No, you haven't lost it altogether. The first generation of G4 processors had a 4 stage pipeline. The move to 7 stages came later, because MOTO couldn't get the chip past the ~500 MHz hump with the 4 stage pipe.
That's a Good Start. I am a cross platform developer, and use other companies' APIs on a regular basis.
Here's my personal wishlist:
1) OO design is good. c++ is good. Having simple interfaces with a
uniform (or at least consistant) convention is very good. Having
non OO (procedural) methods to standard types is also good, given
the option of both, but not as good. Complexity at need is good,
complexity by default is bad. Document everything, with examples
and complete, buildable projects. 2) Support all compilers and linkers and so forth that you can on as
wide a range of platforms as you can. This is very important! I
have had to recommend against outside products that might've been
much easier than doing something in-house, because they were only
available on one, or two, or three of the platforms we need to be
fully supported on. I've had to make hard choices about versions
of operating systems and libs that I supported because of ABIs of
outside libs, and I've had at least a couple of run-ins with ABIs
not being matched on two required outside libraries. If you have
ever had to dlopen a static linked wrapper designed to call a lib
compiled on Forte 6.x, in c++, and another calling g++ 2.9.x, and
replaced the nice OO architecture of the original API with one in
C, because that's the only way to get the two linked to the same,
in this case gcc 3.1, c++ application that they are needed in, it
is with great respect that I salute you, my fellow... (*) 3) In liu of open source, use a 3rd party "source available" policy,
which essentially means, there's a copy of all of the source, the
most recent version, on long term archive in the hands of a third
party, kept under lock and key, to be released, as stipulated, to
the customers, alleviating fears of a critical library provider's
disappearance. This strikes me as a good balance between the not
so practical open source community policies and the paranoia of a
company that spends and makes millions of dollars on their IP. I
won't say much more, 4) Remember, exposed APIs should not be changed often, and if you do
find that they must be changed, never make the change subtle. If
you can, make the change an extension that leaves the behavior of
the original calling convention intact, and simply adds options. 5) Don't feel the need to expose internal APIs and architecture that
may well change, if it does not have anything to do with the APIs
that expose your interface. Focus on the interface for shipping.
Implementation details are your business, and nothing sucks worse
for your customers than having some old-school member of the team
discover that he can shortcut the interface with some exposed API
that allows him to get at the raw data and cast it into something
low level, only to have things break when the next version ships,
with no easy answer to the inevitable "what the @#!!$ happened?". 6) If you are going to ignore 5, whatever you do, never document the
shortcut somewhere deep in a "secrets" book. Whoever that was at
Oracle, the last rant was aimed at you... 7) Standards are good. Solid design, with documentation, is better.
I would rather use something documented that worked. This is not
a rejection of standards. I prefer things that use standards and
can be moved to other implementations of the standard. But there
is a limit to what you can do while supporting an incomplete, and
many of them are, standard. ODBC is simply not as good as OCI on
Oracle, and that's why we support OCI based access (and CLI, OLE,
and so forth for other databases... and ODBC for whatever's left) 8) Product robustness is more important than flash. Don't overstuff
the feature set until the core is rock solid. If you are writing
audio editing libs, don't worry about adding all the catchy sound
filters... focus on writing a good plug-in API. 9) Plug in APIs!!! I can't say it enough... give developers a means
of extending your API. This is critical. And, try to make that,
as well, as cross-compiler and cross-platform as possible.
*) I try to compile versions of external APIs for each major target,
generally meaning native cc, gcc 2.9.x, and gcc 3.2 (now) on each
platform we support (Linux on several hardware platforms, Solaris
on sparc v8 and v9, HP/UX, AIX, Win32, MacOS X (X.1 => gcc 2.9.x,
X.2 => gcc 3.1, carbon => Metrowerks CW 7.x & 8.x), and while the
original effort was a hassle, the maintainance has been at most a
20% drain on my time... a single developer. I've recently added,
on Win32, an initial effort to get Borland C++ working as well...
I'd really like to see this same sort of thing from other people.
I'm not sure if it's rendezvous or something else in the networking... I haven't had the time to track it down... but since I installed 10.2, I've been able to find the printers on our Win2K neighborhood from my mac box, without having to enable a service over TCP on one of my Win2K boxes like I had to, and still do for the linux, solaris, and AIX boxes. Likewise for shared files and directories on the Win2K and WinXP boxes in the local workgroup and domain. Now, I am, for all intents and purposes, the sysadmin for all of our non-windows machines... not because that's in my job description, but because "cross platform development" is, and I know more, from a decade of cross platform programming experience, than anyone else in the place is likely to. Anything that makes things easier for me is going to make me happy... though I do intend to understand what it is doing, just so I can make sure it continues to work.
However, Pacbell charges a fee for it, and they sell a commercial service to bypass it. Yes, you read right, they allow paying telemarketers (Los Angeles Times, for example) to get around the block they extort fees to purchase... read the fine print, and you'll see "select partners". I dropped this service a couple of years ago in frustration, and wrote my own automated screener. Modem functions as a router... took me a while to get the caller id protocols working, but implementing in software one of those $50 dead-tone boxes, and setting the unknown and private numbers so that they could enter a personal extension, instead of having to enter a number or say their name (I've heard of that, too), plus a/dev/null equivalent for known telemarketing numbers and ranges, before the phone even rings and disturbs me or my flatmates... I'm still working on getting selective routing/ringing and seperate (physical) answering machines/voice mail for different recipients without additional modem out lines. Anyone know enough about phones to clue me WRT selective filters for the ringer/pickup? Or is it not in the phone that the multi-ring thing is done?
<<<And the worst part of all about Starbucks, their socially abusive coffee doesn't even taste good. Pretty much every other chain is better.>>>
Gotta agree with you on this count. I grew up in Hawai'i, with access to freshly roasted Kona coffee at coffee shops all over, and with 24 hour espresso (as opposed to coffee) shops in the neighborhood of every college, including most community (2 year) colleges. And then Starbucks moved in. The small little independant shops vanished. OK, so a few of them have survived, maybe 20% of the ones that they had before Starbucks.
On the flip side, the only place I can get a wi-fi hookup when I visit my parents is a Starbucks, and going from DSL to dial-up is just too painful...
Outside of the piss-poor coffee, and the killing mom & pop coffee shops, I appreciate Starbucks. A mulled cider on a freezing night after coming in from a four hour workout on a polynesian outrigger canoe, with my team, that practices past sundown, in California, which may seem warm to people from other parts of the mainland, but for a Hawai'i local, is downright cold... and I worship the girl serving me the blessed warmth. Maybe, if Starbucks hadn't come in, there would be small shops selling hot non-caffeinated beverages at 10pm near Venice Beach, but as it stands only Starbucks is open when I need that warmth...
The truth is, if I want decent coffee, I know places to go in LA... Peets, or, if I'm not near one of those (and they are few and far between), Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf... and some of the really unusual places survived Starbucks. The bizarre fanboy coffee shop across from Canter's on Fairfax seems to do constant business. The unexpectedly laid back internet cafe in Hollywood next to the statues on La Brea, the South American cocoa bean and coffee roasting place in Manhattan Beach...
Starbucks is like McDonalds. Crap quality, but consistant across locales; they're all the same. People pay quite a bit to not be surprised. Now, I won't eat from McDonalds, but Starbucks doesn't actually nauseate me... it isn't too unpleasant, even.
Surprisingly, I discovered, when circumstances left a half hour to burn at 2am near a 24 hour Dennys, that they serve an arabica coffee that isn't far from Starbucks quality at a fraction of the cost... to wit, drinkable, in the sense that Sam Adams' is a drinkable beer... not something with actual value, but not so bad that you want to spit it out.
Here's the thing... if you're in a strange city, where you know nothing and no-one... say, you travel on business (to install enterprise software on customer sites, maybe), and you end up at a hotel the night before you drive up to the customer facility... It's after 8 pm, so any Apple store, or whatever other wi-fi provider you know of closed... and you really need to check in for updates... how do you find a place where you can get wi-fi access? The way I see it, Starbucks is more about the location than the coffee. The goth/punk/hacker 24 hour shops of my college years were an amazing thing, and I miss them, but the truth is, they are not somewhere I could go today...
Sure, I'd prefer something other than a corporate monster, long tentacled and greed-driven. Hell, I won't even touch Ben & Jerry's when given a choice, and if I find a smaller coffee shop where I'm going, and a wi-fi node, I'll gladly chance the unknown place. I've only really regretted that decision once... though I should have known better than to even order a coffee from a local shop in Indiana, when the sign didn't even list beyond decaf and regular... and that coffee may have been bad, but the sweet old couple working the counter (I assumed they were the owners) made it worth it... and the pie was good.
See, I don't object to Starbucks existing. I don't mind a few people succeeding from humble beginings. I do mind it when they deliberately crush all competition, removing all choices other than them.
So far, I haven't seen enough of that to make me hate that Seattle coffee shop. Unlike, say, that Seattle (well, not far from) software shop. Not the image and printing tools one, the really big one.
With sufficient prior notice (varies by locale) and with several restrictions, yes. Provided that it is explicit in your rental agreement, and that they allowed full review of said agreement before requiring any nonrefundable fees from you.
Mind you, in most areas, the balance of rights favors the large rental agencies at the expense of renters and single home self-managed landlords. The fact that rights are essentially for sale to the highest bidder has led to a large number of problems both in the US and elsewhere in the "first world". The fact that there is no requirement for the guilty parties to at least be moderately discreet about it has led to a far larger number of problems in the rest of the world. Just be glad that we have the degree of enforced restraint that we do...
Of interest also is Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel winning physicist (particles, the eightfold way, and the actual discovery of some theoretical particles, Quarks in particular) and Santa Fe Institute co-chair, and perhaps, just maybe, still on to something. Eventually.
His Current focus is the science of simplicity and complexity. He calls it "Plectics". While he has some of the most remarkable credentials possible, the jury's still out on his current work...
Yes, this question has been addressed elsewhere. I'm sure other answers have been more eloquent and informed. But the question, here, even when answered elsewhere, begs to be answered here.
1st amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
This actually falls, in a roundabout way, under both abridgements of the right to speech without punishment (And how that has been weakened), and the right of the press to print without the editorial oversight of those who would be our moral parents.
It ought, however, to also fall under the 4th amendment right you placed in bold. This has to do with the blurring of "papers" and "effects", as the constitution was written before so many agencies that would not have been considered protected regions for personal privacy started keeping a huge amount of private information.
Honestly, there is a justification for, and a general acceptance of, the right of parties charged with maintaining peace, order, law, and justice to obtain certain information, in restricted circumstances, regarding an otherwise private detail of an individual being investigated in criminal matters. With public oversight of the process, and without a willful or careless dissemination of that private information, this becomes a valid and sensible tool.
The problem here, in this case, is that the agency in question failed to reasonably limit the scope of their search. The key is "and no warrants shall issue... particularly describing... things to be seized." There is some degree of lattitude, and in many cases, they may have been right in their blanket request for "purchase records of X from store Y", where store Y was of a particular class of store and one of those records was, with a reasonable degree of probability, known to contain information on a specific purchase. It's a double bind, you see. They know the record in question exists, but not the date, and if the case is still uncertain and the suspect still just that (in theory, until conviction), a privacy argument (protecting against careless dissemination) could justify their blanket request. Local police might even be thought of as unable to, in most cases at least, abuse this particular data, though there are cases, especially where "Christian Values" is a buzzword for "We're going to be a little facist state here, and if you don't like it, you can go move to some big city, you hear?", where that is decidedly not true.
