1) The materials and resulting bomb are completely unbelivable to anyone with a 5th grade education and people won't play it because it's 'too fake'.
Not necessarily. Many of the things MacGyver did on the show were woefully unrealistic, but most people accepted them just fine. I seem to recall one episode where he used an umbrella as a grappling hook. Not even the most expensive umbrella would be able to support that much weight when used in that fashion. It can be similiar enough to reality to let the user feel okay about playing it, but it doesn't have to give exact bomb recipes or anything. And besides, it doesn't necessarily have to be about making bombs. MacGyver did plenty of things that didn't involve explosives, even though most of the interesting things he did ended up blowing up somehow...
If you can make pretty much anything at home, using nanodevices, then information becomes the key input. But how would the auto industry feel about a Napster for Ferraris?
Not bloody likely. All a company would have to do is design their product to require registration via a serial number for activation purposes, a la Windows XP. Granted, there are cracks aplenty for something like that, so maybe it's not such a hot idea.
Perhaps the nanoassembler would need to receive permission from the company in order to manufacture a consumer device in the first place, like an RSA key or something of that sort. Of course, once the actual assemble commands are isolated by some third-party hardware, one could just copy them and distribute them freely.
Then there's the notion of including some manner of rare precious metal in the design of the product, but that can be acquired by other means, and while expensive, the money to buy it wouldn't go to the company in the first place.
Hmm. Well, there go those ideas. To be honest, I think that nanotech, when it reaches maturity, will unavoidably throw a wrench in our economic system. When people can assemble their own goods for free, it's the designers who have the primary work cut out for them. And that could even turn into an open-source style of system, since if food, clothing, and other essentials can be assembled from only basic raw materials like soil, then the need for money would diminish considerably, and people could design new goods and products as a hobby.
Of course, one person could begin distributing a super-virus that can kill us all. Then again... umm...::buries head in sand::
Personally, I'll go with the Moxy Fruvous explanation of who's smarter. Sure, Deep Blue beat Kasparov, but if the building they were playing in ever caught fire, Kasparov would be the only one of the two that was smart enough to get the hell out.
While I definitely have to agree with you on that, I have to add that the Klingons are a very close second in this regard. Remember in ST3, featuring Klingon Commander Jim Ignatowski? He kicked ass!! If I may cite the following examples of his badass-itude.
1) Blowing up his girlfriend's ship because she happened to see the Genesis information 2) Wrestling with and killing that giant worm-constrictor thing that was wrapping itself around his neck, and then throwing its carcass aside as though that happened to him all the time 3) "Kill one of them... I don't care which."
They were portrayed as a society that believed in honor and courage, and in the movies you *believed* that. They could be taken seriously. TNG turned the Klingons into a caricature of themselves. I just couldn't accept them, it was like they were playing pretend or something. All they did was talk the talk, strut around and occasionally fight each other, but nothing truly bastardly; nothing in the spirit of the movies.
Now ST6... General Chang with a thick metal eyepatch bolted to his skull. THAT was badass.
What I envy about them is that they are calm and more warm than the white man. Under normal circumstances (not war, extreme famine etc), they are friendlier than us.
Ahh, the dangers of romanticizing less-technologically-advanced (LTA) cultures. This is a common association with most people in our society, that those in these other cultures are, by definition, at peace with the world and with each other. African, American Indian, and Asian tribes have had wars throughout their history, just as other cultures have. Granted, they're not all warlike, and there are undoubtedly many peaceful peoples who would fit your description quite well. But one can't make the generalisation that all LTA-cultures are calm, wise, and peaceful.
But in general, so to speak, you're absolutely right. A culture need not be technologically advanced in order to be civilized, be happy, or to feel a sense of purpose or self-identity. And like you said, LTA-cultures have societal systems and institutions that are just as complex as the ones in our own society.
But their lack of advanced technology does not automatically make them warmer and friendlier. There are plenty of places in the US where the people are calm, warm, and friendly. I'll get back to you when I find a few examples.
According to the training that I have received to be a manager at a large university, if your manager tells you that you can sue not only the company but also the manager.
The only problem there is that I don't have it in writing that he told me this; they've all been verbal requests, albeit frequent ones. Therefore, it's simply my word (and the words of my coworkers) against his, and that's not enough to prove anything. He's very careful to be as sleazy as possible whilst covering his own ass.
