Remember that attorney Boies ('Bios'? Was that Freudian?) is also the one who handed Microsoft's attorneys and witnesses their asses on a platter. When working for Gore, he was quite ineffective (I think he does well when he has lots of preparation, but less well when he has to dance on short notice in front of A. Scalia)
Boies is of the cult of $$$, and is simply cashing in on his Microsoft case notoriety.
You have now met one. I haven't bought a new CD in approximately a year (when I heard that copy-protected CDs were gonna hit the shelves en-masse; don't know if it has happened). Before then, I bought ~50 - 100 CDs a year (some new, some used).
My strategy is to call in to radio shows that interview artists (whether "big time" or "small time"), and tell them that I would like to buy their CD, but probably won't, because of my concerns over not being able to eject a CD from my iBook (these are apparently VALID concerns). Many seem to be unaware of the situation, but the ones who are, aren't happy about it (they realize that their fans will blame THEM, even though they have little control over distribution).
The business people will never be on our side (their jobs are directly threatened, not just because of revenue, but because their jobs are only relevant if they have control of distribution). But the artists need to know that we DO care about them, and are willing to support them, even if we hate their corporate masters. The artists DO have media clout (fans want to hear from them, not the marketing drones), and they are the ones who can bring these concerns to the attention of the masses. At least, I hope so.
They are making a sequel. I'd bet that it sold well in Europe (the whole "adventure game" market is soft here in the U.S.), and I think it will have some legs (since it gets a lot of good word of mouth advertising). That said, your point is well taken. My comments were pointing out the artistic achievements of the game, not the business achievements.
We talked about this on slashdot a couple of weeks ago, but "The Longest Journey" is a great, plot driven adventure game, with a lead female character who:
- is well acted.
- is realistic (or at least naturalistic).
- is not a mere sex object.
- has a journey of discovery that draws strength from a female perspective (I'm a male, so I could be wrong; but the writing and design are good enough that I think I'm not).
- isn't pandering to men.
- isn't pandering to women, either.
- makes you care about her and her plight.
- has LOTS of dialogue, but also good graphics and interesting story, so I wasn't bored.
- couldn't be replaced with a male character without greatly changing the story (ie. isn't a gratuitous female lead character).
- depicts, as part of the game, the complexities of male/female human interactions.
If ANYONE wants to talk about the potential that women have as "lead characters" in computer games, The Longest Journey should be held as the example of how it can be done without fear of alienating all men, and without exploiting male sexual arousal. Probably no coincidence that is was a game designed in Scandinavia. I highly recommend it.
What struck me most, was that this was a BETTER, more interesting, female lead character than ANY recent mainstream Hollywood movie with a lead female character (which are largely either gratuitous, or pandering to the perceived needs of women, or the perceived needs of men). April Ryan is a better role model for women and men, than most "role models" that are normally foisted on us all by the mass-market media.
Lara croft is an unrealistic depiction of womanhood. But male video game action characters are largely unrealistic portayals of men, too. Getting beyond the sexual elements, Lara does succeed (I think) as a character because her womanhood is not gratuitous (she has big juggs; so do some athletic female friends of mine. It isn't like they turn into missles to kill the bad guys), and her scope is limited to an action role (ie. she isn't portraying a societal 'role model', she is portraying a heroine, which are almost always romanticized ideals.)
I'm glad to see there is at least a trend towards women in computer/video games that is less purely sexual. I think, in some large part, it is because the technology is getting better at allowing "substantive" visual depictions (ie. facial expressions and interactions; see Half Life 2 trailer) that were harder to do previously. Whereas hot-looking bodies are relatively easy to do. I hope gamers are progressing towards more substantive portayals of BOTH men and women (at least as an option).
Thanks for the response. As far as "real world" SCCM students, Paul Hargrove was (is?) an SCCM student, and he wrote the HFS filesystem driver for the Linux kernel (I think while a student). Fun to see Ph.D students of Physics doing driver development on the side.:)
I studied under the SCCM program at Stanford, and started the same year as Sepandar Kamvar. I remember him as a great guy, very smart, and an EXCEPTIONALLY good speaker and tutor (I was always pestering him for explanations of the week's lectures).
