And what a solution! Post links to the Unix Haters Handbook, rant and rave about how you hate it's archaism, even equate every Unix supporter to someone who will slam you without reason.
Well, thanks to you're wonderful and informative post that informed me of my options and alternatives to *nix derivatives, I've decided you do indeed deserve to be branded. Microserf I won't say, strange you would assume so. But like I said, you named so many alternative ways to think about OS'es in general that I am forever in your debt.
Now, seriously now, your post has about as much base as the average '[insert name here] sucks!' post. Try this on for size:
Unfortunately, the average MacWorld reader is so infatuated with their MacOS 9 plaything that they won't stop to consider the horrible horrible flaws that plague the entire MacOS family. Even more sadly, he will steadfastly hold close to his belief that anyone who doesn't like MacOS must be an evil Microserf, and in doing so will pass on the opportunity to learn that there are things better then the Beast from Apple.
Replace the term MacOS recursively with Windows. Or DOS. Or OS/2. Or anything. Next time, be constructive. At least the link you provided was a decent look at languages.
The following is my stance on this issue: If Unix is indeed the wrong way to do things, it's a wonder it's survived for so many years and is now coming back not only in the free OS'es but in Apple's new commercial offering for the home user. Unix itself may not be what's so wonderful, but the fact that there is a platform with standards behind it (POSIX) that allows programmers to write once and port many ways may be what's so wonderful.
Careful with those killall coments, the Pinkertons will come get you after you've been snitched on by the AC's:-)
Slashdot doesn't suck. The new users do. That's all. I used to browse at -1 because it was funny. Now I usually do at +3. That way you even avoid most Karma Whores.
Exactly. As is the same with/. Yet, browsers are expected to grok this utter shit.
Here we all are, hooting and cheering that we finally have a Standards Complying browser.. Well guess what, people don't write code to those same Standards. Some WYSIWYG editors don't make 100% compliant code.
And yet, it's still expected to display all these things. Should we really expect Mozilla to render bad HTML? I'm amazed it does. Building a web browser is a fairly thankless job. Here's to hoping with better browsers, people will take incentive to write better code.
"Looks like a telemarketer needs a comb-over" *ka-click!*
"It's not Sam! It's the head of a multimillion dollar telemarketing conglomerate." "Oh yeah, Sam is the other annoying guy.."
"A robot has left a small town in ruins! Among the ruins, a pet shop where only a few bags of alfalfa hay were stolen, a Spencer's gift shop where only a Baywatch poster was stolen, and a telemarketer office. There were no survivors at the telemarketer office."
In all honesty, Lucas could pretty much do anything and make a killing, think of all he can release on DVD still:
The Trilogy, THX'ed, but not Special Edition The Special Edition Trilogy Episodes 1-3
He can basically release the first 2 items in any order he wants at any time, and the last one when the movies are finished. And you know, people will buy each and every one of them. Lord knows I would, even though I already own the first two items on VHS and am contemplating a VHS purchase of Episode One (my computer and my TV are in different rooms. only one plays DVD's)
Actually, both companies are guilty for doing the make-Quake-run thing. 3dfx wasn't capable of making a full ICD before the Voodoo3 because an ICD requires windowed modes. And nVidia's drivers still don't acclerate every OpenGL call there is, because there's no profit in writing a driver that does that. Software fallbacks, in other words.
As for nVidia having better hardware, that's hooey. The GeForce will be obselete the second DirectX 8 hits, it uses a totally different method to do T&L. I'm personally waiting on the next gen from Matrox. My G400 pleases me greatly and I have no doubts that Matrox will release another quality product.
Onto the next point, I'm not mad at nVidia for holding back specs. They can do that all they want to. It's just that superior drivers would be developed at no cost by them if they released the specs. What's worse is that their commitment to their own Open Source driver is just hideous. Tried using the current TNT driver?
