Yeah, for some reason I read through these books in 1 or 2 evening, as his storytelling is very addictive indeed. And that was just the translation of his english book.
He succeeds brilliantly in explaining clearly how anti matter and quarks, hawking radiation, black holes and space time deformations are all logically tied into the mechanics of relativistic or quantum mechanic processes, without holding back important quirks in the theories or over emphasizing importance of certain details. He invites you to play with notions of timetravel, spacewarps and baby universes, as if you could reach out and touch the essence of these concepts in your mind. His books are among the best, and certainly a good suggestion for people who are curious about the Grand Theory of All, or just interested in reading up from the point where they dropped out of physics classes.
Even on "baloe" (you know which one I mean), it drenches all CPU
power. Try Leonidas and be afraid...very afraid..
Runs like a charm on this pIII:) Great site too, allthough some things didn`t work I think..
You should try this one, great design & great style: it`s the crouching tiger hidden dragon fan-site but be sure to have flash 4 installed, and a system not named Baloe:)
Naah, I don`t think Flash 4 is too bloated, it simply needs more power to run, and eventually, people will have this power and they won`t say it`s too bloated, because it delivers a nice extra touch to your webpage.. from a designers` perspective, I would even goso far as to say flashes capabilities are still rather poor. But then again, somewhere they had to decide where the plugg-in aspect remains important, and where standalone fast animation might be a better choice (through the use of accelerated video etc).. All in all, macromedia tools are heavily used these days because it gives webpages extra identity, makes them stand out, and frankly I think that evolution will only increase rather than decrease.. One can argue about the fact that supporting browsers do not allow plugg-in platforms to take full advantage of hardware and therefore, run through layers stacked on the browser`s canvas. I have no clue how these plugg-in`s work together with browsers but from the looks of it, I think they`re constrained by how the browser allows other clients to draw just about anything on the screen.. Most operations are fade-in fade-out, scaling, masking, moving, etc.. these are all rather easy things which still run slow on machines that definately can run them fast, given that they can take advantage of the raw hardware power in your machine. So I don`t think the plugg-in is to blame here.. but I don`t know for sure.
The truth is FLASH simply looks awesome when you`re surfing, and Netscape will generally be able to display FLASH sites without much of a problem.
Artists simply like to do crazy senseless stuff. A good artist can create an amzing experience while doing so. A successfull artist can do the same but with standard tools. Generally, the latter form is harder, constrainted, smells too kapitalistic and therefore is "not-done".
But don`t worry, your friend will eventually come to discover that, he needs to work differently, comply to standards etc, in order to be successfull.. artists generally take longer to get that into their head:).. they don`t want to "sell-out", things like that..
I should know since my grandparrents were both semi-successfull painting artists. Not that many people heard about em, but whatever..:) It took them ages to understand that their children need food to actually be able to go to school and all that, yeah.. loooong story;)
The plot had major holes (like the internal wounds and blood coughing somehow occurring,) but apparently people were willing to overlook them. A little more
consideration would have made the movie atleast decent but as we all know Hollywood often doesn't have that capability.
For what it's worth, I really can't remember the ending of the Matrix.
Come on.. you`re not being fair: e.g. it was explained in the movie that if the mind experiences serious beating or pain, then the body would respond by acting like so. "If the mind dies then your body dies too. ".. something like that..
The movie ended by Trinity kissing Neo when the guards were busy destroying the ship, and by that waking up Neo in the parallel world so he could stand up again after being shot and see the world as a Matrix, and finally kill Agent Smith.
Now, tell me you don`t remember "there is no spoon", and I`ll let you live:) (j/k)
Yes I think it was a great movie. And before I get slammed to death let me just tell you why:
It`s got a rithm that makes it totally different from any hollidwood movie, it`s got an incredibly fast pace which takes leaps in the story that jump just that little bit further than you expect them to be. It`s got style, special effects, great fighting sequences, an epic but not-so-classic underdogs-fight-higher-forces theme, with that extra touch of GITS running alongside. Most of all, it`s a romantic, optimistic and hotshot action movie that drags you into fantasylife, forcing you to see things differently, and thus appealing to people with an open mind for new angles, which is what us computer nerds are so good at, and like. I`ve seen it at least 6 times by now, and only now is it slowly starting to get booring. And through all this, the creators made sure all those ingredients certainly don`t claim too much of the time they need. Emotions and action switch so easily and uncontrolled that it can`t possibly be a holliwood movie. Add to that the fantastic soundtrack music that is being reused in movies even today (6th Day), the cyberworld setting and universal duality between alice in wonderland and our world, and you`re bound to get hooked by the unstoppable stream of inspiration and fantasy that seems to blend so seamlessly with the visuals..
It`s not a normal movie, it`s manga. The only difference with normal manga being the real shots instead of the drawn art. And taking into account other attempts at that like Batman, Dick tracy and the like, that all got *such* "incredibly positive critics" they had to be good, i think this one finally cleaned out the trashcans and set the record straight that the genre CAN spawn good movies.
At least, that`s only in my humble opinion ofcourse.. I would have loved to see the sequels, though I am being a bit affraid they won`t ever be able to top the first one of the series.. so maybe this isn`t such a bad thing to happen after all, as I`d rather stick with the good memory of one film, instead of having seen parts and bits of series with various random childish, epic, boring and tiresome episodes that no one seems to really like but "you got to have seen them anyway"..
Which means that for at least 5 years, AOL/TW will be under a government microscope -- if they so much as move to limit *non-premium* content from non
AOL/TW users, you'd bet they have the goverment on their backs before you can say 'censorship'. Even with the DOJ on their case, Microsoft is much more free to
do things now than AOL/TW is.
I don`t want to bring in politics, but that "government microscope" you mentioned, reportedly will tend to be less regulative towards big corporations, a small side effect of the recent election results.
If it is possible for a content provider AND network
provider to coexist as the same company while playing fair to all other content and network providers out there, then they might let further mergers go through. If
AOL/TW play rotten tricks, they'll take action to prevent this further.
I don`t think taking actions to reverse the merger are an easy option, because it would mean aknowledgement that current FCC policy is in error. As long as there are conflicting interests, when things really are being played tough and every little propaganda (addvertising if you like) does matter, these issues will become apparent, and usually these are exactly the moments people say it`s 'too late to do something abut it now' and 'we should never have let it come this far'..