I'm glad to hear his research is getting attention, and I hope others who are interested in the theoretical aspects of data mining and web search engines will take a look at the SCCM and statistics programs at Stanford (shameless plug - other can post pointers to similar programs).
Deporting illegals "en masse" is something that is quite often lobbied against by business interests, whether left or right wing. Those illegal immigrants are cheap labor, which can be paid for without supplying benefits or paying taxes. If the "welfare state" is left wing, then is dismantling it without doing ANYTHING to address illegal immigrants lowering labor costs the right wing stance?
The "racism" aspect is played up by business funded politicos to distract people from the real issue. It rarely about "job stealing", but rather, "labor cost control".
BTW. I think 40% is a grossly inflated figure, likely pulled out of someone's ass.
While I'm no expert, I believe the answer is simply "gyroscopes". Very good ones, I'm sure. Also, they use reference stars to correct the gyroscopes when they drift.
You left out the part where Microsoft goes to Netscape, Inc. and tells them they are willing to "carve out" the browser market share, and when Netscape says "No", Microsoft uses its OEM deals to punish Netscape and restrict it from being bundled with new systems.
The "integration" of IE was just a ploy to try and legitimize the illegal act that Microsoft attempted which was collusion to control the market, then leveraging of monopoly power to restrict fair competition. The technical quality of IE and Netscape's browser had NOTHING to do with the legal issues.
But, yes, Netscape made mistakes. If anything, Microsoft may have saved itself a LOT of aggravation by simply competing fairly and legally.
Well, honestly, you may not like it, unless you are predisposed to like interactive story games, lots of dialog, a semi-slow pace with fantasy elements, etc. But check out the website before you decide for sure.
Btw, I'm a 30 year old guy who listens to "Tool" all day, and I liked it.:)
Just another one to chip in and strongly recommend "The Longest Journey". Very different from many of the conventional American adventure games (this one was made by, what, Swedes?) I just finished it last week, finally (I started a couple years before, while I was in Grad school and could only play piecemeal) It was HUGE!
Great graphics, great sound, interesting story, LOTS of truly different themes, locations. And the main character was very realistic and three dimensional (not talking about just the graphics, btw) Would be the perfect game to get your 13-15 year old daughter, BTW.
I bought it at the same time as I got System Shock 2, and often had a hard time deciding which to play (if that's any help in gauging TLJ).
But seriously. The graph indicates that they used the "null" driver for all setups (and even tested with graphics boards of VASTLY different performance to make sure they all performed roughly the same with the "null" driver). So one can infer it does test CPU and memory speed (primarily).
I'm NOT calling you names; no 'names' were said. I simply accused you of being insulting in your responses. That is because, by my judgement, your responses (in this thread) seemed to have a strong sarcastic tone to them, and thus seemed insincere.
However, if that was indeed not your intention, then I apologise myself for my escalating hostility. It seems from this last message that you ARE sincere about not intending to be insulting, so I thank you very much for taking the time to clarify that.
My main source of misunderstanding (I think) was that rather than responding to "autopr0n" about his misunderstanding your post, you replied to my response to him (not you). And in doing so, I read the wrong tone into your messages.
The comment *I* responded to had attributed the "Fear Consumption Model", as you call it, to Michael Moore, so I corrected him. Had *you* been more careful, I may not have needed to respond to people you took the wrong meaning from your words. Not everyone has seen the movie, and thus wouldn't know what Marilyn Manson said or didn't say in it.
Wasn't the "bust" a year 2000 phenomenon (late in the year, no less), not 1999? I remember 1999 as an enthusiatic year, where the sky was still the limit and everyone hopes were expected to be realized as the internet commerce age came to maturity. And the Y2K bug was still putting lots of people to work.
I think the "Fear Consumption Model" quote is a mistatement by the poster of what Michael Moore talked about in Bowling For Columbine, not something he has said or espoused. Obviously fear can be a detriment to the economy as a whole (in fact, it has a "chilling" effect on many types of consumption.)
In his movie, Michael talks about the media habit fo playing upon peoples fears, and how some people DO benefit from the results of people's (often irrational) fears. But I don't think he claims the whole economy is based on "fear", or that fear helps the entire economy as a whole.