If they release them, binary only drivers is death for them. What if someone on a *nix platform OTHER then Linux wants to use an nVidia card? Binary only gives them the shaft. Hell, it means the shaft just between different versions of XFree.
Oh, and I never said 3dfx was a saint for marketing practices. 3dfx had honor back in the days before the Voodoo3. Since then, both nVidia and 3dfx have played some evil marketing practices. I'll list off a few that come to mind:
- The hype game. Leak specs before your engineering teams even know what they're making - Release 'false' specs. Like how the original TNT specs were against hardware that couldn't be made. - The entire 'T-Buffer' BS that 3dfx is doing.
I could go on.. But I'll just take my opportunity to give Matrox a nod, as one of the longest standing supporters of releasing specs. Kudos to them.
You must have better eyes then me. The head of this thread was complaining about Be drivers among others. Linux isn't the only not-Windows platform out there.
Gee, I don't know what you're talking about. I see the links you're talking about, but you know something jackass? They're for TNT/TNT2 cards. NOT GeForce. I shall repeat. NOT Geforce.
This time with some HTML: NOT GEFORCE
You know, those anonymous cowards may not always be right, but that's no reason to slander them all.
It's deeper then that. nVidia has been on MS's dick^H^H^H^Hpayroll since the early days of 3D acceleration. Back then (way way back) when the best of the best was the Voodoo Graphics. nVidia was entering the market with their Riva128.
Back then, the choice in API's were similar to today's. 3dfx had Glide, it was the most popular. Next up was OpenGL, but it was pretty much just a fringe thing. The only company using it was id with GLQuake. Why? Well John Carmack didn't want to get locked into Glide because it only did Voodoo. The alternative was the then AWFUL Direct3D. DirectX was around versions 2 or 3 and it was bad. John Carmack slammed it in many a.plan file.
So nVidia is trying to break into this market, but they can't without a good API. Glide isn't an option. Microsoft didn't like this, they didn't control the market leading API. Thus was born a marriage made in hell. There were many nVidia hosted graphics/gaming development confrences, all sponsored by MS.
The X-Box is just MS's way of giving nVidia the nod after all this time. This is why the TNT drivers have been so poorly maintained, and one of the reasons real lowlevel specs for the TNT aren't available to the Open Source world.
I could go on about why I don't like nVidia, mostly due to their marketing practices, but I won't. I will say that you won't find an nVidia card in my machine. Vote with your dollars.
Well, there's one thing the music industry does.. It makes stars. It makes sensations, in and out of the spotlight. They control what the radios play more or less. They make songs popular. When a new sensation hits, be it the Boy Band or the Latin Stud, they're on top of it. Do you ever see them 'catching up' to a new music fad? No, they create these music fads.
This is why MP3 scares them. They didn't create it. They didn't engineer it. They don't know what to do with it. They will join the digital dancefloor, but when they know they have the same control as they do today. Until then, lititagtion is the name of the game.
Wasn't it the original PowerVR chipset that did this? Or was it one of the early Riva128 ones.. I'm thinking back, way back.. But I do recall there being a big stink over how if you renamed a popular benchmark's.exe file, it's results dropped about 30% on a card who's name currently eludes me.
It's no secret that companies cheat on benchmarks. Heck, ATI released an entire set of drivers (the Rage Pro TURBO drivers) that made a few benchmarks faster and a few real games SLOWER. Was there critisism and what not? Lord no. For some reason, it was expected in the 3D accelerator market. I'll paraphrase Brian Hook: "2 years ago, if you went into a trade show with vague specs and no real product, you'd be laughed out. Now it's a way of doing business."
OK, I'm sorry if I misinterpret your statement.. But it seems to me like you're saying that a PC is a thing of power. You have your fixed disks that you can modify the data on, as opposed to this little Thin Machine that gets all it's data read-only from a main system somewhere.
Well, you're right. Mostly. A PC is a good thing. But let's face it, a modern PC has more power and more hassles then a lot of situations need. Say you need to set up a lot of cheap kiosks? Read the Long Story secion at LTSP, it's a very good example of why those 'powerful PCs' just don't suit the purpose sometimes.
