I've noticed a bit of an increase in Mac ports of big-name games and an increase in advertising for them in Mac sections of ads from CompUSA and the like, and coincidentally(?) I've noticed this spike since a couple months after Carmack started praising the Mac as a game dev platform. Has anyone else noticed this, or have I killed too many brain cells and am now just imagining it? I'm curious as to what others think about this, and how others think Carmack's support might be positively affecting Mac gaming.
Actually, I think it is Apple who have been pushing Mac gaming, and Carmack is just one (significant) part of that. For years Apple was neutral or even openly hostile towards games on its platform. Since Jobs returned and the company has become more consumer-oriented, there has been a concerted drive to get more games developers onto the platform. The number of games ports onto the Mac has increased dramatically, as you have noticed.
Certainly wooing Carmack to the merits of the platform has been a big part of that strategy, but so has the general push to help all game developers. It has also helped that Apple has bought better game-related hardware to the Mac, both directly and through third-party support.
Bet you can't guess. Not that I'll confirm it, even if you get it right . Sorry:-).
Anyway, your statement borders on meaningless. Do you mean parser when you say interpreter? If so, do you just mean getting the document into a data structure?
No, I meant interpreter - parsing is just one step, you then have to actually execute the semantics. in other words, take a Flash description file and actually run the resulting interactive animation. Same for the XML descriptions we were interpreting.
In my experience, custom binary formats are usually easier to parse, because you know exactly what to expect (assuming they're documented, of course), and they end up being mostly follow-your-nose exercises.
In theory perhaps, but once you've got multiple versions of the format that you have to deal with it gets much hairier. And often custom proprietary formats are very poorly documented - often the code is the documentation, and if you don't have the code...Besides which, something like Flash is sufficiently complex that it becomes quite a challenge in its own right.
Whereas XML is (obviously) much more flexible, resulting in more possibilities for the parser to handle. On the other hand, binary formats (being typically less eXtensible) can get ugly more easily, so I can imagine that Flash might be a pain.
Yup, Flash is a pain. And with XML you often (as in my case) don;t have to deal with the full potential of the language, just some known and bounded sub-set. I would guess that SVG is like this, but I haven't looked into it in enough detail to really know this.
As the author of Gill makes painfully clear, vector graphics is hard, standards compliance makes it harder, and XML (with all the baggage it entails) makes it a monster. Care to share why you thought XML would make it easy?
I certainly would care to share. I've been involved in efforts to implement both an XML interpreter and a Macromedia Flash interpreter. I know which one was easier, and it wasn't the Flash interpreter.
The big problem with SVG is that it is text and not binary. This means that a graphic will be bigger in SVG than Flash.
The fact that is is a text-based (actually XML-based) format is a strength as well as a weakness. Yes, it tends to be bigger than Flash binaries, but its open and extendible whereas Flash is a closed, proprietary binary format controlled by Macromedia. Its a bit like comparing HTML with the page description languages used internally by desktop publishing apps. Which one was better suited for creating the Web? Which one would you rather work with?
Also flash can be compressed, and SVG cannot making the difference bigger. Think those 100k flash animations are annoying to wait for loading? I can only image how big the SVG equivelents will be.
Text can be compressed, and will usually compress better than binaries. Why? Well, think of the XML text as source code - compilation into binary is a form of compression, so binaries are already compressed (therefore they won't compress well themselves). A text file is likely to be inherently more compressable. Has anyone actually tried compressing XML?
"The fact that GUIs are considerably more popular than CLIs is some evidence that more people are visually-oriented than verbally."
The problem with this popularity contest is that the majority have never really been given a choice. If one had set a CLI and a GUI side by side and said "pick which one you want" then you would have more of a point. But the majority haven't been given so objective a test. It has been more "this is what you'll be using from now on", and the alternative either is briefly (footnote) mentioned, or not at all.
True enough. What I was actually thinking of was the switch over from DOS to Windows in the late 80's/early 90's. A lot of people voted for a GUI over a CLI with their hard-earned greenbacks. And that was to a pretty crappy GUI (admitedly from a pretty crappy CLI:-) Of course there were other factors involved as well, such as upgrading of applications, but I do believe that a preference for GUIs over CLIs was a large part of this. If we were on DOS 15.7 right now, I don't believe there would be nearly as many computer users in the world.
Obviously a CLI like bash is going to be more efficient at expressing the commands for 1. But assuming that the files related to my web site are not organized according to a regular pattern, then doing operation 2 is going to be much easier using a GUI (I just click on the set of files I want and drag them)."
Assuming no organized pattern then both methods would be slow. Remember the brain is a pattern-matching machine, be it verbal,graphical, or otherwise. If their is a pattern then the deciding factor of one over the other is what comparative sense is being used. .