NOTE - I'm not passing judgement on Michael's movie or works in this statement, that is a separate issue. But I think it fair to not misrepresent one side of an argument (as I believe the original poster did, by passing off their assessment as Michael's).
Not RF, they used magnetic induction to communicate (there were two wearers, one who only bet black/red and did all the observation of the wheel and calculation of the odds, and the other who then bet to win). RF would have been easily detected, whereas magnetic induction is short range (and less common; also this was back in the late 70's)
Recommended reading for any UCSC grad students in math or sciences.
either way, I'd call bullshit. If artoo just showed up right at the climax of the scene, out of nowhere, because all of a sudden he could *fly*(??), I'd have thought "Fucking bullshit!" He never flies later on (when he should have; like getting off the X-Wing on Dagoba, or off the Jabba's sand ship on Tattoine, etc.) In this case, I just thought it earlier.
Instead of the tired old damsel in distress gets rescued routine, Amidala is able to get out herself, using powers of the force which she never really knew she had (but which are supposedly present based on conversations from other movies, and which I'd assume are supposed to be the explanation for why she falls out of a moving plane, and then gets up and says "Gee, not a scratch on me. Let's go jogging.")
I knew that movie would be a piece of ass when I saw the first preview on TV, showing a scene of Amidala running and ducking under mechanical chomping machinery. "Hmmm", I said. "That looks kind of like the scene in Galaxy Quest where they parodied the use of chomping machinery in some random part of the ship that threatens the lives of our heroes. The quote in that movie was 'This episode was BADLY written.'"
And thus, Star Wars Episode II was parodied before it even came out.
His point stands because the DCT *is* a discrete Fourier transform of real, even data. It can be computed with an FFT on real data (by forcing the data to be even, by mirroring). The Fourier Transform is the general principal, the DCT is an implmentation detail.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember that attorney Boies ('Bios'? Was that Freudian?) is also the one who handed Microsoft's attorneys and witnesses their asses on a platter. When working for Gore, he was quite ineffective (I think he does well when he has lots of preparation, but less well when he has to dance on short notice in front of A. Scalia)
Boies is of the cult of $$$, and is simply cashing in on his Microsoft case notoriety.
You have now met one. I haven't bought a new CD in approximately a year (when I heard that copy-protected CDs were gonna hit the shelves en-masse; don't know if it has happened). Before then, I bought ~50 - 100 CDs a year (some new, some used).
My strategy is to call in to radio shows that interview artists (whether "big time" or "small time"), and tell them that I would like to buy their CD, but probably won't, because of my concerns over not being able to eject a CD from my iBook (these are apparently VALID concerns). Many seem to be unaware of the situation, but the ones who are, aren't happy about it (they realize that their fans will blame THEM, even though they have little control over distribution).
The business people will never be on our side (their jobs are directly threatened, not just because of revenue, but because their jobs are only relevant if they have control of distribution). But the artists need to know that we DO care about them, and are willing to support them, even if we hate their corporate masters. The artists DO have media clout (fans want to hear from them, not the marketing drones), and they are the ones who can bring these concerns to the attention of the masses. At least, I hope so.
They are making a sequel. I'd bet that it sold well in Europe (the whole "adventure game" market is soft here in the U.S.), and I think it will have some legs (since it gets a lot of good word of mouth advertising). That said, your point is well taken. My comments were pointing out the artistic achievements of the game, not the business achievements.
We talked about this on slashdot a couple of weeks ago, but "The Longest Journey" is a great, plot driven adventure game, with a lead female character who:
- is well acted.
- is realistic (or at least naturalistic).
- is not a mere sex object.
- has a journey of discovery that draws strength from a female perspective (I'm a male, so I could be wrong; but the writing and design are good enough that I think I'm not).
- isn't pandering to men.
- isn't pandering to women, either.
- makes you care about her and her plight.
- has LOTS of dialogue, but also good graphics and interesting story, so I wasn't bored.
- couldn't be replaced with a male character without greatly changing the story (ie. isn't a gratuitous female lead character).
- depicts, as part of the game, the complexities of male/female human interactions.
If ANYONE wants to talk about the potential that women have as "lead characters" in computer games, The Longest Journey should be held as the example of how it can be done without fear of alienating all men, and without exploiting male sexual arousal. Probably no coincidence that is was a game designed in Scandinavia. I highly recommend it.