Maybe you ARE the sysadmin and you don't want all your lusers to have huge amounts of power on their systems. Say at a school. Most High School students (not the good geeks, the kiddies) will take your systems and do their damndnest to destroy them. Don't give them that option, use thin clients. Have control, have every system cheap and easy to diagnose.
Or maybe you just want to get on the 'net? That's good. You just either need to put up with the fairly easy-to-use-but-unstable Win9x with it's useless Hardware Wizards and Paperclips, or learn Linux (no easy feat). You know something, neither of those options suit some people. Embedded systems are simple. They can't be fscked with by the user that greatly.
And as for your very weak argument on a price point, look at the i-opener. Sure, it's being sold at a LOSS, but it's cheap as dirt. x86 may not be the ideal embedded system, but it works. And other archs aren't as obscure as you make them out to be. That's what this article is all about, the increased availability of other archs.
Miguel may be a man I have a lot of respect for as a great coder. He's the man of Gnome. He just doesn't have much of a grasp on Distro issues. He has the idea that the second a stable piece of code releases the hands of the developers, it should be in distros. The turnover time is a little longer then that. He's also said that Debian packages are 'too hard' and so Helix didn't ship deb's with their recent Gnome Preview.
That doesn't mean I'm mad at him. He just doesn't understand. Give him a chance, be rational. He's a good coder, just maybe a little naive.
Re:My problem with wormhole theories
on
Wormholes? Maybe.
·
· Score: 2
My question about wormholes:
If we're creating these things out of a near-dozen dimensions, how the heck do we send our own little 3D selves through them with any semblance of direction?
We all know what this is going to mean- more weird-ass vortexes, more mindless fights, more anomalies-of-the-week, and probably more women in catsuits. The Baywatch-ization of Star Trek will be complete
And this is one of the reasons I have so much respect for JMS, the writer of Babylon 5 and Crusade. After the amazing success of the first 4 seasons of B5, another season and eventually a follow up season were created. However, the Powers That Be (TNT, the sponsoring channel) wanted to turn the show into "Baywatch In Space." He said 'fuck that' and chose to end Crusade to maintain his creative vision.
And what a vision it had been. B5 was one of the most well written series I've ever seen. The character development was there, especially between Mulari and G'Kar. The first 4 seasons all intricately tied together. They even made a prequel movie 'In the Beginning', and it was good.
The writers of Star Trek could learn a thing or twenty.
I have my doubts. If a government is one thing, it's slow. Not neccessarily calculated and precise, but slow. Change comes slowly. You think the government will just one day pass a law that forces you to turn all your guns in? Lord no. As far as things go now, it's taken 70 years of Big Government to get where we are, and people are only just noticing now. And probably because of the advent of the Internet.
I say this very seriously. Your rights are slipping away, but at such a slow rate that it is mere erosion. More importantly, it is not only the government who is after your rights, corporations are as well.
You talk about 'figuring it out' but people have historically shown themselves to be idiots and morons. The status quo. You don't risk throwing your way of life away just to grasp at Rights that have slipped away so slowly that noone knows what they are. Reactionary changes (things getting 'messy') only happen during times of drastic change. And that's just not happening.
Well the US started on the idea of Liberty. After all, they liberated themselves from rule they didn't agree with. They didn't do much to maintain that Liberty though. People aren't known for correcting their mistakes. While it probably made sense to just put a line in the Constitution saying 'Collect arms in case you need to do what we did,' today it's worthless.
Today, noone wants a gun to protect themselves from the government, they want one to protect themselves from the other idiots who have guns to protect themselves from the other idiots who have guns to.. Well, some people do have guns in case the Gov't goes bad, but they live in compounds in Montana, waiting for the day their conspiracy theories unfold.