I agree, but if I want to identify three files from 50 in a GUI, all I have to do is find them in the list. If I want to do that in a CLI, I have to find them in the ls list, then copy each filename down into the cp command. Its more work that way.
Some of the older (I believe -100x model) playstations would crash because they generated too much heat. I believe the fix for that was to flip your PS over for better cooling.
I can believe this, but in my case it was definately a crash. When I got to certain points in one game, if I made a particular move the Playstation hung, and nothing be a power-down reboot would get it back. Completely reproducible, and if I went on playing without causing the han, it would be fine for hours more of play.
Microsoft will never learn that any product based on a Windows kernel will at one time or another crash. PS has never crashed, Nintendo has never crashed, but XBox most likely will at one point or another. Heart and anethesia monitors never crashed, but I recently read in a NG about a doctor whose devices used Windows, and one day crashed mid-surgery!
My Playstation used to crash. Now, admittedly this was much less common than on my Windows box, but it happened. Probably the fault of badly written games, but it used to hang solid occasionally.
The point being that there is no such thing as a computer that cannot crash - or at least not a computer that does anything useful or complex. Some combinations of hardware, software and application are certainly more stable than others, though. And I agree that using Windows 2000 as a base doesn't give me much confidence in the stability of the XBox. But until we can test the shipping hardware and software, its difficult to be sure.
Looking at all the details, one can see that the X-box really seems to be just a regular computer with a few things disabled.
Win32 API
Microsoft Direct3D
USB support
TCP/IP based networking
Actually, these aren't disabled, so much as modified. For example, the Win32 API is there but fairly heavily modified.
And it is only missing such obvious things as services, hot docking, and -- multiple-procesor support. Hmmm...
No, read the article more carefully. What is missing is multi-processing not multiple processors (though presumably the latter is also gone). This is an even more serious restriction for a computer, but makes sense for a games machine. So it looks like Microsoft are doing more than just putting out a regular computer...
While a file manager is useful to a newbie, I always find that I can get work done faster using a cli to a good shell like bash.
Then I would highly recommend you continue to use a CLI.
A file manager is to a cli as a first grade primer is to a novel.
Why be so offensive? Are you simply trolling? File Managers are not signficantly less powerful than CLIs. They are good at different types of operation, and they suit some people better than others. Many people are more visually-oriented than verbally-oriented. The former tend to prefer GUIs, the later CLIs. The fact that GUIs are considerably more popular than CLIs is some evidence that more people are visually-oriented than verbally.
One can be lot more expressive with text that with pictures. Sure, a picture is equal to a thousand words but the only problem is 'which one?!'
I disagree. Two scenarios:
1. I want to move all the files that end in.txt from directory A to directory B
2. I want to move all the files whose contents relate to my web site from directory A to directory B
Obviously a CLI like bash is going to be more efficient at expressing the commands for 1. But assuming that the files related to my web site are not organized according to a regular pattern, then doing operation 2 is going to be much easier using a GUI (I just click on the set of files I want and drag them).
Even when there is a regular pattern of files you want to work with, a GUI can often be easier (if less efficient) because I can just select the files I want directly, and I don't have to go through the cognitive process of forming the right pattern-matching command. If I want to pick 3 files out of 50, it often feels quicker to just click on them in a GUI view, than figure out the particular command that would select just those files. And in UI what feels quicker is often "better" (i.e. prefered by users) than the actually optimal strategy.
GUIs and CLIs are different tools that are optimized for different purposes. Both have strengths and weaknesses. I personally like to have both running and feel free to switch between them.
Ok... first of all, is this Survivor thing going on live or are they showing something that's already happened? (Sorry, I don't watch the thing.) If it's live, it seems to me that CBS kicked off Gervase just to cover their own @$$ and make themselves look good. If it's taped (as in it happened three months ago) then and only then I can see justification to all the praise they're gettting.
Imagine the goddamned publicity they got from that Gervase stunt? They were smart to make as big a stink as they did about it, even knowing full well it was the wrong answer anyway.
I think it goes to show how Web-savvy the "old media" companies are becoming. I'm guessing (I have no inside info) that they deliberately "hid" this misleading "clue" on the web site and sat back to wait for someone to spot it and publicize it. Hats off to CBS - it worked in a big way.
As I recall, at the time CBS's only official reaction was to neither confirm nor deny this rumor. Smart, smart people in their PR department.
I, for one am glad to see that the Constitution means something. It's time that all this talk of "school prayer" and "equal time" gets taken out of the picture. Do I get equal time on the pulpit at a xitian church to teach evolution? Then why are they invading the minds of children to teach them religious rubbish? Evolution is a confirmed, Objective fact. Religion, and creation "science" is pure fantasy.