What struck me most, was that this was a BETTER, more interesting, female lead character than ANY recent mainstream Hollywood movie with a lead female character (which are largely either gratuitous, or pandering to the perceived needs of women, or the perceived needs of men). April Ryan is a better role model for women and men, than most "role models" that are normally foisted on us all by the mass-market media.
Lara croft is an unrealistic depiction of womanhood. But male video game action characters are largely unrealistic portayals of men, too. Getting beyond the sexual elements, Lara does succeed (I think) as a character because her womanhood is not gratuitous (she has big juggs; so do some athletic female friends of mine. It isn't like they turn into missles to kill the bad guys), and her scope is limited to an action role (ie. she isn't portraying a societal 'role model', she is portraying a heroine, which are almost always romanticized ideals.)
I'm glad to see there is at least a trend towards women in computer/video games that is less purely sexual. I think, in some large part, it is because the technology is getting better at allowing "substantive" visual depictions (ie. facial expressions and interactions; see Half Life 2 trailer) that were harder to do previously. Whereas hot-looking bodies are relatively easy to do. I hope gamers are progressing towards more substantive portayals of BOTH men and women (at least as an option).
Thanks for the response. As far as "real world" SCCM students, Paul Hargrove was (is?) an SCCM student, and he wrote the HFS filesystem driver for the Linux kernel (I think while a student). Fun to see Ph.D students of Physics doing driver development on the side. :)
I studied under the SCCM program at Stanford, and started the same year as Sepandar Kamvar. I remember him as a great guy, very smart, and an EXCEPTIONALLY good speaker and tutor (I was always pestering him for explanations of the week's lectures).
I'm glad to hear his research is getting attention, and I hope others who are interested in the theoretical aspects of data mining and web search engines will take a look at the SCCM and statistics programs at Stanford (shameless plug - other can post pointers to similar programs).
That's the redneck approach. The right-wing approach is to outsource the job to the rednecks.
Deporting illegals "en masse" is something that is quite often lobbied against by business interests, whether left or right wing. Those illegal immigrants are cheap labor, which can be paid for without supplying benefits or paying taxes. If the "welfare state" is left wing, then is dismantling it without doing ANYTHING to address illegal immigrants lowering labor costs the right wing stance?
The "racism" aspect is played up by business funded politicos to distract people from the real issue. It rarely about "job stealing", but rather, "labor cost control".
BTW. I think 40% is a grossly inflated figure, likely pulled out of someone's ass.
I agree. Part of the problem I have these days with people blaming the "left" or the "right".
Our state (CA) is slashing budgets for public schools, while spending $100 million on a new death row for San Quentin.
How LEFT wing is that?
While I'm no expert, I believe the answer is simply "gyroscopes". Very good ones, I'm sure. Also, they use reference stars to correct the gyroscopes when they drift.
You left out the part where Microsoft goes to Netscape, Inc. and tells them they are willing to "carve out" the browser market share, and when Netscape says "No", Microsoft uses its OEM deals to punish Netscape and restrict it from being bundled with new systems.
The "integration" of IE was just a ploy to try and legitimize the illegal act that Microsoft attempted which was collusion to control the market, then leveraging of monopoly power to restrict fair competition. The technical quality of IE and Netscape's browser had NOTHING to do with the legal issues.
But, yes, Netscape made mistakes. If anything, Microsoft may have saved itself a LOT of aggravation by simply competing fairly and legally.
Well, honestly, you may not like it, unless you are predisposed to like interactive story games, lots of dialog, a semi-slow pace with fantasy elements, etc. But check out the website before you decide for sure.
:)
Btw, I'm a 30 year old guy who listens to "Tool" all day, and I liked it.
http://www.longestjourney.com/
Just another one to chip in and strongly recommend "The Longest Journey". Very different from many of the conventional American adventure games (this one was made by, what, Swedes?) I just finished it last week, finally (I started a couple years before, while I was in Grad school and could only play piecemeal) It was HUGE!
Great graphics, great sound, interesting story, LOTS of truly different themes, locations. And the main character was very realistic and three dimensional (not talking about just the graphics, btw) Would be the perfect game to get your 13-15 year old daughter, BTW.