So... had they asked only for documentation of that specific purchase, a reasonable request if not made spuriously as part of a trolling attempt, they would have been right. But they asked for all records, which is an obvious troll.
Now the first ammendment comes into the issue, and compounds the search, which was already iffy, with what could easilly fall under harassment of the free press. Amending the rights of the press doesn't just mean that the publication of a paper which says, "Bush is utterly incompetant, and that was painfully obvious from his original strategy in Afghanistan, as all of you should have seen, and would have, if you weren't so blind and stupid with rage. And I'm sure, if he were carefully investigated, that it would turn out he was still snorting coke," which exercises the free criticism of a public personage, even to the point of near slander (that would be the coke line, the first part was a fact, not an accusation) is protected. It also means that the publisher of said paper has the right not to have goons hired by a corrupt and facist president harassing him, or police spending more time investigating him (as opposed to more time, in the case of someone who has publicly voiced an intention to kill that devolved primate in question, and done so in a credible manner, checking very carefully to make sure the second individual is not actually trying to do so... but not, for example, checking to see if he smokes pot), and in that respect, monitoring the consumption of published goods is indeed a 1st amendment issue. It is an issue of principal. I read. I read in great volume, and from a great many fields. A watchdog agency might get some funny ideas from what I read, though not internally consistant ones if they tried to make a criminal pattern of it. But more important than whether they might get suspicious (and the degrees in physics and a wide range of hobbies and my current work in artificial nerves explain all of the nonfiction, aside from the anthropological elements, which are taken from my dad, an anthropologist... so they can just back off, thank you,) is whether they might try to profile. I have a friend who the DEA tried to harrass because he'd been purchasing botanical books and supplies, of a potentially drug related (and RPGs lead to satanic cults) nature. The SOBs just ignored the fact that he was a botanist (PhD) and worked for a legal agricultural hemp research program on the big island of Hawai'i, a tendancy that's common with those criminal thugs.
He ceased to do business with Barnes N Noble after that visit.
Now, would you trust an agency like the DEA to be honest, or even legal, in its use of personal information about your reading habits? Would you purchase books that might be "considered suspicious"? Even if they were not for criminal purposes? What about books that might be embarassments if publicly displayed? I buy certain books relating to recovering from, and dealing with, certain severe forms of child abuse. I don't but them for myself. I'm recovered just fine, thank you, thanks to some luck and a few remarkable people... but some of the people I buy them for are not yet able to admit that it happened to them, at least in the face of this judgemental and often revolted public, and don't believe that there will never be some suspicious and unscupled person snooping through the books they have purchased, and outing them.
Hell, the same probably applies to gay rights books...
And you want an agency with that track record pushing the limit of this? The people who publish such books might as well hang their hats, if that happens. No one will risk buying the books if big brother is watching.
I'm a programmer. I write software, at work, for high end commercial use... high end means enterprise level. I specialize in algorithm design, which means I'm pretty good at my asm on several platforms, and I do enough GUI development to know ATL and MFC, Motif and KDE/Qt, the classic Mac Toolbox, Powerplant, and the NSObject derived windowing classes, inside and out, and most pertinant to this, I'm comfortable in all of the operating systems involved here.
I had an iMac... an old, 400MHz, sad state of affairs, dust gathering iMac... sitting on my desk at home. I had MacOS 9.1 installed on it, and occasionally used it for this or that... but at work, where I have an assortment of machines ranging from Win2K boxes on dual 800MHz and 1GHz PIIIs, Linux (2.4.x kernels) on similar, to Solaris 8 on a quad E3000, and a dual boot (Win2K enterprise and Linux 2.4.x enterprise) 8 CPU PIII Xeon, I really found my greatest pleasure was derived from working on my Dual 800MHz G4 with MacOS X. So, this weekend, after having not gotten around to it for untold ages, I finally installed MacOS X (10.1.3) on that poor little iMac at home. Guess what? I suddenly like that machine again. It's responsive, where MacOS 9.1 felt sluggish and misbehaved (STOP! NO, DON'T SPEND FIVE MINUTES TRYING TO PROCESS THAT FILE TO OPEN IT, I MEANT TO CLICK ON THE ONE NEXT TO IT! COMMAND-.!!! COMMAND-.!!! LISTEN TO ME, DAMN YOU!!!), it's navigable, it's easy to customize (as opposed to littered with shareware hacks, which is what "customized" means to most mac-heads, and I sort of feel like I don't want to deal with the 1GHz Athlon Linux box, with that wonderful (even if it is trapped in that ugly bubble) mac on my desk... I spent about six hours working on a little project of mine (which I had been building on the Linux box) after spending half an hour porting it into Project Builder... now I have my GUI stubs in place, and can attach a control terminal to the server process on the local machine, which means... well, never mind that, the point is, the dinky little G3 on OS X still beats the pants off of the linux box for enjoyment of use, for me, and severely spanks OS 9...
Of course, that's me, and YMMV...
Re:Why does /. have to concentrate on this film?
on
LoTR Takes 4 Oscars
·
· Score: 2
I dare say that A Beautiful Mind is also a film that alot of nerds found good.
I guess that depends on the nature of the nerd. This nerd found the blatant dishonesty of the movie, which softened the harsh edges of the already dishonest feel-good book into something that, frankly, made me feel vaguely ill, to be such a turn-off that I almost felt as betrayed by this awards ceremony as I did with Titanic. I guess you just have to actually be the kind of nerd who really tries to understand things about things, even if they aren't things in whatever field of nerdhood you subscribe to, rather than just giving them a casual glance. I mean, I wouldn't have really had an opinion on the movie if I hadn't seen it and read the book, and I suppose if I had seen it, or even read the book, without knowing anything more than that about Nash, the general social environment of mathematics as a field (I'm a physicist working in software design and algorithm development - I know mathematicians...), schizophrenia (I spent a decade of my life under the shadow of a clinical diagnosis of MPD for what was really enviromentally induced DPD... eg, severe shell shock... and have seen the insides of clinics... so I also know the disease that I was essentially misdiagnosed with), I might have thought it was a passably decent film. Nowhere near the best film, for any reason, of the year. Don't get me wrong. Technically, the portrayal in "A Beautiful Mind" was more accurate than, say, "The Fisher King"... but it was, emotionally, far less honest, and from some of the interviews I've chanced on, I'd go so far as to lable it deliberately decietful for the sole purpose of a social objective that is, in this particular case (schizophrenia, not mental illness in general) rather misguided, given its emphasis on PC social acceptance instead of concentrated efforts to cure the root problem.
As for FoTR? Not sure. Of all the nominations for Best Picture, I would have gone that route, because: "Mulan Rouge!", while displaying threads of genius in certain profiles, had a lot of shoddy joisting showing. Poor writing and plot, dialog swinging radically between brilliant wordplays and drivel, as if it were a bunch of brilliant ideas stitched together with less-than adequate execution. Kind of like a lot of Neal Stephenson's work, really, but thinner on the brilliance. "Gosford Park" wasn't all that great, and I didn't see "In The Bedroom" FoTR was, in some ways, a better story (as opposed to literature) than the original form. I've long considered Tolkein's significance more historical than anything. His brand of fantasy predates him, and has been done better by others, though rarely with the consistancy. Nontheless, he did much in his time for the acceptance of Fantasy into Literature, at least in theory. I'd rather read Brust or Lindholm (as Lindholm, though her work as Hobb is readable) or Le Guin, but I don't think I could have ever been as...elevated... by a movie based on anything by any of those authors. I was impressed by the impact. Still, does anyone know what won Best Picture in 1978 (hint: it had a Woody, not a Wookie), and the badly played role model for non-ill neurotics is all but forgotten.
For the Record, I thought "As Good As It Gets" was a great movie, and I have a lot of respect for them for making it honest and feel-good at the same time.
As for Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, and Sidney Poitier - it was scripted, and I'm too cynical not to be turned off by that, but they all deserved the recognition - especially Poitier - really, really, really especially Poitier - and there's a part of me that somewhat hopes for a little spillover into awareness of the current prejudices against asian leads... because I still want to see a serious movie about the 442nd/100th and lost Battalion, focussing on the AJAs, not the damned Texans, as the heroes, sometime in my lifetime. And without a few major male Japanese stars, it's not going to happen.
I still wish someone had thought to nominate Memento for Best Director. I thought it deserved the original screenplay, but it was really the absence of a best director nomination that I was most offended about.
A:As a target for development, I'd guess yes. Or at least, a KDE compatible interface of some kind will. After all, the Qt part of it is...
Q: Will KDE be free on MacOS X?
A:If you're not a student... I doubt it. See Trolltech... This only lists the enterprise/professional and academic license
Trolltech Releases Qt/Mac, OS X
( 15. Oct 2001 ) - Oslo, Norway - With its release of Qt/Mac, Trolltech has added Apple Macintosh to the list of platforms supported by Qt, an emerging industry standard in cross-platform software development. Application developers using Qt can now target Mac OS X with the same ease, as they are currently targeting Windows, Linux, Unix, and embedded Linux systems. Qt allows developers to create a single source tree that will run on all these major platforms.
So KDE as a desktop for Darwin? I'd go with no. KDE apps on MacOS X (and looking like Aqua apps?) That's a distinct possibility. But for free, when the developers face the license fee? With only a month to evaluate Qt free, I'm not about to tackle this one.
It uses a common mode to the short story. I made the same mistake, but later discovered that the book that the other Nolan released around the same time as the movie was not the rereleased short story of the same name, but rather the adapted screenplay from his brother's movie, which he coauthored. It comes bundled with another screenplay and (bonus!)) the original short story, for contrast.
Now, I was a fan from the start when I first happened across issue number 3 of The Tick (in the hands of a friend who let me read it) and ended up buying the graphic novel as soon as it saw daylight. I love the humor of the comic, and found the show far more true than the cartoon.
I've also never seen Invader Zim. Is that what happened to Vasquez after the second issue of "I Feel Sick!"? There was mention of a cartoon, but...
But there is a world of difference between The Tick and JTHM. The first time I walked into my favorite indie-friendly comic shop (and I still patronize that sort even if it means going 40 minutes out of my way and spending a lot more than I would on subscriptions, because I value their existance, damnit!) and laid eyes on the grotesque and fascinating work that was Johnny, I was blown away. Twisted. Sick. Perverse. Strangely compelling. His world is the polar opposite of The Tick. With the same innocent disconnectedness, but nothing else in common, Johnny sees himself as artist and equalizer, striking out against the "righteous" and popular, the petty and mostly harmless bullies and bureaucrats of his world, sometimes with a spork. And while he terrifies poor Squee (see Squee's own title), he never considers harming the victim of the condescending, the contemptuous, the too-perfect. And somehow, you're never quite sure if Johnen himself is sane, or even safe.
Now, a show (cartoon, of course) based on JTHM would be... frightening. It would never sell. But... the kid brother of a friend, who I had introduced to JTHM, actually contacted Johnen and got his permission to adapt a play from that same series... and managed to produce and run it at a rather uptight and proper elite high school. And it went over well. Remarkable...
So, your thoughts... whither bound the properties of The Tick? Will we ever see another show, animated or otherwise? Perhaps a new patron could be found, one willing to give it a real chance?
For now, I must actually record myself some episodes of this "Invader Zim"... it will be some consolation, at least.
Generally agree about Fox.
