Yes! Whatever happened to community standards and such? Public shame and propriety should be the standards, and not a computer conscience. Pr0n is good and all, but still, this is a public location!
Though this being a laundromat means there's always some danger, what with all the nylons, panties, bras, and underwear floating around ^^
Whatever happened to community standards? Make the PCs fairly visible, and perhaps tied to the machines so people can be alerted when their wash is finished, or something.
Pr0n is all fine and dandy, but it is inappropriate to view in public, methinks. If we keep relying on censorware and such to enforce community standards, what is the point of a community in the first place? Make it a sales point of the system:
"Surf'n'wash is a public center. We are who we are because of the community that uses are machines and frequents our business. Please do not use these machines for inappropriate uses."
Make it a burden on the people who frequent; they should be shocked and dismayed, you are only offering a service, not trying to scandalize the community
I actually think DVDs are more expensive because you get more content, more value, more goods than you do on a VHS; multiple audio tracks, multiple languages, subtitling, extras, interviews, etc. So you pay for those goodies, where on a VHS you have nothing other than the movie, some ads, and a few trailers.
The value exists for the higher prices on DVDs, I think. I am willing to pay for that!
With a nick like mine, I guess moderators have a hard time judging me fairly.
Books vs CDs
How much does it take to print/distribute/market a book? Let's assume that there are similarities in the way they need to be distributed, published, etc. There are even the categories; classic, pop, alternative, etc. There is also the argument of crap artists etc.
Is it more expensive to actually print a book than a CD? I don't know, but I do know that a book can be bought for $7 where a CD costs $15.
VHS Movies vs CDs
There are a similar set of circumstances...
VHS can cost $15 vs a CD's $15. Does this sound right?
DVD Movies vs CDs
Even more similarities, I think, than VHS, since this is digital!
Offline DVDs cost $30. Online I can get DVDs for $20. Pioneer is repricing older DVDs for $10. CDs cost $15 *everywhere*, more or less. Older CDs don't cost less, and online distribution doesn't seem to be saving us that much money.
I'm not making much arguments here, just throwing out a few thoughts.
With a nick like mine, I guess moderators have a hard time judging me fairly.
I apologize for being rude and nasty, but I feel the need to vent a little.
You are being foolish. You are being silly. NASA has had tremendous impact on our lives *already*, and I suspect they will continue to have a tremendous impact on our lives to come.
Three technologies that they were pivotal to: aerodynamics, rocketry, and digital imaging.
NASA with it's wind tunnels, computers, physicists, and scientists working on lifting bodies, wing surfaces, rocket engines, turbinges, etc. Where would our Concordes be, our Boeings, our cars, without this research?
With it's space program we have satellites and such. Where would your SatelliteTV be? Your tornado watches and weather predictions? How about GPS and military intelligence? Or the titanium based products grown from material science advancements due to the SR71, heat shielding for shuttles and landers?
Without the telescopes and astronomy, where would CCD technology be? Our scanners, our cameras, our webcams, etc?
Now are you saying you could live without all of these things?
And how about 30 years from now? When NASA research unlocks the nanotechnology that enables cancer free lives? Or something else equally outrageous?
With a nick like mine, I guess moderators have a hard time judging me fairly.
Um... Well, for $125k + 20k for the main frame, you can get 181 $800 PCs.
So this one mainframe is definitely cheaper if you want, say, 200 PCs. Or 300 PCs. Or 500 PCs. Or especially 1000 PCs. If some server farm wanted to have 1000 machines, it would only cost $145 a machine with this thing!
Even if the price is doubled with support and 'gubbins', it's still only $300 a machine!
So it's fairly cost effective, especially if you have a farm of 1k machines.
The way the Sun mice worked, an LED reading across a gridded metal surface, is nearly the same as the way current high tech mice work.
Take a logitech; it has, inside the standard case, two spoked wheels; when an LED gets broken by a spoke, the mouse has moved. In a very similar way, the Sun optical mouse happens to detect the LED reflection getting broken by the grid on the metal mouse pad. In this way, the Sun optical mouse technology has been in use in PC mice for very many years.
That in mind, the newer Apple and M$ mice *are not* in the same category. It's a very different principle, and instead use a CCD type mechanism, if I recall correctly, for it's tracking.
You're forgetting that what makes the Japanese/Chinese culture so rich today is the many millenia of crap that got weeded out.
So we have, today, in an information rich era, *tons* of crap Anime and such, that in 2000 years will be treasured as classics and relics. Trigun, BGC, Mononoke, whatever.