But luckily I live in a part of the world where newscontent is bought from big networks we`re not supposed to know about.. ah, ignorance is bliss (not)..
In any case, a blank JVM doesn't amount to anything unless it has been demonstrated to run some common java benchmarks.
Ofcourse not. That`s not what I meant. What I meant is any device will be able to subset the library set because of the intrinsic reduced hardware functionality and specs, without compromising on the usefullness of the item. So dissing Java on that account, like you did, seems just strange to me.
In any case, maybe I *do* want to run staroffice on my phone, if the phone has a really nice speech recognition interface.
Well yes but if the phone has this really nice speech recognition interface then it will need a few megs or gigs on memory too, because at this stage quality speech requires sampleset databases, not fancy A.I... So I figure having a few libs on there won`t be such a big problem either;)
And lighten up on the buzzwords.
Sure:)
I know what you`re thinking.. and I do indeed feel a bit like I`m a Java advocat. But maybe that`s because I have 4 years of Java and 10 years of c++ experience. I won`t say Java is perfect. Far from it. In fact, c# +.NET is looking very good as an alternative.. theoretically. In practice, Java is out there, renewing the way software can be written, being acknowledged and copied for it, and it`s enabling many possibilities that were just unfeasable or impractical to implement before.
I think part of the reason why linux users "hate" Java so much, is because Open Source and Java are 2 boats that row the same stream. They both strive to make software as accessible, safe, documented, good and quick as possible. But I don`t think it`s necessary to make a clear choice.. Java has it`s uses, and so has the Open Source movement. Both can contribute to Linux. Another reason why Java doesn`t hit the Linux crowd with big enthusiasm is because Java has this stigma of being an `easy` language, and traditionally Linux`ers allways have been people that wanted to play around with more obscure and harder-to-deal-with stuff.. So imho it`s a bit of a sociological quirk, too. I don`t condemn that attitude but I think it limits the broadness of the view you could have on certain otherwise quite interresting things.. And there are probably more reasons for not liking Java much, but so far none seemed really smart to me..
But enough ranting.. I`m just positive about Java, and I`ll continue to try to make people see the possibilities it brings. In my view it`ll help push software languages in general into the next century together with our fancy appliances, and we all want those, don`t we:)
Besides, Java is only useful when it
has some windowing libraries and the like, those still need to be built for each cel phone or whatever device that the stuff will go on. I don't think
that something can really be touted as a Java implementation unless a large majority of the libs (javax.swing.*, etc) also exist. If you can't run
StarOffice on your cel phone, what good is it?
Excuse me, but using StarOffice on my cel phone is your ultimate idea of usefullness for Java on a cel phone? Hello ?
Java means WORA. PDA's, CellPhones and other small personal handheld devices aim to deliver the highest degree of functionality while staying relatively inexpensive. Having this new JVM adds the prospect of designers being able to tune their memory requirements very specifically towards the functional objectives of these devices. I think it's use is fairly obvious: the JVM will be able to download any code from anywhere and execute it safely, as any JVM should. This means your cell phone acts as a pluggin into a webservice rather than having to carry the whole caboodle with you.
It means your cellphone's hardware will need to be supporeted, and that's it. Anything else might be delivered over the net (in reality ofcourse this will be balanced out so the thing comes with the most common basic functionality and libraries). The advantages are legio.. new real-time updates of the internal software of your cellphone.. you name it..
If you really want to write a StarOffice document on your cellphone (which is a horrible thought on itself) you'll be swapping modules internally in your cellphone to access the code that is required at a specific instant of time.
Try to think differently.. these things have their uses, but people still have trouble to adjust their ways of using them, thinking about them, thinking about and exploring new hidden opportunities.. Java was built originally to serve this purpous, so the availability of this new KVM can only mean more possibilities, more ease, more joy.. don't think in old fashioned pardigma's like Java = { Libraries }.. it doesn't do justice to the mentality behind the concept.. even MS knows it's a proven model. It just needs to mature, grow and explore it's own boundaries.. and this will take much more time before the rules of the game will be totally clear to most.
Quite on the contrary. I think the more Linux will resemble a windows desktop, and the more applications will provide the same degree of userfriendlyness and GUI comfort, the more people might actually want to make a choice between the 2 platforms. So if linux wants to take the desktop by storm, it needs to target and please current windows users, because that's the largest group. Everybody talks about 'World Domination' these days, well, this is the way to do it. Look at GNOME, GIMP, GTK, KDE, ENLIGHTMENT.. these things sprang to life with that bold ambition firmly entrenched within. Windows2000 isn't bad from a regular user's perspective. It contains everything they want and need. The only thing it fails to provide is personal freedom, and an open culture. You're running microsoft code. Period. This is where linux can ultimately offer more. All the rest is details.
So no, these small distributions certainly have their uses, but any windows user can go out and buy a big 6 cd-set distribution any time for a very fair price. I'm curious if the point that was made earlier about the windows monopoly collapse will really hit the ground. If hardware prices continue to drop, things might indeed start shifting away from that microsoft tax fast!
Even if there really are that many extortion attempts, the problem is allways to find evidence of the break-in. While I understand this can be tough, a creditcard company might be expected to have serious security measures, with enough software and hardware installed to keep an eye on things. The fact that they couldn't even recognise that they had been visited without authority (not even after 4 months even) makes you wonder if this kind of e-business is possible at all (I'm supposing here that creditcards.com did everything in their power to have the most secure systems possible). The risk of your cardinfo getting hacked is not as low as we might hope. Considering the Pentagon gets hundreds of thousands of hacks a year, with the occasional 300 slipping in and about 10 % of that getting into the real deal, chances are sooner or later your cardnumber is going to get hacked.. heck.. maybe my cardnumber is allready on that list, I don't even have a clue!
Ok, this is all pure speculation on my account, and I don't want to sound bitter, but you catch my drift. Unless news like this keeps popping up, how can I convince my family that this is what they should try to get accustomed to because it's simply a new, smarter, easier, and still safe way to spend their money..
In the meantime, not knowing what goes on with our money kinda seems totally unfair to me, allthough in many cases this can be experienced more as a convenience.. but then usually our money is not at jeopardy either..
Probably the hacking didn`t target the database itself, but used more conventional ways of getting into the system. In any case, even firewalled and password protected ssl dbase connections can`t stop someone from getting in if he has enough knowledge about the system and it`s protocols. And usually this can only be the case if someone lets a security fish out of the box for some reason..
