Actually, the OS is the last thing I'd bitch about with this product.
If you notice on the web-site, buying the OS is an OPTION. The mere fact that you can choose not to buy windows when you buy this machine puts it head and shoulders above almost every other PC-type product out there in terms of the OS.
I mean really, if you want to buy this device and don't like ME, just don't pay for it.
It's a paid service, you would think that they would want to cater to their most active customers to keep from losing them. On the other hand, you might think that since you pay a flat fee that those who didn't make good use of their account in previous months but paid the full fee anyway deserve a little extra priority.
Hmmm... I'm not sure that anyone really has a reason to complain to loudly about this. No-one is being ripped off. Still, I'm not sure I understand their logic in implementing this way. In the end I'm not sure it is in their interest to give preference to either group: the frequent users or those who pay and don't play.
> In this particular case, I think the best > response to this kind of lawyer-based slapdown > stupidity is to mirror the picture far and > wide.
Yeah, the real question is, since most regular PA readers had already seen this strip, how many people who would never have known about it in the first place are going to end up seeing it now because of this action? I'm sure quite a few slashdotters to begin with, and this probably isn't the only forum where corporate bullying gets brought up.
Seems like the opposite of the desired effect to me. Unless their desired effect was just to pass the message: "corporate america has no sense of humor". And everyone already knew that anyway.
don't celebrate easter, so i wasn't thinking about it.
when i first read the post I thought it said "Eastern Humour" and I was wondering what easterners found so funny about rabbits.
[grin]
Off-Topic
on
Nuke-Lobbing
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Well, talking politics on slashdot is a great way to brun karma, but here goes anyways.
If you are happil willing to talk about the war as a direct, unprovoked attempt to wrest away control of Iraqi oil and you approve of it in that sense from a Utilitarian perspective then you have no right to be displeased with Bush's dishonesty.
If Bush had openly said: "We are the richest and have the most military might and should therefore control whatever natural resources we want, regardless of who happens to be currently living above them" he would have brought world opinion down upon the U.S. a hundred times more strongly than it has already fallen. You wouldn't have Canada, France and ermany absaining from the war and hoping to avoid economic repercussions, you would have these countries directly imposing economic sanctions on the U.S.
Because really, once Bush has decided that he doesn't need an excuse in the form of Liberation or Terror in order to go after some tasty resources, how long will it be before he looks North and sees a tremendous supply of Gold, Uranium, Lumber and Fresh Clean Water.
If you are using Utilitarianism to justify aggression (something J.S. Mill was strongly and openly against, mind you), you are required to also use it to justify deception about that violence.
Besides, as far as I'm concerned anyway, from a utilitarian perspective the benefit of low oil prices, U.S. dollar hegemony and international power backed by resource control is much lower than the cost of living my life knowing that these benefits were paid for with innocent Iraqi blood (when I say innocent I am talking about civilians, both killed in combat and mistreated more under U.S. control than they were under Saddam).
---QUOTE--- I'll keep running my mail server, and AOL can keep ignoring me, but I'm going to start sending my friends and familly to AOL's competition, must as I hate to because that's mostly folks like MSN and the regional phone companies. ---ENDQUOTE---
I actually had a couple of friends on AOL and when I noticed this a couple of weeks ago, I just told them to stop using their AOL accounts and offered them accounts on my home mailserver, which they both accepted, it being much cooler.
I reccomend that you offer the same to anyone you can no longer e-mail because of this, and then have them send an e-mail to AOL indicating this policy as the reason they have opted to stop using the service.
...this is one of the reasons that their user review system is actually a Good Thing(disregarding problems with abuses of the system, which in the large scheme is pretty insignificant). Game reviews can be good to read, especially if you find someone who has a history of praising games that you have enjoyed and criticizing those which you did not. But really what you need to do before buying is harvest some information from amateur reviewers. Certainly some of them will be idiots and a lot of them will have different tastes from you, but at least they have no vested interest in saying that something is good.
disclaimer: Of course, USENET is also great for this purpose and predates Amazon, but Amazon is more in the public consciousness these days than USENET is.
Unless they go with Linux to save a little money. Especially if they are a manufacturer.
If you are producing a set-top embedded system and need to put an OS on it, it's WAY cheaper to use Linux than Embedded Windows. The only real cost associated with Linux is tech support, which can be a HUGE cost, but won't be in a system like this because access to the OS will be extremely limited so users won't have an opportunity to fuck it up.
If you make this product using Linux, you are probably doing so to save on costs, thus maximizing profit for you and your shareholders. Chances are ideological issues about free software and open source play little or no role in that decision. As such, you would be more than happy to use a port of MS-WMP and related codecs if that is a convenient and efficient way to handle the media.
