British Columbia Attorney General Graeme Bowbrick is not suggesting that the video games be banned, he is suggesting that there should be a rating system for the games
Oh yes he is. As one Canadian from British Columbia to another, I suggest that you look more closely at the proposed legislation. Here are a couple of quotes:
In some instances, product will be reviewed by the Film
Classification Office to ensure that prohibited material including extreme violence,
obscenity or child pornography is not distributed in British Columbia.
and
In practice,
the Film Classification Office will examine all ESRB video games rated as
"MATURE" and "ADULT ONLY". Other games rated in different categories may be
examined if these are alleged to contain prohibited materials.
So the legislation will give our beloved film censors the authority to ban any video games which they don't like. That is the very definition of censorship.
Another quote:
Retailers must comply with the new legislative requirements and not sell or rent age-restricted products to minors.
Whether you agree with the above or not, it shows that this is not just a proposal for a rating system, but is also a proposal for enforcing access restrictions on video games.
You also say:
I don't think that the BC Attorney General is suggesting that we start the equivalent of a book burning club
No? Have a look at this:
The Film Classification Office may enter business premises to inspect video
game products. Where a product is not classified, or is not approved for
distribution, or has been recalled from distribution, it may be removed from the
premises.
And what do you think they'll do with the videos that they remove? Burn them, is my guess. So there likely will be the equivalent of book-burning for video games, although club membership is likely to be by government invitation only.
The proposal will also hurt video-game stores. Not only do they have to pony up money for a new government license (the withholding of which is another avenue for government censorship) but as the legislation itself admits:
The examination of video games for prohibited content in the "MATURE" and "ADULT
ONLY" prior to distribution has some potential to impact "first to market" product
release scheduling.
So when a hot new game comes out that the bleeding-edge types have been aching for, it will take longer to reach the shelves in BC than in surrounding jurisdictions. A lot of early-adopters will simply bypass this by ordering the game from outside the province, thereby hurting in-province sales.
I like the idea of a rating system. I've always been a big fan of labelling things so that I can know what I'm getting and can make an informed choice about whether to buy it or leave it on the shelf.
What I don't like is when those labels are used as an excuse for taking that choice away from me, which is what this legislation proposes to do.
EarthLink wouldn't need a GUID to uniquely
identify everyone. They only need an EarthLink-specific user ID -- which their install program can negotatiate with the server. Maybe that's part of the PGP-encrypted packet which gets sent on install.
So they only need enough bits to
identify their expected customer base. Even if we assume megalomania and go for a potential customer base of one billion, that's just a mere 30 bits.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
But what will the handicapped do with her?
on
Head-Mounted Mouse
·
· Score: 1
The girl in the picture looks kinda stoned, but I can imagine that this could be useful for the handicapped
I think that being stoned could be useful for the non-handicapped, as well.
If you get too much spam, stop frequenting porn sites, and signing up for stupid crap.
Actually, my biggest jump in spam generally comes when I post to/. after having been away from it for a while.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
I'm holding out for Day Of The Tentacle
on
Leisure Suit Unix
·
· Score: 4
I've never been into these kinds of games much. I played King's Quest (III, I think) and quite enjoyed it. Then I played another (V) and was bored. Yeah, the graphics were better and you had a few more choices, but it still had a certain sameness to it.
Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards captivated my attention, mainly because it was funny and irreverant. I got quite a bit of play-time out of that one. Then I tried the second game in the series and found it significantly more tame. I guess Sierra decided that they didn't want to scare parents away from buying the thing for their kids.
I've tried a couple of other KQ/LLL-style games since then, but the only one which has grabbed my attention enough for me to run it all the way through has been Day Of The Tentacle, from LucasArts.
Now there's a classic game. I don't suppose anyone is porting it to Linux?
All of these "automated road" concepts share a
similar difficulty: handing control back to the driver at the end of the automated portion of the journey.
You can beep and flash lights all you want, but if the driver is asleep, passed out from drink, or engaged in coitus, there's a good chance that you'll have to bring the vehicle to a full stop and wait a few moments for zir to resume control.
In fact, I would expect that safety concerns would very quickly result in a requirement that each vehicle must be brought to a complete stop before handing control back to the driver.
That in turn means that each off-ramp will need a landing zone capable of stacking up a few cars while their drivers get their acts together.
This would, perhaps, not be dissimilar to what happens with some downtown off-ramps today, which have traffic lights at the bottom, resulting in cars sitting idle on the ramp, waiting for the light to change. The difference is that every RUF off-ramp would have that sort of built-in delay.