Simpsons has had ups and downs, but is in an up
(and the downs were still better than friends)
Futurama is great, Malcolm is Great, Family Guy is pretty good, if a little overboard, The Tick was shaping up quite well, 24 isn't perfect, but it's good... but it isn't a comedy, it's a drama, so... drama's are fair game?
Then you slight NBC. They have the Law and Order franchise (and the original and SVU are actually really a damn sight better than 24, frankly) and some of the best miniseries on broadcast. West Wing, Crossing Jordan, and ER are too good to dismiss out of hand, especially if you're willing to put 24 on your list.
I'm not all that impressed with CBS on Dramas. I mean, "The Agency"? But they had the wisdom to take the free agent CSI, which is really one of the five best dramas in broadcast and syndication right now, as far as I'm concerned.
ABC is just plain bad, and UPN, well, I can't even watch Enterprise (and lest you peg me, I have cable entirely because I missed Farscape too much, in spite of my "who has time for TV" attitude.)
I really don't watch anything but the first two Law and Order shows (but not CI), CSI, Farscape, Titus, The Tick, Futurama, 24, and Smallville (sorry, I don't know why, but I like it. Probably because of Michael Rosenbaum, who manages to do a weirdly believable road to hell character), and all of those I approach with a tape-it-and-catch-it-later attitude. I'm two months behind on some of them, and that's taking reruns into account.
So my habits result in...
NBC (2 hours), CBS (1 hour), Fox (2.5 hours), WB (1 hour), and SF (1 hour)
Admittedly, my rare extras include Simpsons, Malcolm, and Family Guy. So Fox gets more than the rest. Followed by NBC. ABC gets none of my eyeball time.
I'm not currently speaking for 64 bit PPC. I know PPC quite well. I write software for a living, and the PPC (MacOS X BSD layer with some components in asm) is one of the targets I have to keep synched. Gotta love that big-little endian mode switch...
I'm not currently speaking for 64 bit PPC, as I've never seen one. I've seen 64 bit POWER-4 servers, but that's a little different. I do, however, also target and maintain Solaris versions of my software, which are 64 bit aware. I do have to deal with the 32 bit library/64 bit application issues. I do have to deal with building both 32 and 64 bit versions. I even have to deal with testing gcc 3.0.x 32/64 modes against the Forte CC 32/64 modes. I'm pretty damned familiar with the issues involved in making software on mixed addressing operating systems work.
Before I go on, let me note that a 64 bit application in the sparcv9 format cannot link to a 32 bit sparvcv8 library, either static or dynamic, and the only solution with a commercial library will be to actually write an interface by interface transport layer for the library, linking the 64 bit side of the transport layer to the application, and the 32 bit side to the library, and take the penalty of using pipes for communication right on the jaw. Oh, and the 32 bit side will have the 4GB memory limit, too...
While Sun does do a good job of making the 32 bit/64 bit transition look smooth, it's not, really. SGI and HP face similar issues. I'm told that Alpha Linux may have workarounds not available on the big iron platforms, but I don't know the details, as I don't do any serious Alpha work.
Now I am currently speaking for the PPC. Please take this as speculation based on POWER-4 details and the original PPC spec, not as insider knowledge.
The PPC is interesting. The original design calls for mode switching (like the sparc or mips), but there's a provision for realtime mode switching in there. I expect you would take a heavy hit, but you might be able to link 64 and 32 bit binaries, if the linker was smart enough to insert mode switch instructions into the calling sequence and if the compiler were set to interpret interface definitions (in headers) according to a dependancy determined pointer size assumption. Come to think of it, it should have been possible to implement something like this for the sparc and mips binary formats... (eg _int_v8 and _int_v9 as seperate types in the compiler's internal interpretation...)...but there would be serious penalties for this as well.
Being realistic, I expect eventually we'll have a 64 bit kernel (Darwin) with 32 bit libraries provided as interfaces for mixed mode applications, and a handful of apps (Photoshop, FCPro) that require 4+GB memory being released in 64 bit form (requires G5(6?) or greater!!!) for power users... this of course, at the point in time where we have 2GB+ DDR modules, and four slots again... and another major transition. At least Apple has proven that they are good at tremendous transitions, remarkably so, considering...
There are other possible benefits to 64 bit computing, beyond addressing. Some of them can be realized now... on the G4s, and the P4s, there are ways to use 64 bit (or 128 bit, or even, in one case on the P4, 256 bit) bit vector arithmatic to speed up comparisons, sometimes by unbelievable factors... some higher precision mathematical processing is possible only with 128 bit floating point, which is generally coupled only with 64 bit integer registers, which are the basis of 64 bit memory addressing as a reasonable proposition...
There's also a possible two-instruction-per-cycle trick that could be performed on a 64 bit CPU with a hybrid (64 bit with 32 bit support) kernel for certain operations. There's some documentation for this online, but I haven't tried anything of the sort myself (no current access to a POWER-4 server), so I can't vouch for the usefulness of this.
We're not talking about a trivial task, or any immediate benefits, so don't expect a 64 bit MacOS X anytime soon. Even if the CPUs are 64 bit. It should be transparent, however, as the PPC is upward compatible (32 bit binaries run on 64 bit CPUs) just as the sparc and MIPS are...
Your notebook PC specs in 2004
Your notebook PC in 2004: By 2004 a notebook will be many users' only PC. These mobile monsters will have the power to replace desktops, but will stay slender enough to tuck into a briefcase. Screens won't get much larger than 15 inches, though -- any bigger and you would lose portability -- and battery life will improve, but not as much as most users would like.
CPU and RAM: 2- to 3-GHz chip with 256MB of RAM
Hard disk: 60GB to 80GB with Serial ATA interface
Removable storage: Rewritable DVD; some form of CompactFlash card
Internet connection: Broadband access through wireless networks in your office or the nearest Starbucks
Wireless technologies: 802.11 for connecting to a LAN; Bluetooth for communicating with other devices
Display: 15-inch LCD; video headset accessory for truly mobile (and private) work
Dimensions: 2 to 3 pounds and less than 1 inch thick
Battery: No fuel cells yet, but lithium ion units will be good for 5 to 10 hours of life per charge
Operating system: Windows
Price: $2,000 and up
MY notebook PC specs in 2001
My notebook PC in 2001: By 2001 a notebook will be some users' only PC. These mobile monsters will have the power to replace desktops, but will stay slender enough to tuck into a briefcase. Screens won't get much larger than 15 inches, though -- any bigger and you would lose portability -- and battery life will improve, but not as much as most users would like.
CPU and RAM: 550- to 666-MHz G4 chip with 1GB of RAM
Hard disk: 20GB to 48GB with Ultra ATA/66 interface
Removable storage: Slot Loading CD-RW/DVD
Internet connection: 10/100/1000 Base-T Ethernet; 56K V.90 modem (backup) (Home - DSL; Work - T3)
Wireless technologies: 802.11b for connecting to a LAN
Display: 15.2-inch LCD
Dimensions: 5.4 pounds and barely 1 inch thick
Battery: lithium ion unit good for 5 hours of life per charge
Operating system: MacOS X.1
Price: $2,200 and up ($2000 for DVD-only still available retail)
----
Just to note... I don't actually have one of these. I'd sort of like one, as a fantasy, except I really don't want to have the burden. I have a G4 (Dual 533) at home and a G4 (Dual 800) at work, as well as a Dual Athalon 900 at home (on a 2.4 kernel) and a few 600 to dual 800 range PIII boxen, (2.4 kernel, Win2000), an 8-way Compaq behemoth (8x1GHz Xeon), and a Sun E3000 at work... if I had a cool portable, I'd never escape the damned silicon monsters. A good friend does have one (666MHz/1GB/40MB/DVDw/extern CD-RW) that he got for $2.4k+tax (ADC Premier, the lucky B*st*rd) plus the cost of the memory upgrade (he had one 512MB built in) and while the 550 would be cheaper, the faster bus certainly seemed to give his book more power. Now, I know the costs are lower for PCs, but they don't seem to be much lower for equivalent portables. It isn't like you can (as I do with my boxen) order all the parts through the company's wholesale supplier and assemble your own laptop. And to get 1" thick and 15" screen and optical drive (not in an external bay) is next to impossible. So... when I see nothing compelling about this two-three year off laptop they describe, perhaps there's something there for the PC world. But I still much doubt the 3lb 15" screen DVD-R thing. The 3lb thing will only happen when LCDs get replaced by something lighter (Organics? Would take work) and optical drives get thinner. And Li-ion batteries can't get that light, and power something like that...
I think youre quoting weekend numbers, not week numbers. The total number after secondd weekend was $88m.
Add the numbers up. I listed both M-Th and F-Su for each period, starting with the F-Su it opened. $28,638,131 + $24,331,205 + $35,455,673 = $88,425,009 after the second weekend. The point I was making is that it did as well on the weekdays as the weekends, which is unusual. I was also noting that it didn't show on as many screens as most blockbusters do today.
FotR is now at about 94mil, as of the end of the 25th. We'll see what happens after the second weekend. I'm still optomistic that Titanic will ultimately be dethroned...
Loved this quote:
"If we're not careful, Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings could give hype a good name."
-- Peter Howell, TORONTO STAR
All I can say is, I feel strangely refreshed... like maybe I can start one more expecting quality from the American people in the distant future. Not that Titanic was the source of my disillusionment, but it was a symptom thereof, and I'm hoping for evidence of better.
Hate to drop this one on you, but I actually think a few things from the film did add to the book. Not major things, with one exception, but...
The exception, of course, is Gandalf's betrayal, capture, and escape, and the way it was flashed not just as cutaways and flashbacks, but as premonition flashes (watch carefully, this was subtle), and the fact that it erased what had been my first example of a concept I'd learned a week before first reading tFotR as an eight year old, 18 years ago. The escape, as written, was the first thing my mind seized upon as "Oh, that's what a Deus Ex Machina is!", and I, for one, am glad the exposition with the moth was added. Yeah, yeah, I know, Hobbit, ancient friendship, la, la, but I'd read tFotR first, and even without that, I still think it was a bit too much Deus Ex...
In the box office, December 1997:
Paramount releases Titanic on Friday, to a weekend box office take of only $28,638,131, which is actually not bad given the mere 2,674 screens it played on. A Bond flick released the same day does nearly as well, around 25 mil. This is a good opening, but not remarkable. However, over the week, it takes another $24,331,205, and then another $35,455,673 the next weekend. Then another $35,727,684 over the week, then $33,315,278 on the weekend. This trend continued over the next two months, bouncing around in the $25-35 million range both weekends and weekdays totals, until the end of February, when it slipped below $20mil on weekends, and plummetted on weekdays to the (more typical) $5mil range. It then started to slide slowly down toward the $12mil weekend range, with a brief spike for spring break, until the end of April. Then it abrubtly dropped to about $5mil at the begining of May. A month later, it was drawing about $1mil a week, which was pretty much finis. What was unprecedented was: The weekday take was as high as weekend for the first two months (Leno's "housewife factor"?), and; The falloff curve was typical of a solid drama making 20% the weekly gross, not the much more flash in the pan spike and settle of an action film. For contrast, the first three months curve of Titanic (on a by week, not by day, basis) is pretty much lockstep matched by the two week older "Good Will Hunting"... but about five times as high.