I'm waiting for DNA Computers! Shove a hamburger into where the floppy drive used to be, run gMetabolize for Linux (GNUtrients?), in a few hours my machine isn't obsolete anymore.
Either that, or it mutates into an evil Steve Wozniak and strangles me in my sleep.
I work as a developer for a defense contractor on the East Coast, and they do indeed give paid overtime, as well as flex time. Of course, they've been trying to get rid of that for years. Then again, if they did that, they'd have to raise salaries, because they're vastly non-competitive on base pay alone. Then there's my manager, who tells me to bring my work home and do it on the weekends, without pay, and without charging my time to the contract, which is actually very illegal. And we're not talking minimum security illegal, we're talking federal pound-me-in-the-ass illegal.
But yes, as long as we're here sitting at our desks, typing away like good little code monkeys, we do get paid overtime. For now.
Sure, it's a little dated, and yes, those damned boxing robots are still friggin impossible, but it works.
I thought the boxing robots were from SQ3, The Pirates of Pestulon.
Ahh, the memories... I remember endless hours of frustration resulting from that fine, fine game. Of course, my main problem with the whole series was that if you forgot to check the change pocket of your great-granduncle's Crimean War uniform three minutes after the introduction after sneaking through the seventh air duct on your right and prying open the wall with a toothpick, three Pringles, and a curling iron, you couldn't solve the game and had to load a game you saved three weeks ago.
Or maybe that was Donkey Kong.
No, I'm pretty sure that it was SQ. Maybe not that particular scenario, but one remarkably like it, on several occasions. Then again, I was about 11 when I played them, and somewhat less attentive to detail. Still, though, putting dead ends in a game like that is, IMNSHO, a mark of poor planning. The Myst series, on the other hand, was excellent in this regard. The solution to a puzzle may be excruciatingly obscure, with the only clue residing on the other side of the world, but it's there, and there's always a way to get back to it.
Then again, I played SQ5 for the first time recently, and solved it in a matter of hours. So maybe I just got smarter. Or maybe the games just got easier.
/* Steve */
Re:DRINK! (WARNING: Ender's Game spoilers)
on
Infinite Games?
·
· Score: 1
So what will you do when you are stuck at the Giant's Drink?
You do something that nobody had ever thought of before. And then the alien race overseeing the computer game will try to form a philotic bridge between their hive consciousness and your own in an attempt to control your mind, which will ultimately result in the creation of a superbeing living among the ansible links throughout the galaxy.
Or maybe you'll just end up seeing a bunch of elves make houses out of the Giant's dried-up carcass. It's difficult to say.
I'd say that the real technological genuis would have to have come on your part, in your ability to open and view a fourth DVD in a three-DVD box set:-)
Whatever you do, folks, don't work for a government contractor, at least not the one I'm working for. Aside from the lack of bonus checks, the salaries don't even increase enough to match inflation. Never mind getting off for Christmas week. We're given Christmas Day, and management likes to schedule important pieces of work that week while they run off and spend time with their families.
Yet another reason why I'm joining Academia in the not-too-distant future. It's got its downsides, but at least it's taking steps toward bettering myself. Corporate whoredom wears me down.
A song by Voltaire springs to mind. I first discovered this song in a prior/. post, although I can't seem to remember what it was. He's got a few other ST-related songs that you'll find if you scroll down sufficiently. They range from highly amusing to highly twisted.
On a quasi-related note, I was watching TNG last night on the Star Trek & White Trash network, and I happened upon an episode from the first season, called "Justice". In this episode, Wesley is condemned to death for falling into some flowers on a planet ruled by half-naked nymphomaniac hippie love-children. It made me realize just how much the show managed to improve over the years.
As for you, Wil, I really gotta hand it to you. I remember in your interview, you said that you had little to no say over the lines you were given. Watching that episode, it became clear to me that whoever wrote the script either didn't realize you were over the age of ten, or rather was himself somehow spawned on a rockbed, skipping adolescence entirely. I've done some improv and other acting through college myself, and one of the most difficult things for a young actor to do is to swallow his pride and follow his director, however inane that direction might be. Personally, I think you did a terrific job with what you were given. I've been in that position on stage plays, with all my friends and family sitting in the audience, waiting for them to pounce on me later for something that was the product of poor writing/direction.