The great artwork you so mourn is still here. It will still be studied, and seen, and remembered. But we are in the midst, today, of creating new traditions, new mythologies, new historical stories. Kenshin is a childish, goofy, wacky story in Anime and Manga of the transition of Japan into the Meji era. Sure it's pop, and a little crass. But then look at your Sui-koden stories, and how simple and entertaining they are. This 95 episode series, Kenshin, may become the Sui-koden of the next Millenium.
You're looking at the worst of today's excesses; the problem is that people of the future will have thrown away all of that crap already. If it really isn't worth keeping, it will get lost, and even if it is worth keeping, it still might get lost. So attrition will guarantee that students in the future will only see our greatest works, and not our trash.
Cultural death is alittle bit too hasty a judgement, isn't it?
With the sentiment that space travel should move away from Government organizations; I would concede that space travel should not be only the domain of the Government, but the reason the gov't should be involved is because they really don't have an ulterior motive like profit($$) or market domination.
Rather, they have science, progress, knowledge, and achievement as their goals, and they serve the best interests of the public, since the public happens to be their shareholders.
Microsoft Space would not be going to Mars unless they could make money; if there were production capabilities that space provided, they would use the moon or a space station in geosynch orbit. If they needed materials, they would use the moon probably, and not go as far as mars. AOL space would do it for the networking infrastructure, the satellites, the communications research maybe, but again, not for science, or research, or knowledge.
There are still places where public interest should be served. Not just profit.
Unfortunately, it has also been *proven* to work, courtesy of the Mars Pathfinder. An easier, simpler, less complicated method has not been found, yet, unfortunately. It does separate nicely the dual problems of landing and positioning; you can land anywhere, and let the rover take care of itself in trying to get where it needs to be.
It would be interesting to see if instead one could create an atmospheric entry craft that actually 'flew' through the atmosphere, and when it was flying in the right direction and the right velocity, drop the parachute, then the airbags. That may give us more control, at the expense of even more complexity.
Perhaps if we could build a helicopter into the craft; parachute to the proper velocity, then heli to the right spot?
One, you don't know that a computer couldn't recognize your handwriting than a person could. Unlikely, of course, but possible.
Two, I grant that you prefer to type on a keyboard. If you can't use the writing pad type controller, then don't. Same for everyone else that needs a keyboard.
But don't read more than is available; they are working on writing recognition to supplement and enhance the current interface, and perhaps change it, but not to replace it. They will add it to Wacom tablets, which at best replace mice; then you don't have the problem of context switching between mice and keyboards. This doesn't replace the keyboard unless you choose to replace the keyboard yourself!
As for the GUI for DOS... yes. For people who can't use keyboards, but need mice, joysticks, voice, and eye tracking. They need something to point to. They can't type! As for high speed Internet Access? No, of course we don't need it-we want it!
Apple has no need to keep the needs of all computer users in mind; only those who use them, buy them, or have them. They don't have to cater to the blind, the deaf, or the stupid, but they do, and good for them.
I hope I haven't just responded to a troll, but you get the benefit of the doubt cuz you have a user name and handle!
Under the CLI side, there's the GNU stuff; Emacs, bison, flex, gcc, patch, etc. Most of those should port trivially, if Apple hasn't already provided them with all the Darwin stuff/hype.
So that should be an almost perfect situation, with very little source mod and no GUI...
I might have heard a rumor that Apple had created a development harness/framework/GUI around those tools, in which case people would love to port this out of Apple, if that could be done trivially. Even if it wasn't trivial!
Then there's the other stuff; SSHes, vi's,Apache, SOCKs stuff, that should also be fairly trivial to port since most of them exist in the BSD universe already and are all CLI anyway, again, if Apple hasn't already had them ported for their own use!
Graphical stuff? What, XEyes? XClock? XEarth? Bah. No comment.
Mozilla, Quake3Arena, etc should not be a problem.
Doesn't this really mean that we now have a plastic mirror, where before one needed metal like aluminum or silver or stuff to make mirrors?
So now we can have microwaveable plastic containers that are shiny, if IR is allowed through? That we can create a film to place on windows that reflect all the light without using metals such as copper and gold? That we could build LCD displays with this material to provide brighter, thinner, lighter displays?
It isn't just fibers and cables; it really is a mirror, isn't it?
Doesn't the concept of the perfect mirror mean that the dialectric constant is different according to each frequency, in such a way that at any angle, at any frequency, it still reflects?
Another thought; doesn't this mean that we now have plastic mirrors? If you created windows out of this stuff, for example, wouldn't there be much energy savings because the window would reflect IR, visible light, and UV, for example, and insulating a building from the sun?
Per cost: Until it's massed produced, it's effectively approaching an infinite cost, as it's in the prototyping stage. I don't think anyone can speculate a cost until someone can create a mass-produced version. They don't say how cost effective this material is...