How is this significant with regard to FotR? FotR has the potential to pull in a broader demographic than most films that would be reviewed here. It's getting the same kind of fervered reviews as Titanic did (with much better cause, IMO, but I'm biased... I saw Titanic for the effects, and because it was playing and my friends wanted to see it, but I wouldn't have gone a second time if the most attractive woman I knew had begged me on bended knee... not that she would have, being one of the most razor-minded people I've known, and regarding the film as manipulative drek... ah, how I miss her... but again, my bias is showing) and has the potential to create a repeat viewing draw. It seems to be growing in popularity, not diminishing, which is (sadly... my, what fools these mortals be...) unusual, though we won't have a clear picture on that for two more weeks. It has sequels coming close behind it, and they may sustain the excitement a while. It's already a threat to episode II... putting the EpII preview before this film was a mistake, as the contrast is going to diminish the Star Wars film even more (but it will quite possibly actually create a small late boost in viewing of FotR if it's still on enough screens, which could be interesting) and it has the additional distinction of getting a great deal of weekday attention. Even on the normally brutal Xmas week, there's been two sellout shows today at the theater in the mall next to the offices I work in. The first one was an 11:00 matinee. I don't know (only noted this in passing while grabbing something to nibble on) but there's a chance the next (5:00) show is already running out of tickets. It's currently 2:45. And I think it was on two screens, too. Thing is, though, it's not hauling nearly what "Harry Potter" did. That's bad, right? No. Potter isn't making much anymore, not much at all. It hauled, and it's holding, but it was a Monty Haul, or Hall, and those blow over. FotR opened on the (theoretically) worst week of the year for a debut. No, really. So did Titanic. Was that a factor? Well, not exactly... but sort of. FotR is making a lot more than Titanic did at the begining (or anywhere in its run), but Titanic lasted (oh, my aching head, did that stinker last...) and given it's nature, FotR is really not making nearly as much as it would if it were, say, released in May. Initially. That'll change. (A lot more movies were released in December these last three years than had been previously. Go figure.) And if FotR can keep the momentum long enough, it might even get one last upsurge from anticipation of the sequel. TT will be out the same time next year.
I wouldn't say FotR was the best movie I've ever seen, but it is the best one with mainstream appeal, and I'd really like to see it unseat Titanic. Rest assured, however... as a trilogy, it will certainly do so, and more.
I live in LA. I see about six movies a year, free, because I or one of my friends happened to be walking somewhere when a promotional/production agent was handing out passes to previews. I've currently seen three movies that are nowhere near release yet. One of them was remarkably good. I submitted a review (spoiler free, and with the fact that I had seen it six months before release) on IMDB. But even the release versions of some films are out in NYC and LA a few weeks early, especially at this time of year. Releasing in a handful of LA theaters in December makes a film eligible for this coming year's academy awards. (You know, the 2001 awards presented in 2002...)
On an entirely different note, and with very minor spoilers... I've seen FotR twice, same weekend, same theatre chain, different theatres... and there were about five one second scene cut differences and one full five or six lines of dialog take difference (and in the second to last scene of the film, no less) between the two. The actual dialog between Aragon, Legolas, and Gimli was significantly different in the last scene they appeared in, in the most critical exchange. No difference in effect, and I'm hard pressed to say one or the other version was better, but something tells me they really grazed the wire on the final cut on this one, to the point that some reels got shipped with different cuts than others.
Man, am I looking forward to seeing the uncut four-plus hour version on DVD...
This is a subject on which I am as close to a world expert as it's possible to get. If you are familiar with MMOG development, you may have heard of MUD-Dev. If you do a search for my name and "physmud" you'll turn up hundreds of articles on the simulation of physics in a game engine. I used to simulate multi-day trajectories of orbital and ballistic bodies for SDI purposes for a living. I know just about all there is to know about this kind of modeling, and where you can take a shortcut, how to do a numerical approximation in n or nlogn steps when possible, what the inaccuracies introduced by each approximation would be... sometimes, I know how to do an exact solution to a transformation in a far smaller amount of time, using a jacobian transformation on complex geometries with an angular integration... but the reason I know this is, I learned on the job, and I took a degree (plus a bit) in physics, and I read all the books I could find. So, it is with regret that I say this book was not terribly good. I've seen better in a text entitled "An Introduction to Computer Simulation Methods, Applications to Physical Systems", a not too well written textbook with source in BASIC, but at least featuring a fair breakdown in the nature of algorithms, numerical integration, efficiency and accuracy, etc. A much better choice, IMO, would be "Numerical Recipies in C", though it's a little more advanced... "Numerical Methods for Physics" is hard to find, but very good. "Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers" is not the same book, and while very good for numerical analysis, it isn't an ideal book for learning simulation techniques. If you're interested in related fields, try looking on Amazon under Books/Subjects/Science/Mathematics/Applied/Compute r Mathematics. There's stuff on 3D graphics algorithms, signal processing, crypto, genetic algorithms, organic and physical chemistry sims, and more... just be aware that there are a lot of books on using Matlab/Mathematica/Maple/etc.
No insult intended, and I use MacOS X at home and at work (among others in both cases), and it is my favorite in terms of user experience... and the only ones of the above that I don't currently work with are QNX and OS/2, and QNX I used to develop for (as well as VxWorks)...
That qualifier voiced, I only count three targets for OS X, and they are all gimmes.
Desktop Publishing
Will belong to OS X as soon as Photoshop and QuarkXPress join InDesign as native.
Video Editing
As of last week, secured by Final Cut Pro 3.
Music Editing
Several of the most important authors of professional grade music editing software have recently announced intent to support MacOS X. This includes solutions that were previously MacOS, BeOS, and Windows only. The ultimate status of MacOS X as a premier audio editing platform remains up in the air...
Now, for the others:
Games, apps, and drivers
Number 3, will pass classic Mac soon... plus, I've succeeded in porting linux drivers for an unsupported graphics card and camera. >:) Will never pass windows, I fear. XP will soon take the top spot, as '98/Me vanish off radar...
Server Usage
Marketshare, number 4. Capacities, number 4, with reservations on 3 (See Win2000 Advanced Server)... will never surpass BSD or Linux. Win2000 AS is another issue. SMP is OK, Memory addressing sucks. I suspect MacOS X will start featuring an optional 64 bit kernel before Windows.
Banking
Don't know, don't care, doubt Apple will ever be a contender.
Unless you have a no-brains-required job, listening to music distracts you from your work and lowers your productivity.
I know this a troll, but I have to respond, if only to make the relevant counterpoint. I do listen to music at work. I have (nearly) my entire CD collection encoded as MP3s on one of my computers (the dual G4) at work, and set into a half dozen playlists. There's the debugging playlist, the speedhacking playlist, the algorithm design playlist, the interface design playlist, the asm hacking playlist, and the paced hacking playlist. Yes, they do pace me correctly for each of the above tasks. Yes, the speedhacking playlist is mostly speed metal and german techno. I'm severely ADD, non hyperactive, and even medicated, I can't focus without the music. I don't have it on when interfacing with customers or coworkers, but it effectively doubles my productivity having the music pumping through my headphones into my hindbrain. And believe me, I do not have a no-brains-required job. And I don't exactly look unprofessional when prospective customers are around. The headphones are discreet, and my desk is clean except for the four monitors, phone, soda, kleenex, and whatever papers, books, or notepads I am currently using. I wear professional clothes when customers are in town, and casual elsetimes. I'm currently working as a coder, damnit, not a salesman! As for nerf guns, no thanks. I paddle canoes in my spare time, and wouldn't mind getting the crew out on a paintball field on weekends, if so many of them didn't have young children, but this is no foozeball office. So why does it have a half dozen (out of sixteen) geeks with music pumping into their brains? Well, we're a genius heavy company, and there's a high correlation between intelligence and input/impulse driven thought... it's often looked to as the neurological basis of epiphany, among other things... so with a high intelligence crew, I'd say a pro-music policy is a good thing.
Fortunately, a most of the best stuff out there, for what I use it for, is not distributed by Universal and Co.
Well, the Baen Books Publication Schedule is a pretty clear source for this information. I saw the book several months ago, got excited for a second, then noted the "Publisher's Note: Miles, Mystery & Mayhem was previously published in parts as Cetaganda, Ethan of Athos, and "Labyrinth." This is the first unified edition." on it, and got less excited. True, if you aren't a follower of the schedule (I am mainly because I do escriptions - read it all early on a Visor!, and occasionally drop stuff in the slush forum on the bar) it may not occur to you to check, and I'm a little surprised that the little tag on the back was missing... but I always check SF (c) information first anyway, as I like to know if I'm buying a book that simply collects a serial I read in Analog or SF&S or AsimovSF... after all, I prefer the feel of paperbacks for casual reading, and reserve HCs for a particular kind of book (Fireplace reading), which means I wouldn't want to buy something in the more expensive and less enjoyable HC edition out of pure impatience, when I'd already read it.
Speaking of which, there's a real new Miles book coming out in May... Diplomatic Immunity. I'll probably read the escriptions copy, then buy the PB when it comes out. (Hey, the author gets $1.85 or so from my escriptions fee, which is probably actually more than the cut on a HC these days... plus the pennies from the PB purchase later. I'm quite happy with it, from the getting the early read perspective, and I get this nice whatever format I prefer electronic copy to read from a computer or PDA... and the author gets well compensated. Funny, given Jim's reputation for nasty contracts to newbie writers.)
"Sure thing, I've got this great vanilla almond blend, I'll brew up a pot. See you in a few!"
I have no such thing. I'm a culinary snob, a gourmet, not a gourmand. Only high quality coffees. Kona, Turkish, or French Roast. No flavored. But I might have some cheap "Kona Blend" from a care package a friend gave me when visiting from Hawai'i.
"I hope you like vanilla almond, it's all I have..."
There's real vanilla beans on my spice shelf. Madagascar or Tahiti... but there's probably some basic alcohol based pure vanilla extract in there as well, and it's a lot cheaper. There's almonds, and possibly almond extract, as well, but I'd never use that in coffee.
"Hold on a second, the coffee mugs are in my workshop..."
Well, this one might be true. Some of the coffee mugs, perhaps. Probably not next to the forge and steelworking gear. Certainly not in the steel hardening kit, in the little chemical vials full of interesting salt solutions...
"OK, got the mugs, how soon should I expect you?"
I've got a time release hypodermic kit in a cabinet, next to the first aid gear.
"Oh, good, looks like there's fresh cream in the fridge."
And little bags with Vitamin B-12ain saline solution 7.5g doses
All of which substances could be used for some nefarious purposes the nature of which I'll leave to the reader...
hint: one of the great steel hardening chemicals is also used to extract gold from ore... and might be convinced to disguise itself as flavoring in coffee, if mixed in solution and not overheated too much.
hyperbole
Now that the overly complex humor is over, time for the lecture.
This group is overrun with conspiracy theorists. It's easy to understand why... software is one of those cutting edge technologies that the majority of people don't understand, and that has a lot of misconceptions associated with it, and a lot of money. That means a lot of manipulative lobbying, deception, suppression of peoples' rights, so on and so forth. Beyond that, we've got a questionable election in America a year ago, a would be despot as president, a could be despot as VP (certainly, the sudden push for unreasonable executive power even before September leads one to reflect on this...), and some rather covert wings of federal security agencies that don't seem to have much in the way of scruples, ethics, or even manners. Certainly, there's a high probability of serious despotic behavior, meriting the kind of reaction I just hinted at, from certain federal agencies. But the Secret Service is not one of them! Seriously. In spite of their name, in spite of the way they shove their noses into places with pigheaded cluelessness from time to time. These people are the most single minded agency I can think of, the least political. They are the bodyguards, the detectives, the security force for the federal government...
These aren't the droids you need to be afraid of.