Today, taking away peoples guns won't make a damn difference. Even if they were allowed to keep guns, would it make a difference the day Freedom of Association was ironed over 'for the children' or 'to stop drugs?' Oh wait, that happened, only it was 'for capitalism to stop the Red Scare.' Well what's next in line.. Speech? Well don't worry, as long as people think you're only after pornography and bomb-making instructions, you'll even get them to actively agree with you. Oh right, that's happened too. And did anyone owning a gun make a fscking difference? Food for thought.
Actually, IMNSHO, Apple really shot themselves one good when they dropped SCSI as the standard in every computer. Looking back as far as the late Performa series, IDE harddrives and SCSI cdroms. Today, it's IDE all over the place. IDE has a place in the iMac for certain, but not in the G4's. You're already paying the slight Apple Premium, you may as well get a decent harddrive with that price.
If it was all about simplicity, we'd be seeing internal FireWire harddrives or some such loving;-) As for USB, thank god they ditched ADB when they did. ADB was (and still is) better then any x86 peripheral hookup scheme, short of USB. PS/2, serial, parallel? Get 'em off my board, PLEASE.
My real point is that lately, Apple is only a little better on hardware. They ship IDE for pete's sake, as a default on their most powerful machines. The only reason you don't see a proliferation of IEEE-1394 in the PC market is that Intel has a stick shoved up their ass. USB is common.
The 2 things that an Apple machine get you these days are a G4 processor and a veryvery nice case. These days though, they aren't worth the Apple Premium. And if Jobs decided to hype OS X to the masses, he'll be selling out on the hobbyists and specialists that pride themselves on the Quality of their Macs. Because, no doubt, Jobs will start wanting the Mac to reach out to more and more people, make it cheaper and cheaper. Here's to hoping he won't spoil the power range of Macs.
I can say with some authority that nVidia has been in bed with Microsoft for a long time now. The MS hosted graphics conventions were always the sites of big nVidia announcements.. Developer outreach programs would be by MS and nVidia together..
This has been going on since the days of the Riva128 (damn I feel old;-]), back when there was a realistic need for MS to break into the gaming API market segment.. Back before Direct3D was worth the paper it was printed on. When Glide was proprietary but popular.. Anyway, now I'm reminiscing. nVidia basically is being forced into the Open Source market, like everyone else.
MS would never drop them, they have too much invested.. Besides, ATI is an Apple partner, Matrox is open-source friendly.. Maybe they'd get S3 but I doubt that. The simple fact is that nVidia has never been about their consumers, they've been about hype and the next-best-product. An alliance with the Devil just reinforces that:-) [last point is tounge in cheek]
"Market leader"? I'm sorry, this is the 3D accelerator market. There IS no market leader. ATI has a strong hold in the OEM market (especially with Apple). 3dfx has a very strong following among the hardcore framerate junkies. Matrox releases very professional products that go beyond gaming for some of the best 2D displays, and their Marvel series of video cap/edit boards are the best you can buy in the consumer market.
nVidia is just another player. Since the release of their TNT chipset, they've always played dirty in the PR market.. Leaking specs that can't exist (the TNT2 is what the TNT was meant to be), buying out Tom Palbst.. 3dfx has been fighting back in the hype war as well.
The only two companies that make cards that I can respect are ATI and Matrox. They don't play the hype game, they're among the most Open Source friendly.. What do you know, they're Canadian to boot:-)
I agree with you, nVidia should have taken some free talent in the Open Source arena. Hell, with incomplete specs, the Utah-GLX team has recently added stencil buffering to the G400 driver and the framerates are as good, if not better, then their Win9x counterparts. But nVidia made their bed, they have to sleep in it.
Slashdot Mirror
And what a solution! Post links to the Unix Haters Handbook, rant and rave about how you hate it's archaism, even equate every Unix supporter to someone who will slam you without reason.
Well, thanks to you're wonderful and informative post that informed me of my options and alternatives to *nix derivatives, I've decided you do indeed deserve to be branded. Microserf I won't say, strange you would assume so. But like I said, you named so many alternative ways to think about OS'es in general that I am forever in your debt.