However, unlike current fiber optic technology, this can take multiple wavelengths and multiple polarizations with negligible loss. So in traditional fiber you can only have a beam of wavelength X; in this cable, you can have a beam of wavelength X in 2 different polarizations without problems. Twice the bandwidth now available!
Another benefit is that now you are not limited to a specific spectrum spread by the fiber. You now have access to more or less the entire visible spectrum, plus any other pieces of the spectrum that the cable can reflect perfectly. No clue how big the bandwidth increases with this, but potentially huge!
This technology is an improvement, but it can be used in places where it would be a revolution, not just an evolution. It mentions optical computing, where routing was a problem on a small scale, among other things. It just takes a decent genius to figure out how to use this stuff ^^
Doesn't this leave an incredibly detailed 'IP' trail? I'm not a networking person, unfortunately, but once you have found, say, 10 cracked boxes, if you leave them 'on', can't you use them to trace? Of course it isn't simple, owing to scripts, and multiple levels of cracked boxes... but the more smoking guns, the more evidence, isn't it?
This entity also had to be doing it in pretty real time, since they could switch boxes so fast after being banned. Of course, perhaps there could be scripts to handle that too, I dunno. Anyone care to speak up?
Perhaps keep the game character data local to each/all players? On a per game basis, of course. So for example, there is a registry on a server somewhere that holds templates for characters. A new player uses one of these templates, and creates a new character. As the player progresses, saves occur and the player is uploaded to the repository.
Then whenever the player plays again, a check vs the two is made, as well as allowing the player to be downloaded by all the client machines, because at this point the player is a part of the world too. Then each machine is used to keep the player's character in synch with each other and the main repository?
One: You're really impressed by this computer. Two: It plays Diablo2 <a href="http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku =20322412&loc=105>buy.com</a>
Then there are the two/three button mice: <a href="http://www.logitech.com">logitech</a>
Then you can play with the G4, the Firewire, maybe MacOS X, etc.
I think the real reason you don't buy this computer is the price. Everything else you've mentioned is a non-issue, really. And I really don't see this happening in the PC world anytime soon, because of the power requirements of the video cards and the CPUs!
You're right that proxies become moot in an Open Source game. In that case, a trust model(hopefully built into the game SDK) is all that can be used.
It's a social issue, at that point, as well as a design issue. Reduce the game advantage/bonus/penalty of reflexes, and you reduce the cheating on reflex actions.
As for the command request system, that seems to work in an Open Source game/sdk, doesn't it? Another option available to the programmer is to have 'asserts' on the game world such that the player's actions cannot stray from some set formula, and that all player's formulas must match. So if a player cheats, it will be limited to whatever *all* the clients accepts. IE, a client can't make an unreasonable request, as governed by the people playing.
Open Source doesn't affect that at all, I don't think.
Information exposure can only be caught when the user acts on information he cannot have gathered 'legally'
The fog of war can effect can be done effectively if each client 'requests' information from each other. IE, there is an API as presented by the game interface. Radar towers give a radius of sight that all other players respond to. Cheating towers won't work because it's up to the other players to provide the information, and cheating players won't work because if they don't provide that information, they can't interact with the tower because the tower owner doesn't acknowledge that those units exist! This can be extended to unit to unit visibility as well, but this may be excessive network traffic... Perhaps it's not so bad though, since movement and unit change generates this kind of data anyway!
As for visibility, again a peer trust system would work; each client should know what the others can see, even if it never tells this data to the players themselves, and if a player acts on data he should not be able to see, the other clients will know this as an illegal request.
How about the case of a resource that Cheater A is moving towards because he can see it? Perhaps make 'cheats' part of the game, again. Spies who keep track of troop movements(not perfectly, of course, but with some degree of accuracy), counselors who try to gauge the enemies defenses, resources, and strengths, etc.
It doesn't seem to be an issue of Open Source/Closed Source as much as designing the game in the first place to be cheat free, and to make it unnecessary or unenjoyable to cheat. Social engineering and good game design, I think, mean more than anything else code releated. Code can be hacked. Good strategy and communication cannot.
Perhaps Godlike aim could be controlled with multiple target zones, having protected and armored target zones, etc. So players would be able to customize the 'avatars' to wear armor or force fields in such a way that the cheater can't 'automatically' aim on the lesser protected fields. Of course the cheat program can probably always keep track and start 'aiming' for the less protected fields, but then again, the smart game would have the players always compensating anyway to beef up the most attacked region.
And about the 'script' for WC2? Shouldn't that be a feature of the game!?! Shouldn't we be able to automatically, by default, produce peons and ogres, etc? Civ had this, in a very rough way. Then it's level on all sides, and becomes a game of skill and planning, instead of reflexes.
