>Many companies would only just now be moving >their businesses to computerized systems. Until >now, computers would have been viewed as toys.
I have to disagree here. The Amiga and Macintosh were both developing office software independently of Microsoft. The Amiga had word processing software...it wasn't just a multimedia machine. Also, even though Wang was flogging his embedded word processors back then, the move eventually would have been made to word processing on a PC/Apple/Amiga, even if not straight away. Say you want to listen to a MOD file or MP3 while doing your homework, for instance.
Personally I also tend to doubt that Microsoft had anything to do with the demise of Commodore in particular. The sales/distribution lines for Commodore software in particular were screwed...back in 1990 when I had an Amiga, the main reason why we pirated software was because at the time, piracy via user distribution was the only way to get it. Also, 1990-92 was when a lot of busts of people in the Amiga warez/cracking scene happened, and those who didn't get busted stopped releasing out of fear that they'd be next. With the piracy that had been the machine's main form of software distribution dying, and with IBM and Microsoft beginning to gain speed, gaining new converts to the Amiga format gradually became impossible.
>We wouldn't have the powerful CPUs that we have >now, we'd probably be a couple generations >behind as the hardware demands of the software >would be much lower. Hard disks would be small, >memory would be low, and
Yes, this is true. I've always realised that to a degree, the fanaticism of the Amiga users was indeed justified. Hardware wise anyway, the Amiga was for it's time an incredibly advanced design. Of course, these days we all have sound and video cards with dedicated chips and in some cases memory, and we think nothing of it. But at the time (late 80s, early 90s) such an idea was otherwise unheard of. The Amiga's CPU also leant a lot more heavily on it's sound/graphics processors as well...the CPU from memory was around 7 mHz, and on some models I saw the graphics and sound chips were the same speed. Because of this, although the XT's processor was the same speed as all three (around 18-21 mHz, from memory) the Amiga was able to do things graphically that the XT couldn't concieve of. Microsoft and Apple might have developed the microcomputer software wise in the early days, but Commodore deserve an enormous amount of the credit for refining the hardware. The main reason why in a world without MS we'd still have less advanced hardware would simply be because we wouldn't need anything more powerful. Commodore's machines might have been very small on paper, but the hardware/software combo had a level of efficiency unheard of these days.
>All the arguments about bugs and security don't >work on me. I'm pretty well firewalled, and I >choose my hardware with care. I can't remember >the last time I experienced a blue screen but >its several years ago..
Yes, assuming you're clued in on security, are not using IE or Outlook Express, have a decent firewall, and also preferably have a third party file manager, (Explorer is a lot more stable now than in the past, but it can still have hiccups) XP can be a good enough end-user system, as far as it goes...and the interface can certainly be very pretty if you throw enough RAM and CPU cycles at it, and download some third party apps. I'd possibly also go as far as to say that XP is the most decent platform to have come out of Redmond, at least that I've seen...although many seem to swear by Win2K. Of course, the issue of bloat with XP is worse than ever, but if that doesn't bother you it won't be a problem. Gaming support exists out of the box as well of course...you're right there. Getting most games working with Linux from what I've seen isn't too arduous...at least for me...but it probably wouldn't be at the level of something Joe Sixpack would want to do.
>Linux needs to be able to do something, that I >can't do with Windows, and that I would actually >want to do.:-)
Mmmmm...Let's see. *Total* customisability is probably the main thing I can think of. As a case in point, I installed Xandros recently and was put off by the level of bloat/instability I saw with KDE there, so for my upcoming non-distro custom install I'm going to have a stripped version of GNOME with Enlightenment, maybe Fvwm's dock if I can figure out how to incorporate it, and the GTK/KDE *libs* so I can run isolated apps from those two environments if I want to. The other reason why I want a custom install is because I want to learn about my processor and compile a kernel customised to it's particular strengths. The other thing is, if you design a system based intimately around your own particular hardware, keep the bloat out of X, and try and steer towards apps written along the lines of ESR's seperate app/frontend/protocol model, you will get a level of stability Windows won't be able to come anywhere near.