I agree that the news from Kansas is good. But its dangerous to overstate the case for Evolution. It isn't accurate to characterise this theory as "confirmed, Objective fact". There is a lot of very good evidence to support Evolution. There is no rival theory that has any signficant evidence. Religious "explainations", especially those of creationists are so riddled with errors and run so counter to all the evidence that they do not deserve serious consideration. So certainly, the intelligent response is to accept Evolution as the best explaination out there, but it isn't proved fact.
This is really a non-item, since we all have a pretty good idea of how Carnivore works. It is probably very simple, just scanning for certain headers that will trigger it and then turn on the collection mechnism to collect that email and file it away.
What makes you think this is how Carnivore works? I've seen no evidence that would support this supposition. Its certainly one theory, but we don't know what exactly it is supposed to do, and what data it works on. You might be completely wrong. That';s why getting some details released under the FOIA is a good idea.
If it does anything more than that, I really doubt they would admit it. Do you really think they are going to say,
"Yeah, we set it up to scan for words like Bomb and President, and then we take names, put them in a secret database, and monitor everything that person does." ?
Well on NPR radio news this morning, it was reported that Carnivore does indeed monitor all email going to and coming from individuals. Maybe that was FBI FUD, maybe its closer to how Carnivore actually works. Sounds like it would be worth actually finding out. If it really only targets individuals rather than sniffing every email sent then its a very different system from the one you've supposed.
I think I would trust the Post Office and this Internet scheme a lot more if it was spun off and privatized.
Yeah, I certainly trust those private corporations with my privacy and service. Disney, oil companies, Microsoft; a real nice trustworthy bunch. I actually try to use USPS over (particularly) UPS because they've been much more reliable and customer oriented for my deliveries (YMMV, of course).
I really think the Post Office should just be left to die--or privatize and modernize. Or at least, exist, but in a much reduced state. For packages we've got a plethora of shipping companies. For most plain mail, e-mail does the trick. Why should this huge government agency still exist if there's not a place for it?
Great plan. eMail is such a wonderful solution for the majority of Americans who don't even have a computer at home. What a great way to help bridge the Digital Divide - make sending mail something that only those rich enough to afford Internet connections at home can have.
I strongly agree with this. Games like Myst almost aren't games at all - they really could be called "interactive fiction" (I know, that term has a many bad connotations, but...). They capture your attention because they place you in a fully imagined and realized world; a world where interesting things are happening. They make you want to explore. They contain believable characters and realistic details.
Which is not to say that Myst, Riven or any other example of the type was perfect. But for me the appeal of these games was not so much the intellectual feat of puzzle-solving (they're pretty simple puzzles) but uncovering the depth of the world and the plotline: finding out what happened to the characters and why. Much the same reasons I read a good novel or watch a play.
A few years ago, Apple had some dismal share of new PC sales, like 6% vs 90% for Wintel machines and 4% for *nix-on-Intel machines. Their new products are pretty sexy, and the G4's seem pretty nice for alot of high-end desk applications. Does anyone know what Apple's share of the market is now?
I believe that current sales are running at the 10-11% range for Apple hardware.
The spec for a supercomputer was updated and 1 Gflop (or 7 Gflop) is no longer a supercomputer. So all these "Honey, I shrunk the supercomputer" ads are pure bullshit. Damn you apple, damn you
Wow, there's an official spec for what consitutes a supercomputer? Cool. Would this be the International Council for Supercomputer Specifications? Could you post their URL?/END SARC
My understanding was that the apparent gap in clock speeds was due to Apple using a different clocking scheme than Intel.
No, the clock speed of a chip is a quantative measure. A synchronous chip runs at its quoted speed (unless you overclock it:-). What you may be thinking about is the fact that a 500MHz PowerPC may be a lot faster or slower than a 500MHz Pentium. This is certainly true, leading us to conclude that clock speeds are a very poor measurement of actual performance.
Benchmarks would provide a more reliable comparison of performance between the platforms. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't submitted SPECmarks in quite a while.
Well, benchmarks like SPECmarks are only slightly better indicators of real world performance than raw CPU clock speeds. The only real way to compare is to try running the actual applications you need to use on both platforms. If you are a Photoshop user, then the multi-G4 Mac is a pretty awesome system. For other apps, a Pentium III is probably going to be faster.
I was looking through the article, but mabye I missed it. Will these be G4e or the current line up but speed bumped G4 processors?
It didn't say, but this is a rumor article about a machine that they say isn't due to be launched for six months. Now you're asking if this probably mythical machine will use a processor that itself hasn't been launched. I suspect that even Apple's engineers couldn't answer such a hypothetical question right now...
Sometimes it just leaves you weaker and more vulnerable to future attack.
