He said a Powerbook RUNNING Platinum, which is another way of saying "the current MacOS." Platinum is actually an appearance setting, one of many you can apply to today's MacOS.
And the GUI IS that important. It's the interface you use for everything that isn't done on the CLI. The GUI is what lets you find and open your files, or change your system's settings. Sure, you can do a lot of that on the command line in OSX. But most Mac users won't be working that way, and they shouldn't be forced to.
I am very leery of Aqua too, after having used OSX PB. It's a leap backwards from the current MacOS GUI. At least they made some concessions to the users, like putting the Apple menu back.
Not excusing those, but, at least in the case of Ruby Ridge (and Waco, I think), the victims were armed.
Read up on Ruby Ridge. It will make you sick. One 14 year old kid, who was out hunting, was shot in the back after an agent shot his dog from cover and the frightened kid returned fire. The mom in the family was shot through the head while she was carrying a baby.
Randy Weaver, the subject of the investigation that led to the Ruby Ridge fiasco, is an awful person -- a separatist racist. But that doesn't excuse what happened. To this day he hasn't been convicted of anything.
The Waco folks were also weirdos for sure. But that situation was also fumbled by the Feds. The Waco people weren't violent -- had no history of it. The townsfolk were amazed that the feds didn't just pick up Koresh when he was out shopping for groceries, as he often did. Instead, the decision was made to escalate things. Madness.
This kind of thing is why a lot of Americans still go on and on about that pesky 2nd Amendment.
I always find it fascinating, talking to Taiwanese folks about the situation back home. In the mid-'90s, do you remember the "situation" in the Taiwan Strait? China was running some wargames, testing missiles, and generally being an aggressive pain in the ass. I knew a Taiwanese girl in school, and I talked to her about the situation. She told me that most Taiwanese think it is only a matter of time before China tries to take the ROC by military force. During the "crisis" in the mid-'90s, they didn't think the time had come -- but they seem to think it is inevitable at some point.
One of the finest Americans I know is a Taiwanese immigrant. He runs my local gun store. It's the classic immigrant-makes-good story. The store is open every day but Sunday -- including all holidays. "On American holidays, I am Taiwanese," he'd say. "And on Taiwanese holidays, I am American. Always open." Love that guy.
What's wrong with Home Depot? Power tools... non-power tools... all kinds of gadgets and fasteners... It's almost as much of a geek paradise as Marvac Dow Electronics.
>If you liked VOR, good news, the creator's contract stipulated that rights reverted back to him.
Ack. Vor stinks. I can say that with confidence, because I wrote a big chunk of one of the sourcebooks. My editor padded my stuff by about 1/3 to make up for his incorrect estimate of the needed page count, so my stuff isn't even reading like my stuff. Yuck.
FASA pays late too. I hope Wizkids is run better.
Re:Corporate Consolidation
on
FASA Dies
·
· Score: 2
Before West End got bought out by Yeti, it pissed away all its money and went bankrupt. Chapter 7. When they shut the doors they left a lot of employees out in the cold, missing thousands of $ worth of salary and expenses. It was hardly an organized exit strategy, like the FASA/Wizkids thing.
I know, I was one of the WEGers at the time. I worked from home in LA, on the Herc & Xena RPG.
The owners of WEG were the worst kind of corporate scum. At the end they strung their people along for a while, getting work out of them knowing that soon they'd be cut loose, uncompensated.
Did you know that WEG also owned an Italian shoe importing business? The fantastically successful game company kept paying off debts that the failing shoe business racked up. Eventually the shoe vampire drained them dry, and that was the end. As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up."
As "The H&X RPG Guy" for 6 months, I have HUNDREDS OF PAGES of Herc & Xena RPG materials that were commissioned but never paid for by WEG. The books were never printed, the freelancers were never paid, but I have a huge amount of ready-to-go material. I have contacted my freelancers, and almost unanimously they are in favor of releasing the material for free to the web, so at least SOME fans can enjoy it. The only thing stopping me is the fear of a lawsuit. But does WEG have any claim to the stuff? The studio at least could gripe about it... I don't know what to do. Maybe this should be an Ask Slashdot.
If people hack the X-box, Linux users will by up the suckers to setup Linux boxes. While these boxes cost MS money, and generate no sales revenue, it is another X-box sold. MS needs to have a big chunk of the marketshare, and if they can get another 5%-10% of the market this way, they will.
But Xboxen sold to Linux hackers won't be generating revenue from Xbox games. The sales may count towards marketshare figures, but they won't actually make MS any money unless the buyers use the box for the intended purpose once in a while.