Isn`t it ironic that the affiliates of the company are listed under "e-commerce solutions : success stories".. if I would be a customer, that would certainly bug me. What REALLY bugs me, is that this story is allready 4 months old + that the news came from the hacker, not the company. I would certainly think #NAN times again before using one of their 'success story affiliates' again, because a bankcompany that doesn`t even warn me that my creditcarddata might compromized is ranked much much lower than one that does at least have the guts to tell me, at least in my book.
They (NSI) are given the right to sell the domain names, as the legal contractor that the US has appointed. By accepting that task they submitted to a set of rules and regulations that should preventany abuse of this kind. Ofcourse I'm no lawyer so i totally have no idea how far these regulations do in fact go, but obviously blocking names from being sold because they sound extra-profitable to the registration company should be in there somewhere..
So I think (& hope) that eyeondomain.com has a good chance of winning this case.
Re:Well maybe there's a valid reason.
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"Intel topping the charts"? What news have you been reading? Can anyone name a real technology breakthrough like this that
Intel has come up with in the last 5 years? The only thing Intel tops the charts in is announcements of lower-than-expected
earnings and recalls of their newest processors. There's no "technology deathmatch"--IBM is winning, hands-down. Intel is just
a crappy monopolistic giant trying to force second-rate technology like RAMBUS down everyone's throat. Even worse, I have
to work at this dump... I'm going to be looking to move to IBM as soon as possible.
Well if you scroll Slashdot's homepage down just a tad bit further you'll notice the post announcing 30 nanometer transistor technology achieved by Intel. Don't be blinded by the hype. This company has made some bad decisions in the past but that doesn't mean they can't come up with nifty hardware tech anymore.
Just out of curiosity, what job do you have at Intel ?
Well maybe there's a valid reason.
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Those researchers don't get the respect they deserve because normal people don't rate those breakthroughs as high, because the need for such technical progression, from their point of view, is simply not graspable for them. It's not as apparent anymore, because the applicaitons they use allready run.. on a functional level, computers have little more to offer, it can only get faster and easier to use, but that's about it.
So sure, in the good old days, people cared to go from 16 mhz to 40. Even though that was a small step, together with a few other enhancements to the system architecture, it made windows 3.11 a reality (I'm not trying to say windows is my criterium for progression here, it's just the OS I used back then).
Now clockspeeds jump from 1.1ghz to 1.5ghz or whatever, but John Doe doesn't care about this.. he cares about reading his email now. Windows 2000 runs fine on his 166 or 180, he doesn't really need "faster", that is just a convenience that 'happens automatically when you buy a new pc". The ones who need "faster" are the ones playing games, like his kids perhaps, but then you also see that todays games and gamesystems are shifting allmost completely into a dedicated market. PS2, DC, Xbox,..
I'm NOT saying chipmakers should stop getting on with their new designs and research. *I* WANT these fast things as much as the next guy who likes to game every now and then. But to most people, the difference between 1.1 and 1.5 means as much as the difference between windows 98 and 98OSR2 I think.
Still, *clap* *clap* for Big Blue!.. the one minute it's Intel topping the charts, the next it's IBM.. seems like technology deathmatch at times..
And the number one rule of gaming, BTW, is never, never, NEVER advocate a game that you have not actually played. Even after being repeatedly burned by over-hyped games that turned out to be disappointing, some people just never learn.
You`re right. I was a bit over the top with MGS2 there, but what I`ve seen so far looks very promissing. I also expect to see a lot from Oni, if it ever comes out. I`m not exactly the type of guy to get burned over by gamehypes, since I don`t play many to begin with, and I don`t buy (m)any to end with..If the game gets extremely good reviews, like Unreal did, I buy it. I only played doom and quake I and q3atest because those were either free or ok for an hour or so. Q2 sucked so big I never cared much.. besides I think the doom genre is at it`s end.. games like Sacrifice are much much more fun, and that has some todo with the intelligent graphics system, but also with the gameplay and AI. Which is exactly why I want to try out MGS2. Which is exactly why I want reviews on it. I`ve seen it been played, so I know it`s possible to do these rviews.. But they just don`t happen for some odd reason.
Why do you think Intel did have so much trouble in satisfying demand in the fist place?
The cost to produce a fully functional unit is much higher than, say, in 1995. Chips take up much more space on wafers, the chances of defects are much higher, and the technology to produce these wafers requires hard, costly research.
It`s being estimated that those 10Ghz chips will cost so much on research and equipment that chip manufacturers will never be able to produce enough of them to make them profittable, also because the interest group for such hihg-end chips increasingly drops in numbers. The kind of chips in my (and your) refrigerater doesn`t exactly need to do 42million operations a sec, or does it.. so while chips are certainly common in our society, I still wonder about 10Ghz desktop`s (dishwashers) for the verage user..
This is THE game I`ve seen quickies on that really raised my appetite for getting one of those ps2`s (but I didn`t). Silent Hill 2 being the close second. Where are THOSE reviews ? It seems SharkyGames settled wih just about evey lame pc convert there is, and the reviews are not exactly refreshing or in-depth either. Surely there are lots more goodies out there, maybe not yet released, but close to that point. If you`re going to give an overview of the best ps2 games, at least give ratings and propper content. This site still leaves me hanging in the dark.
That unusually large leap over there can easily be explained if you put AMD`s evolution next to it. Around the same time the PII was developped, a lot of Intel`s engeneers jumped ship and started working on the Athlon, which pushed intel to accellerate it`s development again. It can also be noted that allthough 1.5GHz will be available in the first or second quarter of 2001, we should also take into account that intel has been having serious trouble to generate enough PIII`s and PIV`s, so this doesn`t really depict the evolution on an average scale.
And btw, I bought a pentium pro 180 in 96 (actually I wanted a 200 dual motherboard, but all that candy wasn`t available in Belgium at that time, and I needed something to replace my 486dx badly)
To react to the previous post: No you shouldn`t be that surprised. Moore`s Law predicts that by miniaturizing components further, the rate of speed increase in switcheable components will increase itself. But the real issue at hand here, is not Moore`s law, but the fact that we must technically be ABLE to put it into practice. Miniaturizing chips on the nanolevel requires different techniques than we are using today. The frequency properties of photons make them unsuitable for masking out patterns in silicon dring the annealing process, e.g. The fact that Intel cuts it, is still a breakthrough.