The Gautama Buddha was an ordinary man who used paradoxes when necessary because there is a disparity between the truth that can be understood and the truth that can be told in words. Sometimes the best way to explain something is to say something which seems unrelated but which has a chance of bringing about the same spontaneous realization in your listener as you yourself have achieved. Sometimes that thing which you say is a contradiction.
If you believe that there is a contradiction between enlightenment and being a spiritual teacher, you have a very poor understanding of what Buddhists mean by the word enlightenment.
It's true that sequelism is an epidemic in Hollywood and that whenever a new sequel comes out there are always these interviews with the author of the original screenplay where they talk about how they were only able to tell a small part of the story they intended in the original film and they had planned for a trilogy from the start blah blah blah...
In the case of Star Wars- A New Hope, however, I think the fact that it was subtitled Episode Four lends some believability to the claim that there was more than this one segment to the original story. Regardless, the second Star Wars movie(Empire) was better than the first, hopefully the same will happen in this case.
What the article actually said was not that the new 3D world modeling effect they have developed have been used in a GAP ad already.
What they were pointing out was that the GAP Swing ad which used something very much like Bullet-Time actually PRECEDED the release of the Matrix. Bullet-Time wasn't invented from the ground up by Gaeta and the Matrix team. They took an existing technology and idea and pushed it a little farther than anyone had done before and then used it in a medium(blockbuster movie) where everyone was sure to notice it. Likewise, they are doing the same thing with this new technology. They didn't invent it, but they are taking what already existed to entirely new places.
Maybe they've just decided to give out illegal copies of their software to everyone they can and then sue them over it. It's easier than getting them to trudge all the way down to the store and fork out a hundred bucks willingly.
-----QUOTE----- And, hey, if they MUST use first person, why not a first person multi-player game WITH a story... imagine king's quest first person where you walk around a 3d environment... what if you took your friends along with you for the quest? That way you can chat with them and you can all cooperatively solve problems / puzzles / decide on things? -----ENDQUOTE-----
Isn't that exactly what A Tale in The Desert offers? And with a Linux-Native Client too!
Re:Ozone layer must be removed...
on
Ozone As Pesticide
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"The school may file patent protections on its process.
A $150,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Research Initiative financed the Purdue team's latest wave of research."
I don't mean to be one of those people who freaks out at the mere mention of a patent, but something rubs me the wrong way about research at an educational institution which was funded by a government grant being patentable. Shouldn't it be public domain?
The reason this is interesting is because now the chemical and the habit can be seperated into two problems each easier to deal with on its own than in conjunction with the other. Nicotine patches and gum have helped a large number of people give up smoking because they allow a smoker to wean themselves off of the physical habit without having to deal with withdrawal from the chemical. If they are successful at this step, they have come half way and have only to wean themselves off of the patch.
This engineered tobacco allows the same process to work the other way. In fact the two could probably be combined for a very gentle weaning process consisting of first switching smokers to nicotine-free cigarettes and nicotine patches and then slowly lowering the use of one while keeping the other constant and then lowering the second to match.
Also, to all the people saying this is a dumb idea and using comparisons with alcohol-free beer(which they claim is also a dumb idea). Regardless of whether you think it will help people quit smoking or not, I guarantee that enough people will be willing to try to pull in a healthy profit for the company. All those companies aren't making alcohol-free beer because it doesn't sell. So in that sense its definitely not a dumb idea.
Yes, and interestingly, the article isn't even really saying that OSes and programming languages are the same thing. What it is saying is that any programming language worth it's salt has the potential to become an OS and that it will probable eventually do so for security reasons. Then he tacks on "There will perhaps be new PL's designed with isolation as one of their main goals--or current PL's might be improved/redesigned--so hopefully this requirement of having a 'multiuser PL' will be fulfilled in the future." as his last line.
The bulk of his argument is sound and has convincing precedent in the examples you give(Micro, Spectrum, etc.) and I could add a few of my own, not to mention the modern example of Java. As for his ad hoc specualtion at the end that programming languages will eventually replace OSes. I'm prepared to call that bullshit until he presents some evidence. I don't see it happening, who wants to code on a machine that can only use one language?
Of course, the response is that new language will be written to run inside the OS-Language and that coders can work in either these sub-languages or the OS-level meta-language. But really how would this be any different than the current situation with many languages vs. assembler as meta-language only with an additional obfuscating level of go-between.
Slashdot Mirror
you mean "The Dominion of Canada"?
I thank you to use our proper name.
You're right. Why would you ever want to build one machine that can do many things when you can build many machines that can do one thing each.
This whole "universal machine" idea is going nowhere. Quick, someone call Alan Turing.
Actually, the OS is the last thing I'd bitch about with this product.
If you notice on the web-site, buying the OS is an OPTION. The mere fact that you can choose not to buy windows when you buy this machine puts it head and shoulders above almost every other PC-type product out there in terms of the OS.