Now, seriously now, your post has about as much base as the average '[insert name here] sucks!' post. Try this on for size:
Unfortunately, the average MacWorld reader is so infatuated with their MacOS 9 plaything that they won't stop to consider the horrible horrible flaws that plague the entire MacOS family. Even more sadly, he will steadfastly hold close to his belief that anyone who doesn't like MacOS must be an evil Microserf, and in doing so will pass on the opportunity to learn that there are things better then the Beast from Apple.
Replace the term MacOS recursively with Windows. Or DOS. Or OS/2. Or anything. Next time, be constructive. At least the link you provided was a decent look at languages.
The following is my stance on this issue: If Unix is indeed the wrong way to do things, it's a wonder it's survived for so many years and is now coming back not only in the free OS'es but in Apple's new commercial offering for the home user. Unix itself may not be what's so wonderful, but the fact that there is a platform with standards behind it (POSIX) that allows programmers to write once and port many ways may be what's so wonderful.
Careful with those killall coments, the Pinkertons will come get you after you've been snitched on by the AC's :-)
Slashdot doesn't suck. The new users do. That's all. I used to browse at -1 because it was funny. Now I usually do at +3. That way you even avoid most Karma Whores.
But again, that's a problem with users. (sigh)
To be honest.. I don't remember anymore. :-) phi1 (mighta been phi10 or phi1o), a /. user, said that a while ago in a comment.
:-)
I loved it
Exactly. As is the same with /. Yet, browsers are expected to grok this utter shit.
Here we all are, hooting and cheering that we finally have a Standards Complying browser.. Well guess what, people don't write code to those same Standards. Some WYSIWYG editors don't make 100% compliant code.
And yet, it's still expected to display all these things. Should we really expect Mozilla to render bad HTML? I'm amazed it does. Building a web browser is a fairly thankless job. Here's to hoping with better browsers, people will take incentive to write better code.
"Looks like a telemarketer needs a comb-over" *ka-click!*
"It's not Sam! It's the head of a multimillion dollar telemarketing conglomerate." "Oh yeah, Sam is the other annoying guy.."
"A robot has left a small town in ruins! Among the ruins, a pet shop where only a few bags of alfalfa hay were stolen, a Spencer's gift shop where only a Baywatch poster was stolen, and a telemarketer office. There were no survivors at the telemarketer office."
In all honesty, Lucas could pretty much do anything and make a killing, think of all he can release on DVD still:
The Trilogy, THX'ed, but not Special Edition
The Special Edition Trilogy
Episodes 1-3
He can basically release the first 2 items in any order he wants at any time, and the last one when the movies are finished. And you know, people will buy each and every one of them. Lord knows I would, even though I already own the first two items on VHS and am contemplating a VHS purchase of Episode One (my computer and my TV are in different rooms. only one plays DVD's)
..so it may not be a backdoor. 2 questions remain:
#1, WTF is that string doing in this dll?
#2, Can Netscape sue for libel?
Actually, both companies are guilty for doing the make-Quake-run thing. 3dfx wasn't capable of making a full ICD before the Voodoo3 because an ICD requires windowed modes. And nVidia's drivers still don't acclerate every OpenGL call there is, because there's no profit in writing a driver that does that. Software fallbacks, in other words.
As for nVidia having better hardware, that's hooey. The GeForce will be obselete the second DirectX 8 hits, it uses a totally different method to do T&L. I'm personally waiting on the next gen from Matrox. My G400 pleases me greatly and I have no doubts that Matrox will release another quality product.
Onto the next point, I'm not mad at nVidia for holding back specs. They can do that all they want to. It's just that superior drivers would be developed at no cost by them if they released the specs. What's worse is that their commitment to their own Open Source driver is just hideous. Tried using the current TNT driver?