But what really gets me going is that people buy 2000$ computers to read email and surf the web these days. Do we really need 10 Ghz ? Sure, we`ve been saying that in the past as well, and software will continue to become more complex, more flexible, more interface driven perhaps.. but 10 Ghz for Joe`s consumer desktop pc ? I dunno. Ofcourse I`ll want one myself, but I don`t consider me as the average desktop pc user.
So I don`t know how w-intel will play bigshot marketeer again towards these evolutions, but I`m sure it will look rather silly at best.
If there were no value added, there would be no reason to use my.mp3.com, even if it were free. You're not paying for the right to listen to your music. You're paying MP3.com for the
service of streaming your music to you. If you don't like it, bring the CD with you. Just because you bought the music doesn't mean that companies should be falling all over themselves
to make it easy for you to listen to it whenever and wherever you want.
This would hold if you didn`t have to bring along cd`s to proove you`re really really really listening to our own music.. That practical quirk renders this model totally useless. Sure, it might be streaming, but who needs streaming if they have to carry a set of cd`s with them anyway. Kind of defy`s the original concept of my.mp3.com, doesn`t it. Besides, 25 cd`s online is not THAT much of a deal, I`ll take my Creative portablee instead. So yes, added value, but added impractical cost too.
Like allways, the lawyer`s are trying to shape the world as they seem fit. The end result will be a technology battle which will "seek out new life and civilisations" beyond the laws of those who create them, time and time again. I`m not exactly sure if that`s a bad thing. New applications and devices like the Creative or Rio mp3 players will continue to defy whatever lawfull rulings people can try to constrain evolution.
But in the end, I hope even those judges will think about their lawsystem which now enhances the juridical differences between realworld appliances (you can copy your own) and online appliances(you can`t copy, or you got to proove it), however indirect the consequences may be of their court decissions. As long as new media will be available that enables the masses to copy and transfer, the future has no choice but to open up laws and constraints towards other similar appliances as well. And if we should be disallowed to copy, the world stops turning, or 80% of it is turning into a criminal. They don`t really have a choice, they just don`t realise it yet.. Too bad my.mp3.com takes the first hit of the battle.
So while on the one hand, I don`t like what judges come up with when they keep trying to make their ancient copyright system work, on the other hand it won`t matter anyway, since evolution will find a natural way out eventually. We just got to stay smart and search for new opportunties and applications.. imho it`ll take some more time, yes, but we can`t loose this one..
Moments like this make you think if the juridical copryright system is not inherently flawed again.. Stephen King tried to explore new possibilities, but his case is special. I wonder if the new generations can be as open to these new ways of running a society with new laws: shared responsibility and self regulation. You pay for something you don`t explicitly _have_ to pay for ( but if you don`t pay chances are higher that you`ll never be able to read a book of him again ).. it`s a nice concept, but it`s still too early to really tell if it`ll ever work or not... The same probably goes for musical art & content.
Oh is that so.. I don`t really remember that conference, so it probably wasn`t that big a breakthrough either..
Actually I think that Billy was the best president you people have ever had.. Bill & Gore atleast TALKed about economy and ecology. I personally would have liked Gore to continue that trend. I think the past 2 administrations, appart from loosing face big time every now and then, has really dealth with some important issues. I don`t think Bush can govern in a respectable way.. He`ll be the puppet of his advisors. For all he cares, the queen of Sheva rules the Kremlin. Gore, atleast, has been a primary witness to how things can be accomplished..
I like the article, but I would have written it upside down. The important part is indeed that science can convince governments to take action. An impressive reduction of CFC`s is the nice outcome in this case. But while it is one positive evolution, it fails to mention that CFC`s are being replaced by even more toxic substitutes (which don`t temper with the ozone layer, but just us). Anyway, it`s a real good thing the model predicts healing, but we`ll have to stay put and watch if things are really going the right way, so don`t blow your cans just yet. Both Europe and America do have some more cleaning up to do.
It also suggests that the conference in The Hagues about global warning (which was just the extension of the Kyoto conference 2 years ago) should have been enough reason for America to stop playing tough guy and aknowledge that we do actually have a fuel problem. In the last 5 years, flooding of towns, shifting of land, hurricanes and cyclones, have been very frequent in the news. And while we might not have the numbers or the models to agree on the scientific part of things yet, I think everybody is fairly convinced that producing as much carbon dioxide as possible isn`t going to help. The only ones that benefit from that are the ones at the top, who don`t run a government, but thier own bank account. (and sometimes, the difference is slim, which makes those issues even more acute.)..
When I heard the news that after Kyoto also The Hagues had failed, I felt really sad. Maybe if we`d organise such a conference in Washington DC, right under the nose of your president (well.. let`s assume you have a president..), maybe that would make you guys open your eyes.. it IS hartwarming to see that the green party is starting to play a factor in national elections, and I hope it will grow in size and strength. At least that shwows evidence that some US citizens are also concerned with their environment, good family life, healthy food etc.. just like us europeans.. And now I`m going to stop cuz I sound like Bono/U2:)
I haven't really looked at Object Pascal or Delphi yet, but I've heard many good comments about both. I've programmed in Turbo Pascal in my earlier days, and I help students with beron-2, so I know how Pascal code reads. Still I prefer c++ or Java for coding, just because they somehow feel different.. I guess it's just a matter of taste.. oh well...
I wasn't saying that Java is THE only good language out there either, it just has some nice advantages over c++ programming. But that doesn't render c++ obsolete either. Delphi's user base is large and profound, and I'm sure it's a very decent language. Java has been playing the game totally differently, making browsers a possible platform to run applications right from the web, which ofcourse contributed to the hype that SUN created when it launched Java. They have different interest groups. Delphi benefitted also from the fact that it could take Pascal coders along for the ride, and there's nothing wrong with that. Java tries to take on and convert c++ coders.
Anyway, I think you should allways use the right tools for the right job, and search for new possibilities wherever you can. I don't really think there will be a THE language in the future. There's allways something new around the corner, ready to stirr up things again.. and wether it's Borland or SUN or MS or Mr John Doe's 10 Cents Enterprise, I don't care one bit.. Borland's JBuilder is one of the nicest applications I've seen in a long logn time.. too bad it's still so slow.. I hope they will fix that soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, for some reason I read through these books in 1 or 2 evening, as his storytelling is very addictive indeed. And that was just the translation of his english book.