Hell, I'd be a lot more alarmed if the police showed up at my door than a couple of Secret Service agents. Of course, I do live in LA.
Mind you, the above post was funny... but I hope the poster didn't mean it seriously. I mean, if it were non local CIA agents with suspiciously unmemorable names, or NSA operatives, or personal agents of his imperial majesty George W. Bush (once he finishes disbanding the legislative branch and gets rid of the remaining four independant Supreme Court judges) or Lord Vader, sure, I'd be making sure the automated defense systems were online and ready for mayhem (in case you haven't noticed, the hyperbole light has come back on. Please return to your seats and remain seated, with your seatbelts fastened, until we come to a complete stop), but the situation described sounds like a bunch of slightly spooked (wouldn't you be) agents making sure every base is covered, even if they have to put people in the bleachers and locker rooms.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you haven't lost it altogether. The first generation of G4 processors had a 4 stage pipeline. The move to 7 stages came later, because MOTO couldn't get the chip past the ~500 MHz hump with the 4 stage pipe.
That's a Good Start. I am a cross platform developer, and use other
companies' APIs on a regular basis.
Here's my personal wishlist:
1) OO design is good. c++ is good. Having simple interfaces with a
uniform (or at least consistant) convention is very good. Having
non OO (procedural) methods to standard types is also good, given
the option of both, but not as good. Complexity at need is good,
complexity by default is bad. Document everything, with examples
and complete, buildable projects.
2) Support all compilers and linkers and so forth that you can on as
wide a range of platforms as you can. This is very important! I
have had to recommend against outside products that might've been
much easier than doing something in-house, because they were only
available on one, or two, or three of the platforms we need to be
fully supported on. I've had to make hard choices about versions
of operating systems and libs that I supported because of ABIs of
outside libs, and I've had at least a couple of run-ins with ABIs
not being matched on two required outside libraries. If you have
ever had to dlopen a static linked wrapper designed to call a lib
compiled on Forte 6.x, in c++, and another calling g++ 2.9.x, and
replaced the nice OO architecture of the original API with one in
C, because that's the only way to get the two linked to the same,
in this case gcc 3.1, c++ application that they are needed in, it
is with great respect that I salute you, my fellow... (*)
3) In liu of open source, use a 3rd party "source available" policy,
which essentially means, there's a copy of all of the source, the
most recent version, on long term archive in the hands of a third
party, kept under lock and key, to be released, as stipulated, to
the customers, alleviating fears of a critical library provider's
disappearance. This strikes me as a good balance between the not
so practical open source community policies and the paranoia of a
company that spends and makes millions of dollars on their IP. I
won't say much more,
4) Remember, exposed APIs should not be changed often, and if you do
find that they must be changed, never make the change subtle. If
you can, make the change an extension that leaves the behavior of
the original calling convention intact, and simply adds options.
5) Don't feel the need to expose internal APIs and architecture that
may well change, if it does not have anything to do with the APIs
that expose your interface. Focus on the interface for shipping.
Implementation details are your business, and nothing sucks worse
for your customers than having some old-school member of the team
discover that he can shortcut the interface with some exposed API
that allows him to get at the raw data and cast it into something
low level, only to have things break when the next version ships,
with no easy answer to the inevitable "what the @#!!$ happened?".
6) If you are going to ignore 5, whatever you do, never document the
shortcut somewhere deep in a "secrets" book. Whoever that was at
Oracle, the last rant was aimed at you...
7) Standards are good. Solid design, with documentation, is better.
I would rather use something documented that worked. This is not
a rejection of standards. I prefer things that use standards and
can be moved to other implementations of the standard. But there
is a limit to what you can do while supporting an incomplete, and
many of them are, standard. ODBC is simply not as good as OCI on
Oracle, and that's why we support OCI based access (and CLI, OLE,
and so forth for other databases... and ODBC for whatever's left)
8) Product robustness is more important than flash. Don't overstuff
the feature set until the core is rock solid. If you are writing
audio editing libs, don't worry about adding all the catchy sound
filters... focus on writing a good plug-in API.
9) Plug in APIs!!! I can't say it enough... give developers a means
of extending your API. This is critical. And, try to make that,
as well, as cross-compiler and cross-platform as possible.
*) I try to compile versions of external APIs for each major target,
generally meaning native cc, gcc 2.9.x, and gcc 3.2 (now) on each
platform we support (Linux on several hardware platforms, Solaris
on sparc v8 and v9, HP/UX, AIX, Win32, MacOS X (X.1 => gcc 2.9.x,
X.2 => gcc 3.1, carbon => Metrowerks CW 7.x & 8.x), and while the
original effort was a hassle, the maintainance has been at most a
20% drain on my time... a single developer. I've recently added,
on Win32, an initial effort to get Borland C++ working as well...
I'd really like to see this same sort of thing from other people.
I'm not sure if it's rendezvous or something else in the networking... I haven't had the time to track it down... but since I installed 10.2, I've been able to find the printers on our Win2K neighborhood from my mac box, without having to enable a service over TCP on one of my Win2K boxes like I had to, and still do for the linux, solaris, and AIX boxes. Likewise for shared files and directories on the Win2K and WinXP boxes in the local workgroup and domain.
Now, I am, for all intents and purposes, the sysadmin for all of our non-windows machines... not because that's in my job description, but because "cross platform development" is, and I know more, from a decade of cross platform programming experience, than anyone else in the place is likely to. Anything that makes things easier for me is going to make me happy... though I do intend to understand what it is doing, just so I can make sure it continues to work.
However, Pacbell charges a fee for it, and they sell a commercial service to bypass it. Yes, you read right, they allow paying telemarketers (Los Angeles Times, for example) to get around the block they extort fees to purchase... read the fine print, and you'll see "select partners". I dropped this service a couple of years ago in frustration, and wrote my own automated screener. Modem functions as a router... took me a while to get the caller id protocols working, but implementing in software one of those $50 dead-tone boxes, and setting the unknown and private numbers so that they could enter a personal extension, instead of having to enter a number or say their name (I've heard of that, too), plus a /dev/null equivalent for known telemarketing numbers and ranges, before the phone even rings and disturbs me or my flatmates... I'm still working on getting selective routing/ringing and seperate (physical) answering machines/voice mail for different recipients without additional modem out lines. Anyone know enough about phones to clue me WRT selective filters for the ringer/pickup? Or is it not in the phone that the multi-ring thing is done?
<<<And the worst part of all about Starbucks, their socially abusive coffee doesn't even taste good. Pretty much every other chain is better.>>>
Gotta agree with you on this count. I grew up in Hawai'i,
with access to freshly roasted Kona coffee at coffee shops
all over, and with 24 hour espresso (as opposed to coffee)
shops in the neighborhood of every college, including most
community (2 year) colleges. And then Starbucks moved in.
The small little independant shops vanished. OK, so a few
of them have survived, maybe 20% of the ones that they had
before Starbucks.
On the flip side, the only place I can get a wi-fi hookup
when I visit my parents is a Starbucks, and going from DSL
to dial-up is just too painful...
Outside of the piss-poor coffee, and the killing mom & pop
coffee shops, I appreciate Starbucks. A mulled cider on a
freezing night after coming in from a four hour workout on
a polynesian outrigger canoe, with my team, that practices
past sundown, in California, which may seem warm to people
from other parts of the mainland, but for a Hawai'i local,
is downright cold... and I worship the girl serving me the
blessed warmth. Maybe, if Starbucks hadn't come in, there
would be small shops selling hot non-caffeinated beverages
at 10pm near Venice Beach, but as it stands only Starbucks
is open when I need that warmth...
The truth is, if I want decent coffee, I know places to go
in LA... Peets, or, if I'm not near one of those (and they
are few and far between), Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf... and
some of the really unusual places survived Starbucks. The
bizarre fanboy coffee shop across from Canter's on Fairfax
seems to do constant business. The unexpectedly laid back
internet cafe in Hollywood next to the statues on La Brea,
the South American cocoa bean and coffee roasting place in
Manhattan Beach...
Starbucks is like McDonalds. Crap quality, but consistant
across locales; they're all the same. People pay quite a
bit to not be surprised. Now, I won't eat from McDonalds,
but Starbucks doesn't actually nauseate me... it isn't too
unpleasant, even.
Surprisingly, I discovered, when circumstances left a half
hour to burn at 2am near a 24 hour Dennys, that they serve
an arabica coffee that isn't far from Starbucks quality at
a fraction of the cost... to wit, drinkable, in the sense
that Sam Adams' is a drinkable beer... not something with
actual value, but not so bad that you want to spit it out.
Here's the thing... if you're in a strange city, where you
know nothing and no-one... say, you travel on business (to
install enterprise software on customer sites, maybe), and
you end up at a hotel the night before you drive up to the
customer facility... It's after 8 pm, so any Apple store,
or whatever other wi-fi provider you know of closed... and
you really need to check in for updates... how do you find
a place where you can get wi-fi access? The way I see it,
Starbucks is more about the location than the coffee. The
goth/punk/hacker 24 hour shops of my college years were an
amazing thing, and I miss them, but the truth is, they are
not somewhere I could go today...
Sure, I'd prefer something other than a corporate monster,
long tentacled and greed-driven. Hell, I won't even touch
Ben & Jerry's when given a choice, and if I find a smaller
coffee shop where I'm going, and a wi-fi node, I'll gladly
chance the unknown place. I've only really regretted that
decision once... though I should have known better than to
even order a coffee from a local shop in Indiana, when the
sign didn't even list beyond decaf and regular... and that
coffee may have been bad, but the sweet old couple working
the counter (I assumed they were the owners) made it worth
it... and the pie was good.
See, I don't object to Starbucks existing. I don't mind a
few people succeeding from humble beginings. I do mind it
when they deliberately crush all competition, removing all
choices other than them.
So far, I haven't seen enough of that to make me hate that
Seattle coffee shop. Unlike, say, that Seattle (well, not
far from) software shop. Not the image and printing tools
one, the really big one.
Your super has the right to enter your apartment.
With sufficient prior notice (varies by locale) and with several restrictions, yes. Provided that it is explicit in your rental agreement, and that they allowed full review of said agreement before requiring any nonrefundable fees from you.
Mind you, in most areas, the balance of rights favors the large rental agencies at the expense of renters and single home self-managed landlords. The fact that rights are essentially for sale to the highest bidder has led to a large number of problems both in the US and elsewhere in the "first world". The fact that there is no requirement for the guilty parties to at least be moderately discreet about it has led to a far larger number of problems in the rest of the world. Just be glad that we have the degree of enforced restraint that we do...
Of interest also is Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel winning physicist (particles, the eightfold way, and the actual discovery of some theoretical particles, Quarks in particular) and Santa Fe Institute co-chair, and perhaps, just maybe, still on to something. Eventually.
His Current focus is the science of simplicity and complexity. He calls it "Plectics". While he has some of the most remarkable credentials possible, the jury's still out on his current work...
Yes, this question has been addressed elsewhere. I'm sure other answers
have been more eloquent and informed. But the question, here, even when
answered elsewhere, begs to be answered here.
This actually falls, in a roundabout way, under both abridgements of the
right to speech without punishment (And how that has been weakened), and
the right of the press to print without the editorial oversight of those
who would be our moral parents.
It ought, however, to also fall under the 4th amendment right you placed
in bold. This has to do with the blurring of "papers" and "effects", as
the constitution was written before so many agencies that would not have
been considered protected regions for personal privacy started keeping a
huge amount of private information.