If they release them, binary only drivers is death for them. What if someone on a *nix platform OTHER then Linux wants to use an nVidia card? Binary only gives them the shaft. Hell, it means the shaft just between different versions of XFree.
Oh, and I never said 3dfx was a saint for marketing practices. 3dfx had honor back in the days before the Voodoo3. Since then, both nVidia and 3dfx have played some evil marketing practices. I'll list off a few that come to mind:
- The hype game. Leak specs before your engineering teams even know what they're making
- Release 'false' specs. Like how the original TNT specs were against hardware that couldn't be made.
- The entire 'T-Buffer' BS that 3dfx is doing.
I could go on.. But I'll just take my opportunity to give Matrox a nod, as one of the longest standing supporters of releasing specs. Kudos to them.
LOL.
I actually had to double take on that one. Elegant. Humourous. To the point too. I should quit the brown nosin'
You must have better eyes then me. The head of this thread was complaining about Be drivers among others. Linux isn't the only not-Windows platform out there.
Gee, I don't know what you're talking about. I see the links you're talking about, but you know something jackass? They're for TNT/TNT2 cards. NOT GeForce. I shall repeat. NOT Geforce.
This time with some HTML: NOT GEFORCE
You know, those anonymous cowards may not always be right, but that's no reason to slander them all.
It's deeper then that. nVidia has been on MS's dick^H^H^H^Hpayroll since the early days of 3D acceleration. Back then (way way back) when the best of the best was the Voodoo Graphics. nVidia was entering the market with their Riva128.
.plan file.
Back then, the choice in API's were similar to today's. 3dfx had Glide, it was the most popular. Next up was OpenGL, but it was pretty much just a fringe thing. The only company using it was id with GLQuake. Why? Well John Carmack didn't want to get locked into Glide because it only did Voodoo. The alternative was the then AWFUL Direct3D. DirectX was around versions 2 or 3 and it was bad. John Carmack slammed it in many a
So nVidia is trying to break into this market, but they can't without a good API. Glide isn't an option. Microsoft didn't like this, they didn't control the market leading API. Thus was born a marriage made in hell. There were many nVidia hosted graphics/gaming development confrences, all sponsored by MS.
The X-Box is just MS's way of giving nVidia the nod after all this time. This is why the TNT drivers have been so poorly maintained, and one of the reasons real lowlevel specs for the TNT aren't available to the Open Source world.
I could go on about why I don't like nVidia, mostly due to their marketing practices, but I won't. I will say that you won't find an nVidia card in my machine. Vote with your dollars.
Well, there's one thing the music industry does.. It makes stars. It makes sensations, in and out of the spotlight. They control what the radios play more or less. They make songs popular. When a new sensation hits, be it the Boy Band or the Latin Stud, they're on top of it. Do you ever see them 'catching up' to a new music fad? No, they create these music fads.
This is why MP3 scares them. They didn't create it. They didn't engineer it. They don't know what to do with it. They will join the digital dancefloor, but when they know they have the same control as they do today. Until then, lititagtion is the name of the game.
Oh where to start..
.exe file, it's results dropped about 30% on a card who's name currently eludes me.
Wasn't it the original PowerVR chipset that did this? Or was it one of the early Riva128 ones.. I'm thinking back, way back.. But I do recall there being a big stink over how if you renamed a popular benchmark's
It's no secret that companies cheat on benchmarks. Heck, ATI released an entire set of drivers (the Rage Pro TURBO drivers) that made a few benchmarks faster and a few real games SLOWER. Was there critisism and what not? Lord no. For some reason, it was expected in the 3D accelerator market. I'll paraphrase Brian Hook: "2 years ago, if you went into a trade show with vague specs and no real product, you'd be laughed out. Now it's a way of doing business."
OK, I'm sorry if I misinterpret your statement.. But it seems to me like you're saying that a PC is a thing of power. You have your fixed disks that you can modify the data on, as opposed to this little Thin Machine that gets all it's data read-only from a main system somewhere.