He succeeds brilliantly in explaining clearly how anti matter and quarks, hawking radiation, black holes and space time deformations are all logically tied into the mechanics of relativistic or quantum mechanic processes, without holding back important quirks in the theories or over emphasizing importance of certain details. He invites you to play with notions of timetravel, spacewarps and baby universes, as if you could reach out and touch the essence of these concepts in your mind. His books are among the best, and certainly a good suggestion for people who are curious about the Grand Theory of All, or just interested in reading up from the point where they dropped out of physics classes.
Even on "baloe" (you know which one I mean), it drenches all CPU power. Try Leonidas and be afraid...very afraid..
:) Great site too, allthough some things didn`t work I think..
:)
a sh/
Runs like a charm on this pIII
You should try this one, great design & great style: it`s the crouching tiger hidden dragon fan-site but be sure to have flash 4 installed, and a system not named Baloe
Naah, I don`t think Flash 4 is too bloated, it simply needs more power to run, and eventually, people will have this power and they won`t say it`s too bloated, because it delivers a nice extra touch to your webpage.. from a designers` perspective, I would even goso far as to say flashes capabilities are still rather poor. But then again, somewhere they had to decide where the plugg-in aspect remains important, and where standalone fast animation might be a better choice (through the use of accelerated video etc).. All in all, macromedia tools are heavily used these days because it gives webpages extra identity, makes them stand out, and frankly I think that evolution will only increase rather than decrease.. One can argue about the fact that supporting browsers do not allow plugg-in platforms to take full advantage of hardware and therefore, run through layers stacked on the browser`s canvas. I have no clue how these plugg-in`s work together with browsers but from the looks of it, I think they`re constrained by how the browser allows other clients to draw just about anything on the screen.. Most operations are fade-in fade-out, scaling, masking, moving, etc.. these are all rather easy things which still run slow on machines that definately can run them fast, given that they can take advantage of the raw hardware power in your machine. So I don`t think the plugg-in is to blame here.. but I don`t know for sure.
If you like to see what cool flash demo`s can look like, get a look at these things: ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/parties/2000/bizarre00/fl
The truth is FLASH simply looks awesome when you`re surfing, and Netscape will generally be able to display FLASH sites without much of a problem.
Artists simply like to do crazy senseless stuff. A good artist can create an amzing experience while doing so. A successfull artist can do the same but with standard tools. Generally, the latter form is harder, constrainted, smells too kapitalistic and therefore is "not-done".
But don`t worry, your friend will eventually come to discover that, he needs to work differently, comply to standards etc, in order to be successfull.. artists generally take longer to get that into their head
I should know since my grandparrents were both semi-successfull painting artists. Not that many people heard about em, but whatever..
The plot had major holes (like the internal wounds and blood coughing somehow occurring,) but apparently people were willing to overlook them. A little more consideration would have made the movie atleast decent but as we all know Hollywood often doesn't have that capability. For what it's worth, I really can't remember the ending of the Matrix.
:) (j/k)
Come on.. you`re not being fair: e.g. it was explained in the movie that if the mind experiences serious beating or pain, then the body would respond by acting like so. "If the mind dies then your body dies too. ".. something like that..
The movie ended by Trinity kissing Neo when the guards were busy destroying the ship, and by that waking up Neo in the parallel world so he could stand up again after being shot and see the world as a Matrix, and finally kill Agent Smith.
Now, tell me you don`t remember "there is no spoon", and I`ll let you live
Yes I think it was a great movie. And before I get slammed to death let me just tell you why:
It`s got a rithm that makes it totally different from any hollidwood movie, it`s got an incredibly fast pace which takes leaps in the story that jump just that little bit further than you expect them to be. It`s got style, special effects, great fighting sequences, an epic but not-so-classic underdogs-fight-higher-forces theme, with that extra touch of GITS running alongside. Most of all, it`s a romantic, optimistic and hotshot action movie that drags you into fantasylife, forcing you to see things differently, and thus appealing to people with an open mind for new angles, which is what us computer nerds are so good at, and like. I`ve seen it at least 6 times by now, and only now is it slowly starting to get booring. And through all this, the creators made sure all those ingredients certainly don`t claim too much of the time they need. Emotions and action switch so easily and uncontrolled that it can`t possibly be a holliwood movie. Add to that the fantastic soundtrack music that is being reused in movies even today (6th Day), the cyberworld setting and universal duality between alice in wonderland and our world, and you`re bound to get hooked by the unstoppable stream of inspiration and fantasy that seems to blend so seamlessly with the visuals..
It`s not a normal movie, it`s manga. The only difference with normal manga being the real shots instead of the drawn art. And taking into account other attempts at that like Batman, Dick tracy and the like, that all got *such* "incredibly positive critics" they had to be good, i think this one finally cleaned out the trashcans and set the record straight that the genre CAN spawn good movies.
At least, that`s only in my humble opinion ofcourse.. I would have loved to see the sequels, though I am being a bit affraid they won`t ever be able to top the first one of the series.. so maybe this isn`t such a bad thing to happen after all, as I`d rather stick with the good memory of one film, instead of having seen parts and bits of series with various random childish, epic, boring and tiresome episodes that no one seems to really like but "you got to have seen them anyway"..
And now you can slam me..
Which means that for at least 5 years, AOL/TW will be under a government microscope -- if they so much as move to limit *non-premium* content from non AOL/TW users, you'd bet they have the goverment on their backs before you can say 'censorship'. Even with the DOJ on their case, Microsoft is much more free to do things now than AOL/TW is.
I don`t want to bring in politics, but that "government microscope" you mentioned, reportedly will tend to be less regulative towards big corporations, a small side effect of the recent election results.If it is possible for a content provider AND network provider to coexist as the same company while playing fair to all other content and network providers out there, then they might let further mergers go through. If AOL/TW play rotten tricks, they'll take action to prevent this further.
I don`t think taking actions to reverse the merger are an easy option, because it would mean aknowledgement that current FCC policy is in error. As long as there are conflicting interests, when things really are being played tough and every little propaganda (addvertising if you like) does matter, these issues will become apparent, and usually these are exactly the moments people say it`s 'too late to do something abut it now' and 'we should never have let it come this far'..But luckily I live in a part of the world where newscontent is bought from big networks we`re not supposed to know about.. ah, ignorance is bliss (not)..