>I'm using lots of open source software, and I >think open source is a great movement.. But I'm >always going to use the tool that fits the task, >and doesn't steal my time away from reading >Slashdot.;-)
I do understand this argument, and it's one which actually kept me from switching to Linux myself for a long time. However, my answer to it now is that I am going to spend two or so weeks of solid work initially to get the system exactly the way I want it, and I'm hoping that after I've done that, apart from incremental upgrades I'll never have to touch the fundamental layout again. Because it will also be tailored to exactly how I as an individual work, I also expect to achieve a level of productivity unattainable on anything from Microsoft, who adopt the one-size-fits-all philosophy. Although the Linux kernel revs very rapidly, being on the upgrade treadmill is a choice, and unless you're a developer it's not a good idea to be on it anyway. I can still to.0 releases of everything if I want to, and I'm going to.
Another point, and perhaps the most crucial one, is that if you buy Microsoft you're relying on their roadmap, and from what I've seen after 2000/XP, they really don't have one. With Linux, by contrast, the only real "roadmap" you follow is your own. Sure, other people decide which features they develop, (if you're not a programmer) but you decide which ones you install, and unlike with Windows, you also have the choice to remove them if they don't work. I do not believe Microsoft have a long-term future...It's not a case of Linux taking over the world, but rather a case of Microsoft having built a house of cards which is on the verge of collapsing on it's own...the company is creating it's own demise.
>with a massive trade war.. our economy is our
most vulnerable weakness...
The economy isn't America's only weakness. When it really comes down to it, the only real form of military superiority that the US has over *the rest of the planet* is nuclear...the army can only be in so many countries at once, and the population of the rest of the world is greater than the population of the army by a ratio of probably several hundred million to one. As Machiavelli repeatedly says in The Prince, the only thing a ruling power really needs to fear more than anything else is becoming widely hated...because once that happens, conspiracies, insurrections, and unrest start springing up in all directions. Americans need to realise more than anything else that their current President is leading them towards both national and international ruin, because the level of hatred that will eventually (and indeed already is, to a degree) be felt and expressed towards the country will reach a level such that not only will trade become increasingly difficult, but the military will also be overtaxed and unable to cope.
It would grieve me enormously to see such a scenario take place, as I have known many Americans online and have percieved most of them to be of as much value as other individuals from anywhere else in the world.
The most important thing is for the core minority of Americans who see themselves as superior to the rest of the planet to change this view, because it is quite simply incorrect. They do not have any greater level of intrinsic value than anyone else. America is not an entity apart...it is part of the planet the same as any other country, as are it's people...and it needs to learn to see itself as the rest of the planet's equal, rather than it's superior. If that can be done, peace both internationally and domestically will be achievable.
I'm not saying I advocate Microsoft here, but to me they should really stop doing these comparitive analyses from the point of view that even when they try and tilt them with propoganda, they still only really succeed in making themselves look bad and telling the world that they're frightened of Open Source. I'm sure anyone who read the original Halloween memorandum will remember VinodV's exhaustive analysis of Linux's strengths, and the areas in which Microsoft lags behind GNU/Linux. In doing so, he gave us probably a better piece of advocacy material than we could have written ourselves, and made Microsoft look terrible in the process.
If MS were intelligent, they'd shut up about this...because every time they try and make themselves out to have a superior system to GNU/Linux or it's applications, the only two things they do are either a) Make themselves morally look bad by resorting to FUD and intimidation, not to mention the fact that this also reinforces the idea that they know they're losing, and b) Draw attention to the monumental technical inferiority of their products. They do this because, presumably in trying to appear objective, they exhaustively list Linux's strengths in these comparisons. The problem for them is that once they do that, anyone with half a brain who reads them can see how much of a better deal they're getting with GNU/Linux than with anything Redmond could offer them.
Then again, it is really good for us because it means that when we're trying to convert people to GNU/Linux and away from Microsoft's products, all we really need to do is point them in some cases to Microsoft's own literature...so I know I shouldn't discourage it. I was just talking from MS's POV.