Well, you're right. Mostly. A PC is a good thing. But let's face it, a modern PC has more power and more hassles then a lot of situations need. Say you need to set up a lot of cheap kiosks? Read the Long Story secion at LTSP, it's a very good example of why those 'powerful PCs' just don't suit the purpose sometimes.
Maybe you ARE the sysadmin and you don't want all your lusers to have huge amounts of power on their systems. Say at a school. Most High School students (not the good geeks, the kiddies) will take your systems and do their damndnest to destroy them. Don't give them that option, use thin clients. Have control, have every system cheap and easy to diagnose.
Or maybe you just want to get on the 'net? That's good. You just either need to put up with the fairly easy-to-use-but-unstable Win9x with it's useless Hardware Wizards and Paperclips, or learn Linux (no easy feat). You know something, neither of those options suit some people. Embedded systems are simple. They can't be fscked with by the user that greatly.
And as for your very weak argument on a price point, look at the i-opener. Sure, it's being sold at a LOSS, but it's cheap as dirt. x86 may not be the ideal embedded system, but it works. And other archs aren't as obscure as you make them out to be. That's what this article is all about, the increased availability of other archs.
..an easy way to make an embedded-ish system is with Boot ROM's on your ethernet card! NFS your root FS, get your kernel over the network.
Read up on the Linux Terminal Server Project. It's good stuff.
Miguel may be a man I have a lot of respect for as a great coder. He's the man of Gnome. He just doesn't have much of a grasp on Distro issues. He has the idea that the second a stable piece of code releases the hands of the developers, it should be in distros. The turnover time is a little longer then that. He's also said that Debian packages are 'too hard' and so Helix didn't ship deb's with their recent Gnome Preview.
That doesn't mean I'm mad at him. He just doesn't understand. Give him a chance, be rational. He's a good coder, just maybe a little naive.
My question about wormholes:
If we're creating these things out of a near-dozen dimensions, how the heck do we send our own little 3D selves through them with any semblance of direction?
We all know what this is going to mean- more weird-ass vortexes, more mindless fights, more anomalies-of-the-week, and probably more women in catsuits. The Baywatch-ization of Star Trek will be complete
And this is one of the reasons I have so much respect for JMS, the writer of Babylon 5 and Crusade. After the amazing success of the first 4 seasons of B5, another season and eventually a follow up season were created. However, the Powers That Be (TNT, the sponsoring channel) wanted to turn the show into "Baywatch In Space." He said 'fuck that' and chose to end Crusade to maintain his creative vision.
And what a vision it had been. B5 was one of the most well written series I've ever seen. The character development was there, especially between Mulari and G'Kar. The first 4 seasons all intricately tied together. They even made a prequel movie 'In the Beginning', and it was good.
The writers of Star Trek could learn a thing or twenty.
I have my doubts. If a government is one thing, it's slow. Not neccessarily calculated and precise, but slow. Change comes slowly. You think the government will just one day pass a law that forces you to turn all your guns in? Lord no. As far as things go now, it's taken 70 years of Big Government to get where we are, and people are only just noticing now. And probably because of the advent of the Internet.
I say this very seriously. Your rights are slipping away, but at such a slow rate that it is mere erosion. More importantly, it is not only the government who is after your rights, corporations are as well.
You talk about 'figuring it out' but people have historically shown themselves to be idiots and morons. The status quo. You don't risk throwing your way of life away just to grasp at Rights that have slipped away so slowly that noone knows what they are. Reactionary changes (things getting 'messy') only happen during times of drastic change. And that's just not happening.
Well the US started on the idea of Liberty. After all, they liberated themselves from rule they didn't agree with. They didn't do much to maintain that Liberty though. People aren't known for correcting their mistakes. While it probably made sense to just put a line in the Constitution saying 'Collect arms in case you need to do what we did,' today it's worthless.
Today, noone wants a gun to protect themselves from the government, they want one to protect themselves from the other idiots who have guns to protect themselves from the other idiots who have guns to.. Well, some people do have guns in case the Gov't goes bad, but they live in compounds in Montana, waiting for the day their conspiracy theories unfold.