Personally I HOPE this thing is violated ten ways the day it is released. It would be fun. I'm just not counting on it.
If MS is smart they'll engineer the Xbox so that nothing unapproved will boot on it. I'd love to see Xbox Linux but I doubt it will be easy to do, if it's possible at all.
I have a friend who works at a California university. There is some kind of union present on campus. He has a tech job, and is not a union member, yet is forced to pay several hundred clams per month in union dues. The reason is that it "isn't fair for him to receive the benefits of union representation without paying."
He has constant disputes with the pointy-haired management, has a hostile workplace and a pack of other problems. Naturally the union does nothing for him, but he can't say, "don't represent me, I want nothing from you, and I don't want to give you any money."
It should be illegal to extort money from non-union members in this way.
I was under the impression that Real bills you monthly for every stream, in addition to the license fee for the server. I don't know if this is true, but the people I was talking to made it sound like they nickel and dime you to death.
I always used to call Data on ST:TNG "the toaster," which pissed off my wife. It's my preferred racial slur for intelligent machines.
"Sir, we have intercepted an alien recon pod."
"And?"
"It's full of toasters."
"Toasters?"
"Yes sir, small, chrome-plated machines with simple moving parts and heating elements."
"You're telling me that toasters dropped a rock on New York?"
"That is the lab's unfortunate conclusion, sir."
You are correct that you may not *need* to partition, but I personally would recommend it, or at least have 2 OS 9 system folders. OS X puts some stuff in your OS 9 system folder which can (in the PB) cause conflicts when running in OS 9.
Not to mention the fact that OSX re-arranges the hierarchy of everything, including where your system folder is, and this confuses the HELL out of some apps when you are in OS9. If you compound it with Multiple Users you'll find that it gets worse.
The best sceme, as others have said, seems to be 2 partitions with OS9 on both, so OSX doesn't mess with your OS9 boot environment.
Yeah, well, I have used OSX PB (dual-booting, 1 partition). I am not sure the interface IS a giant leap forward, or I wouldn't have posted my original comment.
I fear change, but only the senseless kind. There was talk long ago of not letting you put icons on the desktop on Rhapsody/OSX. It was a terrible idea and I'm glad it died.
How much of your favorite interface paradigm are YOU willing to sacrifice for the Next Big Thing?
[by Terry Bisson; originally appearing in OMNI Magazine]
Imagine if you will... the leader of the fifth invader force speaking to
the commander in chief...
"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of
the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way
through. They're completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the
stars."
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them.
The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made
the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to
believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only
sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence
that goes through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several
of their life spans, which didn't take too long. Do you have any idea
the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the
Weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the
Weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way
through."
"No brain?"
"Oh, there is a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of
meat!"
"So... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The
meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The
meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Finally, Yes. They are indeed made out meat. And they've been trying to
get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"So what does the meat have in mind?"
"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the
universe, contact other sentients, swap ideas and information. The
usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat?"
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio.
'Hello. Anyone out there? Anyone home?' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know
how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping
their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through
their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you
advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and log in any and all
sentient races or multibeings in the quadrant, without prejudice, fear,
or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget
the whole thing."
"I was hoping you would say that."
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact
with meat?"
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say?" `Hello, meat. How's
it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with
here?"
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers,
but they can't live on them. And being meat, they only travel through C
space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility
of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the universe."
"That's it."
"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones
who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you have probed? You're sure
they won't remember?"
"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads
and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's
dream."
"And we can mark this sector unoccupied."
"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others?
Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"
"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a
class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago,
wants to be friendly again."
"They always come around."
"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the universe
would be if one were all alone."
I've been a Mac user since the very beginning -- our family had a Mac 128k, and it went through a few upgrades before being replaced by a Plus... and on and on. I have the Mac GUI burned into my brain, and honestly it colors the way I relate to all GUIs, including Windows and Gnome.
On the one hand, I am jazzed about all the new features and unix-y goodness of OSX. On the other, I am terrified of the new interface. I have been using the PB, and I didn't like the interface. Maybe I am just picky; maybe it's because I have too much Mac history to abandon. But everything felt buried to me, hidden under layers of needless windows. I live by desktop shortcuts and the Apple Menu when I use my Mac. I arrange my Win & Debian desktops the same way, as much as possible.
The fact that Apple LISTENED to us and put back features like the Apple Menu is very encouraging. The fact that they changed things so radically inthe first place is frightening.