I just bought a copy of Xandros 2.0 the other day, and from what I've seen so far it's fantastic...I'm extremely happy with it. Installation is a breeze, and my jaw dropped when I saw how it automatically detected/configured my wretched WinModem. (which I feared would require a kernel recompile to get working, and although I'm definitely not a complete UNIX newb, I'm sufficiently non-programmatically oriented that that would have been somewhat daunting)
Xandros also doesn't seem to have the problem you mentioned about SuSE not allowing other apps. It does prefer.debs, it's true...but I've been able to get an rpm to work with minimal tinkering, and I'm used to doing manual.configure/compiles with tarballs anywayz, to a degree. My only real grizzle with Xandros is KDE, because last time I had Linux installed I was using Enlightenment, which is a lot prettier than KDE, if less user-friendly. Everything else though is fine...File Explorer works like a charm, and I'm currently in the process of installing the alphaware monstrosity that is WINE, in order to use a few of my beloved windows apps. Incidentally, if anyone feels like having a crack at getting RealDraw (http://www.mediachance.com/) working with WINE and posting the results, (I will be myself as well) I'd be much obliged. It's a truly fantastic little vector graphics app too, so you'd be doing yourself a favour at the same time.
>I can't be the only one who has noticed that major >product version numbers are a) inflated, and b) the >same (+- 1) as the competetors.
I think part of the reason for that is that (in theory, anywayz) Windows end-users are not used to having to download updates all the time. Because of this, the makers of a lot of the "Windows conversion" distros know that a Windows user isn't going to want to get on the treadmill. They're going to want to install the system out of the box, and not have to trawl the Internet hunting down libs for Application X. Therefore the problem is that the distro makers have to include absolutely EVERYTHING, including the kitchen sink, associated with whatever Linux apps are in a given release. In the case of the GUIs in particular like GNOME or KDE, that's a lot...and that is where your bloat comes from.
Also, Microsoft do still use version numbers internally...Look in the System part of the control panel on an XP machine sometime. The version numbers just aren't listed on the packaging...but they're still there.
It's funny...I remember a time (not so long ago, either) when diversity was encouraged in the Linux community. I'm assuming that the reason why unity has become the Holy Grail is because of the desire to convert Windows users to Linux.
I read a good article on madpenguin.org the other day though about how if a reasonably consistent, unified *interface* is maintained, it doesn't matter how many actual programs there are out there.
Also, methinks peeps need to keep in mind that the whole reason why Outlook Express and IE are now the target of so many viruses is precisely because nearly everyone and their dog uses just those two programs. Only having a single set of apps which everyone uses makes life a lot easier for the crackers, script kiddies, and virus writers, and a lot harder for everyone else. If we want unity and consistency, I think we should aim for it primarily in the UI space. If we follow ESR's paradigm of creating the core program and UI as modules connected by protocols anywayz, we can have a boatload of different programs all doing different things, (diversity being a GOOD thing) but the UI can be consistent enough that Joe Sixpack will have absolutely no trouble using them. The bazaar lives on.
I went to the site, had a look, and downloaded an mp3 with recordings of ghost/human interactions. It's quite impressive, but there are a number of glitches...Most notably in the speed of the speech and pronunciation...the ghosts seem to skip the middle segment of certain words. It jumps a bit.
Of course, bugs are to be expected with any new thing and once they are ironed out, this could be an extremely impressive technology I think...one which I can see employed in a myriad of different applications. I thought the ability of the ghosts to interpret the wording of a user's requests was particularly impressive. Computer speech recognition and comprehension certainly seems to have come a long way. There is still some ground to be covered, but it's getting there.
The main things I use a PC for are games, 2D/3D artwork, and web design. I also tragically have a Lucent WinModem although I deny responsibility for that because there was no indication anywhere that it was a Lucent, and I was unaware that winmodems were incompatible with Linux at the time.