I'll admit, when I first watched TNG as a relatively wee lad, I didn't much like Wesley's character. Still, I did know the difference between actor and character, and I was secretly jealous as hell, watching someone who was only a few years older than me and got to work on Star Trek!! I was also pleased to see the writers wise up and let Wesley start kicking some ass in later episodes, culminating with his eventual transubstantiation to deity-hood with an intergalactic "elder on the hill". I was kinda scratching my head at that one for a while, but concluded that it was a better way to go than being killed by a an greasy sentient Hefty bag in the middle of a living puddle of muck, as was the case with Denise Crosby. Best, I can figure from the special effects, the cause of death was "fatal birthmark on face".
Anyway, it's always interesting to see how it was for you on the show, especially since you're the member of the cast to which most/.-ers can most easily relate. And I'm pleased to see you popping up in User Friendly these days. Will wonders never cease...
Actually, Sun isn't releasing StarOffice v6.0 for free to the Linux or Windows crowds anymore. And my own experience with StarOffice was that it was rather slow, and left behind a lot of zombie processes that defied even the almighty "kill -9".
What I'd like to see is Hancom Word compared against KOffice and AbiWord, which are still very free and fairly high-quality products. Of course, I'm still waiting for someone to port Bank Street Writer over to Linux. There have got to be a few loose cannons out there who are willing to give that a shot...
Actually, the new version, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, is multiplayer. It's a pretty sweet game, and it even runs under Linux. Now if only multiple copies of the game can be used to build a Beowulf cluster...
people don't want the same shit they've been given for decades
Actually, it's quite surprising how many people really do want the same shit they've been listening to for decades. Look at your average boy-band/Britney/Christina fan. Generally, they tend to be early adolescent girls, and judging by the marketing schemes these "artists" use, it's clear that it's the image they're selling, rather than the music. And really, it's the image that will sell. The fact that they're singing and dancing is just incidental. It's not the music, it's the whole phenomenon. It's the social aspect of it, where liking these bands versus hating them helps define those lines of social stratification we loved so much in junior high school. To quote Ferris Bueller, "It's stupid and childish, but then again, so is high school."
Most people to whom the MTV generation of music is being marketed don't want to go out on a limb, take a chance, and risk buying an album that they may be ostracized later for admitting they like. It's all about fitting in, being cool, and following one's fellow lemmings to the end. That's not to say that most people in our society are like that, but they do have a rather loud voice and a significant presence in the media.
If you look at it, really, music hasn't changed all that much, at least culturally. It's just become more of a business over the years.
The first boy band, at least as we think of the term, was the Beatles. Of course, among their many differences from today's counterparts are the ideas that they wrote their own songs, could actually sing well, play their own instruments (when was the last time you saw N'Sync pick up a guitar?), and write thought-provoking, insightful, clever tunes. Of course, there was a sizeable subset of Beatles fans that didn't care about all that. They just screamed and pulled their hair when they saw their heroes on stage, and then years later discovered new dimensions to the music that most 12 or 13-year-olds don't pick up or notice.
It isn't until the past 25 years or so that music has begun migrating toward outright commercialism, where the image is more important than the substance. There's an article on the Irish Times about some observations regarding boy bands and the like. It's a pretty good read. For my part, I'll stop rambling.
My questions here are, what keeps the power from dissipating over the great distance from earth to the moon, and what happens if the laser/maser misfires? I'd hate to see this turn into some kind of comic-book-style weapon, and chances are, this technology would almost definitely fall into the wrong hands.
Also, why not just build satellites in geosync orbit? If you have enough of them, a constant percentage will get sunlight at all times, and then the power could be beamed between the satellites to the appropriate receiving stations. No sense using the moon, which would require an enormous amount of resources, when we can build something a lot closer to home.
One reason for Microsoft's monopoly is the proprietarity of their operating system. Conversely, the reason why open source products such as Linux work so well is that the operating system itself is publically available, while companies can use it to make money off of support, documentation, and separate resources which improve the use of Linux (i.e. HardDrake, Red Carpet, etc). This allows an economic model of computing in which competition is possible, and it means that programs written for Linux will work under most distributions, thus taking the software industry out of the hands of a single all-powerful giant.
What would your plans for Microsoft be in this regard? Obviously, having MS open up the Windows source is not a realistic goal, but do you feel that there is any way to establish a set of non-proprietary operating system standards that would re-enable competition in the desktop market?