Take away the reflex penalty/bonus, and reflex augmentation is not part of the game.
In FPS, that may be impossible because the game is so heavily reflex based anyway!
"Nothing is more terrible than seeing ignorance in action"
This is a very different test and experiment. The setup is to take some very extreme microbes that have been shown to be hard radiation and vacuum resistent, and see how they react, adapt, and adjust to 'space' conditions. The main mission of the launch is to study the sun and it's corona (that is your tax dollars at work) while the secondary or minor mission is these cultures.
Perhaps you should read the article, first? Anyway, it's hoped this can give us more information on genetic repair mechanisms, among other things, as well as perhaps giving us a clue on whether life could really survive outer space.
The Apollo missions had no controls, no precautions, no safeties, so we don't really know *what* those microbes mean, other than the fact that there were microbes on the equipment. That is all that we can really infer.
My first response to you was rushed an unfinished. I apologize.
I'm glad you're not a troll. Mostly trolls don't respond to counter-posts. I enjoy some real communication on/.
To counter some more of your arguments...
About never seeing exotic particles under normal conditions: Not unless we somehow find a way to harness these exotic particles under 'normal' conditions, and if we don't do the research to find, categorize, and characterize these exotic particles, how do we expect to be able to use them?
By analogy, an electron was an exotic particle 400 years ago, but research into em and fields and math eventually, today, make it a very ordinary 'normal' condition particle. If we are to extrapolate 400 years into the future, who is to say that neutrinos and other exotic particles won't be integral to our communications and computation technology?
Then there is the counter, that we *do* see neutrinos under normal conditions. Another poster mentioned that the sun and nuclear applications generate neutrons, and as we refine our fission(and hopefully fusion!) technology, neutrinos become a more 'normal' aspect of our life.
About your point that fixing parameters in the Standard Model has not application in any other field:
If we can 'complete' the Standard Model, whether through neutrino research or otherwise, then there are a great many benefits. Among them, the fact that we can't yet describe gravity and it's relationship to quantum mechanics, or describe gravity as a quaternion(did I get this right, the more Techy among us?) when every other force we know of can be? Especially since there is hope that quantum effects and science is expected to lead a new generation in computing, information, and knowledge once transistors and 'conventional' physics hits it's limits?
About EVERYTHING an engineer needs is ordinary matter:
That's only true today, if true at all. Don't forget photons in your statement, besides protons, neutrons, and electrons. Are you saying that we won't be using neutrons in information processing devices in the future? How do we know at all, if we don't look at neutrinos?
About chemists and neutrinos and room temperature phyics:
Chemists, physicists, and scientists in general, are trying to perfect the science of superconductors, which is *not* room temperature at all. We'd like it if there are room temperature superconductors, but that is only possible if we can figure out how they work in the first place, and then construct one to fit the temperature, cost, manufacturing, and handling constraints we design. All we do know is that superconductors happen to use the same physics that govern everything else, so there is currently a gap in our knowledge that fails to explain how superconductors can exist *at all*, and perhaps it can be explained if we perfect our Standard Model, in which, wow, the tau neutrino exists. If our model can explain one extreme, it should explain the other.
More on the above subject, with our friend Maxwell. His equations have to be an approximation. They deal with light/em, but fail to explain superconductors, so we need something else. This will affect materials engineers who *need* to make these superconductors, and we can't know that tau neutrinos won't be crucial in the explanation of our physics.
About Newton and light: Today, it is easy to produce and see all the time. We have diodes, lasers, light emitting materials, etc. He had candles, sunlight, and gas flames. It was definitely not easy in his time. Just has neutrinos (and other things) aren't easy in our times. Maybe 100 years from now we'll have neutrino based technology. Maybe we won't. Be we almost certainly won't if we don't study, research, and understand them.
High energy physics is useful! Don't knock it! High energy physics, in it's current incarnation, is very much an outlier and poorly understood field because it is so hard to get a hold of high energy particles and reactions. But if our model can describe the extreme high energy reactions well, and the same equations can describe the low energy reactions well, there is the possibility that along that spectrum there are 'quirks' that we can take advantage of that would not be seen if all we had were the low energy 'approximations' that Maxwell gave us.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes! Whatever happened to community standards and such? Public shame and propriety should be the standards, and not a computer conscience. Pr0n is good and all, but still, this is a public location!
Though this being a laundromat means there's always some danger, what with all the nylons, panties, bras, and underwear floating around ^^
The nick is a joke! Really!
Whatever happened to community standards? Make the PCs fairly visible, and perhaps tied to the machines so people can be alerted when their wash is finished, or something.
