for Intel. If AMD are smart, they will not respond.
Did you notice that this scientist is in South Africa, home of DeBeers, and refuses to verify his experimental results? Wow, that would really be something if a company paid off academic scientists to create a buzz about their product with some journal articles. Now, before you flame me, I'm not silly enough to actually think this is what's going on in this case, but it sorta makes you think it's only a matter of time before this sort of collusion becomes common. I expect the first manifestation will be some paid off, retiring biochemists with nothing to lose but their reputation, publishing articles which claim breaktrhough results using some process/chemical which happens to be patented by a certain company. It's a great way to drive up that company's stock prices, especially if the claims are vague enough to never be definitively falsified.
If you've seen the episode of the Simpsons where Springfield gets a fancy monorail, you'll recognize immediately what this is really about. It's a con artist selling false hope using technobabble that probably sounds impressive to some provincial mayor in Amish country. Only a fool could think that all you need to bring in tech companies is a place for them to plug in. Luckily for these snake-oil-selling jerks, many of our leaders really are fools.
Luckily, the FCC faschism hardly affects me at all, because foreign media is now accessible with an ease that we would have found amazing 10 years ago. Anybody in the USA can put up a statellite dish and watch Al Jazeera news, or state television from most European states. We can read foreign newspapers online, and even a mediocre internet connection is good enough to listen streaming radio from everywhere in the world. I mean, just a few minutes ago I learned which Berlin freeways are stalled, and I live in New York.
My point is that just as the FCC has completely lost interest in serving the American people, they have luckily become reasonably irrelveant. If I could hypnotize Powell, I'd suggest that he'd take all broadcasters off the air and give that frequency to the people, enforcing only that their signals are weak enough to not mess things up for others. That's the way to move the country forward! Reserving our prescious spectrum for applications of the past, like rabbit-ear TV recievers, is a clear sign the FCC doesn't give a shit about serving this country.
Top Ten Reasons Why MS Windows Should Not Run Movie Theater Projectors.
What, you thought I was going to actually write it out? No, I'm at the karma cap. Whoever isn't: go nuts!
This is an optimistic interpretation of what's going on. The pessimistic interpretation is that they expect their processor unit to tank totally, and they don't want it to take down their flash memory works, so they're splitting it off. It's like the Enterprise-D separating the saucer section when the warp core in engineering is about to breech.
When you're a dictator, everybody is your competitor.
Think about it, won't you?
April fools jokes are supposed to have an element of absurdity. Just passing on false information does not a joke make. That's why the article in the parent comment is so much funnier than the one Slashdot linked.
I think we should try to use these very useful technologies for legal things as much as possible. I promise to share it through mldonkey once I get it.
I am frankly sick of her crap. She has become the Jon Katz of interface design analysis. If Slashdot insists on licking her ass every week, they should make an icon of her, so I can put the topic on my ignore list.
Also, I was thinking that a coastal reigeon that taps geothermal power might be able to use a similar geothermally-powered system to desalinize sea water without pollution. I'm thinking of of places like Los Angeles--though a better solution might be to just abandon that settlement.
If you read my comment, I said is was not like civil disobedience, at least not for most people. I think the illegality of filetrading is perceived my many (including me, I suppose) to be as morally bad as crossing a quitet road where there is no marked sidewalk. I mean, you're braking the law, but you'd be stupid to worry about it.
If you need a dictionary to read Slashdot, you'd better go back to school!
This is kinda spooky. McNealy is trying to fight the Empire by recruiting some far-away mercenaries to build him clones of something the Empire already has. It sounds like he's been watching too much Star Wars, and not the good stuff, either.
By the way, there was no Federation in ENT days. That comes later.
If you really like Rambo, I know some movies you would like: Rambo 1, 2 and 3. Go watch those. Or, for the time being, I guess you can get your fix from the networks, watching some real heads blow up.
But since you got me started, I'll share my "counter-fantasy" for ENT with you:
Season 3:
The crew realizes that since this is their first expedition to deep space, just about every single ship there is far more advanced than theirs. Since they have what is basically a science vessel, every Tom, Dick and Harry outguns them. If you want realism, this is the place you have to start. I mean, nobody with first generation technology is going to challenge people who have been fighting in deep space for centuries, like the Suliban and basically any other warp-capable race the Enterprise encounters.
I think they should be regularly plundered, held for ransom, ripped off, made to pay "protection money" and in general, made to grovel at the green feet of everyone they meet. If anyone thinks a first, exploratory mission into deep space which is densely populated with hostile, technologically advanced civilizations would be any different must be on drugs.
Basically, I too am picturing an "Iraqis vs Americans" scenario, but it's obvious that the Enterprise crew would be playing the Iraqis. They'd be getting slapped around like bitches. It would be a much more interesting (and realistic) show, and maybe it would teach us some humility, which we badly need these days.