Exactly how have these laws reduced "nazism" or whatever you want to call it?
Well, the stated intent behind the laws was to prevent far-right groups from seizing power in a European nation and starting another war/genocide. It is true that no such war has happened, but obviously it is almost impossible to prove what impact - one way or another - a particular law has had.
Has it done anything to address the issues which created the need for nazism in the first place?
Well the issues that "created" Nazism in Germany between the wars were massive poverty, hyper-inflation, a loss of national pride and rampant and institutionalized racism. None of these conditions exist now in Europe, and you can certainly make a reasonable argument that the laws against racial hatred contribute towards moving racist attitudes from the mainstream of a society to the fringes. So I would conclude that these laws are one part of an effective program of measures.
Is treating the "symptoms" the way to cure the disease...
There is a lot of evidence that treating symptoms really can cure the underlying disease. This is the "broken window" theory of crime: take a look at this book review that gives an overview of the theory. It is the theory that was behind New York's clean up of minor crime in early 90's. That effort was widely credited with a dramatic reduction in serious crime in that city.
...or are these laws really intended to push political agendas that are not openly espoused, and to silence groups that that ruling elites would rather not have to deal with?
Errr... the political agendas of anti-nazisim are openly espoused and widely supported in the countries that have such laws. And I'm sure that the "ruling elites" (aka the democratically elected governments) would rather not deal with the murderous thugs of the extreme right-wing, but given that they have to, I think they are doing a pretty good job.
Like adults, children are very good at distinguishing fantasy from reality. Many children play games (computer-based and otherwise) in which they can fly, yet relatively few of them attempt this in the real world. Either you fail to grok this, or you have an extremely low (and deeply incorrect) estimation of the intelligence of children.
It's actually somewhat irrelevant. Episode I and II are about 30 - 50 years apart. So it's either 4000 years before Episode I or 4030 - 4050 years before. Nitpick all you want, but I don't distinguish much between 2000 BC and 1950 BC.
No, the question was: is it before both episodes, or is it only before Episode IV (i.e. between I and IV). As you say, the difference between 4000 and 4350 years is pretty irrelevant, so it clearly is before both episodes, so Hemos (not Ant, my apologies) obviously hadn't read the press release before posting that question.
Ummm, Ant asks: "the setting of the game is going to be prior to the Star Wars movies. I don't know whether that means prior to Episode I or Episode IV". Its not hard, Ant. According to the press release that you linked to:
LucasArts and BioWare are creating an entirely original storyline set some four thousand years before Star Wars: Episode I.
I think that answers your question.
Is it really too much to expect people who submit stories to actually read the links they are submitting? I guess it is...
The level of understanding most people have of computers, translated into automotive terms, would not be enough to encompass ideas such as "cars are driven on the street," "tires are less effective when they're wet," and "things in your rearview mirror will look backwards." Most people's interaction with their computer is less like driving a car and more like shouting commands to a barely-competent, intellectually stunted chauffeur.
Well, apart from being highly pejorative, this is just a statement of your viewpoint. Unless you could actually back that up with at least some examples, I don't think you're about to convince me or anyone else. It just comes across as prejudice.
My own analogy would be to history. Obviously it's not necessary in any immediate, practical sense to know the year of the Magna Carta or the Battle of Hastings. And I'm the first to admit that, in school, I thought it ludicrous that I should be expected to know such things. But you know what? There is *meaning* behind those minutiae. History gives you insight into how things work. Without that context, one's view of the contemporary world is massively impoverished.
Of course there is meaning in history. There is also meaning in the minutiae of current times. There is meaning in romantic novels and the pop songs of Britney Spears (no, really, there is). We all glean meaning from a vast number of sources. I just don't believe we should hold history as a particularly good source of meaning. Why? First because "history" is notorious for being very hard to get right - whose history do you trust? Secondly, history is by its nature very specific to particular time periods, and it can often be highly misleading when applied to modern times. Just ask the Israelis, Palestinians or anyone in Northern Ireland about how clinging to history can be a bloody and unproductive activity.
And it's the same for a person whose idea of computers is based on buttons and windows and talking paper clips.
No, modern GUIs really are made of windows and buttons. These objects are real in the context of the UI. This is exactly what makes computers so powerful - if I make a world of buttons and windows and menus, then those objects are precisely real. Computers are infinitely flexible processing machines that can simulate any reality to whatever degree of accuracy the programmer wants to create.
If you believe that the commands a CLI system understands are any more or less real than the widgets of a GUI then I would highly recommend you go back to first principles and actually learn some of the very computer science principles we are debating:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I've noticed a bit of an increase in Mac ports of big-name games and an increase in advertising for them in Mac sections of ads from CompUSA and the like, and coincidentally(?) I've noticed this spike since a couple months after Carmack started praising the Mac as a game dev platform. Has anyone else noticed this, or have I killed too many brain cells and am now just imagining it? I'm curious as to what others think about this, and how others think Carmack's support might be positively affecting Mac gaming.