Other reasons why although I'd consider Linux in the future, I don't use it now:-
(a) Virtually nonexistent font support in comparison to Windows. With some of the art stuff I do, I need decent font rendering...Maybe someone can give me some advice on this, but I haven't seen a means of supporting Windows/Apple fonts in Linux yet, or the anti-aliasing that Windows has.
(b) Games. Granted that there's a UT binary available for Linux, so that isn't so much a problem...but in terms of the larger development issue, you're not going to get the gaming industry on side in a big way until there is a Linux equivalent of DirectX. Having to develop/buy individual hardware drivers for games was one of the main things that made game development for DOS a pain...there's no way game companies are going to want to go back to that. I know about WINE, which I can use to emulate older games, but if the majority of programs I use are Windows-based anywayz, from that point of view it makes a lot more sense to simply use Windows itself.
Despite the cons though, there are reasons why I'd definitely be willing to at least consider reinstalling Linux at some point:-
(a) Greater security/stability. This one is a no-brainer, and probably the primary reason for using a non-Microsoft operating system. Virtually all of the viruses in existence from what I've read have been written to specifically target certain elements of Microsoft operating systems...and very often these targets are vulnerabilities which should not be present in the system.
(b) The ability to create a completely custom installation from scratch, having everything I do want and nothing I don't, which again is something extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have with Windows. The half-dozen or so times I've installed Linux, despite it at times being a gruelling process I have greatly enjoyed customising the system...Choosing which window manager, and specific set of other applications I was going to use. It is a liberating, refreshing, and confidence-building experience.
In short, I like very much what I've seen of Linux...I feel very positive about it, especially considering that the first system I ever used the Internet on was FreeBSD...so I'm somewhat accustomed to a UNIX environment anywayz. The amount that I've used Windows in the last 10 years has admittedly caused me to become mentally lazy, but there are also times when I simply find myself wanting to *do something* and not worry about the technical particulars. If Linux can get to the point where that is a bit more possible, I'll definitely be interested.
It hasn't happened too often, but during my travels in Ultima Online I've occasionally seen couples. I think there genuinely are a number of women who play this particular game as well, as well as the usual poser guys who just want to use a female appearance to get free stuff.
The good thing about this particular game is that there are so many different character paths available. In my experience it's not so much games that women don't like, as it is combat/violence. It's entirely possible to play a totally trade/crafting based character in UO who doesn't need to engage in any conflict whatsoever. There are also at least three different forms of in game communication, as well as the ability to leave text messages in the form of virtual books for each other.
If teledildonics/cybersex are what you're looking for, then UO might not be the best avenue, but if you want text-based communication with what can be genuinely memorable shared experiences, it's perfect. I've been playing the game for around six months myself now, and consider it to be some of the most enjoyable gaming-related time I've spent...Britannia really is a wonderful place.:)
If you do decide to check out the game, come and have a look sometime for my character, Petrus Laredes, who you can often find hanging around the Haven bank on the Lake Superior server. I'll be more than happy to show you and your girlfriend around.
This story IMHO is pessimistic garbage. The author states his case by looking at an unfounded future...I can refute it by pointing to a well-established past.
Consider that id eventually opened the source of both Doom and Quake, and that originally these two games were their flagship moneymakers. In doing so, in my mind id proved three things:-
(a) That they'd already made more money than they could need or know what to do with,
(b) That once they had established their livelihoods, that they wished to contribute to the future of first-person gaming, and
(c) That although earning a living was important to them, (we all need to eat and pay the bills) finding a means of expression for their phenomonal levels of intelligence and creativity, contributing a form of entertainment to the world, and enjoying themselves in the process was the primary motivation in persuing their enterprise.
We need to remember that perhaps unlike the RIAA or MPAA, the gaming industry is populated by some of the most intelligent, lucid, and conscious human beings alive today. Active copy protection is in place for the first 2-3 years of a game, because yes, games do take time and money to make, (if you know anything about the industry, you'll know it's typically large amounts of both) and the people involved want to get something back for their efforts. After that time however (typically after a game hits "platinum" status sales wise) and it is assumed that no more income can be reasonably expected from the title, then in most cases the copy protection is removed, and in some instances the source of the game itself is opened, as we have seen. The copy protection of both the original Unreal Tournament and Half-Life was removed in later patches.