I mean really, if you want to buy this device and don't like ME, just don't pay for it.
It's a paid service, you would think that they would want to cater to their most active customers to keep from losing them. On the other hand, you might think that since you pay a flat fee that those who didn't make good use of their account in previous months but paid the full fee anyway deserve a little extra priority.
Hmmm... I'm not sure that anyone really has a reason to complain to loudly about this. No-one is being ripped off. Still, I'm not sure I understand their logic in implementing this way. In the end I'm not sure it is in their interest to give preference to either group: the frequent users or those who pay and don't play.
> In this particular case, I think the best
> response to this kind of lawyer-based slapdown
> stupidity is to mirror the picture far and
> wide.
Yeah, the real question is, since most regular PA readers had already seen this strip, how many people who would never have known about it in the first place are going to end up seeing it now because of this action? I'm sure quite a few slashdotters to begin with, and this probably isn't the only forum where corporate bullying gets brought up.
Seems like the opposite of the desired effect to me. Unless their desired effect was just to pass the message: "corporate america has no sense of humor". And everyone already knew that anyway.
don't celebrate easter, so i wasn't thinking about it.
when i first read the post I thought it said "Eastern Humour" and I was wondering what easterners found so funny about rabbits.
[grin]
Well, talking politics on slashdot is a great way to brun karma, but here goes anyways.
If you are happil willing to talk about the war as a direct, unprovoked attempt to wrest away control of Iraqi oil and you approve of it in that sense from a Utilitarian perspective then you have no right to be displeased with Bush's dishonesty.
If Bush had openly said: "We are the richest and have the most military might and should therefore control whatever natural resources we want, regardless of who happens to be currently living above them" he would have brought world opinion down upon the U.S. a hundred times more strongly than it has already fallen. You wouldn't have Canada, France and ermany absaining from the war and hoping to avoid economic repercussions, you would have these countries directly imposing economic sanctions on the U.S.
Because really, once Bush has decided that he doesn't need an excuse in the form of Liberation or Terror in order to go after some tasty resources, how long will it be before he looks North and sees a tremendous supply of Gold, Uranium, Lumber and Fresh Clean Water.
If you are using Utilitarianism to justify aggression (something J.S. Mill was strongly and openly against, mind you), you are required to also use it to justify deception about that violence.
Besides, as far as I'm concerned anyway, from a utilitarian perspective the benefit of low oil prices, U.S. dollar hegemony and international power backed by resource control is much lower than the cost of living my life knowing that these benefits were paid for with innocent Iraqi blood (when I say innocent I am talking about civilians, both killed in combat and mistreated more under U.S. control than they were under Saddam).
I'm confused...
My room-mate has had a copy of Vice City for about six months... Is there some dort of split release date thing? We are in Canada.
---QUOTE---
I'll keep running my mail server, and AOL can keep ignoring me, but I'm going to start sending my friends and familly to AOL's competition, must as I hate to because that's mostly folks like MSN and the regional phone companies.
---ENDQUOTE---
I actually had a couple of friends on AOL and when I noticed this a couple of weeks ago, I just told them to stop using their AOL accounts and offered them accounts on my home mailserver, which they both accepted, it being much cooler.
I reccomend that you offer the same to anyone you can no longer e-mail because of this, and then have them send an e-mail to AOL indicating this policy as the reason they have opted to stop using the service.
...this is one of the reasons that their user review system is actually a Good Thing(disregarding problems with abuses of the system, which in the large scheme is pretty insignificant). Game reviews can be good to read, especially if you find someone who has a history of praising games that you have enjoyed and criticizing those which you did not. But really what you need to do before buying is harvest some information from amateur reviewers. Certainly some of them will be idiots and a lot of them will have different tastes from you, but at least they have no vested interest in saying that something is good.
disclaimer: Of course, USENET is also great for this purpose and predates Amazon, but Amazon is more in the public consciousness these days than USENET is.
Unless they go with Linux to save a little money. Especially if they are a manufacturer.
If you are producing a set-top embedded system and need to put an OS on it, it's WAY cheaper to use Linux than Embedded Windows. The only real cost associated with Linux is tech support, which can be a HUGE cost, but won't be in a system like this because access to the OS will be extremely limited so users won't have an opportunity to fuck it up.
If you make this product using Linux, you are probably doing so to save on costs, thus maximizing profit for you and your shareholders. Chances are ideological issues about free software and open source play little or no role in that decision. As such, you would be more than happy to use a port of MS-WMP and related codecs if that is a convenient and efficient way to handle the media.
The Gautama Buddha was an ordinary man who used paradoxes when necessary because there is a disparity between the truth that can be understood and the truth that can be told in words. Sometimes the best way to explain something is to say something which seems unrelated but which has a chance of bringing about the same spontaneous realization in your listener as you yourself have achieved. Sometimes that thing which you say is a contradiction.