Another problem, specific to RUF, is that there is no equivalent to the passing lane. So whenever there is a blockage -- for example, when an accident occurs or an off-ramp backs up -- it will block the entire flow of traffic, which could very quickly bring the whole system to a standstill.
These may not be insurmountable problems, but they would have to be addressed before implementing a system such as this.
Will any of us ever see plastic semiconductors in use?
Given that plastic semiconductors are already in use, the answer to your question is, "yes".
If you mean plastic superconductors, the answer to your question is still, "yes".
Quantum computers?
Yes.
How about space elevators?!
Given the big bag of cheesies that I just polished off and the party-sized SunChips® that I'm currently eyeing, I probably won't live long enough to see space elevators. But if we have any five-year-olds reading/., they might.
we need to take the emphasis off of multi-gigahertz processing, and take a step back to develop other components to the same technological advancement
As others have pointed out, this is basic research which can be applied to all kinds of circuitry, not just CPUs.
However, even applied to CPU development, decreasing feature size means more than just faster processors. It also means that you can create a processor of similar speed to what we have today, but with lower power consumption and better chip yields.
We were able to e-mail a primary developer (Monty), and got back extremely helpful responses very quickly.
I had a similar experience. I found a bug in the MySQL query optimizer which was causing our application to return incorrect results. I spent a couple of hours developing a simple test case and posted it to the mailing list. This was on a Saturday. By Sunday night Monty had replied to me in email, confirmed the bug, fixed it, and posted updated binaries on the web-site.
Had I been dealing with Microsoft or Oracle, there is absolutely no way that I would have had a patch available to me that quickly, let alone during a weekend.
This is not to say that all such problems get addressed as quickly in MySQL or any other Open Source package, but my experience has been that what they lack in front-line support they more than make up for on the back nine.
I've found that most front-line support problems tend to be documentation issues (i.e. poor or absent documentation, or a failure on the part of the user to find or understand the necessary bits). As a techie I can usually find my way around such problems, either by careful RTFMing, experimentation, and/or talking to other users.
Those approaches won't work with problems which are integral to the product itself. So if I had to choose between good front-end support and fast bug fixes, I'd take the latter.
He/She is 100% correct. If I work in Canada, make $30,000 a year, and pay $50 Canadian for DSL, that's the same as if I worked in the US, made $30,000 a year, and paid $50 US. (Unless Canada and the US's standards of living were much different, and I dont' think they are)
Look at this way. My C$50 will buy me about 20
loaves of bread here in Canada. Your US$50 will
buy you around 30 loaves of bread in the US.
So by paying US$50 for your service, you are forgoing 10 more loaves of bread than I each month.
Hong Kong already has been changing China, for several decades, now.
Look at the huge economic build-up in Guangdong and mainland hinterlands of Hong Kong. This is a direct result of dollars and expertise flowing out of Hong Kong and into neighbouring Chinese towns and cities.
The other "Special Economic Zones" set up along the coast were in direct response (and a counterbalance) to the success of Guangdong.
And with economic success has come political power as well. The governors of Guangdong, Shenzen, Shanghai and the other SEZs have become a considerable moderating influence on the central government in Beihing.
The only reason we use NT around here is because of Maya. The alternative of running it under IRIX on an SGI box is technically alluring but financially unsupportable. (I'll never understand why SGI insists on charging thousands of dollars for their development tools: no wonder IRIX attracts so few developers.)
Once Maya is out for Linux, we can switch back to using Linux throughout the company and never again have to use an OS that forces us to reboot simply to change fonts.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yes he is. As one Canadian from British Columbia to another, I suggest that you look more closely at the proposed legislation. Here are a couple of quotes:
and So the legislation will give our beloved film censors the authority to ban any video games which they don't like. That is the very definition of censorship.Another quote:
Whether you agree with the above or not, it shows that this is not just a proposal for a rating system, but is also a proposal for enforcing access restrictions on video games.You also say:
No? Have a look at this:
And what do you think they'll do with the videos that they remove? Burn them, is my guess. So there likely will be the equivalent of book-burning for video games, although club membership is likely to be by government invitation only.The proposal will also hurt video-game stores. Not only do they have to pony up money for a new government license (the withholding of which is another avenue for government censorship) but as the legislation itself admits:
So when a hot new game comes out that the bleeding-edge types have been aching for, it will take longer to reach the shelves in BC than in surrounding jurisdictions. A lot of early-adopters will simply bypass this by ordering the game from outside the province, thereby hurting in-province sales.I like the idea of a rating system. I've always been a big fan of labelling things so that I can know what I'm getting and can make an informed choice about whether to buy it or leave it on the shelf.