It might be true that Microsoft are planning on making their own products more closed and crippled, but in looking at this, you need to look at the history of individual companies. Fascist behaviour is par for the course in Microsoft's case in particular, but just because that's the norm for their behaviour, that doesn't mean it's that way for everybody.
I can't emphasise enough that (at least in my opinion) id and Epic represent two of the most intellectually and creatively gifted groups of human beings that I've ever heard of. The RIAA might be unreasoning, jackbooted idiots, but these two companies aren't, and that being the case they know that binding up the mod scene and doing other such things would only be shooting themselves in the foot. After all, let us not forget that Steven Polge, Epic's own AI programmer, was initially recognised due to a modification he made for the first Quake game, the Reaper Bot. The gaming industry trying to kill modding would be a case of them biting the hand that feeds them, and I believe they would be highly conscious of that fact.
I've said it before and I'll say it again...FreeBSD is the real man's UNIX. Linux is a toy...a well-meaning toy, to be sure...but a toy by comparison, none the less. 'Nuff said.
I will never understand why Quake 2 in particular has had as much developer/mod author attention as has seemed to. I also don't know what id were smoking when they released it...it was by far their weakest release, IMHO. The in-game AI was horrible, and the graphical engine itself was worse. To prove my point, it's worth remembering that the original Half-Life was built on a heavily modded version of Quake *1*, and that looked, played, and just generally *was* infinitely superior to Q2 in every possible way. Q1 was IMNSHO id's crowning achievement, and remains the best multiplayer experience I've ever had.
>Olga is an artist, a dramatic actress, a theatre >costumier, she loves drawing fairies and elves >and illustrating Tolkien, she also specializes >in the history of arts and culture and loves >mythology and collects cosmogonical mythos. They >both are elves: his name is Elenhil Laiquendo >and her one is Elgaladna Findilauriel. > >so elves do get laid,
I sincerely hope they *don't* get laid. Crackpots like these two reproducing is really not what the rest of the planet needs...the world is crazy enough.;-)
Even on the off chance that the About network doesn't have all the information you need, they have a large number of links to sites with relevant information across the Web, so there's a very good chance that you will be able to use them to find what you are looking for. Also...although these are not strictly an answer to your question, I would still heartily encourage you to follow the links to these (listed in a suggested order of reading...my probably misguided opinion only) text files, web pages, and books, as I think they could be of enormous benefit to both your children and yourself...indeed, anyone who wishes to read them. Although I understand that several of these could possibly only be understood at tertiary level, they also as far as I know are not normally included in *general* curriculums, and IMHO they should be.
It used to be in the past that the education systems of most nations didn't want us to know the why (philosophy, religion, history, political theory) of life, but were content enough to let us know the how. (Science without analysis, numeracy and literacy skills, etc) Now however we are seeing that primarily in America, but also in other places, government education departments no longer even want to allow people to know the how.
Mathematics is part of the how - a means to an end, a way of solving problems - but it is not a destination in itself. The material I've given you links to in my second section is concerned with finding out *why* - "Why am I here? Who am I? How do I know what reality is? What do I want to do with my life? What moral values do I believe in?" The answers to these questions are far more important than becoming merely literate or mathematically capable for their own sake. Figure out what your purpose is first, and the rest, although still requiring work, will be relatively easy. That is what the links in the second list will help you do, and it's not something you'll be taught to do in any contemporary public school, either...Governments consider people with purpose to be highly dangerous.
>Possibly, but Gate's saying this weakens the
>position of regulatory bodies and courts in both
>the U.S. and in the E.U. that have, are and will
>consider Microsoft to be using its monopoly
>position to compete unfairly. If people believe
>there is any semblance of serious competition,
>then they will be less likely to want to
>interfere with the marketplace.
Granted, and for anyone familiar with Gates' past tactics or at least his public way of thinking (doing an author search for him on Amazon and getting some of the titles that come up will help) it is predictable that he would have made this move.