Pr0n is all fine and dandy, but it is inappropriate to view in public, methinks. If we keep relying on censorware and such to enforce community standards, what is the point of a community in the first place? Make it a sales point of the system:
"Surf'n'wash is a public center. We are who we are because of the community that uses are machines and frequents our business. Please do not use these machines for inappropriate uses."
Make it a burden on the people who frequent; they should be shocked and dismayed, you are only offering a service, not trying to scandalize the community
The nick is a joke! Really!
I actually think DVDs are more expensive because you get more content, more value, more goods than you do on a VHS; multiple audio tracks, multiple languages, subtitling, extras, interviews, etc. So you pay for those goodies, where on a VHS you have nothing other than the movie, some ads, and a few trailers.
The value exists for the higher prices on DVDs, I think. I am willing to pay for that!
With a nick like mine, I guess moderators have a hard time judging me fairly.
Do these analogies hold water?
Books vs CDs
How much does it take to print/distribute/market a book? Let's assume that there are similarities in the way they need to be distributed, published, etc. There are even the categories; classic, pop, alternative, etc. There is also the argument of crap artists etc.
Is it more expensive to actually print a book than a CD? I don't know, but I do know that a book can be bought for $7 where a CD costs $15.
VHS Movies vs CDs
There are a similar set of circumstances...
VHS can cost $15 vs a CD's $15. Does this sound right?
DVD Movies vs CDs
Even more similarities, I think, than VHS, since this is digital!
Offline DVDs cost $30. Online I can get DVDs for $20. Pioneer is repricing older DVDs for $10. CDs cost $15 *everywhere*, more or less. Older CDs don't cost less, and online distribution doesn't seem to be saving us that much money.
I'm not making much arguments here, just throwing out a few thoughts.
With a nick like mine, I guess moderators have a hard time judging me fairly.
I had a teacher in high school who also had the initials PMS, but perhaps it was before the term was popularly coined and in widespread use.
Thanks for the reply.
Bye!
I apologize for being rude and nasty, but I feel the need to vent a little.
You are being foolish. You are being silly. NASA has had tremendous impact on our lives *already*, and I suspect they will continue to have a tremendous impact on our lives to come.
Three technologies that they were pivotal to: aerodynamics, rocketry, and digital imaging.
NASA with it's wind tunnels, computers, physicists, and scientists working on lifting bodies, wing surfaces, rocket engines, turbinges, etc. Where would our Concordes be, our Boeings, our cars, without this research?
With it's space program we have satellites and such. Where would your SatelliteTV be? Your tornado watches and weather predictions? How about GPS and military intelligence? Or the titanium based products grown from material science advancements due to the SR71, heat shielding for shuttles and landers?
Without the telescopes and astronomy, where would CCD technology be? Our scanners, our cameras, our webcams, etc?
Now are you saying you could live without all of these things?
And how about 30 years from now? When NASA research unlocks the nanotechnology that enables cancer free lives? Or something else equally outrageous?
With a nick like mine, I guess moderators have a hard time judging me fairly.
Um... Well, for $125k + 20k for the main frame, you can get 181 $800 PCs.
So this one mainframe is definitely cheaper if you want, say, 200 PCs. Or 300 PCs. Or 500 PCs. Or especially 1000 PCs. If some server farm wanted to have 1000 machines, it would only cost $145 a machine with this thing!
Even if the price is doubled with support and 'gubbins', it's still only $300 a machine!
So it's fairly cost effective, especially if you have a farm of 1k machines.
Bye!
The way the Sun mice worked, an LED reading across a gridded metal surface, is nearly the same as the way current high tech mice work.
Take a logitech; it has, inside the standard case, two spoked wheels; when an LED gets broken by a spoke, the mouse has moved. In a very similar way, the Sun optical mouse happens to detect the LED reflection getting broken by the grid on the metal mouse pad. In this way, the Sun optical mouse technology has been in use in PC mice for very many years.
That in mind, the newer Apple and M$ mice *are not* in the same category. It's a very different principle, and instead use a CCD type mechanism, if I recall correctly, for it's tracking.
Bye!
Apple will probably win this one:
They have the NeXT cube, which is over 10 years old now, as precedent.
So Cobalt has not case here.
Bye!
You're forgetting that what makes the Japanese/Chinese culture so rich today is the many millenia of crap that got weeded out.
So we have, today, in an information rich era, *tons* of crap Anime and such, that in 2000 years will be treasured as classics and relics. Trigun, BGC, Mononoke, whatever.
The great artwork you so mourn is still here. It will still be studied, and seen, and remembered. But we are in the midst, today, of creating new traditions, new mythologies, new historical stories. Kenshin is a childish, goofy, wacky story in Anime and Manga of the transition of Japan into the Meji era. Sure it's pop, and a little crass. But then look at your Sui-koden stories, and how simple and entertaining they are. This 95 episode series, Kenshin, may become the Sui-koden of the next Millenium.