I'm afraid to jump wholeheartedly into OSX, so it's definitely a dual-boot setup for me. The Pismo's drive is already partitioned... I am looking forward to X-Day.
Just because there isn't GNU software out for it doesn't mean that it isn't solved. The gov't is typical years ahead in crypto and other technologies, right?
Look, I used to work at a gov't shop where they were doing some crazy image-recognition work in the lab next door to mine. They had a table full of Hotwheels cars that they used to test the system. The computer's task was to pick a car out from the "parking lot", having been told what it looks like. You could partially cover the target, rotate it, etc. and the computer nailed it most of the time. This was in the early '90s, in an UNCLASSIFIED lab at JPL. I am sure the CLASSIFIED systems are much more advanced by now!
The problem ("problem," I should say "salvation") is that for now a computer that is fast enough and smart enough to understand "call the cops when you see THIS person") is too expensive to put on a lightpost. Probably too expensive and classified to be centrally located by a city government. But that isn't going to last. Someday those $99 webcams will have enough logic in them to spot people, license plates, crimes in progress, wayward youth and diaper rash. Then they'll infest our cities.
It is worth noting that the American freedom to own a gun is seen here as a reason that they have a per capita murder rate 100 times greater than ours.
We have equal access to fists and sticks, and I bet our murder rate is higher with those weapons too. America is just a different culture -- it IS more violent here. I don't know why. But it isn't the guns.
In US cities where they pass laws allowing you to carry a concealed weapon, crime rates tend to go down. Check this link, which has stats on that, especially Florida, a recent case.
We can argue about statistics and sampling methods and all that crap if you want, but at the least the numbers make one thing clear: concealed carry laws don't make cities into Wild West bloodbaths, despite what anti-gun advocates may hope for.
I have OFTEN had discussions on this matter with friends from Australia. Their gun attitude is similar to the UK. It always amazes me how different we are, culturally, on this matter. The Aussies in the office thought the gun-totin' Americans were just INSANE, while we thought they were crazy for not caring about personal freedom, self defense, government control, etc. But we still managed to get along.:)
>Private US citizens with modest military training, would be absolutely no match against the US military.
Tell that to the Russian soldiers in Chechnya.
OK, in an all-out war of destruction, a neighborhood full of rifles isn't going to stop the military. They could obviously bomb the place into dust. But you are making the critical mistake of believing THAT IS HOW A REVOLUTIONARY WAR WOULD BE FOUGHT. It isn't.
The military needs to SUBDUE the population. Not destroy it. And an occupying, invading, pacifying force is terribly susceptible to the kind of warfare that armed citizens can produce. When every door and window might hide a rifleman, it makes the job of rounding up the malcontents a lot harder.
Going back to Chechnya, the Russian Army found this kind of warfare SO terrible that they DID resort to bombing the city. They shelled the hell out of Grozny. They bombed it with aircraft. They destroyed MOST of the city, and killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians, who were not actively resisting. And to this day, Russian soldiers in Grozny take their life in their hands. Snipers and carbombs still abound. Armed resistance against a "superior" military force can be effective.
The first time the Russians invaded Grozny, they occupied the city for a time, then were SOUNDLY whipped by the rebel forces. The Russians retreated. A couple of years later, they started the war we see today. (At least we used to see it, before it stopped being news.) Are the Russians in control of the city now? Technically, yes -- but only technically. But at what cost to them? And the Chechens show no signs of letting up. Those guys have some serious spirit.
A revolution isn't an easy thing. You don't do it overnight. But even against the standing army of a nation, the citizens CAN prevail. It has happened in our recent history.
>If Apple had gone with Be, they would have had an OS with a spare, functional interface, which booted in ten seconds and required not even 100 MB of hard drive space.
- Disk space isn't much of a problem these days.
- If you don't like Aqua wait for someone to port a different GUI to OSX.
- I could care less how long it takes to boot, because I won't be doing that much.
BeOS is cool, I have the demo version of 5 and play with it frequently. But I am happier having the Unixy goodness of OSX.
Slashdot Mirror
He said a Powerbook RUNNING Platinum, which is another way of saying "the current MacOS." Platinum is actually an appearance setting, one of many you can apply to today's MacOS.
And the GUI IS that important. It's the interface you use for everything that isn't done on the CLI. The GUI is what lets you find and open your files, or change your system's settings. Sure, you can do a lot of that on the command line in OSX. But most Mac users won't be working that way, and they shouldn't be forced to.