What I don't like is when those labels are used as an excuse for taking that choice away from me, which is what this legislation proposes to do.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
So they only need enough bits to identify their expected customer base. Even if we assume megalomania and go for a potential customer base of one billion, that's just a mere 30 bits.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
I think that being stoned could be useful for the non-handicapped, as well.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
Actually, my biggest jump in spam generally comes when I post to /. after having been away from it for a while.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards captivated my attention, mainly because it was funny and irreverant. I got quite a bit of play-time out of that one. Then I tried the second game in the series and found it significantly more tame. I guess Sierra decided that they didn't want to scare parents away from buying the thing for their kids.
I've tried a couple of other KQ/LLL-style games since then, but the only one which has grabbed my attention enough for me to run it all the way through has been Day Of The Tentacle, from LucasArts.
Now there's a classic game. I don't suppose anyone is porting it to Linux?
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
All of these "automated road" concepts share a similar difficulty: handing control back to the driver at the end of the automated portion of the journey.
You can beep and flash lights all you want, but if the driver is asleep, passed out from drink, or engaged in coitus, there's a good chance that you'll have to bring the vehicle to a full stop and wait a few moments for zir to resume control.
In fact, I would expect that safety concerns would very quickly result in a requirement that each vehicle must be brought to a complete stop before handing control back to the driver.
That in turn means that each off-ramp will need a landing zone capable of stacking up a few cars while their drivers get their acts together.
This would, perhaps, not be dissimilar to what happens with some downtown off-ramps today, which have traffic lights at the bottom, resulting in cars sitting idle on the ramp, waiting for the light to change. The difference is that every RUF off-ramp would have that sort of built-in delay.
Another problem, specific to RUF, is that there is no equivalent to the passing lane. So whenever there is a blockage -- for example, when an accident occurs or an off-ramp backs up -- it will block the entire flow of traffic, which could very quickly bring the whole system to a standstill.
These may not be insurmountable problems, but they would have to be addressed before implementing a system such as this.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
Given that plastic semiconductors are already in use, the answer to your question is, "yes".
If you mean plastic superconductors, the answer to your question is still, "yes".
Quantum computers?
Yes.
How about space elevators?!
Given the big bag of cheesies that I just polished off and the party-sized SunChips® that I'm currently eyeing, I probably won't live long enough to see space elevators. But if we have any five-year-olds reading /., they might.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
As others have pointed out, this is basic research which can be applied to all kinds of circuitry, not just CPUs.
However, even applied to CPU development, decreasing feature size means more than just faster processors. It also means that you can create a processor of similar speed to what we have today, but with lower power consumption and better chip yields.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
I had a similar experience. I found a bug in the MySQL query optimizer which was causing our application to return incorrect results. I spent a couple of hours developing a simple test case and posted it to the mailing list. This was on a Saturday. By Sunday night Monty had replied to me in email, confirmed the bug, fixed it, and posted updated binaries on the web-site.
Had I been dealing with Microsoft or Oracle, there is absolutely no way that I would have had a patch available to me that quickly, let alone during a weekend.
This is not to say that all such problems get addressed as quickly in MySQL or any other Open Source package, but my experience has been that what they lack in front-line support they more than make up for on the back nine.
I've found that most front-line support problems tend to be documentation issues (i.e. poor or absent documentation, or a failure on the part of the user to find or understand the necessary bits). As a techie I can usually find my way around such problems, either by careful RTFMing, experimentation, and/or talking to other users.
Those approaches won't work with problems which are integral to the product itself. So if I had to choose between good front-end support and fast bug fixes, I'd take the latter.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
You must have been using Confederate dollars.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
Look at this way. My C$50 will buy me about 20 loaves of bread here in Canada. Your US$50 will buy you around 30 loaves of bread in the US.
So by paying US$50 for your service, you are forgoing 10 more loaves of bread than I each month.
Thus, it's a better deal for me.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
Look at the huge economic build-up in Guangdong and mainland hinterlands of Hong Kong. This is a direct result of dollars and expertise flowing out of Hong Kong and into neighbouring Chinese towns and cities.
The other "Special Economic Zones" set up along the coast were in direct response (and a counterbalance) to the success of Guangdong. And with economic success has come political power as well. The governors of Guangdong, Shenzen, Shanghai and the other SEZs have become a considerable moderating influence on the central government in Beihing.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
Have a look at http://www.highend 3d.com/maya/tutorials/charcterSetup/setup_1.3d as well as some of the other tutorials on this site.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
Once Maya is out for Linux, we can switch back to using Linux throughout the company and never again have to use an OS that forces us to reboot simply to change fonts.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya