The more Microsoft do things like this, the more it makes me believe that not only are they finished, but on a subconscious level at least, they know it and are actually conceding such.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again...Gates and Ballmer need to stay very punctual with their laundry and dry cleaning from here on, as I'm assuming they'll want something clean to get buried in.
Blah, blah, blah. Just another soulless, scorched earth capitalist. "I relied on other people to make my money, but now, due to the frailty of my own nature, I'm now going to promptly forget what made me a millionaire in the first place, and get down to the usual millionaire activity of destroying the lives of as many people as I possibly can."
And before I get yet another barrage of comments from American reactionaries labelling me a Communist, let me say that I have nothing whatsoever against capitalism, provided that the capitalist in question remembers that they do not exist in a vacuum...that they're part of the larger human race...also that they actually need other people to get their money in the first place. It is capitalism with total disregard for others that I have major problems with. Mind you, the latter is the form that most Americans are familiar with anyway, so I stand corrected...a lot of you probably won't be able to tell the difference.
They might not know about Linux, but they do know about their existing versions of Windows. Chances are they know them fairly well, in fact. Parts of the residential market will be forced to upgrade, perhaps...Gamers want new versions of DirectX, and Microsoft can decree that new versions of DirectX will only work with Longhorn, in order to force their hand. Ditto for future versions of Office.
The corporate customer however has no such compulsion...and in fact, given Microsoft's pricing model, the incentive is far greater not to upgrade than to do so...because as well as licensing fees, there will also be retraining and hardware costs as well. Thus, for many continuing to use their existing versions of Windows is likely to be far more appealing.
I hope the final product is infinitely more exciting than the alphas, screenshots, and so on I've already seen are...for Microsoft's sake, anywayz.
I've made the comment before that one way or another, Longhorn is going to represent Microsoft's last stand. I give it around an 80% chance that whatever they release, (unless it's darn near miraculous) it's not going to be able to either stem the tide of defections to Linux, or force existing Windows users to upgrade. Then there are the usual issues of not being able to completely reinvent the wheel because of needing to maintain backward compatibility. Windows needs to be rebuilt from the ground up...but that is the one thing they can't do.
If Longhorn is a failure, (and as I've said, for numerous reasons I think it's virtually inevitable that it will be) it's going to be extremely interesting to see what Microsoft tries to do next.
>They lack the correctly formed tools to cope >with basic aspects of the mainstream social >world, things like dealing with separation and >boundaries/emotional distance
Right. They don't need to know about "emotional distance," because they live in a society where people from outside an immediate family group actually give a shit about each other. Strange concept, I know.
>the need to be assertive or to tolerate >assertiveness in others,
Yep. Again, because they have a consistent social structure, they don't need to learn how to communicate in an environment where the heirarchical position of individuals is constantly in flux, depending on context. Each individual has a consistent position in the social pecking order, which makes life much easier.
>the "sixth sense" that most urban and even >suburban dwellers develop about crime and >dangerous situations
Again, their society doesn't include things like illegal drug use (and hence, no drug-related crime.) They don't have expensive consumer electronics as an incentive for theft, and being agriculturally based means that virtually anyone is able to get a job, regardless of lack of skill...so there is little incentive to steal.
The bottom line is that in a vast multitude of areas, mainstream contemporary (corporate) American society is sick, degenerate, and unjustifiable. It is also primarily based in nearly every aspect on the concept of weakening and impoverishing the individual almost to the point of death, so that there is no possible chance of said individual being a threat to the homocidal parasites at the top of the heap. Sure, there's a whole heap of *talk* about the importance of individuality...but the intention behind that is actually the weakening of social cohesion...which again, leads indirectly to the weakening of the individual.
By contrast, most non-mainstream indigenous or technologically regressive societies are based on the concept of *strengthening* both individuals and communities, and as such they form methods of achieving this over time. So yeah...anyone coming from one of those societies will experience problems...they'll need to undergo a paradigm shift...From being in a society where the emphasis is on doing things that *do* work to benefit human beings, to being in one (the mainstream one) where the specific intention is to emphasise doing things which are detrimental to human beings.
They've kept knowledge of how to live independently of electricity within living human memory, for one thing. It is therefore possible to study their lifestyle and (in the event that for whatever reason, large-scale generation of electricity becomes impossible) learn how the rest of humanity might be able to cope with it.
True, the picture of a low-technology lifestyle isn't *entirely* rosy...They have a much higher birthrate on average, and as the article points out, a much smaller population compared to the average means less genetic diversity, which in turn means more genetic problems, and *possibly* somewhat lower average intelligence. It would also possibly mean lower overall literacy...but there are a very large number of people within the general American population who do not have basic literacy and numeracy skills, either. It is entirely possible that the Amish actually have a rather superior education system, since the intention behind their system would actually be to educate...whereas the aim of the mainstream education system in most countries these days is likely a lot closer to penal reform.
The Amish are an extremely important cultural group, IMHO. I'd be lost without my computer, but aside from that I consider them a positive example to the rest of us (at least in some respects) where sustainable living is concerned. I've believed for a while now that despite having had some people laugh at them, it may well be that the Amish themselves will have the last laugh once peak oil hits. Their lifestyle also has numerous sociological benefits as well. It's fairly self-evident that the level of communal interaction is higher among less technologically oriented societies, as well as overall levels of apathy being a good deal lower. People from such communities tend to care a great deal more about their fellow man, and on a day to day basis, as well...not just when disaster hits. The rest of human society could learn a lot from them.
id's problem has always been that they were a one-trick pony...i.e., graphics. John Carmack took what was at the time a largely theoretical specification, (BSP) first built two genre-defining games out of it, (Doom and Doom 2) and then went on to display an increasing level of technical mastery with it by adding full three-dimensionality. (Quake) As far as pure graphics are concerned, the man is without peer...he occupies a place fairly close to Einstein in my own head. (And he's a Texan, no less!;-))
However, problems eventually arose from the fact that graphics alone are not what make a truly engaging FPS. It might have been the first engine to utilise OpenGL, but from a *gameplay* perspective Quake 2 especially was complete crap in my book. The situation got markedly worse with Quake 3 as well, from the point of view that the base engine was the only part of it which id actually produced themselves. Everything else (the AI, the cutscenes) had to be outsourced. Q3's credits list is very long...and id's own staff do not occupy a very large part of it.
Q1 was id's finest hour in my mind...I still don't think I've ever had a more immersive or atmospheric multiplayer experience since then. (and I've played my share of Q3 and UT 2003 online) I realise however that such is a completely subjective statement...but I've long tended to believe that the development of any technology follows a bell pattern, where it hits a peak of development/refinement, and then actually starts to come back down somewhat. (I don't include visual photo-realism as a criteria here either; quite the opposite, actually) For me, (purely in terms of multiplayer) the original Quake was the proverbial summit of the mountain.
The release of Unreal and Unreal Tournament certainly didn't help matters for id though, either...because not only were they beautiful graphically, (the original UT is still a completely acceptable visual experience in my book) but they also included all sorts of innovations where AI and gameplay were concerned...not to mention an extremely discoverable and user-friendly editor, which made it easy for any net-dwelling 14 year old to create their own scenarios as well. Epic might have been ardent worshippers of id, but they were probably more responsible for their idols' demise than any other single factor from what I saw.
So, yeah...that to me is the main issue. Carmack is/was a graphical genius...but they were only able to get away with graphics alone for maybe three releases. (Doom/2, Quake) These days, graphics alone aren't what sell a game...You need good level design, decent AI, and people generally like a strong storyline with a high immersion factor as well.
id were the first, and they will always have that distinction...but they were not able to reinvent themselves...and the world has moved on.
I've got the Sims 2 and also spent a large amount of time playing the original game...but I do hear what you're saying. The Sims is a strange game in that playing it in Live mode is only one of the things people do with it...and in fact, very few people probably do spend time doing that, because it is genuinely boring.
There are a couple of different things people tend to do with it:-
Probably the single biggest drawcard for most people seems to be designing their own furniture and other three dimensional objects for the game.
Architectural design/interior decoration. The Sims 2 has a fantastic three dimensional house building mode, and unlike the first game you can now go up around 10 storeys or so. Many people absolutely love designing houses or building community centres inspired by real-life international landmarks. It's also possible to do landscape design...and of course, a big draw for many people is submitting their work to sites such as The Sims Resource where other people can then download it for inclusion in their own games.
Clothing/makeup design.
3D humanoid modelling - creating Sims based either on famous people or extraterrestrials.
Storytelling or amateur computer-generated filmmaking. (machinima) You might have heard of a series of films built with the Sims 2 called The Strangerhood. If not, you might want to check it out to see what the engine is capable of...it's pretty amazing.
An interactive episodic soap opera/reality TV show where you get to be the director. You might not record all of it as AVI files, as that would get somewhat prohibitive, but each household can have a photo album/journal where you can have snapshots and captions talking about various incidents in their lives. One thing I really liked early on was that although I liked the idea of the show Big Brother, I often didn't like some of the people they had on there...The Sims 2 lets me stage something like that which is completely run by me...I can either direct and control everything that happens, or I can let the Sims loose and watch them interact.
So as you can possibly see, the game doesn't just have one use...there are a lot of different things that can be done with it, depending on the type of creativity that the person in question prefers to engage in.
Here's the analogy I've always used to compare piracy with conventional theft.
Let's say a teenager goes into a supermarket and steals a Mars Bar. After the teenager took it, that then meant that there was one less Mars Bar *physically on the shelf.* The Mars Bar is a physical object. So the supermarket has to suffer a loss on the money they were expecting to make from that physical object.
Now let's say that same teenager goes home and later that night, uses his T1 cable to download a warez copy of Windows XP. The teenager has downloaded a copy of XP...but in doing so, there has actually been an *additional* copy of XP created...one which didn't exist before...as a result of the downloading process. Nothing is missing from the shelves of any shrink-wrap boxed software shop, either.
So that's the difference. Shoplifting *removes* an item which the store then has to cover the loss of. Piracy on the other hand does not physically remove merchandise...what it really does is to create alternate sources of said merchandise...sources which are not necessarily under the software author's control. The software author might not make the amount of money he/she/they were expecting, but given that software doesn't exist as a physical object, it's a lot harder to quantify with any real accuracy the amount of money you could expect to make from it anyway.
It's basically a Kevlar reinforced wetsuit with a hardened rubber overlay, some metal gauntlets, and presumably some chest plates and greaves (plate boots) as well. All science fiction aside, Kevlar genuinely does seem to be pretty amazing stuff, and if its properties are close to what Du Pont's site claims, then as the HSW article says, the Batsuit is essentially a specialised version of the Kevlar hazard suit which DuPont already sell...and hence, not implausible at all. The only element of it that really makes it seem fantastic is the cowl, and that probably only because of how it looks. Batman himself of course was going primarily for the intimidation factor with the cowl, but defensively speaking a more conventional Kevlar reinforced plate helm with noseguard would probably make more sense. If you look at some of the earlier or more rough concept sketches of several of these characters, the suits were less aesthetically appealing but made a lot more sense from a defensive point of view...As they tried to make the design more appealing aesthetically, it got less realistically useful. Spandex might *look* better, but it ain't bullet proof.
Also, while pricey, the material doesn't appear to be astronomically expensive. A full torso vest which a sales site claims to protect against rifle bullets is selling here for $400 US - Which as I said while not dirt cheap, still isn't Bruce Wayne only. Based on the prices I'm seeing, I'd guess you could have a basic (and functional) batsuit clone for probably $4000-$5000 US...although mind you, that's only in terms of the bullet proof element. Unless you've got a friendly neighbourhood blacksmith, the gauntlets could be harder to come by. A retractable hang-gliding setup built into the suit would probably also be very difficult to implement...but it might not be impossible...particularly if you were going to try and go wings only and forego the handlebar...of course, steering then becomes more or less impossible as well.
Anywayz, from what I'm reading here, it would be genuinely possible to create a basic but functional Batsuit semi-clone for under $10K US, if you were so inclined. I say a semi-clone because it wouldn't be identical visually, but it would make a lot more sense functionally. You wouldn't be flying with it, but it *would* give you limited ballistic protection, as well as a fairly impressive degree of chemical and thermal protection as well, not to mention protection from punches and bladed weapons with the gauntlets/helm/chest plates.
In terms of the heat/weight element that Bale is quoted complaining about, I'd attribute that primarily to the rubber, which to my mind only makes sense as part of the suit from a mainly visual point of view anyway. The armour elements would be heavy of course, but the entire point of the wetsuit is for temperature regulation, and from what I'm reading Kevlar (which I'm guessing they didn't actually use in the suit, since in a film of course it'd be primarily visual) is also supposed to be fairly light. If they'd gone for a more plausible and even less visual design, Bale might have been more comfortable than he was.
Re:The Batmobile is much more interesting
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How the Batsuit Works
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I saw the photos. Although the comments on them state that it looks a bit dubious, to me the design looks extremely logical, and basically exactly what I'd expect Batman to drive.
Realistically, to my mind he'd want if not caterpillar tracks, then as close to all-terrain as tires could give him. That would mean all-wheel drive presumably, and it would also mean big tires like the ones we see there. He'd also presumably want it to be very heavily armoured; capable of withstanding anything short of rockets if that were possible. Heavily armoured glass, small windows, and possibly blast shutters for them as well. The downside is that the car would be extremely heavy in all likelihood, but that probably couldn't be helped.
I'm guessing he'd also want the car to have its own air filtration system. (for threats like the Scarecrow's fear gas, and other airborne threats) If I was wanting a vehicle like that, I'd also want GPS in conjunction with a very large map database, as well as at least basic AI pathfinding to plot courses between points quickly. More futuristically speaking, steering via AI-augmented direct neural interface could also be interesting, especially for people with disabilities. I've got some disabilities as far as learning to drive is concerned myself, so it makes me hope that if AI gets somewhat more advanced in the future, a partly-AI driven car could be a great thing for some people.
>I have to say that from what I've seen of ebuilds >and the like, it's a seriously cheesy bunch of >hacks that really have no place in anything that >intends to use words >like "money" or "professional" >;)
From what I saw myself, Robbins was a gifted Bash scripter, even if nothing else. He possibly didn't market the distro as well as he could have...but then again, from everything I've seen, lack of popularity is not one of the problems Gentoo suffers from.
From what I see on a persistent basis, there are a lot of people associated with Linux who expect an entirely (monetarily) free lunch, and refuse to understand or accept the idea that while people are developing, they actually do have expenses. I blame a) Richard Stallman, and b) people's misconceptions of some parts of his message primarily for this. As it has been written many times, one of the main things Stallman has not done well enough is to adequately differentiate that software should be free in terms of a person's right to use it, but not necessarily in terms of monetary value. Because of that, many of the people who listen to him, while not having enormous capacity for rational thought themselves, then make the assumption that anyone who desires to do virtually anything commercially oriented with Linux automatically has exploitative intentions. What these people (and you) might want to remember is that food (and a good many other things besides) costs money.
If people are able to derive use from Gentoo, that gives it value...which in turn means that (IMHO anyway) it is not entirely unreasonable for Robbins to expect some kind of recompense for his work...if for no other reason than so he can simply afford to eat while he continues coding. I realise that you will probably try and argue otherwise, (indeed, you already have above) but from your weblog I noticed that you seem to have a PHP-related job.
I'm curious...if "your code is the contribution and the reward, anything else is a bonus," then please explain to me...why should your employers pay *you*?
...that if they don't cough up, they can go back to using Linux, where (unless they never read news related to the OS) they'll have to endure Stallman's whining, ranting autistic diatribes every other month or so, not to mention his unwavering belief that anybody who uses anything licensed under the GPL has permanently become his bitch by default.
Once people are confronted with such a ghastly threat, I have a feeling that streams of cash will begin flowing in from all directions.;-)
...Of the story I read a bit back about the earth-shattering revelation that apparently Mars is covered in rocks not unlike those which can be found in virtually any desert on our own planet.
I propose that after the next E3, somebody round up all of the booth babes from that event that they can find, drive all of them to wherever it is the scientists who are producing these news stories are conducting their research, and then lock both the scientists and the booth babes in the research facility for the next three weeks or so...preferably also with a large amount of alcohol and/or other controlled substances. Apologies to said women in advance...but think of it as civic duty, ladies. By giving these poor, repressed and lonely individuals that which they are fairly obviously crying out for, it will relieve the rest of us from being forced to hear stupid and obvious "revelations" about the Martian environment every few months.
You only need to be able to rip the original CD once. Rip it with clonecd, use that to produce an ISO file, then re-burn that file to as many other blank CDs as you like. After that, it won't matter if you can't extract an ISO again...although I'd have serious doubts about not being able to, because how does the machine distinguish between that an ordinary reading?
I haven't read TFA, and I won't be either. I've just had two bottom teeth extracted, and the dentist told me to make sure to take things very quietly for the rest of the day. If there's one thing that normally makes me truly angry, however, it's reading something written by Richard Stallman...so I will abstain on those grounds.
If Stallman actually wants to make himself useful, he might try investigating Red Hat's hijacking of the GNU project...particularly Glibc. The plan on their part is while keeping Glibc under the GPL, to simply make it sufficiently complex that they won't have to fear many people using it, and will thus be able to move closer to their desired general monopoly on Linux.
But to RMS: Either actually do some concrete work on preserving your software's freedom, or go back to sleep...because all pontificating does is piss people off.
This isn't exactly what I'd call an earth-shattering revelation. Do you people seriously expect intelligence from corporations?
Corps feel a desperate, hysterically technophobic *need* to be hand-held and spoonfed, especially where computers are concerned...and Microsoft are going to be a lot better equipped to do that than any Linux vendor.
Whether Linux gains corporate mindshare has nothing whatsoever to do with technical superiority...It has to do with who is best capable of burping, feeding, and changing the nappies of corporate executives and managers...and as I said, that's Microsoft in this case. Other than maybe IBM, it's not going to be anybody else selling Linux.
I will be bluntly honest when I say that Linux users in general, and RMS in particular, have done a truly commendable job of making the term "community" one of the most dire swearwords in my vocabulary.
As something at least moderately resembling an anarchist, the main reason why I have an aversion to being part of anything that could be referred to as a "community" myself is because the term also subtly implies the presence of something else held deeply pernicious by the anarchist mind; a heirarchy.
This then, is why, although I find Linux a fantastic operating system from a technical standpoint, its other users are very often people who I wouldn't want to go within light years of. I have literally spent years wishing that the operating system's technical merits were all that needed to be emphasised...and that we could have entirely skipped the part where Linux became a tool by which the Rain Man Alliance, led by that most unholy of high priests, RMS, and comprised of a global legion of asexual, basement-dwelling autistic mutants, could attempt to take over the world.
Linux needs once and for all to get back to being an operating system and forget completely about being a political/social movement...although I'm aware that for that to happen, the removal of the self-appointed Aspergian Messiah, RMS, would be critical...and is sadly not likely to occur. Frankly though, "Revenge of the Aspies" is one film I've grown very, very tired of seeing...and it went into reruns long ago.
Looking at both part 1 and 2 of this article, and attempting to read between the lines, I noticed one overarching theme which struck me as fairly important:-
Microsoft are abandoning their traditional, core market, namely, the desktop OS. The tone of the second article is very, very defensive...in a nutshell stating that they're aware Windows is doomed, and are essentially scrambling to jump to another market/find something to replace Windows with as their core bread and butter.
The "wired home" stuff in particular will fail. I can predict that with a high degree of certainty. The main reason why is because it's redundant...it's technology that people do not want or need. People wanting a more programmable combination DVD/MP3 player I could accept, but we've already got those...and you could quite easily bundle that and an HDTV set top box together without it needing to use XP...In fact, the only thing XP would introduce there would be a security/stability risk. The thing wouldn't need a hard drive, either...That's what 4 Gb DVDs are for.
I can't see Microsoft making it big in the mobile/handheld/embedded markets, either...embedded Linux is already out there, and even if Linux won't catch on as a mainstream home user (read: idiot proof) desktop OS for a while yet, it works just fine for dedicated applications such as a web browsing kiosk, etc.
The only one of its existing markets that I could see Microsoft feasibly surviving in would be the console market with the new Xbox...but even then, they'll be looking at massive downsizing if that becomes their new centre of gravity.
Microsoft's main problem now is quite simply the fact that although during the 80s, the UNIX world was kept distracted and divided by the vendor wars, that is no longer the case. Microsoft might have been referred to metaphorically as an 800 pound gorilla...but although the Tyrannosaurus Rex that is UNIX spent some time sleeping, in the last ten years it has re-awoken...and Gates has a very large and deadly surprise in store for him.
I had a look at this a week or so back, since there was a link to it on TerraNova. I really wasn't particularly impressed, to be honest, although I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and say that it is still very much early days as far as the project is concerned.
There would also be a couple of major obstacles to this in the real world, sadly.
a) With regards to content in particular, Sturgeon's Law would probably apply with a brutal vengeance.
b) With client-side character files and (worse yet) individual control of bandwidth from peers, you'd see 14 year old Neo wannabes swarming out of the woodwork everywhere, with things like the recent Blizzard speed hack, item duping, and so forth.
c) Although most people might, not everybody has broadband yet, sadly...and for this, everyone would need to. (I'm still on a 56k modem myself)
At least in terms of its level of progress, Croquet is far more interesting. I downloaded it and had a mess around with it...and although there are some issues which could be majorly improved, (texture size needs to be made uniform, for one thing) it's coming along well. It will be a while I think before a sufficient portion of the online population will have the processing capacity or bandwidth for a networked version of Croquet to be large-scale viable...but when we get to that point it could be very interesting. It essentially looks like an ancestor of the sort of completely 3D, networked virtual environment that Gibson and others wrote about.
Because Microsoft's profit model depends on the unique selling point philosophy, i.e. the idea that a customer will only buy from you rather than another company for as long as you've got something which no other company has. The unique selling point philosophy is the main thing in opposition to interoperability...it's the entire reason why companies do not in fact want standards, despite paying lip service to the contrary. It's because they like the idea that if a customer wants feature X in software, and only one company has software with feature X, then said customer will *have* to go to that company, and that company only in order to buy it. Exclusivity/uniqueness of offerings gives companies a lot of control, which they want.
>Thats what is at stake here and why both sides are >fighting tooth and nail. Scientists can demonstrate >evolution on a small scale, and the >fundamentalists >are scared that the scientists will teach this to >their children. In turn, fundamentalists want to >bend the education system to their will, and the >scientists are scared that their children will >become stupid sheep, rather than more scientists.
It's a shame these fundamentalists aren't simply the homeschooling type, like some Amish/Mennonites as an example. I'm also guessing though, equally tragically, that the fundamentalists aren't willing to start their own schools, so that their kids (who are almost certainly the minority) can be educated with whatever lanebrain David Koresh-style pseudotheology their parents want. That way other people's children could be given a more sane education as well, and everyone would be happy.
The thing that needs to be realised about most of the Pentecostal/fundamentalist groups I've heard of, (the SBC, AOG etc to name two large ones) is that they have faith which is based primarily on emotionalism. Sure, they rote memorise the Bible, but in their minds the genuine, intellectual study of *anything* is considered one of the most heinous of sins, and that often includes any genuinely coherent form of theology or church history, and almost always includes even a cursory study of linguistics. (Aramaic, Hebrew, and ancient Greek being the relevant languages here) Thus, although they call themselves Christian, in many cases they barely know what that means. They will generally use the King James translation of the Bible and aver with fire-eyed zeal that it is the only God-breathed translation in existence, when again, in reality they don't have a clue.
That's why it is so hard to reason with so many of them...because the types we're talking about here aren't even legitimately Christian except in the most loose of possible terms. They're rednecks with sound bite theology (and in reality, calling it theology is a grievous insult to the word) and the blanks filled in with testosterone, adrenaline, whiskey, and in some extreme cases, bullets.
That again, is also why it's hard to openly fight them...because they expect and thrive on the idea of being persecuted for one thing, and because they're used to fighting amongst themselves. (in the armed sense, in some cases)
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The more Microsoft do things like this, the more it makes me believe that not only are they finished, but on a subconscious level at least, they know it and are actually conceding such.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again...Gates and Ballmer need to stay very punctual with their laundry and dry cleaning from here on, as I'm assuming they'll want something clean to get buried in.
Blah, blah, blah.
Just another soulless, scorched earth capitalist. "I relied on other people to make my money, but now, due to the frailty of my own nature, I'm now going to promptly forget what made me a millionaire in the first place, and get down to the usual millionaire activity of destroying the lives of as many people as I possibly can."
And before I get yet another barrage of comments from American reactionaries labelling me a Communist, let me say that I have nothing whatsoever against capitalism, provided that the capitalist in question remembers that they do not exist in a vacuum...that they're part of the larger human race...also that they actually need other people to get their money in the first place. It is capitalism with total disregard for others that I have major problems with. Mind you, the latter is the form that most Americans are familiar with anyway, so I stand corrected...a lot of you probably won't be able to tell the difference.
They might not know about Linux, but they do know about their existing versions of Windows. Chances are they know them fairly well, in fact. Parts of the residential market will be forced to upgrade, perhaps...Gamers want new versions of DirectX, and Microsoft can decree that new versions of DirectX will only work with Longhorn, in order to force their hand. Ditto for future versions of Office.
The corporate customer however has no such compulsion...and in fact, given Microsoft's pricing model, the incentive is far greater not to upgrade than to do so...because as well as licensing fees, there will also be retraining and hardware costs as well. Thus, for many continuing to use their existing versions of Windows is likely to be far more appealing.
I hope the final product is infinitely more exciting than the alphas, screenshots, and so on I've already seen are...for Microsoft's sake, anywayz.
I've made the comment before that one way or another, Longhorn is going to represent Microsoft's last stand. I give it around an 80% chance that whatever they release, (unless it's darn near miraculous) it's not going to be able to either stem the tide of defections to Linux, or force existing Windows users to upgrade. Then there are the usual issues of not being able to completely reinvent the wheel because of needing to maintain backward compatibility. Windows needs to be rebuilt from the ground up...but that is the one thing they can't do.
If Longhorn is a failure, (and as I've said, for numerous reasons I think it's virtually inevitable that it will be) it's going to be extremely interesting to see what Microsoft tries to do next.
>They lack the correctly formed tools to cope
>with basic aspects of the mainstream social
>world, things like dealing with separation and
>boundaries/emotional distance
Right. They don't need to know about "emotional distance," because they live in a society where people from outside an immediate family group actually give a shit about each other. Strange concept, I know.
>the need to be assertive or to tolerate >assertiveness in others,
Yep. Again, because they have a consistent social structure, they don't need to learn how to communicate in an environment where the heirarchical position of individuals is constantly in flux, depending on context. Each individual has a consistent position in the social pecking order, which makes life much easier.
>the "sixth sense" that most urban and even >suburban dwellers develop about crime and >dangerous situations
Again, their society doesn't include things like illegal drug use (and hence, no drug-related crime.) They don't have expensive consumer electronics as an incentive for theft, and being agriculturally based means that virtually anyone is able to get a job, regardless of lack of skill...so there is little incentive to steal.
The bottom line is that in a vast multitude of areas, mainstream contemporary (corporate) American society is sick, degenerate, and unjustifiable. It is also primarily based in nearly every aspect on the concept of weakening and impoverishing the individual almost to the point of death, so that there is no possible chance of said individual being a threat to the homocidal parasites at the top of the heap. Sure, there's a whole heap of *talk* about the importance of individuality...but the intention behind that is actually the weakening of social cohesion...which again, leads indirectly to the weakening of the individual.
By contrast, most non-mainstream indigenous or technologically regressive societies are based on the concept of *strengthening* both individuals and communities, and as such they form methods of achieving this over time. So yeah...anyone coming from one of those societies will experience problems...they'll need to undergo a paradigm shift...From being in a society where the emphasis is on doing things that *do* work to benefit human beings, to being in one (the mainstream one) where the specific intention is to emphasise doing things which are detrimental to human beings.
They've kept knowledge of how to live independently of electricity within living human memory, for one thing. It is therefore possible to study their lifestyle and (in the event that for whatever reason, large-scale generation of electricity becomes impossible) learn how the rest of humanity might be able to cope with it.
True, the picture of a low-technology lifestyle isn't *entirely* rosy...They have a much higher birthrate on average, and as the article points out, a much smaller population compared to the average means less genetic diversity, which in turn means more genetic problems, and *possibly* somewhat lower average intelligence. It would also possibly mean lower overall literacy...but there are a very large number of people within the general American population who do not have basic literacy and numeracy skills, either. It is entirely possible that the Amish actually have a rather superior education system, since the intention behind their system would actually be to educate...whereas the aim of the mainstream education system in most countries these days is likely a lot closer to penal reform.
The Amish are an extremely important cultural group, IMHO. I'd be lost without my computer, but aside from that I consider them a positive example to the rest of us (at least in some respects) where sustainable living is concerned. I've believed for a while now that despite having had some people laugh at them, it may well be that the Amish themselves will have the last laugh once peak oil hits. Their lifestyle also has numerous sociological benefits as well. It's fairly self-evident that the level of communal interaction is higher among less technologically oriented societies, as well as overall levels of apathy being a good deal lower. People from such communities tend to care a great deal more about their fellow man, and on a day to day basis, as well...not just when disaster hits. The rest of human society could learn a lot from them.
You have experience with real demons?!
"Horatio! Get this man his medication...now!"
id's problem has always been that they were a one-trick pony...i.e., graphics. John Carmack took what was at the time a largely theoretical specification, (BSP) first built two genre-defining games out of it, (Doom and Doom 2) and then went on to display an increasing level of technical mastery with it by adding full three-dimensionality. (Quake) As far as pure graphics are concerned, the man is without peer...he occupies a place fairly close to Einstein in my own head. (And he's a Texan, no less! ;-))
However, problems eventually arose from the fact that graphics alone are not what make a truly engaging FPS. It might have been the first engine to utilise OpenGL, but from a *gameplay* perspective Quake 2 especially was complete crap in my book. The situation got markedly worse with Quake 3 as well, from the point of view that the base engine was the only part of it which id actually produced themselves. Everything else (the AI, the cutscenes) had to be outsourced. Q3's credits list is very long...and id's own staff do not occupy a very large part of it.
Q1 was id's finest hour in my mind...I still don't think I've ever had a more immersive or atmospheric multiplayer experience since then. (and I've played my share of Q3 and UT 2003 online) I realise however that such is a completely subjective statement...but I've long tended to believe that the development of any technology follows a bell pattern, where it hits a peak of development/refinement, and then actually starts to come back down somewhat. (I don't include visual photo-realism as a criteria here either; quite the opposite, actually) For me, (purely in terms of multiplayer) the original Quake was the proverbial summit of the mountain.
The release of Unreal and Unreal Tournament certainly didn't help matters for id though, either...because not only were they beautiful graphically, (the original UT is still a completely acceptable visual experience in my book) but they also included all sorts of innovations where AI and gameplay were concerned...not to mention an extremely discoverable and user-friendly editor, which made it easy for any net-dwelling 14 year old to create their own scenarios as well. Epic might have been ardent worshippers of id, but they were probably more responsible for their idols' demise than any other single factor from what I saw.
So, yeah...that to me is the main issue. Carmack is/was a graphical genius...but they were only able to get away with graphics alone for maybe three releases. (Doom/2, Quake) These days, graphics alone aren't what sell a game...You need good level design, decent AI, and people generally like a strong storyline with a high immersion factor as well.
id were the first, and they will always have that distinction...but they were not able to reinvent themselves...and the world has moved on.
There are a couple of different things people tend to do with it:-
So as you can possibly see, the game doesn't just have one use...there are a lot of different things that can be done with it, depending on the type of creativity that the person in question prefers to engage in.
Here's the analogy I've always used to compare piracy with conventional theft.
Let's say a teenager goes into a supermarket and steals a Mars Bar. After the teenager took it, that then meant that there was one less Mars Bar *physically on the shelf.* The Mars Bar is a physical object. So the supermarket has to suffer a loss on the money they were expecting to make from that physical object.
Now let's say that same teenager goes home and later that night, uses his T1 cable to download a warez copy of Windows XP. The teenager has downloaded a copy of XP...but in doing so, there has actually been an *additional* copy of XP created...one which didn't exist before...as a result of the downloading process. Nothing is missing from the shelves of any shrink-wrap boxed software shop, either.
So that's the difference. Shoplifting *removes* an item which the store then has to cover the loss of. Piracy on the other hand does not physically remove merchandise...what it really does is to create alternate sources of said merchandise...sources which are not necessarily under the software author's control. The software author might not make the amount of money he/she/they were expecting, but given that software doesn't exist as a physical object, it's a lot harder to quantify with any real accuracy the amount of money you could expect to make from it anyway.
It's basically a Kevlar reinforced wetsuit with a hardened rubber overlay, some metal gauntlets, and presumably some chest plates and greaves (plate boots) as well. All science fiction aside, Kevlar genuinely does seem to be pretty amazing stuff, and if its properties are close to what Du Pont's site claims, then as the HSW article says, the Batsuit is essentially a specialised version of the Kevlar hazard suit which DuPont already sell...and hence, not implausible at all. The only element of it that really makes it seem fantastic is the cowl, and that probably only because of how it looks. Batman himself of course was going primarily for the intimidation factor with the cowl, but defensively speaking a more conventional Kevlar reinforced plate helm with noseguard would probably make more sense. If you look at some of the earlier or more rough concept sketches of several of these characters, the suits were less aesthetically appealing but made a lot more sense from a defensive point of view...As they tried to make the design more appealing aesthetically, it got less realistically useful. Spandex might *look* better, but it ain't bullet proof.
Also, while pricey, the material doesn't appear to be astronomically expensive. A full torso vest which a sales site claims to protect against rifle bullets is selling here for $400 US - Which as I said while not dirt cheap, still isn't Bruce Wayne only. Based on the prices I'm seeing, I'd guess you could have a basic (and functional) batsuit clone for probably $4000-$5000 US...although mind you, that's only in terms of the bullet proof element. Unless you've got a friendly neighbourhood blacksmith, the gauntlets could be harder to come by. A retractable hang-gliding setup built into the suit would probably also be very difficult to implement...but it might not be impossible...particularly if you were going to try and go wings only and forego the handlebar...of course, steering then becomes more or less impossible as well.
Anywayz, from what I'm reading here, it would be genuinely possible to create a basic but functional Batsuit semi-clone for under $10K US, if you were so inclined. I say a semi-clone because it wouldn't be identical visually, but it would make a lot more sense functionally. You wouldn't be flying with it, but it *would* give you limited ballistic protection, as well as a fairly impressive degree of chemical and thermal protection as well, not to mention protection from punches and bladed weapons with the gauntlets/helm/chest plates.
In terms of the heat/weight element that Bale is quoted complaining about, I'd attribute that primarily to the rubber, which to my mind only makes sense as part of the suit from a mainly visual point of view anyway. The armour elements would be heavy of course, but the entire point of the wetsuit is for temperature regulation, and from what I'm reading Kevlar (which I'm guessing they didn't actually use in the suit, since in a film of course it'd be primarily visual) is also supposed to be fairly light. If they'd gone for a more plausible and even less visual design, Bale might have been more comfortable than he was.
I saw the photos. Although the comments on them state that it looks a bit dubious, to me the design looks extremely logical, and basically exactly what I'd expect Batman to drive.
Realistically, to my mind he'd want if not caterpillar tracks, then as close to all-terrain as tires could give him. That would mean all-wheel drive presumably, and it would also mean big tires like the ones we see there. He'd also presumably want it to be very heavily armoured; capable of withstanding anything short of rockets if that were possible. Heavily armoured glass, small windows, and possibly blast shutters for them as well. The downside is that the car would be extremely heavy in all likelihood, but that probably couldn't be helped.
I'm guessing he'd also want the car to have its own air filtration system. (for threats like the Scarecrow's fear gas, and other airborne threats) If I was wanting a vehicle like that, I'd also want GPS in conjunction with a very large map database, as well as at least basic AI pathfinding to plot courses between points quickly. More futuristically speaking, steering via AI-augmented direct neural interface could also be interesting, especially for people with disabilities. I've got some disabilities as far as learning to drive is concerned myself, so it makes me hope that if AI gets somewhat more advanced in the future, a partly-AI driven car could be a great thing for some people.
>I have to say that from what I've seen of ebuilds
>and the like, it's a seriously cheesy bunch of
>hacks that really have no place in anything that
>intends to use words
>like "money" or "professional"
>;)
From what I saw myself, Robbins was a gifted Bash scripter, even if nothing else. He possibly didn't market the distro as well as he could have...but then again, from everything I've seen, lack of popularity is not one of the problems Gentoo suffers from.
From what I see on a persistent basis, there are a lot of people associated with Linux who expect an entirely (monetarily) free lunch, and refuse to understand or accept the idea that while people are developing, they actually do have expenses. I blame a) Richard Stallman, and b) people's misconceptions of some parts of his message primarily for this. As it has been written many times, one of the main things Stallman has not done well enough is to adequately differentiate that software should be free in terms of a person's right to use it, but not necessarily in terms of monetary value. Because of that, many of the people who listen to him, while not having enormous capacity for rational thought themselves, then make the assumption that anyone who desires to do virtually anything commercially oriented with Linux automatically has exploitative intentions. What these people (and you) might want to remember is that food (and a good many other things besides) costs money.
If people are able to derive use from Gentoo, that gives it value...which in turn means that (IMHO anyway) it is not entirely unreasonable for Robbins to expect some kind of recompense for his work...if for no other reason than so he can simply afford to eat while he continues coding. I realise that you will probably try and argue otherwise, (indeed, you already have above) but from your weblog I noticed that you seem to have a PHP-related job.
I'm curious...if "your code is the contribution and the reward, anything else is a bonus," then please explain to me...why should your employers pay *you*?
...that if they don't cough up, they can go back to using Linux, where (unless they never read news related to the OS) they'll have to endure Stallman's whining, ranting autistic diatribes every other month or so, not to mention his unwavering belief that anybody who uses anything licensed under the GPL has permanently become his bitch by default.
;-)
Once people are confronted with such a ghastly threat, I have a feeling that streams of cash will begin flowing in from all directions.
...Of the story I read a bit back about the earth-shattering revelation that apparently Mars is covered in rocks not unlike those which can be found in virtually any desert on our own planet.
I propose that after the next E3, somebody round up all of the booth babes from that event that they can find, drive all of them to wherever it is the scientists who are producing these news stories are conducting their research, and then lock both the scientists and the booth babes in the research facility for the next three weeks or so...preferably also with a large amount of alcohol and/or other controlled substances. Apologies to said women in advance...but think of it as civic duty, ladies. By giving these poor, repressed and lonely individuals that which they are fairly obviously crying out for, it will relieve the rest of us from being forced to hear stupid and obvious "revelations" about the Martian environment every few months.
>What's the diagnosis for the overly-outgoing, >socially-obsessed technophobe who can't do math!?!
Normal. Seriously. Psychology considers morons as the baseline...because let's face it...most people are.
You only need to be able to rip the original CD once. Rip it with clonecd, use that to produce an ISO file, then re-burn that file to as many other blank CDs as you like. After that, it won't matter if you can't extract an ISO again...although I'd have serious doubts about not being able to, because how does the machine distinguish between that an ordinary reading?
Back to the old drawing board, guys.
I haven't read TFA, and I won't be either. I've just had two bottom teeth extracted, and the dentist told me to make sure to take things very quietly for the rest of the day. If there's one thing that normally makes me truly angry, however, it's reading something written by Richard Stallman...so I will abstain on those grounds.
If Stallman actually wants to make himself useful, he might try investigating Red Hat's hijacking of the GNU project...particularly Glibc. The plan on their part is while keeping Glibc under the GPL, to simply make it sufficiently complex that they won't have to fear many people using it, and will thus be able to move closer to their desired general monopoly on Linux.
But to RMS: Either actually do some concrete work on preserving your software's freedom, or go back to sleep...because all pontificating does is piss people off.
This isn't exactly what I'd call an earth-shattering revelation. Do you people seriously expect intelligence from corporations?
Corps feel a desperate, hysterically technophobic *need* to be hand-held and spoonfed, especially where computers are concerned...and Microsoft are going to be a lot better equipped to do that than any Linux vendor.
Whether Linux gains corporate mindshare has nothing whatsoever to do with technical superiority...It has to do with who is best capable of burping, feeding, and changing the nappies of corporate executives and managers...and as I said, that's Microsoft in this case. Other than maybe IBM, it's not going to be anybody else selling Linux.
I will be bluntly honest when I say that Linux users in general, and RMS in particular, have done a truly commendable job of making the term "community" one of the most dire swearwords in my vocabulary.
As something at least moderately resembling an anarchist, the main reason why I have an aversion to being part of anything that could be referred to as a "community" myself is because the term also subtly implies the presence of something else held deeply pernicious by the anarchist mind; a heirarchy.
This then, is why, although I find Linux a fantastic operating system from a technical standpoint, its other users are very often people who I wouldn't want to go within light years of. I have literally spent years wishing that the operating system's technical merits were all that needed to be emphasised...and that we could have entirely skipped the part where Linux became a tool by which the Rain Man Alliance, led by that most unholy of high priests, RMS, and comprised of a global legion of asexual, basement-dwelling autistic mutants, could attempt to take over the world.
Linux needs once and for all to get back to being an operating system and forget completely about being a political/social movement...although I'm aware that for that to happen, the removal of the self-appointed Aspergian Messiah, RMS, would be critical...and is sadly not likely to occur. Frankly though, "Revenge of the Aspies" is one film I've grown very, very tired of seeing...and it went into reruns long ago.
Looking at both part 1 and 2 of this article, and attempting to read between the lines, I noticed one overarching theme which struck me as fairly important:-
Microsoft are abandoning their traditional, core market, namely, the desktop OS. The tone of the second article is very, very defensive...in a nutshell stating that they're aware Windows is doomed, and are essentially scrambling to jump to another market/find something to replace Windows with as their core bread and butter.
The "wired home" stuff in particular will fail. I can predict that with a high degree of certainty. The main reason why is because it's redundant...it's technology that people do not want or need. People wanting a more programmable combination DVD/MP3 player I could accept, but we've already got those...and you could quite easily bundle that and an HDTV set top box together without it needing to use XP...In fact, the only thing XP would introduce there would be a security/stability risk. The thing wouldn't need a hard drive, either...That's what 4 Gb DVDs are for.
I can't see Microsoft making it big in the mobile/handheld/embedded markets, either...embedded Linux is already out there, and even if Linux won't catch on as a mainstream home user (read: idiot proof) desktop OS for a while yet, it works just fine for dedicated applications such as a web browsing kiosk, etc.
The only one of its existing markets that I could see Microsoft feasibly surviving in would be the console market with the new Xbox...but even then, they'll be looking at massive downsizing if that becomes their new centre of gravity.
Microsoft's main problem now is quite simply the fact that although during the 80s, the UNIX world was kept distracted and divided by the vendor wars, that is no longer the case. Microsoft might have been referred to metaphorically as an 800 pound gorilla...but although the Tyrannosaurus Rex that is UNIX spent some time sleeping, in the last ten years it has re-awoken...and Gates has a very large and deadly surprise in store for him.
I had a look at this a week or so back, since there was a link to it on Terra Nova.
I really wasn't particularly impressed, to be honest, although I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and say that it is still very much early days as far as the project is concerned.
There would also be a couple of major obstacles to this in the real world, sadly.
a) With regards to content in particular, Sturgeon's Law would probably apply with a brutal vengeance.
b) With client-side character files and (worse yet) individual control of bandwidth from peers, you'd see 14 year old Neo wannabes swarming out of the woodwork everywhere, with things like the recent Blizzard speed hack, item duping, and so forth.
c) Although most people might, not everybody has broadband yet, sadly...and for this, everyone would need to. (I'm still on a 56k modem myself)
At least in terms of its level of progress, Croquet is far more interesting. I downloaded it and had a mess around with it...and although there are some issues which could be majorly improved, (texture size needs to be made uniform, for one thing) it's coming along well. It will be a while I think before a sufficient portion of the online population will have the processing capacity or bandwidth for a networked version of Croquet to be large-scale viable...but when we get to that point it could be very interesting. It essentially looks like an ancestor of the sort of completely 3D, networked virtual environment that Gibson and others wrote about.
Because Microsoft's profit model depends on the unique selling point philosophy, i.e. the idea that a customer will only buy from you rather than another company for as long as you've got something which no other company has. The unique selling point philosophy is the main thing in opposition to interoperability...it's the entire reason why companies do not in fact want standards, despite paying lip service to the contrary. It's because they like the idea that if a customer wants feature X in software, and only one company has software with feature X, then said customer will *have* to go to that company, and that company only in order to buy it. Exclusivity/uniqueness of offerings gives companies a lot of control, which they want.
>Thats what is at stake here and why both sides are
>fighting tooth and nail. Scientists can demonstrate
>evolution on a small scale, and the
>fundamentalists
>are scared that the scientists will teach this to
>their children. In turn, fundamentalists want to
>bend the education system to their will, and the
>scientists are scared that their children will
>become stupid sheep, rather than more scientists.
It's a shame these fundamentalists aren't simply the homeschooling type, like some Amish/Mennonites as an example. I'm also guessing though, equally tragically, that the fundamentalists aren't willing to start their own schools, so that their kids (who are almost certainly the minority) can be educated with whatever lanebrain David Koresh-style pseudotheology their parents want. That way other people's children could be given a more sane education as well, and everyone would be happy.
The thing that needs to be realised about most of the Pentecostal/fundamentalist groups I've heard of, (the SBC, AOG etc to name two large ones) is that they have faith which is based primarily on emotionalism. Sure, they rote memorise the Bible, but in their minds the genuine, intellectual study of *anything* is considered one of the most heinous of sins, and that often includes any genuinely coherent form of theology or church history, and almost always includes even a cursory study of linguistics. (Aramaic, Hebrew, and ancient Greek being the relevant languages here) Thus, although they call themselves Christian, in many cases they barely know what that means. They will generally use the King James translation of the Bible and aver with fire-eyed zeal that it is the only God-breathed translation in existence, when again, in reality they don't have a clue.
That's why it is so hard to reason with so many of them...because the types we're talking about here aren't even legitimately Christian except in the most loose of possible terms. They're rednecks with sound bite theology (and in reality, calling it theology is a grievous insult to the word) and the blanks filled in with testosterone, adrenaline, whiskey, and in some extreme cases, bullets.
That again, is also why it's hard to openly fight them...because they expect and thrive on the idea of being persecuted for one thing, and because they're used to fighting amongst themselves. (in the armed sense, in some cases)