You're looking at the worst of today's excesses; the problem is that people of the future will have thrown away all of that crap already. If it really isn't worth keeping, it will get lost, and even if it is worth keeping, it still might get lost. So attrition will guarantee that students in the future will only see our greatest works, and not our trash.
Cultural death is alittle bit too hasty a judgement, isn't it?
Bye!
With the sentiment that space travel should move away from Government organizations; I would concede that space travel should not be only the domain of the Government, but the reason the gov't should be involved is because they really don't have an ulterior motive like profit($$) or market domination.
Rather, they have science, progress, knowledge, and achievement as their goals, and they serve the best interests of the public, since the public happens to be their shareholders.
Microsoft Space would not be going to Mars unless they could make money; if there were production capabilities that space provided, they would use the moon or a space station in geosynch orbit. If they needed materials, they would use the moon probably, and not go as far as mars. AOL space would do it for the networking infrastructure, the satellites, the communications research maybe, but again, not for science, or research, or knowledge.
There are still places where public interest should be served. Not just profit.
Bye!
Unfortunately, it has also been *proven* to work, courtesy of the Mars Pathfinder. An easier, simpler, less complicated method has not been found, yet, unfortunately. It does separate nicely the dual problems of landing and positioning; you can land anywhere, and let the rover take care of itself in trying to get where it needs to be.
It would be interesting to see if instead one could create an atmospheric entry craft that actually 'flew' through the atmosphere, and when it was flying in the right direction and the right velocity, drop the parachute, then the airbags. That may give us more control, at the expense of even more complexity.
Perhaps if we could build a helicopter into the craft; parachute to the proper velocity, then heli to the right spot?
Still, this is the best we have, currently
Bye!
One, you don't know that a computer couldn't recognize your handwriting than a person could. Unlikely, of course, but possible.
Two, I grant that you prefer to type on a keyboard. If you can't use the writing pad type controller, then don't. Same for everyone else that needs a keyboard.
But don't read more than is available; they are working on writing recognition to supplement and enhance the current interface, and perhaps change it, but not to replace it. They will add it to Wacom tablets, which at best replace mice; then you don't have the problem of context switching between mice and keyboards. This doesn't replace the keyboard unless you choose to replace the keyboard yourself!
As for the GUI for DOS... yes. For people who can't use keyboards, but need mice, joysticks, voice, and eye tracking. They need something to point to. They can't type! As for high speed Internet Access? No, of course we don't need it-we want it!
Apple has no need to keep the needs of all computer users in mind; only those who use them, buy them, or have them. They don't have to cater to the blind, the deaf, or the stupid, but they do, and good for them.
I hope I haven't just responded to a troll, but you get the benefit of the doubt cuz you have a user name and handle!
Bye!
Under the CLI side, there's the GNU stuff; Emacs, bison, flex, gcc, patch, etc. Most of those should port trivially, if Apple hasn't already provided them with all the Darwin stuff/hype.
So that should be an almost perfect situation, with very little source mod and no GUI...
I might have heard a rumor that Apple had created a development harness/framework/GUI around those tools, in which case people would love to port this out of Apple, if that could be done trivially. Even if it wasn't trivial!
Then there's the other stuff; SSHes, vi's,Apache, SOCKs stuff, that should also be fairly trivial to port since most of them exist in the BSD universe already and are all CLI anyway, again, if Apple hasn't already had them ported for their own use!
Graphical stuff? What, XEyes? XClock? XEarth? Bah. No comment.
Mozilla, Quake3Arena, etc should not be a problem.
What needs to be worried about?
Bye!
Hmmm, right. Then you would only be able to see in, and not out, and then only at night when lights are on inside...
Hmm. Only good for peeping toms, I guess.
Maybe for the ultimate dash-sun screen for the car!
Bye!
Doesn't this really mean that we now have a plastic mirror, where before one needed metal like aluminum or silver or stuff to make mirrors?
So now we can have microwaveable plastic containers that are shiny, if IR is allowed through? That we can create a film to place on windows that reflect all the light without using metals such as copper and gold? That we could build LCD displays with this material to provide brighter, thinner, lighter displays?
It isn't just fibers and cables; it really is a mirror, isn't it?
Bye!
Doesn't the concept of the perfect mirror mean that the dialectric constant is different according to each frequency, in such a way that at any angle, at any frequency, it still reflects?
Another thought; doesn't this mean that we now have plastic mirrors? If you created windows out of this stuff, for example, wouldn't there be much energy savings because the window would reflect IR, visible light, and UV, for example, and insulating a building from the sun?
Bye!