Actually, I think it is Apple who have been pushing Mac gaming, and Carmack is just one (significant) part of that. For years Apple was neutral or even openly hostile towards games on its platform. Since Jobs returned and the company has become more consumer-oriented, there has been a concerted drive to get more games developers onto the platform. The number of games ports onto the Mac has increased dramatically, as you have noticed.
Certainly wooing Carmack to the merits of the platform has been a big part of that strategy, but so has the general push to help all game developers. It has also helped that Apple has bought better game-related hardware to the Mac, both directly and through third-party support.
How many guesses do I get? ;)
Bet you can't guess. Not that I'll confirm it, even if you get it right . Sorry :-).
Anyway, your statement borders on meaningless. Do you mean parser when you say interpreter? If so, do you just mean getting the document into a data structure?
No, I meant interpreter - parsing is just one step, you then have to actually execute the semantics. in other words, take a Flash description file and actually run the resulting interactive animation. Same for the XML descriptions we were interpreting.
In my experience, custom binary formats are usually easier to parse, because you know exactly what to expect (assuming they're documented, of course), and they end up being mostly follow-your-nose exercises.
In theory perhaps, but once you've got multiple versions of the format that you have to deal with it gets much hairier. And often custom proprietary formats are very poorly documented - often the code is the documentation, and if you don't have the code...Besides which, something like Flash is sufficiently complex that it becomes quite a challenge in its own right.
Whereas XML is (obviously) much more flexible, resulting in more possibilities for the parser to handle. On the other hand, binary formats (being typically less eXtensible) can get ugly more easily, so I can imagine that Flash might be a pain.
Yup, Flash is a pain. And with XML you often (as in my case) don;t have to deal with the full potential of the language, just some known and bounded sub-set. I would guess that SVG is like this, but I haven't looked into it in enough detail to really know this.
As the author of Gill makes painfully clear, vector graphics is hard, standards compliance makes it harder, and XML (with all the baggage it entails) makes it a monster. Care to share why you thought XML would make it easy?
I certainly would care to share. I've been involved in efforts to implement both an XML interpreter and a Macromedia Flash interpreter. I know which one was easier, and it wasn't the Flash interpreter.
The big problem with SVG is that it is text and not binary. This means that a graphic will be bigger in SVG than Flash.
The fact that is is a text-based (actually XML-based) format is a strength as well as a weakness. Yes, it tends to be bigger than Flash binaries, but its open and extendible whereas Flash is a closed, proprietary binary format controlled by Macromedia. Its a bit like comparing HTML with the page description languages used internally by desktop publishing apps. Which one was better suited for creating the Web? Which one would you rather work with?
Also flash can be compressed, and SVG cannot making the difference bigger. Think those 100k flash animations are annoying to wait for loading? I can only image how big the SVG equivelents will be.
Text can be compressed, and will usually compress better than binaries. Why? Well, think of the XML text as source code - compilation into binary is a form of compression, so binaries are already compressed (therefore they won't compress well themselves). A text file is likely to be inherently more compressable. Has anyone actually tried compressing XML?
"The fact that GUIs are considerably more popular than CLIs is some evidence that more people are visually-oriented than verbally."
The problem with this popularity contest is that the majority have never really been given a choice. If one had set a CLI and a GUI side by side and said "pick which one you want" then you would have more of a point. But the majority haven't been given so objective a test. It has been more "this is what you'll be using from now on", and the alternative either is briefly (footnote) mentioned, or not at all.
True enough. What I was actually thinking of was the switch over from DOS to Windows in the late 80's/early 90's. A lot of people voted for a GUI over a CLI with their hard-earned greenbacks. And that was to a pretty crappy GUI (admitedly from a pretty crappy CLI :-) Of course there were other factors involved as well, such as upgrading of applications, but I do believe that a preference for GUIs over CLIs was a large part of this. If we were on DOS 15.7 right now, I don't believe there would be nearly as many computer users in the world.
Obviously a CLI like bash is going to be more efficient at expressing the commands for 1. But assuming that the files related to my web site are not organized according to a regular pattern, then doing operation 2 is going to be much easier using a GUI (I just click on the set of files I want and drag them)."
Assuming no organized pattern then both methods would be slow. Remember the brain is a pattern-matching machine, be it verbal,graphical, or otherwise. If their is a pattern then the deciding factor of one over the other is what comparative sense is being used. .