Or maybe by "us" you meant something that differs from my perception of it.
Yes, very true. I've generally found BBC to be more objective than most American news services. However, my original comment was that if the news services were corrupt, not just the American ones. Give it enough time, anything's possible.
Uh... bullshit. As much as you'd like to believe otherwise, the latest Media Player will play any MP3 you want. If you install a third party MP3 encoder, it'll encode any MP3 you want at any data rate the encoder supports. Might want to recheck the facts there.
Ah, yes. I looked it up, and found this article which seems to verify your claim, such as it is. It does seem, though, that Microsoft is making it more difficult for users to do this. Of course, most MP3 junkies tend to be technically savvy enough to pull it off. And seeing as how the only article I found was a post on an opinions board, it may be a very simple matter.
The point of my post was to indicate that MS seems to be moving closer and closer to regulating the behavior of its customers in a way that seems characteristic of a legal institution. This reply is very true, though, as MS's power appears to be coming largely from the people who are allowing more restrictions to be put in place.
Honestly, I realize that demonizing Microsoft is nothing new to/., and that it tends to be done rather blindly without a full understanding of the facts. I freely admit that I haven't got all the answers. I'm just noticing a trend, between DeCSS, the DMCA, and MS's sleazy tactics, that media is being regulated more than ever, and MS is among those on the front lines, ready to cash in.
It's not really Microsoft that's the main problem, admittedly. It's the whole notion of property, ownership, and copyright getting way out of hand, combined with many people's tendencies to go to whatever means they can to acquire more of what they want. Thankfully, though, if enough people want more freedom from media restrictions (which, incidentally, aren't all that extensive yet. I still have a sizeable MP3 collection, and it continues to grow), they have the power to take action.
As soon as the story was posted on/. about WinXP's license verification system not letting users make more than a certain number of changes to their computers, within days there were cracks available. Where there are restrictions, there are usually ways around them, at least technologically. And they're pretty readily available.
So maybe it's not such a sturm und drang story after all:)
Very true. See, what's happening here is that a company, rather than a government institution, is enforcing "digital rights management". This is essentially Microsoft's way of ensuring that all digital media is Windows-compatible only, and given most people's general tendency to flock to whatever's popular, it looks like they have a good shot at succeeding. I have no doubt that MP3 is here to stay, it's just a question of how readily available they'll be to everyday users. The latest Media Player won't play MP3s at anything better than 56kbps, which sounds something like singing underwater over a telephone. I'm fairly certain that under the auspices of Digital Rights Management, we'll start to see Windows reject the installation attempts of CD rippers, and given the fact that Windows still dominates the desktop market, that will dramatically reduce MP3 availability.
Granted, as for MP3 players like Winamp, they'll still exist, and Microsoft will have a hard time justifying any restrictions placed on installing that. It is disturbing, however, that Microsoft is becoming analogous to a government entity, where it has the power to restrict and regulate the behavior and actions of its users.
Okay, so that makes me paranoid. And maybe what I'm suggesting is a bit over the top. But it's still interesting to think about how one company has become so powerful. Then again, I look at something like AOL Time-Warner. Microsoft controls our desktop computers, fine. AOL-TW controls television, record labels, movie studios, news networks, and internet news sites. Those are the things that steer public opinion and tell many folks out there how to think. But they're much more subtle about it. Besides, if the news services are corrupt, who's going to tell us about it?
Okay, I'll stop my overly paranoid rant. If y'all excuse me, I think I'll go etch a few more conspiracy theories on the men's room walls.
Well, actually, this cloned embryo isn't going to be implanted into a woman's uterus with the intent to let it develop into a fully-grown human/mutant/whatever. The stem cells are going to be harvested for therapeutic purposes, like regrowing heart or liver tissue. The Scientific American article made it pretty clear that they were still very much against cloning for reproductive purposes, at least until the technical and ethical problems were worked out.
Slashdot Mirror
Not necessarily. Many of the things MacGyver did on the show were woefully unrealistic, but most people accepted them just fine. I seem to recall one episode where he used an umbrella as a grappling hook. Not even the most expensive umbrella would be able to support that much weight when used in that fashion. It can be similiar enough to reality to let the user feel okay about playing it, but it doesn't have to give exact bomb recipes or anything. And besides, it doesn't necessarily have to be about making bombs. MacGyver did plenty of things that didn't involve explosives, even though most of the interesting things he did ended up blowing up somehow...