However, it is worth realising that by doing this he is robbing Peter to pay Paul, proverbially speaking. He might be using one enemy (Linux) in order to try and stall another (the DOJ, international equivalents) but the very fact that he is required to do this demonstrates that his overall (economic, ideological etc) campaign is becoming by necessity defensive, on multiple fronts. Anyone familiar with the Art of War will remember a couple of key points relevant here:-
Fight offensively wherever possible and avoid defensive strategy, unless you've got the high ground, and
Do not allow your enemies to congregate/collaborate/form alliances.
Personally I have tended to believe that Microsoft have been on their way out since around September 1997 (the release of IE 4) and to my mind, situations like this one only serve to validate that belief. In his book The Road Ahead, Bill talks about individuals who've been able to come up with a single technological innovation but have been sidelined by an inability to diversify once their initial product became obsolete. If Microsoft stay in the OS game, Bill will be in danger of not heeding his own advice here.
The development of the XBox was something which I will admit I wasn't expecting, and neither were a lot of other people, I suspect. The point with the XBox however is that it demonstrates that Microsoft at least on some level understand what they need to do. Long term, the commercial OS market is going to dry up...People have demonstrated in sufficient numbers that they both do not want and do not need to pay for an operating system in particular, so if Microsoft want to survive, they're going to have to come up with either software that people will pay for, or proprietary/tied software/hardware products...and not just a PC in console's clothing like the XBox itself.
The OS market (in the old sense, at least) is on the way out. IMHO Microsoft should at least try to cut it's losses there and use whatever money it has left from OS sales to move to another market. If they move too far away, they risk screwing up their brand recognition...but their traditional dabbling in small hardware (mice, keyboards, joysticks) means they could get into integrated hardware.
Of course this would also mean however that they are no longer in a monopoly position. But a realistic appraisal of the situation would I think show that they aren't really still in a monopoly position right now, or that if they are, its' days are numbered. The company basically needs to choose whether it wants to prosper at a somewhat lower level than what it is used to, or face a slow and ignominious downfall due to an unwillingness to see which way the wind is blowing.
>So, once again, I challenge you. Instead of >saying shit like, "The government is >fucked." "Politicians are idiots." and comparing >the government of the greatest nation on the >planet to the fucking Nazis for fucks' sake
In terms of solutions to terrorism...One thing I can promise you is that repressive measures on the part of a centralised government most certainly is NOT the solution. Quite the opposite, actually. If you've read anything about geurilla warfare, you'll know that a geurilla army/terrorist organisation is structurally the opposite of a government. Things are done at an individual level, rather than at a group level...and so because of that, it needs to be responded to on an individual level.
I definitely agree with the idea that individual people should report anything they find suspicious (large quantities of incendiary material/nitrate bearing fertiliser being purchased from supermarkets, garden shops etc as an admittedly rather dumb, but definitely possible example) to the authorities...but I do not believe in a mechanised information gathering system. It will draw in vast amounts of innocuous information as well as terrorism-related material, and there is also (and I shouldn't need to even point this out) astronomical potential for abuse.
Advocating that we resort to fascism as an answer to these kinds of problems is not an objective response. It is also not the response of someone who values being a free individual, able to make their own decisions about how they live their life. I can honestly say that I understand why someone could be afraid of having freedom...there is nothing more terrifying. I have never seen the concept of freedom more aptly illustrated than in the scene in The Matrix where Neo first wakes up in his pod, and looks over the side to see the billions of other pods, above and below him.
Freedom means more than anything else, being subjected to the naked truth about the nature of reality. Not hiding from that, not running from it. Looking it in the face, and resolving that you alone will be the author of your own destiny, even despite the amount of resistance you will encounter to that. I realise that only the very smallest minority of human beings have had or will have the courage to truly do this, and I lament that you quite obviously do not, as I grieve for every other such individual I encounter. If it is any consolation, the hell that you are going to ultimately end up inhabiting, assuming you do not change your mindset (whether it be spiritual, psychological, or physical) as a result will be very well populated. You most definitely will not be alone.