Honestly, there is a justification for, and a general acceptance of, the
right of parties charged with maintaining peace, order, law, and justice
to obtain certain information, in restricted circumstances, regarding an
otherwise private detail of an individual being investigated in criminal
matters. With public oversight of the process, and without a willful or
careless dissemination of that private information, this becomes a valid
and sensible tool.
The problem here, in this case, is that the agency in question failed to
reasonably limit the scope of their search. The key is "and no warrants
shall issue
is some degree of lattitude, and in many cases, they may have been right
in their blanket request for "purchase records of X from store Y", where
store Y was of a particular class of store and one of those records was,
with a reasonable degree of probability, known to contain information on
a specific purchase. It's a double bind, you see. They know the record
in question exists, but not the date, and if the case is still uncertain
and the suspect still just that (in theory, until conviction), a privacy
argument (protecting against careless dissemination) could justify their
blanket request. Local police might even be thought of as unable to, in
most cases at least, abuse this particular data, though there are cases,
especially where "Christian Values" is a buzzword for "We're going to be
a little facist state here, and if you don't like it, you can go move to
some big city, you hear?", where that is decidedly not true.
So... had they asked only for documentation of that specific purchase, a
reasonable request if not made spuriously as part of a trolling attempt,
they would have been right. But they asked for all records, which is an
obvious troll.
Now the first ammendment comes into the issue, and compounds the search,
which was already iffy, with what could easilly fall under harassment of
the free press. Amending the rights of the press doesn't just mean that
the publication of a paper which says, "Bush is utterly incompetant, and
that was painfully obvious from his original strategy in Afghanistan, as
all of you should have seen, and would have, if you weren't so blind and
stupid with rage. And I'm sure, if he were carefully investigated, that
it would turn out he was still snorting coke," which exercises the free
criticism of a public personage, even to the point of near slander (that
would be the coke line, the first part was a fact, not an accusation) is
protected. It also means that the publisher of said paper has the right
not to have goons hired by a corrupt and facist president harassing him,
or police spending more time investigating him (as opposed to more time,
in the case of someone who has publicly voiced an intention to kill that
devolved primate in question, and done so in a credible manner, checking
very carefully to make sure the second individual is not actually trying
to do so... but not, for example, checking to see if he smokes pot), and
in that respect, monitoring the consumption of published goods is indeed
a 1st amendment issue. It is an issue of principal. I read. I read in
great volume, and from a great many fields. A watchdog agency might get
some funny ideas from what I read, though not internally consistant ones
if they tried to make a criminal pattern of it. But more important than
whether they might get suspicious (and the degrees in physics and a wide
range of hobbies and my current work in artificial nerves explain all of
the nonfiction, aside from the anthropological elements, which are taken
from my dad, an anthropologist... so they can just back off, thank you,)
is whether they might try to profile. I have a friend who the DEA tried
to harrass because he'd been purchasing botanical books and supplies, of
a potentially drug related (and RPGs lead to satanic cults) nature. The
SOBs just ignored the fact that he was a botanist (PhD) and worked for a
legal agricultural hemp research program on the big island of Hawai'i, a
tendancy that's common with those criminal thugs.
He ceased to do business with Barnes N Noble after that visit.
Now, would you trust an agency like the DEA to be honest, or even legal,
in its use of personal information about your reading habits? Would you
purchase books that might be "considered suspicious"? Even if they were
not for criminal purposes? What about books that might be embarassments
if publicly displayed? I buy certain books relating to recovering from,
and dealing with, certain severe forms of child abuse. I don't but them
for myself. I'm recovered just fine, thank you, thanks to some luck and
a few remarkable people... but some of the people I buy them for are not
yet able to admit that it happened to them, at least in the face of this
judgemental and often revolted public, and don't believe that there will
never be some suspicious and unscupled person snooping through the books
they have purchased, and outing them.
Hell, the same probably applies to gay rights books...
And you want an agency with that track record pushing the limit of this?
The people who publish such books might as well hang their hats, if that
happens. No one will risk buying the books if big brother is watching.
I'm a programmer. I write software, at work, for high end commercial use... high end means enterprise level. I specialize in algorithm design, which means I'm pretty good at my asm on several platforms, and I do enough GUI development to know ATL and MFC, Motif and KDE/Qt, the classic Mac Toolbox, Powerplant, and the NSObject derived windowing classes, inside and out, and most pertinant to this, I'm comfortable in all of the operating systems involved here.
I had an iMac... an old, 400MHz, sad state of affairs, dust gathering iMac... sitting on my desk at home. I had MacOS 9.1 installed on it, and occasionally used it for this or that... but at work, where I have an assortment of machines ranging from Win2K boxes on dual 800MHz and 1GHz PIIIs, Linux (2.4.x kernels) on similar, to Solaris 8 on a quad E3000, and a dual boot (Win2K enterprise and Linux 2.4.x enterprise) 8 CPU PIII Xeon, I really found my greatest pleasure was derived from working on my Dual 800MHz G4 with MacOS X. So, this weekend, after having not gotten around to it for untold ages, I finally installed MacOS X (10.1.3) on that poor little iMac at home. Guess what? I suddenly like that machine again. It's responsive, where MacOS 9.1 felt sluggish and misbehaved (STOP! NO, DON'T SPEND FIVE MINUTES TRYING TO PROCESS THAT FILE TO OPEN IT, I MEANT TO CLICK ON THE ONE NEXT TO IT! COMMAND-.!!! COMMAND-.!!! LISTEN TO ME, DAMN YOU!!!), it's navigable, it's easy to customize (as opposed to littered with shareware hacks, which is what "customized" means to most mac-heads, and I sort of feel like I don't want to deal with the 1GHz Athlon Linux box, with that wonderful (even if it is trapped in that ugly bubble) mac on my desk... I spent about six hours working on a little project of mine (which I had been building on the Linux box) after spending half an hour porting it into Project Builder... now I have my GUI stubs in place, and can attach a control terminal to the server process on the local machine, which means... well, never mind that, the point is, the dinky little G3 on OS X still beats the pants off of the linux box for enjoyment of use, for me, and severely spanks OS 9...
Of course, that's me, and YMMV...
I guess that depends on the nature of the nerd. This nerd found the blatant dishonesty of the movie, which softened the harsh edges of the already dishonest feel-good book into something that, frankly, made me feel vaguely ill, to be such a turn-off that I almost felt as betrayed by this awards ceremony as I did with Titanic.
I guess you just have to actually be the kind of nerd who really tries to understand things about things, even if they aren't things in whatever field of nerdhood you subscribe to, rather than just giving them a casual glance. I mean, I wouldn't have really had an opinion on the movie if I hadn't seen it and read the book, and I suppose if I had seen it, or even read the book, without knowing anything more than that about Nash, the general social environment of mathematics as a field (I'm a physicist working in software design and algorithm development - I know mathematicians...), schizophrenia (I spent a decade of my life under the shadow of a clinical diagnosis of MPD for what was really enviromentally induced DPD... eg, severe shell shock... and have seen the insides of clinics... so I also know the disease that I was essentially misdiagnosed with), I might have thought it was a passably decent film. Nowhere near the best film, for any reason, of the year.
Don't get me wrong. Technically, the portrayal in "A Beautiful Mind" was more accurate than, say, "The Fisher King"... but it was, emotionally, far less honest, and from some of the interviews I've chanced on, I'd go so far as to lable it deliberately decietful for the sole purpose of a social objective that is, in this particular case (schizophrenia, not mental illness in general) rather misguided, given its emphasis on PC social acceptance instead of concentrated efforts to cure the root problem.
As for FoTR? Not sure. Of all the nominations for Best Picture, I would have gone that route, because:
"Mulan Rouge!", while displaying threads of genius in certain profiles, had a lot of shoddy joisting showing. Poor writing and plot, dialog swinging radically between brilliant wordplays and drivel, as if it were a bunch of brilliant ideas stitched together with less-than adequate execution. Kind of like a lot of Neal Stephenson's work, really, but thinner on the brilliance.
"Gosford Park" wasn't all that great, and I didn't see "In The Bedroom"
FoTR was, in some ways, a better story (as opposed to literature) than the original form. I've long considered Tolkein's significance more historical than anything. His brand of fantasy predates him, and has been done better by others, though rarely with the consistancy. Nontheless, he did much in his time for the acceptance of Fantasy into Literature, at least in theory. I'd rather read Brust or Lindholm (as Lindholm, though her work as Hobb is readable) or Le Guin, but I don't think I could have ever been as
For the Record, I thought "As Good As It Gets" was a great movie, and I have a lot of respect for them for making it honest and feel-good at the same time.
As for Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, and Sidney Poitier - it was scripted, and I'm too cynical not to be turned off by that, but they all deserved the recognition - especially Poitier - really, really, really especially Poitier - and there's a part of me that somewhat hopes for a little spillover into awareness of the current prejudices against asian leads... because I still want to see a serious movie about the 442nd/100th and lost Battalion, focussing on the AJAs, not the damned Texans, as the heroes, sometime in my lifetime. And without a few major male Japanese stars, it's not going to happen.
I still wish someone had thought to nominate Memento for Best Director. I thought it deserved the original screenplay, but it was really the absence of a best director nomination that I was most offended about.
A: As a target for development, I'd guess yes. Or at least, a KDE compatible interface of some kind will. After all, the Qt part of it is...
Q: Will KDE be free on MacOS X?
A: If you're not a student... I doubt it. See Trolltech... This only lists the enterprise/professional and academic license
So KDE as a desktop for Darwin? I'd go with no. KDE apps on MacOS X (and looking like Aqua apps?) That's a distinct possibility. But for free, when the developers face the license fee? With only a month to evaluate Qt free, I'm not about to tackle this one.
It uses a common mode to the short story. I made the same mistake, but later discovered that the book that the other Nolan released around the same time as the movie was not the rereleased short story of the same name, but rather the adapted screenplay from his brother's movie, which he coauthored. It comes bundled with another screenplay and (bonus!)) the original short story, for contrast.
Now, I was a fan from the start when I first happened across issue number 3 of The Tick (in the hands of a friend who let me read it) and ended up buying the graphic novel as soon as it saw daylight. I love the humor of the comic, and found the show far more true than the cartoon.
I've also never seen Invader Zim. Is that what happened to Vasquez after the second issue of "I Feel Sick!"? There was mention of a cartoon, but...
But there is a world of difference between The Tick and JTHM. The first time I walked into my favorite indie-friendly comic shop (and I still patronize that sort even if it means going 40 minutes out of my way and spending a lot more than I would on subscriptions, because I value their existance, damnit!) and laid eyes on the grotesque and fascinating work that was Johnny, I was blown away. Twisted. Sick. Perverse. Strangely compelling. His world is the polar opposite of The Tick. With the same innocent disconnectedness, but nothing else in common, Johnny sees himself as artist and equalizer, striking out against the "righteous" and popular, the petty and mostly harmless bullies and bureaucrats of his world, sometimes with a spork. And while he terrifies poor Squee (see Squee's own title), he never considers harming the victim of the condescending, the contemptuous, the too-perfect. And somehow, you're never quite sure if Johnen himself is sane, or even safe.
Now, a show (cartoon, of course) based on JTHM would be... frightening. It would never sell. But... the kid brother of a friend, who I had introduced to JTHM, actually contacted Johnen and got his permission to adapt a play from that same series... and managed to produce and run it at a rather uptight and proper elite high school. And it went over well. Remarkable...