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They'll just have to incorporate WYSIWYP technology. What You See Is Where You Pee
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If you can make pretty much anything at home, using nanodevices, then information becomes the key input. But how would the auto industry feel about a Napster for Ferraris?
::buries head in sand::
Not bloody likely. All a company would have to do is design their product to require registration via a serial number for activation purposes, a la Windows XP. Granted, there are cracks aplenty for something like that, so maybe it's not such a hot idea.
Perhaps the nanoassembler would need to receive permission from the company in order to manufacture a consumer device in the first place, like an RSA key or something of that sort. Of course, once the actual assemble commands are isolated by some third-party hardware, one could just copy them and distribute them freely.
Then there's the notion of including some manner of rare precious metal in the design of the product, but that can be acquired by other means, and while expensive, the money to buy it wouldn't go to the company in the first place.
Hmm. Well, there go those ideas. To be honest, I think that nanotech, when it reaches maturity, will unavoidably throw a wrench in our economic system. When people can assemble their own goods for free, it's the designers who have the primary work cut out for them. And that could even turn into an open-source style of system, since if food, clothing, and other essentials can be assembled from only basic raw materials like soil, then the need for money would diminish considerably, and people could design new goods and products as a hobby.
Of course, one person could begin distributing a super-virus that can kill us all. Then again... umm...
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These chess players aren't really THAT smart.
Yeah, especially because all they really are are just midgets crammed inside mechanical men. They don't impress me none.
Personally, I'll go with the Moxy Fruvous explanation of who's smarter. Sure, Deep Blue beat Kasparov, but if the building they were playing in ever caught fire, Kasparov would be the only one of the two that was smart enough to get the hell out.
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Worst. Screwing up of a cool bad guy. EVER.
While I definitely have to agree with you on that, I have to add that the Klingons are a very close second in this regard. Remember in ST3, featuring Klingon Commander Jim Ignatowski? He kicked ass!! If I may cite the following examples of his badass-itude.
1) Blowing up his girlfriend's ship because she happened to see the Genesis information
2) Wrestling with and killing that giant worm-constrictor thing that was wrapping itself around his neck, and then throwing its carcass aside as though that happened to him all the time
3) "Kill one of them... I don't care which."
They were portrayed as a society that believed in honor and courage, and in the movies you *believed* that. They could be taken seriously. TNG turned the Klingons into a caricature of themselves. I just couldn't accept them, it was like they were playing pretend or something. All they did was talk the talk, strut around and occasionally fight each other, but nothing truly bastardly; nothing in the spirit of the movies.
Now ST6... General Chang with a thick metal eyepatch bolted to his skull. THAT was badass.
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What I envy about them is that they are calm and more warm than the white man. Under normal circumstances (not war, extreme famine etc), they are friendlier than us.
Ahh, the dangers of romanticizing less-technologically-advanced (LTA) cultures. This is a common association with most people in our society, that those in these other cultures are, by definition, at peace with the world and with each other. African, American Indian, and Asian tribes have had wars throughout their history, just as other cultures have. Granted, they're not all warlike, and there are undoubtedly many peaceful peoples who would fit your description quite well. But one can't make the generalisation that all LTA-cultures are calm, wise, and peaceful.
But in general, so to speak, you're absolutely right. A culture need not be technologically advanced in order to be civilized, be happy, or to feel a sense of purpose or self-identity. And like you said, LTA-cultures have societal systems and institutions that are just as complex as the ones in our own society.
But their lack of advanced technology does not automatically make them warmer and friendlier. There are plenty of places in the US where the people are calm, warm, and friendly. I'll get back to you when I find a few examples.
Don't hold your breath...
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According to the training that I have received to be a manager at a large university, if your manager tells you that you can sue not only the company but also the manager.
The only problem there is that I don't have it in writing that he told me this; they've all been verbal requests, albeit frequent ones. Therefore, it's simply my word (and the words of my coworkers) against his, and that's not enough to prove anything. He's very careful to be as sleazy as possible whilst covering his own ass.
/* Steve */
I'm waiting for DNA Computers! Shove a hamburger into where the floppy drive used to be, run gMetabolize for Linux (GNUtrients?), in a few hours my machine isn't obsolete anymore.