I am very leery of Aqua too, after having used OSX PB. It's a leap backwards from the current MacOS GUI. At least they made some concessions to the users, like putting the Apple menu back.
Good post. Too bad almost no one cares about this issue. Can't understant that.
The economy fared very well under Clinton, but I think the country lost something intangible at the same time.
Not excusing those, but, at least in the case of Ruby Ridge (and Waco, I think), the victims were armed.
Read up on Ruby Ridge. It will make you sick. One 14 year old kid, who was out hunting, was shot in the back after an agent shot his dog from cover and the frightened kid returned fire. The mom in the family was shot through the head while she was carrying a baby.
Randy Weaver, the subject of the investigation that led to the Ruby Ridge fiasco, is an awful person -- a separatist racist. But that doesn't excuse what happened. To this day he hasn't been convicted of anything.
The Waco folks were also weirdos for sure. But that situation was also fumbled by the Feds. The Waco people weren't violent -- had no history of it. The townsfolk were amazed that the feds didn't just pick up Koresh when he was out shopping for groceries, as he often did. Instead, the decision was made to escalate things. Madness.
This kind of thing is why a lot of Americans still go on and on about that pesky 2nd Amendment.
I always find it fascinating, talking to Taiwanese folks about the situation back home. In the mid-'90s, do you remember the "situation" in the Taiwan Strait? China was running some wargames, testing missiles, and generally being an aggressive pain in the ass. I knew a Taiwanese girl in school, and I talked to her about the situation. She told me that most Taiwanese think it is only a matter of time before China tries to take the ROC by military force. During the "crisis" in the mid-'90s, they didn't think the time had come -- but they seem to think it is inevitable at some point.
One of the finest Americans I know is a Taiwanese immigrant. He runs my local gun store. It's the classic immigrant-makes-good story. The store is open every day but Sunday -- including all holidays. "On American holidays, I am Taiwanese," he'd say. "And on Taiwanese holidays, I am American. Always open." Love that guy.
Wish I had a +1 Funny to give you.
I have a ferret myself but the image is classic.
What's wrong with Home Depot? Power tools... non-power tools... all kinds of gadgets and fasteners... It's almost as much of a geek paradise as Marvac Dow Electronics.
>If you liked VOR, good news, the creator's contract stipulated that rights reverted back to him.
Ack. Vor stinks. I can say that with confidence, because I wrote a big chunk of one of the sourcebooks. My editor padded my stuff by about 1/3 to make up for his incorrect estimate of the needed page count, so my stuff isn't even reading like my stuff. Yuck.
FASA pays late too. I hope Wizkids is run better.
Before West End got bought out by Yeti, it pissed away all its money and went bankrupt. Chapter 7. When they shut the doors they left a lot of employees out in the cold, missing thousands of $ worth of salary and expenses. It was hardly an organized exit strategy, like the FASA/Wizkids thing.
I know, I was one of the WEGers at the time. I worked from home in LA, on the Herc & Xena RPG.
The owners of WEG were the worst kind of corporate scum. At the end they strung their people along for a while, getting work out of them knowing that soon they'd be cut loose, uncompensated.
Did you know that WEG also owned an Italian shoe importing business? The fantastically successful game company kept paying off debts that the failing shoe business racked up. Eventually the shoe vampire drained them dry, and that was the end. As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up."
As "The H&X RPG Guy" for 6 months, I have HUNDREDS OF PAGES of Herc & Xena RPG materials that were commissioned but never paid for by WEG. The books were never printed, the freelancers were never paid, but I have a huge amount of ready-to-go material. I have contacted my freelancers, and almost unanimously they are in favor of releasing the material for free to the web, so at least SOME fans can enjoy it. The only thing stopping me is the fear of a lawsuit. But does WEG have any claim to the stuff? The studio at least could gripe about it... I don't know what to do. Maybe this should be an Ask Slashdot.
If people hack the X-box, Linux users will by up the suckers to setup Linux boxes. While these boxes cost MS money, and generate no sales revenue, it is another X-box sold. MS needs to have a big chunk of the marketshare, and if they can get another 5%-10% of the market this way, they will.
But Xboxen sold to Linux hackers won't be generating revenue from Xbox games. The sales may count towards marketshare figures, but they won't actually make MS any money unless the buyers use the box for the intended purpose once in a while.
Personally I HOPE this thing is violated ten ways the day it is released. It would be fun. I'm just not counting on it.