I agree, but if I want to identify three files from 50 in a GUI, all I have to do is find them in the list. If I want to do that in a CLI, I have to find them in the ls list, then copy each filename down into the cp command. Its more work that way.
Some of the older (I believe -100x model) playstations would crash because they generated too much heat. I believe the fix for that was to flip your PS over for better cooling.
I can believe this, but in my case it was definately a crash. When I got to certain points in one game, if I made a particular move the Playstation hung, and nothing be a power-down reboot would get it back. Completely reproducible, and if I went on playing without causing the han, it would be fine for hours more of play.
Microsoft will never learn that any product based on a Windows kernel will at one time or another crash. PS has never crashed, Nintendo has never crashed, but XBox most likely will at one point or another. Heart and anethesia monitors never crashed, but I recently read in a NG about a doctor whose devices used Windows, and one day crashed mid-surgery!
My Playstation used to crash. Now, admittedly this was much less common than on my Windows box, but it happened. Probably the fault of badly written games, but it used to hang solid occasionally.
The point being that there is no such thing as a computer that cannot crash - or at least not a computer that does anything useful or complex. Some combinations of hardware, software and application are certainly more stable than others, though. And I agree that using Windows 2000 as a base doesn't give me much confidence in the stability of the XBox. But until we can test the shipping hardware and software, its difficult to be sure.
Looking at all the details, one can see that the X-box really seems to be just a regular computer with a few things disabled.
Win32 API
Microsoft Direct3D
USB support
TCP/IP based networking
Actually, these aren't disabled, so much as modified. For example, the Win32 API is there but fairly heavily modified.
And it is only missing such obvious things as services, hot docking, and -- multiple-procesor support. Hmmm...
No, read the article more carefully. What is missing is multi-processing not multiple processors (though presumably the latter is also gone). This is an even more serious restriction for a computer, but makes sense for a games machine. So it looks like Microsoft are doing more than just putting out a regular computer...
While a file manager is useful to a newbie, I always find that I can get work done faster using a cli to a good shell like bash.
Then I would highly recommend you continue to use a CLI.
A file manager is to a cli as a first grade primer is to a novel.
Why be so offensive? Are you simply trolling? File Managers are not signficantly less powerful than CLIs. They are good at different types of operation, and they suit some people better than others. Many people are more visually-oriented than verbally-oriented. The former tend to prefer GUIs, the later CLIs. The fact that GUIs are considerably more popular than CLIs is some evidence that more people are visually-oriented than verbally.
One can be lot more expressive with text that with pictures. Sure, a picture is equal to a thousand words but the only problem is 'which one?!'
I disagree. Two scenarios:
1. I want to move all the files that end in .txt from directory A to directory B
2. I want to move all the files whose contents relate to my web site from directory A to directory B
Obviously a CLI like bash is going to be more efficient at expressing the commands for 1. But assuming that the files related to my web site are not organized according to a regular pattern, then doing operation 2 is going to be much easier using a GUI (I just click on the set of files I want and drag them).
Even when there is a regular pattern of files you want to work with, a GUI can often be easier (if less efficient) because I can just select the files I want directly, and I don't have to go through the cognitive process of forming the right pattern-matching command. If I want to pick 3 files out of 50, it often feels quicker to just click on them in a GUI view, than figure out the particular command that would select just those files. And in UI what feels quicker is often "better" (i.e. prefered by users) than the actually optimal strategy.
GUIs and CLIs are different tools that are optimized for different purposes. Both have strengths and weaknesses. I personally like to have both running and feel free to switch between them.
Ok... first of all, is this Survivor thing going on live or are they showing something that's already happened? (Sorry, I don't watch the thing.) If it's live, it seems to me that CBS kicked off Gervase just to cover their own @$$ and make themselves look good. If it's taped (as in it happened three months ago) then and only then I can see justification to all the praise they're gettting.
It was taped several months ago.
Imagine the goddamned publicity they got from that Gervase stunt? They were smart to make as big a stink as they did about it, even knowing full well it was the wrong answer anyway.
I think it goes to show how Web-savvy the "old media" companies are becoming. I'm guessing (I have no inside info) that they deliberately "hid" this misleading "clue" on the web site and sat back to wait for someone to spot it and publicize it. Hats off to CBS - it worked in a big way.
As I recall, at the time CBS's only official reaction was to neither confirm nor deny this rumor. Smart, smart people in their PR department.
I, for one am glad to see that the Constitution means something. It's time that all this talk of "school prayer" and "equal time" gets taken out of the picture. Do I get equal time on the pulpit at a xitian church to teach evolution? Then why are they invading the minds of children to teach them religious rubbish? Evolution is a confirmed, Objective fact. Religion, and creation "science" is pure fantasy.