First, about the merger itself, some reactions from a few known and lesser-known people, and lastly a bit of content about what this means for competitive news&webcontent enterprises.
In any case, a blank JVM doesn't amount to anything unless it has been demonstrated to run some common java benchmarks.
;)
:)
.NET is looking very good as an alternative.. theoretically. In practice, Java is out there, renewing the way software can be written, being acknowledged and copied for it, and it`s enabling many possibilities that were just unfeasable or impractical to implement before.
:)
Ofcourse not. That`s not what I meant. What I meant is any device will be able to subset the library set because of the intrinsic reduced hardware functionality and specs, without compromising on the usefullness of the item. So dissing Java on that account, like you did, seems just strange to me.
In any case, maybe I *do* want to run staroffice on my phone, if the phone has a really nice speech recognition interface.
Well yes but if the phone has this really nice speech recognition interface then it will need a few megs or gigs on memory too, because at this stage quality speech requires sampleset databases, not fancy A.I... So I figure having a few libs on there won`t be such a big problem either
And lighten up on the buzzwords.
Sure
I know what you`re thinking.. and I do indeed feel a bit like I`m a Java advocat. But maybe that`s because I have 4 years of Java and 10 years of c++ experience. I won`t say Java is perfect. Far from it. In fact, c# +
I think part of the reason why linux users "hate" Java so much, is because Open Source and Java are 2 boats that row the same stream. They both strive to make software as accessible, safe, documented, good and quick as possible. But I don`t think it`s necessary to make a clear choice.. Java has it`s uses, and so has the Open Source movement. Both can contribute to Linux. Another reason why Java doesn`t hit the Linux crowd with big enthusiasm is because Java has this stigma of being an `easy` language, and traditionally Linux`ers allways have been people that wanted to play around with more obscure and harder-to-deal-with stuff.. So imho it`s a bit of a sociological quirk, too. I don`t condemn that attitude but I think it limits the broadness of the view you could have on certain otherwise quite interresting things.. And there are probably more reasons for not liking Java much, but so far none seemed really smart to me..
But enough ranting.. I`m just positive about Java, and I`ll continue to try to make people see the possibilities it brings. In my view it`ll help push software languages in general into the next century together with our fancy appliances, and we all want those, don`t we
Besides, Java is only useful when it has some windowing libraries and the like, those still need to be built for each cel phone or whatever device that the stuff will go on. I don't think that something can really be touted as a Java implementation unless a large majority of the libs (javax.swing.*, etc) also exist. If you can't run StarOffice on your cel phone, what good is it?
Excuse me, but using StarOffice on my cel phone is your ultimate idea of usefullness for Java on a cel phone? Hello ?
Java means WORA. PDA's, CellPhones and other small personal handheld devices aim to deliver the highest degree of functionality while staying relatively inexpensive. Having this new JVM adds the prospect of designers being able to tune their memory requirements very specifically towards the functional objectives of these devices. I think it's use is fairly obvious: the JVM will be able to download any code from anywhere and execute it safely, as any JVM should. This means your cell phone acts as a pluggin into a webservice rather than having to carry the whole caboodle with you. It means your cellphone's hardware will need to be supporeted, and that's it. Anything else might be delivered over the net (in reality ofcourse this will be balanced out so the thing comes with the most common basic functionality and libraries). The advantages are legio.. new real-time updates of the internal software of your cellphone.. you name it..
If you really want to write a StarOffice document on your cellphone (which is a horrible thought on itself) you'll be swapping modules internally in your cellphone to access the code that is required at a specific instant of time.
Try to think differently.. these things have their uses, but people still have trouble to adjust their ways of using them, thinking about them, thinking about and exploring new hidden opportunities.. Java was built originally to serve this purpous, so the availability of this new KVM can only mean more possibilities, more ease, more joy.. don't think in old fashioned pardigma's like Java = { Libraries }.. it doesn't do justice to the mentality behind the concept.. even MS knows it's a proven model. It just needs to mature, grow and explore it's own boundaries.. and this will take much more time before the rules of the game will be totally clear to most.
Quite on the contrary. I think the more Linux will resemble a windows desktop, and the more applications will provide the same degree of userfriendlyness and GUI comfort, the more people might actually want to make a choice between the 2 platforms. So if linux wants to take the desktop by storm, it needs to target and please current windows users, because that's the largest group. Everybody talks about 'World Domination' these days, well, this is the way to do it. Look at GNOME, GIMP, GTK, KDE, ENLIGHTMENT.. these things sprang to life with that bold ambition firmly entrenched within. Windows2000 isn't bad from a regular user's perspective. It contains everything they want and need. The only thing it fails to provide is personal freedom, and an open culture. You're running microsoft code. Period. This is where linux can ultimately offer more. All the rest is details.
So no, these small distributions certainly have their uses, but any windows user can go out and buy a big 6 cd-set distribution any time for a very fair price. I'm curious if the point that was made earlier about the windows monopoly collapse will really hit the ground. If hardware prices continue to drop, things might indeed start shifting away from that microsoft tax fast!
Even if there really are that many extortion attempts, the problem is allways to find evidence of the break-in. While I understand this can be tough, a creditcard company might be expected to have serious security measures, with enough software and hardware installed to keep an eye on things. The fact that they couldn't even recognise that they had been visited without authority (not even after 4 months even) makes you wonder if this kind of e-business is possible at all (I'm supposing here that creditcards.com did everything in their power to have the most secure systems possible). The risk of your cardinfo getting hacked is not as low as we might hope. Considering the Pentagon gets hundreds of thousands of hacks a year, with the occasional 300 slipping in and about 10 % of that getting into the real deal, chances are sooner or later your cardnumber is going to get hacked.. heck.. maybe my cardnumber is allready on that list, I don't even have a clue!
Ok, this is all pure speculation on my account, and I don't want to sound bitter, but you catch my drift. Unless news like this keeps popping up, how can I convince my family that this is what they should try to get accustomed to because it's simply a new, smarter, easier, and still safe way to spend their money..
In the meantime, not knowing what goes on with our money kinda seems totally unfair to me, allthough in many cases this can be experienced more as a convenience
Probably the hacking didn`t target the database itself, but used more conventional ways of getting into the system. In any case, even firewalled and password protected ssl dbase connections can`t stop someone from getting in if he has enough knowledge about the system and it`s protocols. And usually this can only be the case if someone lets a security fish out of the box for some reason..