UNIX/Linux (IMHO anyway) are traditionally used primarily by highly left brained people (programmers and so on) who don't feel a need for a GUI. The only real reason why any GUI development has been done for Linux at all that I can see has been for the purpose of promoting the OS to non-technical end users...people who customarily use Windows, and therefore are used to a GUI.
Also...in terms of the next wave of UI innovations, the films Minority Report and Johnny Mneumonic feature some good ideas...the use of gloves and gestures etc...but for that we need advances in the area of hardware itself.
Except for mouse driven gesture tech, my guess is we've pretty much hit a ceiling in terms of what we can do with conventional hardware in this regard...To go further will mean we use new hardware and change the fundamental nature of user interfaces themselves...go from the traditional window-type interface to something truly virtual. Considering how long the ideas for this have been around, it's amazing really that we haven't done it yet.
To clarify, I don't think relativism in particular is *always* a bad thing. Smallville is a very good example of how it's used in a highly interesting way.
In that show, at least from what I've seen, Lex Luthor isn't always simply "evil." Sometimes he's against Clarke...other times he and Clarke seem to be the best of friends. It seems to depend on the situation, how he's feeling at the time, and the weather, among other things.;-)
I don't think XBox Linux is a useless idea at all...it has some great potential uses.
Consider that an XBox goes for around $400 AUD (probably 'bout $200 US, depending on how the market's doing on a given day.) This means that you can get yourself a very nice 700 MHz setup, fully hardware compatible with PC architecture (after some tweaking anywayz) for peanuts compared to what you'll pay for a fully fledged PC. The XBox's games have proven what a 700 MHz processor is capable of, especially with NVidia's graphics card, and it's no joke. The system is more than capable of serving as a Web/mail/news server...or another potential use is that you could have yourself a 4 node low-end render farm for home 3d animation work for $1600 or so AUD, with particularly munchy video cards as well ($800 US, assuming the pricing is roughly equivalent over there). Not too damn bad, if you ask me.
Given how compatible the XBox has proven after modifications, it's a great way to put together a dirt cheap system with all that legacy doorstop hardware you've got gathering dust in the spare room, too. Web servers, proxy servers, low-end word processing/office work, legacy gaming, car/mobile computers/entertainment systems/GPS, the aforementioned graphical use in numbers...buy one and set up an entry-level Web-surfing computer for Grandma...She'll love the fact that she can watch her favourite movies on DVD on it as well.;-)
Some people need to dig down into their feeble little minds and pull out some creativity, methinks.;-)
This is a complex issue and there are probably a lot of different reasons for it, but I can think of one as far as the subject matter of the cartoons themselves is concerned.
Cartoons during the 80s anyway (when I was watching them) typically had very morally absolutist/dualistic themes permeating their storylines. You had a group that was identified as "good," another group that was identified as "bad," and the line between the two was very clearly defined. This of course was before the advent of postmodernism, which includes among other things the concept of moral relativism...ergo, the concept that there's no such thing as moral absolutes. The other thing that was different is that back then the entire concept of political correctness didn't exist either. Society now is so inundated with the clamouring cries of this or that minority group that it's virtually impossible to conceive of a storyline for just about anything without the risk of offending *someone*. I'm not sure why it's happened in the last 20 years, but before about 1990, people used to be nowhere near as easily offended as they are now. There's talk of releasing watered down versions of The Lord of The Rings, the Bible, and pretty much everything in between in order to make them bland and as inoffensive as possible.
The bottom line is that if you can't say something without having to worry that it's going to bring all sorts of crap down on your head because of possibly offending the gay movement or some other equally paranoid, emotive, and fanatical minority group, you most likely will end up not saying anything at all. To me, this has far more wide-ranging implications also than just the death of cartoons...we're talking about freedom of expression as a whole.