I bought it at the same time as I got System Shock 2, and often had a hard time deciding which to play (if that's any help in gauging TLJ).
But seriously. The graph indicates that they used the "null" driver for all setups (and even tested with graphics boards of VASTLY different performance to make sure they all performed roughly the same with the "null" driver). So one can infer it does test CPU and memory speed (primarily).
I'm NOT calling you names; no 'names' were said. I simply accused you of being insulting in your responses. That is because, by my judgement, your responses (in this thread) seemed to have a strong sarcastic tone to them, and thus seemed insincere.
However, if that was indeed not your intention, then I apologise myself for my escalating hostility. It seems from this last message that you ARE sincere about not intending to be insulting, so I thank you very much for taking the time to clarify that.
My main source of misunderstanding (I think) was that rather than responding to "autopr0n" about his misunderstanding your post, you replied to my response to him (not you). And in doing so, I read the wrong tone into your messages.
So, again, thanks for clarifying.
How about you just ensure that you not respond with insult to people who are trying to be of some help to you.
The comment *I* responded to had attributed the "Fear Consumption Model", as you call it, to Michael Moore, so I corrected him. Had *you* been more careful, I may not have needed to respond to people you took the wrong meaning from your words. Not everyone has seen the movie, and thus wouldn't know what Marilyn Manson said or didn't say in it.
Wasn't the "bust" a year 2000 phenomenon (late in the year, no less), not 1999? I remember 1999 as an enthusiatic year, where the sky was still the limit and everyone hopes were expected to be realized as the internet commerce age came to maturity. And the Y2K bug was still putting lots of people to work.
I think the "Fear Consumption Model" quote is a mistatement by the poster of what Michael Moore talked about in Bowling For Columbine, not something he has said or espoused. Obviously fear can be a detriment to the economy as a whole (in fact, it has a "chilling" effect on many types of consumption.)
In his movie, Michael talks about the media habit fo playing upon peoples fears, and how some people DO benefit from the results of people's (often irrational) fears. But I don't think he claims the whole economy is based on "fear", or that fear helps the entire economy as a whole.
NOTE - I'm not passing judgement on Michael's movie or works in this statement, that is a separate issue. But I think it fair to not misrepresent one side of an argument (as I believe the original poster did, by passing off their assessment as Michael's).
Not RF, they used magnetic induction to communicate (there were two wearers, one who only bet black/red and did all the observation of the wheel and calculation of the odds, and the other who then bet to win). RF would have been easily detected, whereas magnetic induction is short range (and less common; also this was back in the late 70's)
Recommended reading for any UCSC grad students in math or sciences.
either way, I'd call bullshit. If artoo just showed up right at the climax of the scene, out of nowhere, because all of a sudden he could *fly*(??), I'd have thought "Fucking bullshit!" He never flies later on (when he should have; like getting off the X-Wing on Dagoba, or off the Jabba's sand ship on Tattoine, etc.) In this case, I just thought it earlier.
Instead of the tired old damsel in distress gets rescued routine, Amidala is able to get out herself, using powers of the force which she never really knew she had (but which are supposedly present based on conversations from other movies, and which I'd assume are supposed to be the explanation for why she falls out of a moving plane, and then gets up and says "Gee, not a scratch on me. Let's go jogging.")
I knew that movie would be a piece of ass when I saw the first preview on TV, showing a scene of Amidala running and ducking under mechanical chomping machinery. "Hmmm", I said. "That looks kind of like the scene in Galaxy Quest where they parodied the use of chomping machinery in some random part of the ship that threatens the lives of our heroes. The quote in that movie was 'This episode was BADLY written.'"
And thus, Star Wars Episode II was parodied before it even came out.
His point stands because the DCT *is* a discrete Fourier transform of real, even data. It can be computed with an FFT on real data (by forcing the data to be even, by mirroring). The Fourier Transform is the general principal, the DCT is an implmentation detail.
Except, perhaps, for those who are "system integrators", or the curious (yes, we still exist.)
TOOL LYRICS
"Aenima" - abbreviated
I've a suggestion to keep you all occupied...
Learn to swim.
Learn to swim.
Learn to swim.
Learn to swim.