If MS is smart they'll engineer the Xbox so that nothing unapproved will boot on it. I'd love to see Xbox Linux but I doubt it will be easy to do, if it's possible at all.
(putting on flame-retardant suit...)
I have a friend who works at a California university. There is some kind of union present on campus. He has a tech job, and is not a union member, yet is forced to pay several hundred clams per month in union dues. The reason is that it "isn't fair for him to receive the benefits of union representation without paying."
He has constant disputes with the pointy-haired management, has a hostile workplace and a pack of other problems. Naturally the union does nothing for him, but he can't say, "don't represent me, I want nothing from you, and I don't want to give you any money."
It should be illegal to extort money from non-union members in this way.
Are you forgetting Full Metal Jacket, or did you dislike it?
One of the best war movies ever, IMHO, and definitely Kubrick's best movie. Can't watch the others over and over.
After seeing Eyes Wide Shut I think that Kubrick lost his mind in his old age. Like Arthur C. Clarke... his latest stuff has been crap.
I'm very excited to see AI, it's one of my favorite themes, but I remain skeptical about the quality of the film.
I was under the impression that Real bills you monthly for every stream, in addition to the license fee for the server. I don't know if this is true, but the people I was talking to made it sound like they nickel and dime you to death.
If we're just meat, then they are toasters.
I always used to call Data on ST:TNG "the toaster," which pissed off my wife. It's my preferred racial slur for intelligent machines.
"Sir, we have intercepted an alien recon pod."
"And?"
"It's full of toasters."
"Toasters?"
"Yes sir, small, chrome-plated machines with simple moving parts and heating elements."
"You're telling me that toasters dropped a rock on New York?"
"That is the lab's unfortunate conclusion, sir."
You are correct that you may not *need* to partition, but I personally would recommend it, or at least have 2 OS 9 system folders. OS X puts some stuff in your OS 9 system folder which can (in the PB) cause conflicts when running in OS 9.
Not to mention the fact that OSX re-arranges the hierarchy of everything, including where your system folder is, and this confuses the HELL out of some apps when you are in OS9. If you compound it with Multiple Users you'll find that it gets worse.
The best sceme, as others have said, seems to be 2 partitions with OS9 on both, so OSX doesn't mess with your OS9 boot environment.
Yeah, well, I have used OSX PB (dual-booting, 1 partition). I am not sure the interface IS a giant leap forward, or I wouldn't have posted my original comment.
I fear change, but only the senseless kind. There was talk long ago of not letting you put icons on the desktop on Rhapsody/OSX. It was a terrible idea and I'm glad it died.
How much of your favorite interface paradigm are YOU willing to sacrifice for the Next Big Thing?
[by Terry Bisson; originally appearing in OMNI Magazine]
Imagine if you will... the leader of the fifth invader force speaking to
the commander in chief...
"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of
the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way
through. They're completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the
stars."
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them.
The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made
the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to
believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only
sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence
that goes through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several
of their life spans, which didn't take too long. Do you have any idea
the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the
Weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the
Weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way
through."
"No brain?"
"Oh, there is a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of
meat!"
"So... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The
meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The
meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Finally, Yes. They are indeed made out meat. And they've been trying to
get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"So what does the meat have in mind?"
"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the
universe, contact other sentients, swap ideas and information. The
usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat?"
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio.
'Hello. Anyone out there? Anyone home?' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know
how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping
their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through
their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you
advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and log in any and all
sentient races or multibeings in the quadrant, without prejudice, fear,
or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget
the whole thing."
"I was hoping you would say that."
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact
with meat?"
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say?" `Hello, meat. How's
it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with
here?"
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers,
but they can't live on them. And being meat, they only travel through C
space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility
of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the universe."
"That's it."
"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones
who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you have probed? You're sure
they won't remember?"
"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads
and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's
dream."
"And we can mark this sector unoccupied."
"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others?
Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"
"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a
class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago,
wants to be friendly again."
"They always come around."
"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the universe
would be if one were all alone."
I've been a Mac user since the very beginning -- our family had a Mac 128k, and it went through a few upgrades before being replaced by a Plus... and on and on. I have the Mac GUI burned into my brain, and honestly it colors the way I relate to all GUIs, including Windows and Gnome.
On the one hand, I am jazzed about all the new features and unix-y goodness of OSX. On the other, I am terrified of the new interface. I have been using the PB, and I didn't like the interface. Maybe I am just picky; maybe it's because I have too much Mac history to abandon. But everything felt buried to me, hidden under layers of needless windows. I live by desktop shortcuts and the Apple Menu when I use my Mac. I arrange my Win & Debian desktops the same way, as much as possible.