I agree that the news from Kansas is good. But its dangerous to overstate the case for Evolution. It isn't accurate to characterise this theory as "confirmed, Objective fact". There is a lot of very good evidence to support Evolution. There is no rival theory that has any signficant evidence. Religious "explainations", especially those of creationists are so riddled with errors and run so counter to all the evidence that they do not deserve serious consideration. So certainly, the intelligent response is to accept Evolution as the best explaination out there, but it isn't proved fact.
This is really a non-item, since we all have a pretty good idea of how Carnivore works. It is probably very simple, just scanning for certain headers that will trigger it and then turn on the collection mechnism to collect that email and file it away.
What makes you think this is how Carnivore works? I've seen no evidence that would support this supposition. Its certainly one theory, but we don't know what exactly it is supposed to do, and what data it works on. You might be completely wrong. That';s why getting some details released under the FOIA is a good idea.
If it does anything more than that, I really doubt they would admit it. Do you really think they are going to say,
"Yeah, we set it up to scan for words like Bomb and President, and then we take names, put them in a secret database, and monitor everything that person does." ?
Well on NPR radio news this morning, it was reported that Carnivore does indeed monitor all email going to and coming from individuals. Maybe that was FBI FUD, maybe its closer to how Carnivore actually works. Sounds like it would be worth actually finding out. If it really only targets individuals rather than sniffing every email sent then its a very different system from the one you've supposed.
I think I would trust the Post Office and this Internet scheme a lot more if it was spun off and privatized.
Yeah, I certainly trust those private corporations with my privacy and service. Disney, oil companies, Microsoft; a real nice trustworthy bunch. I actually try to use USPS over (particularly) UPS because they've been much more reliable and customer oriented for my deliveries (YMMV, of course).
I really think the Post Office should just be left to die--or privatize and modernize. Or at least, exist, but in a much reduced state. For packages we've got a plethora of shipping companies. For most plain mail, e-mail does the trick. Why should this huge government agency still exist if there's not a place for it?
Great plan. eMail is such a wonderful solution for the majority of Americans who don't even have a computer at home. What a great way to help bridge the Digital Divide - make sending mail something that only those rich enough to afford Internet connections at home can have.
I strongly agree with this. Games like Myst almost aren't games at all - they really could be called "interactive fiction" (I know, that term has a many bad connotations, but...). They capture your attention because they place you in a fully imagined and realized world; a world where interesting things are happening. They make you want to explore. They contain believable characters and realistic details.
Which is not to say that Myst, Riven or any other example of the type was perfect. But for me the appeal of these games was not so much the intellectual feat of puzzle-solving (they're pretty simple puzzles) but uncovering the depth of the world and the plotline: finding out what happened to the characters and why. Much the same reasons I read a good novel or watch a play.
A few years ago, Apple had some dismal share of new PC sales, like 6% vs 90% for Wintel machines and 4% for *nix-on-Intel machines. Their new products are pretty sexy, and the G4's seem pretty nice for alot of high-end desk applications. Does anyone know what Apple's share of the market is now?
I believe that current sales are running at the 10-11% range for Apple hardware.
The spec for a supercomputer was updated and 1 Gflop (or 7 Gflop) is no longer a supercomputer. So all these "Honey, I shrunk the supercomputer" ads are pure bullshit. Damn you apple, damn you
Wow, there's an official spec for what consitutes a supercomputer? Cool. Would this be the International Council for Supercomputer Specifications? Could you post their URL? /END SARC
My understanding was that the apparent gap in clock speeds was due to Apple using a different clocking scheme than Intel.
No, the clock speed of a chip is a quantative measure. A synchronous chip runs at its quoted speed (unless you overclock it :-). What you may be thinking about is the fact that a 500MHz PowerPC may be a lot faster or slower than a 500MHz Pentium. This is certainly true, leading us to conclude that clock speeds are a very poor measurement of actual performance.
Benchmarks would provide a more reliable comparison of performance between the platforms. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't submitted SPECmarks in quite a while.
Well, benchmarks like SPECmarks are only slightly better indicators of real world performance than raw CPU clock speeds. The only real way to compare is to try running the actual applications you need to use on both platforms. If you are a Photoshop user, then the multi-G4 Mac is a pretty awesome system. For other apps, a Pentium III is probably going to be faster.
I was looking through the article, but mabye I missed it. Will these be G4e or the current line up but speed bumped G4 processors?
It didn't say, but this is a rumor article about a machine that they say isn't due to be launched for six months. Now you're asking if this probably mythical machine will use a processor that itself hasn't been launched. I suspect that even Apple's engineers couldn't answer such a hypothetical question right now...
"That which does not kill me makes me stronger".
Sometimes it just leaves you weaker and more vulnerable to future attack.