Isn`t it ironic that the affiliates of the company are listed under "e-commerce solutions : success stories".. if I would be a customer, that would certainly bug me. What REALLY bugs me, is that this story is allready 4 months old + that the news came from the hacker, not the company. I would certainly think #NAN times again before using one of their 'success story affiliates' again, because a bankcompany that doesn`t even warn me that my creditcarddata might compromized is ranked much much lower than one that does at least have the guts to tell me, at least in my book.
They (NSI) are given the right to sell the domain names, as the legal contractor that the US has appointed. By accepting that task they submitted to a set of rules and regulations that should preventany abuse of this kind. Ofcourse I'm no lawyer so i totally have no idea how far these regulations do in fact go, but obviously blocking names from being sold because they sound extra-profitable to the registration company should be in there somewhere..
So I think (& hope) that eyeondomain.com has a good chance of winning this case.
"Intel topping the charts"? What news have you been reading? Can anyone name a real technology breakthrough like this that Intel has come up with in the last 5 years? The only thing Intel tops the charts in is announcements of lower-than-expected earnings and recalls of their newest processors. There's no "technology deathmatch"--IBM is winning, hands-down. Intel is just a crappy monopolistic giant trying to force second-rate technology like RAMBUS down everyone's throat. Even worse, I have to work at this dump... I'm going to be looking to move to IBM as soon as possible.
Well if you scroll Slashdot's homepage down just a tad bit further you'll notice the post announcing 30 nanometer transistor technology achieved by Intel. Don't be blinded by the hype. This company has made some bad decisions in the past but that doesn't mean they can't come up with nifty hardware tech anymore.
Just out of curiosity, what job do you have at Intel ?
Those researchers don't get the respect they deserve because normal people don't rate those breakthroughs as high, because the need for such technical progression, from their point of view, is simply not graspable for them. It's not as apparent anymore, because the applicaitons they use allready run.. on a functional level, computers have little more to offer, it can only get faster and easier to use, but that's about it.
So sure, in the good old days, people cared to go from 16 mhz to 40. Even though that was a small step, together with a few other enhancements to the system architecture, it made windows 3.11 a reality (I'm not trying to say windows is my criterium for progression here, it's just the OS I used back then).
Now clockspeeds jump from 1.1ghz to 1.5ghz or whatever, but John Doe doesn't care about this.. he cares about reading his email now. Windows 2000 runs fine on his 166 or 180, he doesn't really need "faster", that is just a convenience that 'happens automatically when you buy a new pc". The ones who need "faster" are the ones playing games, like his kids perhaps, but then you also see that todays games and gamesystems are shifting allmost completely into a dedicated market. PS2, DC, Xbox,..
I'm NOT saying chipmakers should stop getting on with their new designs and research. *I* WANT these fast things as much as the next guy who likes to game every now and then. But to most people, the difference between 1.1 and 1.5 means as much as the difference between windows 98 and 98OSR2 I think.
Still, *clap* *clap* for Big Blue!.. the one minute it's Intel topping the charts, the next it's IBM.. seems like technology deathmatch at times..
And the number one rule of gaming, BTW, is never, never, NEVER advocate a game that you have not actually played. Even after being repeatedly burned by over-hyped games that turned out to be disappointing, some people just never learn.
You`re right. I was a bit over the top with MGS2 there, but what I`ve seen so far looks very promissing. I also expect to see a lot from Oni, if it ever comes out. I`m not exactly the type of guy to get burned over by gamehypes, since I don`t play many to begin with, and I don`t buy (m)any to end with..If the game gets extremely good reviews, like Unreal did, I buy it. I only played doom and quake I and q3atest because those were either free or ok for an hour or so. Q2 sucked so big I never cared much.. besides I think the doom genre is at it`s end.. games like Sacrifice are much much more fun, and that has some todo with the intelligent graphics system, but also with the gameplay and AI. Which is exactly why I want to try out MGS2. Which is exactly why I want reviews on it. I`ve seen it been played, so I know it`s possible to do these rviews.. But they just don`t happen for some odd reason.
Ok yeah, I see your point, but it`s kinda moot.
Why do you think Intel did have so much trouble in satisfying demand in the fist place?
The cost to produce a fully functional unit is much higher than, say, in 1995. Chips take up much more space on wafers, the chances of defects are much higher, and the technology to produce these wafers requires hard, costly research.
It`s being estimated that those 10Ghz chips will cost so much on research and equipment that chip manufacturers will never be able to produce enough of them to make them profittable, also because the interest group for such hihg-end chips increasingly drops in numbers. The kind of chips in my (and your) refrigerater doesn`t exactly need to do 42million operations a sec, or does it.. so while chips are certainly common in our society, I still wonder about 10Ghz desktop`s (dishwashers) for the verage user..
This is THE game I`ve seen quickies on that really raised my appetite for getting one of those ps2`s (but I didn`t). Silent Hill 2 being the close second. Where are THOSE reviews ? It seems SharkyGames settled wih just about evey lame pc convert there is, and the reviews are not exactly refreshing or in-depth either. Surely there are lots more goodies out there, maybe not yet released, but close to that point. If you`re going to give an overview of the best ps2 games, at least give ratings and propper content. This site still leaves me hanging in the dark.
That unusually large leap over there can easily be explained if you put AMD`s evolution next to it. Around the same time the PII was developped, a lot of Intel`s engeneers jumped ship and started working on the Athlon, which pushed intel to accellerate it`s development again. It can also be noted that allthough 1.5GHz will be available in the first or second quarter of 2001, we should also take into account that intel has been having serious trouble to generate enough PIII`s and PIV`s, so this doesn`t really depict the evolution on an average scale.
And btw, I bought a pentium pro 180 in 96 (actually I wanted a 200 dual motherboard, but all that candy wasn`t available in Belgium at that time, and I needed something to replace my 486dx badly)
To react to the previous post: No you shouldn`t be that surprised. Moore`s Law predicts that by miniaturizing components further, the rate of speed increase in switcheable components will increase itself. But the real issue at hand here, is not Moore`s law, but the fact that we must technically be ABLE to put it into practice. Miniaturizing chips on the nanolevel requires different techniques than we are using today. The frequency properties of photons make them unsuitable for masking out patterns in silicon dring the annealing process, e.g. The fact that Intel cuts it, is still a breakthrough.