Either that, or it mutates into an evil Steve Wozniak and strangles me in my sleep.
/* Steve */
I work as a developer for a defense contractor on the East Coast, and they do indeed give paid overtime, as well as flex time. Of course, they've been trying to get rid of that for years. Then again, if they did that, they'd have to raise salaries, because they're vastly non-competitive on base pay alone. Then there's my manager, who tells me to bring my work home and do it on the weekends, without pay, and without charging my time to the contract, which is actually very illegal. And we're not talking minimum security illegal, we're talking federal pound-me-in-the-ass illegal.
/* Steve */
But yes, as long as we're here sitting at our desks, typing away like good little code monkeys, we do get paid overtime. For now.
Sure, it's a little dated, and yes, those damned boxing robots are still friggin impossible, but it works.
I thought the boxing robots were from SQ3, The Pirates of Pestulon.
Ahh, the memories... I remember endless hours of frustration resulting from that fine, fine game. Of course, my main problem with the whole series was that if you forgot to check the change pocket of your great-granduncle's Crimean War uniform three minutes after the introduction after sneaking through the seventh air duct on your right and prying open the wall with a toothpick, three Pringles, and a curling iron, you couldn't solve the game and had to load a game you saved three weeks ago.
Or maybe that was Donkey Kong.
No, I'm pretty sure that it was SQ. Maybe not that particular scenario, but one remarkably like it, on several occasions. Then again, I was about 11 when I played them, and somewhat less attentive to detail. Still, though, putting dead ends in a game like that is, IMNSHO, a mark of poor planning. The Myst series, on the other hand, was excellent in this regard. The solution to a puzzle may be excruciatingly obscure, with the only clue residing on the other side of the world, but it's there, and there's always a way to get back to it.
Then again, I played SQ5 for the first time recently, and solved it in a matter of hours. So maybe I just got smarter. Or maybe the games just got easier.
/* Steve */
So what will you do when you are stuck at the Giant's Drink?
/* Steve */
You do something that nobody had ever thought of before. And then the alien race overseeing the computer game will try to form a philotic bridge between their hive consciousness and your own in an attempt to control your mind, which will ultimately result in the creation of a superbeing living among the ansible links throughout the galaxy.
Or maybe you'll just end up seeing a bunch of elves make houses out of the Giant's dried-up carcass. It's difficult to say.
I'd say that the real technological genuis would have to have come on your part, in your ability to open and view a fourth DVD in a three-DVD box set :-)
/* Steve */
Lucky bastard...
Whatever you do, folks, don't work for a government contractor, at least not the one I'm working for. Aside from the lack of bonus checks, the salaries don't even increase enough to match inflation. Never mind getting off for Christmas week. We're given Christmas Day, and management likes to schedule important pieces of work that week while they run off and spend time with their families.
Yet another reason why I'm joining Academia in the not-too-distant future. It's got its downsides, but at least it's taking steps toward bettering myself. Corporate whoredom wears me down.
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A song by Voltaire springs to mind. I first discovered this song in a prior /. post, although I can't seem to remember what it was. He's got a few other ST-related songs that you'll find if you scroll down sufficiently. They range from highly amusing to highly twisted.
/.-ers can most easily relate. And I'm pleased to see you popping up in User Friendly these days. Will wonders never cease...
/* Steve */
On a quasi-related note, I was watching TNG last night on the Star Trek & White Trash network, and I happened upon an episode from the first season, called "Justice". In this episode, Wesley is condemned to death for falling into some flowers on a planet ruled by half-naked nymphomaniac hippie love-children. It made me realize just how much the show managed to improve over the years.
As for you, Wil, I really gotta hand it to you. I remember in your interview, you said that you had little to no say over the lines you were given. Watching that episode, it became clear to me that whoever wrote the script either didn't realize you were over the age of ten, or rather was himself somehow spawned on a rockbed, skipping adolescence entirely. I've done some improv and other acting through college myself, and one of the most difficult things for a young actor to do is to swallow his pride and follow his director, however inane that direction might be. Personally, I think you did a terrific job with what you were given. I've been in that position on stage plays, with all my friends and family sitting in the audience, waiting for them to pounce on me later for something that was the product of poor writing/direction.