So, your thoughts... whither bound the properties of The Tick? Will we ever see another show, animated or otherwise? Perhaps a new patron could be found, one willing to give it a real chance?
For now, I must actually record myself some episodes of this "Invader Zim"... it will be some consolation, at least.
Generally agree about Fox. Simpsons has had ups and downs, but is in an up (and the downs were still better than friends) Futurama is great, Malcolm is Great, Family Guy is pretty good, if a little overboard, The Tick was shaping up quite well, 24 isn't perfect, but it's good... but it isn't a comedy, it's a drama, so... drama's are fair game? Then you slight NBC. They have the Law and Order franchise (and the original and SVU are actually really a damn sight better than 24, frankly) and some of the best miniseries on broadcast. West Wing, Crossing Jordan, and ER are too good to dismiss out of hand, especially if you're willing to put 24 on your list. I'm not all that impressed with CBS on Dramas. I mean, "The Agency"? But they had the wisdom to take the free agent CSI, which is really one of the five best dramas in broadcast and syndication right now, as far as I'm concerned. ABC is just plain bad, and UPN, well, I can't even watch Enterprise (and lest you peg me, I have cable entirely because I missed Farscape too much, in spite of my "who has time for TV" attitude.) I really don't watch anything but the first two Law and Order shows (but not CI), CSI, Farscape, Titus, The Tick, Futurama, 24, and Smallville (sorry, I don't know why, but I like it. Probably because of Michael Rosenbaum, who manages to do a weirdly believable road to hell character), and all of those I approach with a tape-it-and-catch-it-later attitude. I'm two months behind on some of them, and that's taking reruns into account. So my habits result in... NBC (2 hours), CBS (1 hour), Fox (2.5 hours), WB (1 hour), and SF (1 hour) Admittedly, my rare extras include Simpsons, Malcolm, and Family Guy. So Fox gets more than the rest. Followed by NBC. ABC gets none of my eyeball time.
I'm not currently speaking for 64 bit PPC. I know PPC quite well. I write software for a living, and the PPC (MacOS X BSD layer with some components in asm) is one of the targets I have to keep synched. Gotta love that big-little endian mode switch...
...but there would be serious penalties for this as well.
I'm not currently speaking for 64 bit PPC, as I've never seen one. I've seen 64 bit POWER-4 servers, but that's a little different. I do, however, also target and maintain Solaris versions of my software, which are 64 bit aware. I do have to deal with the 32 bit library/64 bit application issues. I do have to deal with building both 32 and 64 bit versions. I even have to deal with testing gcc 3.0.x 32/64 modes against the Forte CC 32/64 modes. I'm pretty damned familiar with the issues involved in making software on mixed addressing operating systems work.
Before I go on, let me note that a 64 bit application in the sparcv9 format cannot link to a 32 bit sparvcv8 library, either static or dynamic, and the only solution with a commercial library will be to actually write an interface by interface transport layer for the library, linking the 64 bit side of the transport layer to the application, and the 32 bit side to the library, and take the penalty of using pipes for communication right on the jaw. Oh, and the 32 bit side will have the 4GB memory limit, too...
While Sun does do a good job of making the 32 bit/64 bit transition look smooth, it's not, really. SGI and HP face similar issues. I'm told that Alpha Linux may have workarounds not available on the big iron platforms, but I don't know the details, as I don't do any serious Alpha work.
Now I am currently speaking for the PPC. Please take this as speculation based on POWER-4 details and the original PPC spec, not as insider knowledge.
The PPC is interesting. The original design calls for mode switching (like the sparc or mips), but there's a provision for realtime mode switching in there. I expect you would take a heavy hit, but you might be able to link 64 and 32 bit binaries, if the linker was smart enough to insert mode switch instructions into the calling sequence and if the compiler were set to interpret interface definitions (in headers) according to a dependancy determined pointer size assumption. Come to think of it, it should have been possible to implement something like this for the sparc and mips binary formats... (eg _int_v8 and _int_v9 as seperate types in the compiler's internal interpretation...)
Being realistic, I expect eventually we'll have a 64 bit kernel (Darwin) with 32 bit libraries provided as interfaces for mixed mode applications, and a handful of apps (Photoshop, FCPro) that require 4+GB memory being released in 64 bit form (requires G5(6?) or greater!!!) for power users... this of course, at the point in time where we have 2GB+ DDR modules, and four slots again... and another major transition. At least Apple has proven that they are good at tremendous transitions, remarkably so, considering...
There are other possible benefits to 64 bit computing, beyond addressing. Some of them can be realized now... on the G4s, and the P4s, there are ways to use 64 bit (or 128 bit, or even, in one case on the P4, 256 bit) bit vector arithmatic to speed up comparisons, sometimes by unbelievable factors... some higher precision mathematical processing is possible only with 128 bit floating point, which is generally coupled only with 64 bit integer registers, which are the basis of 64 bit memory addressing as a reasonable proposition...
There's also a possible two-instruction-per-cycle trick that could be performed on a 64 bit CPU with a hybrid (64 bit with 32 bit support) kernel for certain operations. There's some documentation for this online, but I haven't tried anything of the sort myself (no current access to a POWER-4 server), so I can't vouch for the usefulness of this.
We're not talking about a trivial task, or any immediate benefits, so don't expect a 64 bit MacOS X anytime soon. Even if the CPUs are 64 bit. It should be transparent, however, as the PPC is upward compatible (32 bit binaries run on 64 bit CPUs) just as the sparc and MIPS are...
MY notebook PC specs in 2001
My notebook PC in 2001: By 2001 a notebook will be some users' only PC. These mobile monsters will have the power to replace desktops, but will stay slender enough to tuck into a briefcase. Screens won't get much larger than 15 inches, though -- any bigger and you would lose portability -- and battery life will improve, but not as much as most users would like.
CPU and RAM: 550- to 666-MHz G4 chip with 1GB of RAM
Hard disk: 20GB to 48GB with Ultra ATA/66 interface
Removable storage: Slot Loading CD-RW/DVD
Internet connection: 10/100/1000 Base-T Ethernet; 56K V.90 modem (backup) (Home - DSL; Work - T3)
Wireless technologies: 802.11b for connecting to a LAN
Display: 15.2-inch LCD
Dimensions: 5.4 pounds and barely 1 inch thick
Battery: lithium ion unit good for 5 hours of life per charge
Operating system: MacOS X.1
Price: $2,200 and up ($2000 for DVD-only still available retail)
----
Just to note... I don't actually have one of these. I'd sort of like one, as a fantasy, except I really don't want to have the burden. I have a G4 (Dual 533) at home and a G4 (Dual 800) at work, as well as a Dual Athalon 900 at home (on a 2.4 kernel) and a few 600 to dual 800 range PIII boxen, (2.4 kernel, Win2000), an 8-way Compaq behemoth (8x1GHz Xeon), and a Sun E3000 at work... if I had a cool portable, I'd never escape the damned silicon monsters. A good friend does have one (666MHz/1GB/40MB/DVDw/extern CD-RW) that he got for $2.4k+tax (ADC Premier, the lucky B*st*rd) plus the cost of the memory upgrade (he had one 512MB built in) and while the 550 would be cheaper, the faster bus certainly seemed to give his book more power. Now, I know the costs are lower for PCs, but they don't seem to be much lower for equivalent portables. It isn't like you can (as I do with my boxen) order all the parts through the company's wholesale supplier and assemble your own laptop. And to get 1" thick and 15" screen and optical drive (not in an external bay) is next to impossible. So... when I see nothing compelling about this two-three year off laptop they describe, perhaps there's something there for the PC world. But I still much doubt the 3lb 15" screen DVD-R thing. The 3lb thing will only happen when LCDs get replaced by something lighter (Organics? Would take work) and optical drives get thinner. And Li-ion batteries can't get that light, and power something like that...
Add the numbers up. I listed both M-Th and F-Su for each period, starting with the F-Su it opened. $28,638,131 + $24,331,205 + $35,455,673 = $88,425,009 after the second weekend. The point I was making is that it did as well on the weekdays as the weekends, which is unusual. I was also noting that it didn't show on as many screens as most blockbusters do today.
FotR is now at about 94mil, as of the end of the 25th. We'll see what happens after the second weekend. I'm still optomistic that Titanic will ultimately be dethroned...
Loved this quote:
"If we're not careful, Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings could give hype a good name."
-- Peter Howell, TORONTO STAR
All I can say is, I feel strangely refreshed... like maybe I can start one more expecting quality from the American people in the distant future. Not that Titanic was the source of my disillusionment, but it was a symptom thereof, and I'm hoping for evidence of better.
Hate to drop this one on you, but I actually think a few things from the film did add to the book. Not major things, with one exception, but...
The exception, of course, is Gandalf's betrayal, capture, and escape, and the way it was flashed not just as cutaways and flashbacks, but as premonition flashes (watch carefully, this was subtle), and the fact that it erased what had been my first example of a concept I'd learned a week before first reading tFotR as an eight year old, 18 years ago. The escape, as written, was the first thing my mind seized upon as "Oh, that's what a Deus Ex Machina is!", and I, for one, am glad the exposition with the moth was added. Yeah, yeah, I know, Hobbit, ancient friendship, la, la, but I'd read tFotR first, and even without that, I still think it was a bit too much Deus Ex...
Interesting thing about Titanic...
In the box office, December 1997:
Paramount releases Titanic on Friday, to a weekend box office take of only $28,638,131, which is actually not bad given the mere 2,674 screens it played on. A Bond flick released the same day does nearly as well, around 25 mil. This is a good opening, but not remarkable. However, over the week, it takes another $24,331,205, and then another $35,455,673 the next weekend. Then another $35,727,684 over the week, then $33,315,278 on the weekend. This trend continued over the next two months, bouncing around in the $25-35 million range both weekends and weekdays totals, until the end of February, when it slipped below $20mil on weekends, and plummetted on weekdays to the (more typical) $5mil range. It then started to slide slowly down toward the $12mil weekend range, with a brief spike for spring break, until the end of April. Then it abrubtly dropped to about $5mil at the begining of May. A month later, it was drawing about $1mil a week, which was pretty much finis. What was unprecedented was: The weekday take was as high as weekend for the first two months (Leno's "housewife factor"?), and; The falloff curve was typical of a solid drama making 20% the weekly gross, not the much more flash in the pan spike and settle of an action film. For contrast, the first three months curve of Titanic (on a by week, not by day, basis) is pretty much lockstep matched by the two week older "Good Will Hunting"... but about five times as high.