Per cost: Until it's massed produced, it's effectively approaching an infinite cost, as it's in the prototyping stage. I don't think anyone can speculate a cost until someone can create a mass-produced version. They don't say how cost effective this material is...
However, unlike current fiber optic technology, this can take multiple wavelengths and multiple polarizations with negligible loss. So in traditional fiber you can only have a beam of wavelength X; in this cable, you can have a beam of wavelength X in 2 different polarizations without problems. Twice the bandwidth now available!
Another benefit is that now you are not limited to a specific spectrum spread by the fiber. You now have access to more or less the entire visible spectrum, plus any other pieces of the spectrum that the cable can reflect perfectly. No clue how big the bandwidth increases with this, but potentially huge!
This technology is an improvement, but it can be used in places where it would be a revolution, not just an evolution. It mentions optical computing, where routing was a problem on a small scale, among other things. It just takes a decent genius to figure out how to use this stuff ^^
Bye!
Doesn't this leave an incredibly detailed 'IP' trail? I'm not a networking person, unfortunately, but once you have found, say, 10 cracked boxes, if you leave them 'on', can't you use them to trace? Of course it isn't simple, owing to scripts, and multiple levels of cracked boxes... but the more smoking guns, the more evidence, isn't it?
This entity also had to be doing it in pretty real time, since they could switch boxes so fast after being banned. Of course, perhaps there could be scripts to handle that too, I dunno. Anyone care to speak up?
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Perhaps keep the game character data local to each/all players? On a per game basis, of course. So for example, there is a registry on a server somewhere that holds templates for characters. A new player uses one of these templates, and creates a new character. As the player progresses, saves occur and the player is uploaded to the repository.
Then whenever the player plays again, a check vs the two is made, as well as allowing the player to be downloaded by all the client machines, because at this point the player is a part of the world too. Then each machine is used to keep the player's character in synch with each other and the main repository?
Bye!
One: You're really impressed by this computer.u =20322412&loc=105>buy.com</a>
c ts/product.asp?pf%5Fid=185286&mscssid=AF QGU693N9L39L9BWLLQBJSHGPAF5R50">ebworld.com</a>
Two: It plays Diablo2
<a href="http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sk
<a href="http://www.ebworld.com/ebx/categories/produ
Then there are the two/three button mice:
<a href="http://www.logitech.com">logitech</a>
Then you can play with the G4, the Firewire, maybe MacOS X, etc.
I think the real reason you don't buy this computer is the price. Everything else you've mentioned is a non-issue, really. And I really don't see this happening in the PC world anytime soon, because of the power requirements of the video cards and the CPUs!
Bye!
You're right that proxies become moot in an Open Source game. In that case, a trust model(hopefully built into the game SDK) is all that can be used.
It's a social issue, at that point, as well as a design issue. Reduce the game advantage/bonus/penalty of reflexes, and you reduce the cheating on reflex actions.
As for the command request system, that seems to work in an Open Source game/sdk, doesn't it? Another option available to the programmer is to have 'asserts' on the game world such that the player's actions cannot stray from some set formula, and that all player's formulas must match. So if a player cheats, it will be limited to whatever *all* the clients accepts. IE, a client can't make an unreasonable request, as governed by the people playing.
Open Source doesn't affect that at all, I don't think.
Information exposure can only be caught when the user acts on information he cannot have gathered 'legally'
The fog of war can effect can be done effectively if each client 'requests' information from each other. IE, there is an API as presented by the game interface. Radar towers give a radius of sight that all other players respond to. Cheating towers won't work because it's up to the other players to provide the information, and cheating players won't work because if they don't provide that information, they can't interact with the tower because the tower owner doesn't acknowledge that those units exist! This can be extended to unit to unit visibility as well, but this may be excessive network traffic... Perhaps it's not so bad though, since movement and unit change generates this kind of data anyway!
As for visibility, again a peer trust system would work; each client should know what the others can see, even if it never tells this data to the players themselves, and if a player acts on data he should not be able to see, the other clients will know this as an illegal request.
How about the case of a resource that Cheater A is moving towards because he can see it? Perhaps make 'cheats' part of the game, again. Spies who keep track of troop movements(not perfectly, of course, but with some degree of accuracy), counselors who try to gauge the enemies defenses, resources, and strengths, etc.
It doesn't seem to be an issue of Open Source/Closed Source as much as designing the game in the first place to be cheat free, and to make it unnecessary or unenjoyable to cheat. Social engineering and good game design, I think, mean more than anything else code releated. Code can be hacked. Good strategy and communication cannot.
Bye!