Exactly how have these laws reduced "nazism" or whatever you want to call it?
Well, the stated intent behind the laws was to prevent far-right groups from seizing power in a European nation and starting another war/genocide. It is true that no such war has happened, but obviously it is almost impossible to prove what impact - one way or another - a particular law has had.
Has it done anything to address the issues which created the need for nazism in the first place?
Well the issues that "created" Nazism in Germany between the wars were massive poverty, hyper-inflation, a loss of national pride and rampant and institutionalized racism. None of these conditions exist now in Europe, and you can certainly make a reasonable argument that the laws against racial hatred contribute towards moving racist attitudes from the mainstream of a society to the fringes. So I would conclude that these laws are one part of an effective program of measures.
Is treating the "symptoms" the way to cure the disease...
There is a lot of evidence that treating symptoms really can cure the underlying disease. This is the "broken window" theory of crime: take a look at this book review that gives an overview of the theory. It is the theory that was behind New York's clean up of minor crime in early 90's. That effort was widely credited with a dramatic reduction in serious crime in that city.
Errr... the political agendas of anti-nazisim are openly espoused and widely supported in the countries that have such laws. And I'm sure that the "ruling elites" (aka the democratically elected governments) would rather not deal with the murderous thugs of the extreme right-wing, but given that they have to, I think they are doing a pretty good job.
RPG's encourage kids to live in a fantasy world.
etc.
Like adults, children are very good at distinguishing fantasy from reality. Many children play games (computer-based and otherwise) in which they can fly, yet relatively few of them attempt this in the real world. Either you fail to grok this, or you have an extremely low (and deeply incorrect) estimation of the intelligence of children.
Actually, that was Hemos's comment, not Ant's. Read more carefully before you flame the wrong person. ;)
D'oh. Apologies to Ant, and a particularly big "you suck" to Hemos, then, who really should have known better :-)
It's actually somewhat irrelevant. Episode I and II are about 30 - 50 years apart. So it's either 4000 years before Episode I or 4030 - 4050 years before. Nitpick all you want, but I don't distinguish much between 2000 BC and 1950 BC.
No, the question was: is it before both episodes, or is it only before Episode IV (i.e. between I and IV). As you say, the difference between 4000 and 4350 years is pretty irrelevant, so it clearly is before both episodes, so Hemos (not Ant, my apologies) obviously hadn't read the press release before posting that question.
Ummm, Ant asks: "the setting of the game is going to be prior to the Star Wars movies. I don't know whether that means prior to Episode I or Episode IV". Its not hard, Ant. According to the press release that you linked to:
LucasArts and BioWare are creating an entirely original storyline set some four thousand years before Star Wars: Episode I.
I think that answers your question.
Is it really too much to expect people who submit stories to actually read the links they are submitting? I guess it is...
The level of understanding most people have of computers, translated into automotive terms, would not be enough to encompass ideas such as "cars are driven on the street," "tires are less effective when they're wet," and "things in your rearview mirror will look backwards." Most people's interaction with their computer is less like driving a car and more like shouting commands to a barely-competent, intellectually stunted chauffeur.
Well, apart from being highly pejorative, this is just a statement of your viewpoint. Unless you could actually back that up with at least some examples, I don't think you're about to convince me or anyone else. It just comes across as prejudice.
My own analogy would be to history. Obviously it's not necessary in any immediate, practical sense to know the year of the Magna Carta or the Battle of Hastings. And I'm the first to admit that, in school, I thought it ludicrous that I should be expected to know such things. But you know what? There is *meaning* behind those minutiae. History gives you insight into how things work. Without that context, one's view of the contemporary world is massively impoverished.
Of course there is meaning in history. There is also meaning in the minutiae of current times. There is meaning in romantic novels and the pop songs of Britney Spears (no, really, there is). We all glean meaning from a vast number of sources. I just don't believe we should hold history as a particularly good source of meaning. Why? First because "history" is notorious for being very hard to get right - whose history do you trust? Secondly, history is by its nature very specific to particular time periods, and it can often be highly misleading when applied to modern times. Just ask the Israelis, Palestinians or anyone in Northern Ireland about how clinging to history can be a bloody and unproductive activity.
And it's the same for a person whose idea of computers is based on buttons and windows and talking paper clips.
No, modern GUIs really are made of windows and buttons. These objects are real in the context of the UI. This is exactly what makes computers so powerful - if I make a world of buttons and windows and menus, then those objects are precisely real. Computers are infinitely flexible processing machines that can simulate any reality to whatever degree of accuracy the programmer wants to create.
If you believe that the commands a CLI system understands are any more or less real than the widgets of a GUI then I would highly recommend you go back to first principles and actually learn some of the very computer science principles we are debating :-)