I'll admit, when I first watched TNG as a relatively wee lad, I didn't much like Wesley's character. Still, I did know the difference between actor and character, and I was secretly jealous as hell, watching someone who was only a few years older than me and got to work on Star Trek!! I was also pleased to see the writers wise up and let Wesley start kicking some ass in later episodes, culminating with his eventual transubstantiation to deity-hood with an intergalactic "elder on the hill". I was kinda scratching my head at that one for a while, but concluded that it was a better way to go than being killed by a an greasy sentient Hefty bag in the middle of a living puddle of muck, as was the case with Denise Crosby. Best, I can figure from the special effects, the cause of death was "fatal birthmark on face".
Anyway, it's always interesting to see how it was for you on the show, especially since you're the member of the cast to which most
Actually, Sun isn't releasing StarOffice v6.0 for free to the Linux or Windows crowds anymore. And my own experience with StarOffice was that it was rather slow, and left behind a lot of zombie processes that defied even the almighty "kill -9".
What I'd like to see is Hancom Word compared against KOffice and AbiWord, which are still very free and fairly high-quality products. Of course, I'm still waiting for someone to port Bank Street Writer over to Linux. There have got to be a few loose cannons out there who are willing to give that a shot...
/* Steve */
Actually, the new version, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, is multiplayer. It's a pretty sweet game, and it even runs under Linux. Now if only multiple copies of the game can be used to build a Beowulf cluster...
people don't want the same shit they've been given for decades
Actually, it's quite surprising how many people really do want the same shit they've been listening to for decades. Look at your average boy-band/Britney/Christina fan. Generally, they tend to be early adolescent girls, and judging by the marketing schemes these "artists" use, it's clear that it's the image they're selling, rather than the music. And really, it's the image that will sell. The fact that they're singing and dancing is just incidental. It's not the music, it's the whole phenomenon. It's the social aspect of it, where liking these bands versus hating them helps define those lines of social stratification we loved so much in junior high school. To quote Ferris Bueller, "It's stupid and childish, but then again, so is high school."
Most people to whom the MTV generation of music is being marketed don't want to go out on a limb, take a chance, and risk buying an album that they may be ostracized later for admitting they like. It's all about fitting in, being cool, and following one's fellow lemmings to the end. That's not to say that most people in our society are like that, but they do have a rather loud voice and a significant presence in the media.
If you look at it, really, music hasn't changed all that much, at least culturally. It's just become more of a business over the years.
The first boy band, at least as we think of the term, was the Beatles. Of course, among their many differences from today's counterparts are the ideas that they wrote their own songs, could actually sing well, play their own instruments (when was the last time you saw N'Sync pick up a guitar?), and write thought-provoking, insightful, clever tunes. Of course, there was a sizeable subset of Beatles fans that didn't care about all that. They just screamed and pulled their hair when they saw their heroes on stage, and then years later discovered new dimensions to the music that most 12 or 13-year-olds don't pick up or notice.
It isn't until the past 25 years or so that music has begun migrating toward outright commercialism, where the image is more important than the substance. There's an article on the Irish Times about some observations regarding boy bands and the like. It's a pretty good read. For my part, I'll stop rambling.
/* Steve */
SHUT UP!!
Bloody Vikings...
/* Steve */
My questions here are, what keeps the power from dissipating over the great distance from earth to the moon, and what happens if the laser/maser misfires? I'd hate to see this turn into some kind of comic-book-style weapon, and chances are, this technology would almost definitely fall into the wrong hands.
Also, why not just build satellites in geosync orbit? If you have enough of them, a constant percentage will get sunlight at all times, and then the power could be beamed between the satellites to the appropriate receiving stations. No sense using the moon, which would require an enormous amount of resources, when we can build something a lot closer to home.
/* Steve */
One reason for Microsoft's monopoly is the proprietarity of their operating system. Conversely, the reason why open source products such as Linux work so well is that the operating system itself is publically available, while companies can use it to make money off of support, documentation, and separate resources which improve the use of Linux (i.e. HardDrake, Red Carpet, etc). This allows an economic model of computing in which competition is possible, and it means that programs written for Linux will work under most distributions, thus taking the software industry out of the hands of a single all-powerful giant.
What would your plans for Microsoft be in this regard? Obviously, having MS open up the Windows source is not a realistic goal, but do you feel that there is any way to establish a set of non-proprietary operating system standards that would re-enable competition in the desktop market?