The fact that Apple LISTENED to us and put back features like the Apple Menu is very encouraging. The fact that they changed things so radically inthe first place is frightening.
I'm afraid to jump wholeheartedly into OSX, so it's definitely a dual-boot setup for me. The Pismo's drive is already partitioned... I am looking forward to X-Day.
Hey... that's cool. At the least, a good thing for a story.
Wish I had a +1 for you.
Just because there isn't GNU software out for it doesn't mean that it isn't solved. The gov't is typical years ahead in crypto and other technologies, right?
Look, I used to work at a gov't shop where they were doing some crazy image-recognition work in the lab next door to mine. They had a table full of Hotwheels cars that they used to test the system. The computer's task was to pick a car out from the "parking lot", having been told what it looks like. You could partially cover the target, rotate it, etc. and the computer nailed it most of the time. This was in the early '90s, in an UNCLASSIFIED lab at JPL. I am sure the CLASSIFIED systems are much more advanced by now!
The problem ("problem," I should say "salvation") is that for now a computer that is fast enough and smart enough to understand "call the cops when you see THIS person") is too expensive to put on a lightpost. Probably too expensive and classified to be centrally located by a city government. But that isn't going to last. Someday those $99 webcams will have enough logic in them to spot people, license plates, crimes in progress, wayward youth and diaper rash. Then they'll infest our cities.
It is worth noting that the American freedom to own a gun is seen here as a reason that they have a per capita murder rate 100 times greater than ours.
:)
We have equal access to fists and sticks, and I bet our murder rate is higher with those weapons too. America is just a different culture -- it IS more violent here. I don't know why. But it isn't the guns.
In US cities where they pass laws allowing you to carry a concealed weapon, crime rates tend to go down. Check this link, which has stats on that, especially Florida, a recent case.
We can argue about statistics and sampling methods and all that crap if you want, but at the least the numbers make one thing clear: concealed carry laws don't make cities into Wild West bloodbaths, despite what anti-gun advocates may hope for.
I have OFTEN had discussions on this matter with friends from Australia. Their gun attitude is similar to the UK. It always amazes me how different we are, culturally, on this matter. The Aussies in the office thought the gun-totin' Americans were just INSANE, while we thought they were crazy for not caring about personal freedom, self defense, government control, etc. But we still managed to get along.
>Private US citizens with modest military training, would be absolutely no match against the US military.
Tell that to the Russian soldiers in Chechnya.
OK, in an all-out war of destruction, a neighborhood full of rifles isn't going to stop the military. They could obviously bomb the place into dust. But you are making the critical mistake of believing THAT IS HOW A REVOLUTIONARY WAR WOULD BE FOUGHT. It isn't.
The military needs to SUBDUE the population. Not destroy it. And an occupying, invading, pacifying force is terribly susceptible to the kind of warfare that armed citizens can produce. When every door and window might hide a rifleman, it makes the job of rounding up the malcontents a lot harder.
Going back to Chechnya, the Russian Army found this kind of warfare SO terrible that they DID resort to bombing the city. They shelled the hell out of Grozny. They bombed it with aircraft. They destroyed MOST of the city, and killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians, who were not actively resisting. And to this day, Russian soldiers in Grozny take their life in their hands. Snipers and carbombs still abound. Armed resistance against a "superior" military force can be effective.
The first time the Russians invaded Grozny, they occupied the city for a time, then were SOUNDLY whipped by the rebel forces. The Russians retreated. A couple of years later, they started the war we see today. (At least we used to see it, before it stopped being news.) Are the Russians in control of the city now? Technically, yes -- but only technically. But at what cost to them? And the Chechens show no signs of letting up. Those guys have some serious spirit.
A revolution isn't an easy thing. You don't do it overnight. But even against the standing army of a nation, the citizens CAN prevail. It has happened in our recent history.
>If Apple had gone with Be, they would have had an OS with a spare, functional interface, which booted in ten seconds and required not even 100 MB of hard drive space.
- Disk space isn't much of a problem these days.
- If you don't like Aqua wait for someone to port a different GUI to OSX.
- I could care less how long it takes to boot, because I won't be doing that much.
BeOS is cool, I have the demo version of 5 and play with it frequently. But I am happier having the Unixy goodness of OSX.
>tell the newspaper folks you're illiterate
I tell the newspaper people "I already subscribe." That always works, they get right off the phone. No one has challenged me.