Perhaps Godlike aim could be controlled with multiple target zones, having protected and armored target zones, etc. So players would be able to customize the 'avatars' to wear armor or force fields in such a way that the cheater can't 'automatically' aim on the lesser protected fields. Of course the cheat program can probably always keep track and start 'aiming' for the less protected fields, but then again, the smart game would have the players always compensating anyway to beef up the most attacked region.
And about the 'script' for WC2? Shouldn't that be a feature of the game!?! Shouldn't we be able to automatically, by default, produce peons and ogres, etc? Civ had this, in a very rough way. Then it's level on all sides, and becomes a game of skill and planning, instead of reflexes.
Take away the reflex penalty/bonus, and reflex augmentation is not part of the game.
In FPS, that may be impossible because the game is so heavily reflex based anyway!
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"Nothing is more terrible than seeing ignorance in action"
This is a very different test and experiment. The setup is to take some very extreme microbes that have been shown to be hard radiation and vacuum resistent, and see how they react, adapt, and adjust to 'space' conditions. The main mission of the launch is to study the sun and it's corona (that is your tax dollars at work) while the secondary or minor mission is these cultures.
Perhaps you should read the article, first? Anyway, it's hoped this can give us more information on genetic repair mechanisms, among other things, as well as perhaps giving us a clue on whether life could really survive outer space.
The Apollo missions had no controls, no precautions, no safeties, so we don't really know *what* those microbes mean, other than the fact that there were microbes on the equipment. That is all that we can really infer.
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My first response to you was rushed an unfinished. I apologize.
/.
I'm glad you're not a troll. Mostly trolls don't respond to counter-posts. I enjoy some real communication on
To counter some more of your arguments...
About never seeing exotic particles under normal conditions: Not unless we somehow find a way to harness these exotic particles under 'normal' conditions, and if we don't do the research to find, categorize, and characterize these exotic particles, how do we expect to be able to use them?
By analogy, an electron was an exotic particle 400 years ago, but research into em and fields and math eventually, today, make it a very ordinary 'normal' condition particle. If we are to extrapolate 400 years into the future, who is to say that neutrinos and other exotic particles won't be integral to our communications and computation technology?
Then there is the counter, that we *do* see neutrinos under normal conditions. Another poster mentioned that the sun and nuclear applications generate neutrons, and as we refine our fission(and hopefully fusion!) technology, neutrinos become a more 'normal' aspect of our life.
About your point that fixing parameters in the Standard Model has not application in any other field:
If we can 'complete' the Standard Model, whether through neutrino research or otherwise, then there are a great many benefits. Among them, the fact that we can't yet describe gravity and it's relationship to quantum mechanics, or describe gravity as a quaternion(did I get this right, the more Techy among us?) when every other force we know of can be? Especially since there is hope that quantum effects and science is expected to lead a new generation in computing, information, and knowledge once transistors and 'conventional' physics hits it's limits?
About EVERYTHING an engineer needs is ordinary matter:
That's only true today, if true at all. Don't forget photons in your statement, besides protons, neutrons, and electrons. Are you saying that we won't be using neutrons in information processing devices in the future? How do we know at all, if we don't look at neutrinos?
About chemists and neutrinos and room temperature phyics:
Chemists, physicists, and scientists in general, are trying to perfect the science of superconductors, which is *not* room temperature at all. We'd like it if there are room temperature superconductors, but that is only possible if we can figure out how they work in the first place, and then construct one to fit the temperature, cost, manufacturing, and handling constraints we design. All we do know is that superconductors happen to use the same physics that govern everything else, so there is currently a gap in our knowledge that fails to explain how superconductors can exist *at all*, and perhaps it can be explained if we perfect our Standard Model, in which, wow, the tau neutrino exists. If our model can explain one extreme, it should explain the other.
More on the above subject, with our friend Maxwell. His equations have to be an approximation. They deal with light/em, but fail to explain superconductors, so we need something else. This will affect materials engineers who *need* to make these superconductors, and we can't know that tau neutrinos won't be crucial in the explanation of our physics.
About Newton and light:
Today, it is easy to produce and see all the time. We have diodes, lasers, light emitting materials, etc. He had candles, sunlight, and gas flames. It was definitely not easy in his time. Just has neutrinos (and other things) aren't easy in our times. Maybe 100 years from now we'll have neutrino based technology. Maybe we won't. Be we almost certainly won't if we don't study, research, and understand them.
High energy physics is useful! Don't knock it! High energy physics, in it's current incarnation, is very much an outlier and poorly understood field because it is so hard to get a hold of high energy particles and reactions. But if our model can describe the extreme high energy reactions well, and the same equations can describe the low energy reactions well, there is the possibility that along that spectrum there are 'quirks' that we can take advantage of that would not be seen if all we had were the low energy 'approximations' that Maxwell gave us.
Bye!