/* Steve */
Those on the other side of the pond?
Or maybe by "us" you meant something that differs from my perception of it.
Yes, very true. I've generally found BBC to be more objective than most American news services. However, my original comment was that if the news services were corrupt, not just the American ones. Give it enough time, anything's possible.
/* Steve */
Uh... bullshit. As much as you'd like to believe otherwise, the latest Media Player will play any MP3 you want. If you install a third party MP3 encoder, it'll encode any MP3 you want at any data rate the encoder supports. Might want to recheck the facts there.
/., and that it tends to be done rather blindly without a full understanding of the facts. I freely admit that I haven't got all the answers. I'm just noticing a trend, between DeCSS, the DMCA, and MS's sleazy tactics, that media is being regulated more than ever, and MS is among those on the front lines, ready to cash in.
/. about WinXP's license verification system not letting users make more than a certain number of changes to their computers, within days there were cracks available. Where there are restrictions, there are usually ways around them, at least technologically. And they're pretty readily available.
:)
Ah, yes. I looked it up, and found this article which seems to verify your claim, such as it is. It does seem, though, that Microsoft is making it more difficult for users to do this. Of course, most MP3 junkies tend to be technically savvy enough to pull it off. And seeing as how the only article I found was a post on an opinions board, it may be a very simple matter.
The point of my post was to indicate that MS seems to be moving closer and closer to regulating the behavior of its customers in a way that seems characteristic of a legal institution. This reply is very true, though, as MS's power appears to be coming largely from the people who are allowing more restrictions to be put in place.
Honestly, I realize that demonizing Microsoft is nothing new to
It's not really Microsoft that's the main problem, admittedly. It's the whole notion of property, ownership, and copyright getting way out of hand, combined with many people's tendencies to go to whatever means they can to acquire more of what they want. Thankfully, though, if enough people want more freedom from media restrictions (which, incidentally, aren't all that extensive yet. I still have a sizeable MP3 collection, and it continues to grow), they have the power to take action.
As soon as the story was posted on
So maybe it's not such a sturm und drang story after all
/* Steve */
Very true. See, what's happening here is that a company, rather than a government institution, is enforcing "digital rights management". This is essentially Microsoft's way of ensuring that all digital media is Windows-compatible only, and given most people's general tendency to flock to whatever's popular, it looks like they have a good shot at succeeding. I have no doubt that MP3 is here to stay, it's just a question of how readily available they'll be to everyday users. The latest Media Player won't play MP3s at anything better than 56kbps, which sounds something like singing underwater over a telephone. I'm fairly certain that under the auspices of Digital Rights Management, we'll start to see Windows reject the installation attempts of CD rippers, and given the fact that Windows still dominates the desktop market, that will dramatically reduce MP3 availability.
Granted, as for MP3 players like Winamp, they'll still exist, and Microsoft will have a hard time justifying any restrictions placed on installing that. It is disturbing, however, that Microsoft is becoming analogous to a government entity, where it has the power to restrict and regulate the behavior and actions of its users.
Okay, so that makes me paranoid. And maybe what I'm suggesting is a bit over the top. But it's still interesting to think about how one company has become so powerful. Then again, I look at something like AOL Time-Warner. Microsoft controls our desktop computers, fine. AOL-TW controls television, record labels, movie studios, news networks, and internet news sites. Those are the things that steer public opinion and tell many folks out there how to think. But they're much more subtle about it. Besides, if the news services are corrupt, who's going to tell us about it?
Okay, I'll stop my overly paranoid rant. If y'all excuse me, I think I'll go etch a few more conspiracy theories on the men's room walls.
/* Steve */
"Crap... forget this, I'm just going to stay down here and play with my invisibility ring"
I suppose that makes Bill Gates Gallum. But then, who'd be Bilbo? Linus Torvalds? Tux the penguin?
/* Steve */
Well, actually, this cloned embryo isn't going to be implanted into a woman's uterus with the intent to let it develop into a fully-grown human/mutant/whatever. The stem cells are going to be harvested for therapeutic purposes, like regrowing heart or liver tissue. The Scientific American article made it pretty clear that they were still very much against cloning for reproductive purposes, at least until the technical and ethical problems were worked out.
/* Steve */