But what really gets me going is that people buy 2000$ computers to read email and surf the web these days. Do we really need 10 Ghz ? Sure, we`ve been saying that in the past as well, and software will continue to become more complex, more flexible, more interface driven perhaps.. but 10 Ghz for Joe`s consumer desktop pc ? I dunno. Ofcourse I`ll want one myself, but I don`t consider me as the average desktop pc user.
So I don`t know how w-intel will play bigshot marketeer again towards these evolutions, but I`m sure it will look rather silly at best.
If there were no value added, there would be no reason to use my.mp3.com, even if it were free. You're not paying for the right to listen to your music. You're paying MP3.com for the service of streaming your music to you. If you don't like it, bring the CD with you. Just because you bought the music doesn't mean that companies should be falling all over themselves to make it easy for you to listen to it whenever and wherever you want.
This would hold if you didn`t have to bring along cd`s to proove you`re really really really listening to our own music.. That practical quirk renders this model totally useless. Sure, it might be streaming, but who needs streaming if they have to carry a set of cd`s with them anyway. Kind of defy`s the original concept of my.mp3.com, doesn`t it. Besides, 25 cd`s online is not THAT much of a deal, I`ll take my Creative portablee instead. So yes, added value, but added impractical cost too.
Like allways, the lawyer`s are trying to shape the world as they seem fit. The end result will be a technology battle which will "seek out new life and civilisations" beyond the laws of those who create them, time and time again. I`m not exactly sure if that`s a bad thing. New applications and devices like the Creative or Rio mp3 players will continue to defy whatever lawfull rulings people can try to constrain evolution.
But in the end, I hope even those judges will think about their lawsystem which now enhances the juridical differences between realworld appliances (you can copy your own) and online appliances(you can`t copy, or you got to proove it), however indirect the consequences may be of their court decissions. As long as new media will be available that enables the masses to copy and transfer, the future has no choice but to open up laws and constraints towards other similar appliances as well. And if we should be disallowed to copy, the world stops turning, or 80% of it is turning into a criminal. They don`t really have a choice, they just don`t realise it yet.. Too bad my.mp3.com takes the first hit of the battle.
So while on the one hand, I don`t like what judges come up with when they keep trying to make their ancient copyright system work, on the other hand it won`t matter anyway, since evolution will find a natural way out eventually. We just got to stay smart and search for new opportunties and applications.. imho it`ll take some more time, yes, but we can`t loose this one..
Moments like this make you think if the juridical copryright system is not inherently flawed again.. Stephen King tried to explore new possibilities, but his case is special. I wonder if the new generations can be as open to these new ways of running a society with new laws: shared responsibility and self regulation. You pay for something you don`t explicitly _have_ to pay for ( but if you don`t pay chances are higher that you`ll never be able to read a book of him again ).. it`s a nice concept, but it`s still too early to really tell if it`ll ever work or not... The same probably goes for musical art & content.
Oh is that so.. I don`t really remember that conference, so it probably wasn`t that big a breakthrough either..
Actually I think that Billy was the best president you people have ever had.. Bill & Gore atleast TALKed about economy and ecology. I personally would have liked Gore to continue that trend. I think the past 2 administrations, appart from loosing face big time every now and then, has really dealth with some important issues. I don`t think Bush can govern in a respectable way.. He`ll be the puppet of his advisors. For all he cares, the queen of Sheva rules the Kremlin. Gore, atleast, has been a primary witness to how things can be accomplished..
But it won`t matter much now anyway..
I like the article, but I would have written it upside down. The important part is indeed that science can convince governments to take action. An impressive reduction of CFC`s is the nice outcome in this case. But while it is one positive evolution, it fails to mention that CFC`s are being replaced by even more toxic substitutes (which don`t temper with the ozone layer, but just us). Anyway, it`s a real good thing the model predicts healing, but we`ll have to stay put and watch if things are really going the right way, so don`t blow your cans just yet. Both Europe and America do have some more cleaning up to do.
It also suggests that the conference in The Hagues about global warning (which was just the extension of the Kyoto conference 2 years ago) should have been enough reason for America to stop playing tough guy and aknowledge that we do actually have a fuel problem. In the last 5 years, flooding of towns, shifting of land, hurricanes and cyclones, have been very frequent in the news. And while we might not have the numbers or the models to agree on the scientific part of things yet, I think everybody is fairly convinced that producing as much carbon dioxide as possible isn`t going to help. The only ones that benefit from that are the ones at the top, who don`t run a government, but thier own bank account. (and sometimes, the difference is slim, which makes those issues even more acute.)..
When I heard the news that after Kyoto also The Hagues had failed, I felt really sad. Maybe if we`d organise such a conference in Washington DC, right under the nose of your president (well.. let`s assume you have a president..), maybe that would make you guys open your eyes.. it IS hartwarming to see that the green party is starting to play a factor in national elections, and I hope it will grow in size and strength. At least that shwows evidence that some US citizens are also concerned with their environment, good family life, healthy food etc.. just like us europeans.. And now I`m going to stop cuz I sound like Bono/U2
I haven't really looked at Object Pascal or Delphi yet, but I've heard many good comments about both. I've programmed in Turbo Pascal in my earlier days, and I help students with beron-2, so I know how Pascal code reads. Still I prefer c++ or Java for coding, just because they somehow feel different.. I guess it's just a matter of taste.. oh well...
I wasn't saying that Java is THE only good language out there either, it just has some nice advantages over c++ programming. But that doesn't render c++ obsolete either. Delphi's user base is large and profound, and I'm sure it's a very decent language. Java has been playing the game totally differently, making browsers a possible platform to run applications right from the web, which ofcourse contributed to the hype that SUN created when it launched Java. They have different interest groups. Delphi benefitted also from the fact that it could take Pascal coders along for the ride, and there's nothing wrong with that. Java tries to take on and convert c++ coders.
Anyway, I think you should allways use the right tools for the right job, and search for new possibilities wherever you can. I don't really think there will be a THE language in the future. There's allways something new around the corner, ready to stirr up things again.. and wether it's Borland or SUN or MS or Mr John Doe's 10 Cents Enterprise, I don't care one bit.. Borland's JBuilder is one of the nicest applications I've seen in a long logn time.. too bad it's still so slow.. I hope they will fix that soon.