Today, taking away peoples guns won't make a damn difference. Even if they were allowed to keep guns, would it make a difference the day Freedom of Association was ironed over 'for the children' or 'to stop drugs?' Oh wait, that happened, only it was 'for capitalism to stop the Red Scare.' Well what's next in line.. Speech? Well don't worry, as long as people think you're only after pornography and bomb-making instructions, you'll even get them to actively agree with you. Oh right, that's happened too. And did anyone owning a gun make a fscking difference? Food for thought.
Actually, IMNSHO, Apple really shot themselves one good when they dropped SCSI as the standard in every computer. Looking back as far as the late Performa series, IDE harddrives and SCSI cdroms. Today, it's IDE all over the place. IDE has a place in the iMac for certain, but not in the G4's. You're already paying the slight Apple Premium, you may as well get a decent harddrive with that price.
;-) As for USB, thank god they ditched ADB when they did. ADB was (and still is) better then any x86 peripheral hookup scheme, short of USB. PS/2, serial, parallel? Get 'em off my board, PLEASE.
If it was all about simplicity, we'd be seeing internal FireWire harddrives or some such loving
My real point is that lately, Apple is only a little better on hardware. They ship IDE for pete's sake, as a default on their most powerful machines. The only reason you don't see a proliferation of IEEE-1394 in the PC market is that Intel has a stick shoved up their ass. USB is common.
The 2 things that an Apple machine get you these days are a G4 processor and a veryvery nice case. These days though, they aren't worth the Apple Premium. And if Jobs decided to hype OS X to the masses, he'll be selling out on the hobbyists and specialists that pride themselves on the Quality of their Macs. Because, no doubt, Jobs will start wanting the Mac to reach out to more and more people, make it cheaper and cheaper. Here's to hoping he won't spoil the power range of Macs.
I can say with some authority that nVidia has been in bed with Microsoft for a long time now. The MS hosted graphics conventions were always the sites of big nVidia announcements.. Developer outreach programs would be by MS and nVidia together..
;-]), back when there was a realistic need for MS to break into the gaming API market segment.. Back before Direct3D was worth the paper it was printed on. When Glide was proprietary but popular.. Anyway, now I'm reminiscing. nVidia basically is being forced into the Open Source market, like everyone else.
:-) [last point is tounge in cheek]
This has been going on since the days of the Riva128 (damn I feel old
MS would never drop them, they have too much invested.. Besides, ATI is an Apple partner, Matrox is open-source friendly.. Maybe they'd get S3 but I doubt that. The simple fact is that nVidia has never been about their consumers, they've been about hype and the next-best-product. An alliance with the Devil just reinforces that
I know that.. A or two year ago, ATI was scraping the bottom of my list of fav. hardware companies.
:-)
But they can make a comeback
"Market leader"? I'm sorry, this is the 3D accelerator market. There IS no market leader. ATI has a strong hold in the OEM market (especially with Apple). 3dfx has a very strong following among the hardcore framerate junkies. Matrox releases very professional products that go beyond gaming for some of the best 2D displays, and their Marvel series of video cap/edit boards are the best you can buy in the consumer market.
:-)
nVidia is just another player. Since the release of their TNT chipset, they've always played dirty in the PR market.. Leaking specs that can't exist (the TNT2 is what the TNT was meant to be), buying out Tom Palbst.. 3dfx has been fighting back in the hype war as well.
The only two companies that make cards that I can respect are ATI and Matrox. They don't play the hype game, they're among the most Open Source friendly.. What do you know, they're Canadian to boot
I agree with you, nVidia should have taken some free talent in the Open Source arena. Hell, with incomplete specs, the Utah-GLX team has recently added stencil buffering to the G400 driver and the framerates are as good, if not better, then their Win9x counterparts. But nVidia made their bed, they have to sleep in it.