How is this significant with regard to FotR? FotR has the potential to pull in a broader demographic than most films that would be reviewed here. It's getting the same kind of fervered reviews as Titanic did (with much better cause, IMO, but I'm biased... I saw Titanic for the effects, and because it was playing and my friends wanted to see it, but I wouldn't have gone a second time if the most attractive woman I knew had begged me on bended knee... not that she would have, being one of the most razor-minded people I've known, and regarding the film as manipulative drek... ah, how I miss her... but again, my bias is showing) and has the potential to create a repeat viewing draw. It seems to be growing in popularity, not diminishing, which is (sadly... my, what fools these mortals be...) unusual, though we won't have a clear picture on that for two more weeks. It has sequels coming close behind it, and they may sustain the excitement a while. It's already a threat to episode II... putting the EpII preview before this film was a mistake, as the contrast is going to diminish the Star Wars film even more (but it will quite possibly actually create a small late boost in viewing of FotR if it's still on enough screens, which could be interesting) and it has the additional distinction of getting a great deal of weekday attention. Even on the normally brutal Xmas week, there's been two sellout shows today at the theater in the mall next to the offices I work in. The first one was an 11:00 matinee. I don't know (only noted this in passing while grabbing something to nibble on) but there's a chance the next (5:00) show is already running out of tickets. It's currently 2:45. And I think it was on two screens, too. Thing is, though, it's not hauling nearly what "Harry Potter" did. That's bad, right? No. Potter isn't making much anymore, not much at all. It hauled, and it's holding, but it was a Monty Haul, or Hall, and those blow over. FotR opened on the (theoretically) worst week of the year for a debut. No, really. So did Titanic. Was that a factor? Well, not exactly... but sort of. FotR is making a lot more than Titanic did at the begining (or anywhere in its run), but Titanic lasted (oh, my aching head, did that stinker last...) and given it's nature, FotR is really not making nearly as much as it would if it were, say, released in May. Initially. That'll change. (A lot more movies were released in December these last three years than had been previously. Go figure.) And if FotR can keep the momentum long enough, it might even get one last upsurge from anticipation of the sequel. TT will be out the same time next year.
I wouldn't say FotR was the best movie I've ever seen, but it is the best one with mainstream appeal, and I'd really like to see it unseat Titanic. Rest assured, however... as a trilogy, it will certainly do so, and more.
I live in LA. I see about six movies a year, free, because I or one of my friends happened to be walking somewhere when a promotional/production agent was handing out passes to previews. I've currently seen three movies that are nowhere near release yet. One of them was remarkably good. I submitted a review (spoiler free, and with the fact that I had seen it six months before release) on IMDB. But even the release versions of some films are out in NYC and LA a few weeks early, especially at this time of year. Releasing in a handful of LA theaters in December makes a film eligible for this coming year's academy awards. (You know, the 2001 awards presented in 2002...)
On an entirely different note, and with very minor spoilers... I've seen FotR twice, same weekend, same theatre chain, different theatres... and there were about five one second scene cut differences and one full five or six lines of dialog take difference (and in the second to last scene of the film, no less) between the two. The actual dialog between Aragon, Legolas, and Gimli was significantly different in the last scene they appeared in, in the most critical exchange. No difference in effect, and I'm hard pressed to say one or the other version was better, but something tells me they really grazed the wire on the final cut on this one, to the point that some reels got shipped with different cuts than others.
Man, am I looking forward to seeing the uncut four-plus hour version on DVD...
This is a subject on which I am as close to a world expert as it's possible to get. If you are familiar with MMOG development, you may have heard of MUD-Dev. If you do a search for my name and "physmud" you'll turn up hundreds of articles on the simulation of physics in a game engine. I used to simulate multi-day trajectories of orbital and ballistic bodies for SDI purposes for a living. I know just about all there is to know about this kind of modeling, and where you can take a shortcut, how to do a numerical approximation in n or nlogn steps when possible, what the inaccuracies introduced by each approximation would be... sometimes, I know how to do an exact solution to a transformation in a far smaller amount of time, using a jacobian transformation on complex geometries with an angular integration... but the reason I know this is, I learned on the job, and I took a degree (plus a bit) in physics, and I read all the books I could find. So, it is with regret that I say this book was not terribly good. I've seen better in a text entitled "An Introduction to Computer Simulation Methods, Applications to Physical Systems", a not too well written textbook with source in BASIC, but at least featuring a fair breakdown in the nature of algorithms, numerical integration, efficiency and accuracy, etc. A much better choice, IMO, would be "Numerical Recipies in C", though it's a little more advanced... "Numerical Methods for Physics" is hard to find, but very good. "Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers" is not the same book, and while very good for numerical analysis, it isn't an ideal book for learning simulation techniques. If you're interested in related fields, try looking on Amazon under Books/Subjects/Science/Mathematics/Applied/Compute r Mathematics. There's stuff on 3D graphics algorithms, signal processing, crypto, genetic algorithms, organic and physical chemistry sims, and more... just be aware that there are a lot of books on using Matlab/Mathematica/Maple/etc.
No insult intended, and I use MacOS X at home and at work (among others in both cases), and it is my favorite in terms of user experience... and the only ones of the above that I don't currently work with are QNX and OS/2, and QNX I used to develop for (as well as VxWorks)...
That qualifier voiced, I only count three targets for OS X, and they are all gimmes.
Desktop Publishing
Will belong to OS X as soon as Photoshop and QuarkXPress join InDesign as native.
Video Editing
As of last week, secured by Final Cut Pro 3.
Music Editing
Several of the most important authors of professional grade music editing software have recently announced intent to support MacOS X. This includes solutions that were previously MacOS, BeOS, and Windows only. The ultimate status of MacOS X as a premier audio editing platform remains up in the air...
Now, for the others:
Games, apps, and drivers
Number 3, will pass classic Mac soon... plus, I've succeeded in porting linux drivers for an unsupported graphics card and camera. >:) Will never pass windows, I fear. XP will soon take the top spot, as '98/Me vanish off radar...
Server Usage
Marketshare, number 4. Capacities, number 4, with reservations on 3 (See Win2000 Advanced Server)... will never surpass BSD or Linux. Win2000 AS is another issue. SMP is OK, Memory addressing sucks. I suspect MacOS X will start featuring an optional 64 bit kernel before Windows.
Banking
Don't know, don't care, doubt Apple will ever be a contender.
I know this a troll, but I have to respond, if only to make the relevant counterpoint. I do listen to music at work. I have (nearly) my entire CD collection encoded as MP3s on one of my computers (the dual G4) at work, and set into a half dozen playlists. There's the debugging playlist, the speedhacking playlist, the algorithm design playlist, the interface design playlist, the asm hacking playlist, and the paced hacking playlist. Yes, they do pace me correctly for each of the above tasks. Yes, the speedhacking playlist is mostly speed metal and german techno. I'm severely ADD, non hyperactive, and even medicated, I can't focus without the music. I don't have it on when interfacing with customers or coworkers, but it effectively doubles my productivity having the music pumping through my headphones into my hindbrain. And believe me, I do not have a no-brains-required job. And I don't exactly look unprofessional when prospective customers are around. The headphones are discreet, and my desk is clean except for the four monitors, phone, soda, kleenex, and whatever papers, books, or notepads I am currently using. I wear professional clothes when customers are in town, and casual elsetimes. I'm currently working as a coder, damnit, not a salesman! As for nerf guns, no thanks. I paddle canoes in my spare time, and wouldn't mind getting the crew out on a paintball field on weekends, if so many of them didn't have young children, but this is no foozeball office. So why does it have a half dozen (out of sixteen) geeks with music pumping into their brains? Well, we're a genius heavy company, and there's a high correlation between intelligence and input/impulse driven thought... it's often looked to as the neurological basis of epiphany, among other things... so with a high intelligence crew, I'd say a pro-music policy is a good thing.
Fortunately, a most of the best stuff out there, for what I use it for, is not distributed by Universal and Co.
Well, the Baen Books Publication Schedule is a pretty clear source for this information. I saw the book several months ago, got excited for a second, then noted the "Publisher's Note: Miles, Mystery & Mayhem was previously published in parts as Cetaganda, Ethan of Athos, and "Labyrinth." This is the first unified edition." on it, and got less excited. True, if you aren't a follower of the schedule (I am mainly because I do escriptions - read it all early on a Visor!, and occasionally drop stuff in the slush forum on the bar) it may not occur to you to check, and I'm a little surprised that the little tag on the back was missing... but I always check SF (c) information first anyway, as I like to know if I'm buying a book that simply collects a serial I read in Analog or SF&S or AsimovSF... after all, I prefer the feel of paperbacks for casual reading, and reserve HCs for a particular kind of book (Fireplace reading), which means I wouldn't want to buy something in the more expensive and less enjoyable HC edition out of pure impatience, when I'd already read it.
Speaking of which, there's a real new Miles book coming out in May... Diplomatic Immunity. I'll probably read the escriptions copy, then buy the PB when it comes out. (Hey, the author gets $1.85 or so from my escriptions fee, which is probably actually more than the cut on a HC these days... plus the pennies from the PB purchase later. I'm quite happy with it, from the getting the early read perspective, and I get this nice whatever format I prefer electronic copy to read from a computer or PDA... and the author gets well compensated. Funny, given Jim's reputation for nasty contracts to newbie writers.)
<hyperbole>
"Sure thing, I've got this great vanilla almond blend, I'll brew up a pot. See you in a few!"
I have no such thing. I'm a culinary snob, a gourmet, not a gourmand. Only high quality coffees. Kona, Turkish, or French Roast. No flavored. But I might have some cheap "Kona Blend" from a care package a friend gave me when visiting from Hawai'i.
"I hope you like vanilla almond, it's all I have..."
There's real vanilla beans on my spice shelf. Madagascar or Tahiti... but there's probably some basic alcohol based pure vanilla extract in there as well, and it's a lot cheaper. There's almonds, and possibly almond extract, as well, but I'd never use that in coffee.
"Hold on a second, the coffee mugs are in my workshop..."
Well, this one might be true. Some of the coffee mugs, perhaps. Probably not next to the forge and steelworking gear. Certainly not in the steel hardening kit, in the little chemical vials full of interesting salt solutions...
"OK, got the mugs, how soon should I expect you?"
I've got a time release hypodermic kit in a cabinet, next to the first aid gear.
"Oh, good, looks like there's fresh cream in the fridge."
And little bags with Vitamin B-12ain saline solution 7.5g doses
All of which substances could be used for some nefarious purposes the nature of which I'll leave to the reader...
hint: one of the great steel hardening chemicals is also used to extract gold from ore... and might be convinced to disguise itself as flavoring in coffee, if mixed in solution and not overheated too much.
hyperbole
Now that the overly complex humor is over, time for the lecture.
This group is overrun with conspiracy theorists. It's easy to understand why... software is one of those cutting edge technologies that the majority of people don't understand, and that has a lot of misconceptions associated with it, and a lot of money. That means a lot of manipulative lobbying, deception, suppression of peoples' rights, so on and so forth. Beyond that, we've got a questionable election in America a year ago, a would be despot as president, a could be despot as VP (certainly, the sudden push for unreasonable executive power even before September leads one to reflect on this...), and some rather covert wings of federal security agencies that don't seem to have much in the way of scruples, ethics, or even manners. Certainly, there's a high probability of serious despotic behavior, meriting the kind of reaction I just hinted at, from certain federal agencies. But the Secret Service is not one of them! Seriously. In spite of their name, in spite of the way they shove their noses into places with pigheaded cluelessness from time to time. These people are the most single minded agency I can think of, the least political. They are the bodyguards, the detectives, the security force for the federal government...
These aren't the droids you need to be afraid of.
Hell, I'd be a lot more alarmed if the police showed up at my door than a couple of Secret Service agents. Of course, I do live in LA.
Mind you, the above post was funny... but I hope the poster didn't mean it seriously. I mean, if it were non local CIA agents with suspiciously unmemorable names, or NSA operatives, or personal agents of his imperial majesty George W. Bush (once he finishes disbanding the legislative branch and gets rid of the remaining four independant Supreme Court judges) or Lord Vader, sure, I'd be making sure the automated defense systems were online and ready for mayhem (in case you haven't noticed, the hyperbole light has come back on. Please return to your seats and remain seated, with your seatbelts fastened, until we come to a complete stop), but the situation described sounds like a bunch of slightly spooked (wouldn't you be) agents making sure every base is covered, even if they have to put people in the bleachers and locker rooms.