If you believe that there is a contradiction between enlightenment and being a spiritual teacher, you have a very poor understanding of what Buddhists mean by the word enlightenment.
Please stop with the faith-bashing.
It's true that sequelism is an epidemic in Hollywood and that whenever a new sequel comes out there are always these interviews with the author of the original screenplay where they talk about how they were only able to tell a small part of the story they intended in the original film and they had planned for a trilogy from the start blah blah blah...
In the case of Star Wars- A New Hope, however, I think the fact that it was subtitled Episode Four lends some believability to the claim that there was more than this one segment to the original story. Regardless, the second Star Wars movie(Empire) was better than the first, hopefully the same will happen in this case.
What the article actually said was not that the new 3D world modeling effect they have developed have been used in a GAP ad already.
What they were pointing out was that the GAP Swing ad which used something very much like Bullet-Time actually PRECEDED the release of the Matrix. Bullet-Time wasn't invented from the ground up by Gaeta and the Matrix team. They took an existing technology and idea and pushed it a little farther than anyone had done before and then used it in a medium(blockbuster movie) where everyone was sure to notice it. Likewise, they are doing the same thing with this new technology. They didn't invent it, but they are taking what already existed to entirely new places.
Maybe they've just decided to give out illegal copies of their software to everyone they can and then sue them over it. It's easier than getting them to trudge all the way down to the store and fork out a hundred bucks willingly.
stupid posts will be modded down, intelligent posts modded up. Only this one day a year.
is an acceptable word. it's in the scrabble dictionary
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the parent paraphrase as: "If it's useful, and it's not ours, we have the right to blow it up."?
Since when does that sort of dangerous self-righteous neo-patriotic paranoia qualify as insightful?
This may be marked as flamebait, but it's worth the chance, I have Karma to burn anyway.
-----QUOTE-----
And, hey, if they MUST use first person, why not a first person multi-player game WITH a story... imagine king's quest first person where you walk around a 3d environment... what if you took your friends along with you for the quest? That way you can chat with them and you can all cooperatively solve problems / puzzles / decide on things?
-----ENDQUOTE-----
Isn't that exactly what A Tale in The Desert offers? And with a Linux-Native Client too!
for those not in the know:
What is the Animatrix?
"The school may file patent protections on its process.
A $150,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Research Initiative financed the Purdue team's latest wave of research."
I don't mean to be one of those people who freaks out at the mere mention of a patent, but something rubs me the wrong way about research at an educational institution which was funded by a government grant being patentable. Shouldn't it be public domain?
The reason this is interesting is because now the chemical and the habit can be seperated into two problems each easier to deal with on its own than in conjunction with the other. Nicotine patches and gum have helped a large number of people give up smoking because they allow a smoker to wean themselves off of the physical habit without having to deal with withdrawal from the chemical. If they are successful at this step, they have come half way and have only to wean themselves off of the patch.
This engineered tobacco allows the same process to work the other way. In fact the two could probably be combined for a very gentle weaning process consisting of first switching smokers to nicotine-free cigarettes and nicotine patches and then slowly lowering the use of one while keeping the other constant and then lowering the second to match.
Also, to all the people saying this is a dumb idea and using comparisons with alcohol-free beer(which they claim is also a dumb idea). Regardless of whether you think it will help people quit smoking or not, I guarantee that enough people will be willing to try to pull in a healthy profit for the company. All those companies aren't making alcohol-free beer because it doesn't sell. So in that sense its definitely not a dumb idea.
Yes, and interestingly, the article isn't even really saying that OSes and programming languages are the same thing. What it is saying is that any programming language worth it's salt has the potential to become an OS and that it will probable eventually do so for security reasons. Then he tacks on "There will perhaps be new PL's designed with isolation as one of their main goals--or current PL's might be improved/redesigned--so hopefully this requirement of having a 'multiuser PL' will be fulfilled in the future." as his last line.
The bulk of his argument is sound and has convincing precedent in the examples you give(Micro, Spectrum, etc.) and I could add a few of my own, not to mention the modern example of Java. As for his ad hoc specualtion at the end that programming languages will eventually replace OSes. I'm prepared to call that bullshit until he presents some evidence. I don't see it happening, who wants to code on a machine that can only use one language?
Of course, the response is that new language will be written to run inside the OS-Language and that coders can work in either these sub-languages or the OS-level meta-language. But really how would this be any different than the current situation with many languages vs. assembler as meta-language only with an additional obfuscating level of go-between.
my two cents.
one other quick comment... maybe it's a universal turing machine, but maybe not.
You have a problem when your bits start deviating from their layed out path because they suddenly have to pee.
This whole .walk thing is pretty interesting, especially having just re-read: 0wnzored.