>Keep your repetitive games that haven't changed
>since 94 (or whenever Warcraft 2 was released),
>you fucks. You'll get no money from me until you
This is true. I'm not boycotting Blizzard, but to a large extent *gameplay wise* Diablo 2 as it currently stands is mainstream RPG lite.
The LOD game expansion only really made the game worth looking at..."Classic" Diablo 2 was almost completely unplayable to my mind, due to very rapid onset of boredom.
The game is phenomenally well packaged, with outstanding MAX work, it's true...including raising the bar as far as in-game cinematics are concerned...and it's also true that on a purely stat level, some of the weapons are nice...but I can't remember the last RPG I've seen for the PC that didn't have substantially better gameplay than D2...It's mind-numbingly repetitive for my money.
The annoying thing is, that while they got some things right, it could have been a much better game than it was...Some ideas for Diablo 3:- (assuming it ever happens, of course)
License and adapt the AI used in Black and White from Lionhead. Applied in a dedicated sense to D2's hirelings, you could end up with skilled trackers who know the terrain of the different areas, and could dramatically increase their use of tactics over time. This way as well as different NPCs being more expensive when having more life/skill points, you could also make them more expensive based on their level of knowledge of the terrain and tactics employed when dealing with specific monsters. Best of all, because it's a dedicated scenario with only a limited number of creatures, you don't need to worry about the AI needing to be too open-ended. If you were really scared of that, you could have specialist hirelings who were better at/only knew how to deal with certain kinds of monsters, so that players who were having difficulty in certain areas could say simply hire the NPC to get through that specific area. The possibilities are endless. Hell, you could even go really crazy and apply this to the monsters if you wanted to, although unless you grew a template for each of those, the monsters probably wouldn't live long enough to get good.
Make the hirelings' inventory possibilities as complete as the real players. While Battle.net and multiplayer capabilities do of course exist, there are always going to be people who play single player games. Coupled with the above suggestion, this would give single players a party member with very close to human functionality in some areas.
Study some of the other RPGs that have come out since. Many of them use if nothing else, much more complex animation sequences for sword moves for example. You could have for example a scenario where in a town there is a magic training NPC and a weapons training NPC. Assuming a person has enough money/xp/whatever, they could go to each one of these teaching npcs. Probably what you'd perhaps want to do is devise a series of forms/groups of related moves in different tiers/levels, and then based on char level or money, the character could work through each one. For primarily non-magic using characters, to me focussing on mundane moves that can then be optionally augmented with elemental boosts would be the best way to go there. The Assassin has a basic example of what I'm talking about here...but a lot more can and should be done with it.
Inject atmosphere back into the game. D1 was a truly fantastic game in terms of the environments/music/overall feel...by contrast, although some of it is equally great, a lot of D2's areas are sterile to the point where you almost need Prozac to get through them. This is an intangible, and it's difficult to describe exactly what I mean here...but I think the main thing to remember here is that less is more. Looking at it, one of the main reasons why Diablo 1 was as good as it was is because it was almost exactly the right length...D2 would probably be dramatically improved IMHO by nixing Act 2 in particular altogether.
I'm leaving a wakeup call for when somebody from Dell says or does something intelligent. I have a feeling I'll probably beat Rip Van Winkle's record in the meantime.;-)
Can someone please explain to me why unity is always considered mandatory??
I really don't understand what is supposed to drive genuine innovation if we demand that everyone (as much as possible, anywayz) is under one banner and doing the same thing. Why is having many different P2P protocols a bad thing? I always thought that this kind of diversity meant that, even if eventually there had to be only one, having large numbers initially would better facilitate the selection process.
Read Darwin, people. Genuine technological development does not come about from rigid unity, but rather just the opposite. You have as many different prototypes, re-interpretations, code forks, or versions of whatever it is you're developing as possible. That way the most suitable model/s for the task are identified over time. The relevant salvageable features of the less suitable models can be taken and added to the more suitable ones, and the less suitable ones eventually fall away by themselves...naturally.
This goes back to the entire Linux vs Windows question, where the thing people complain about is the idea of only having one system (Windows) where they can't make any of the decisions concerning the operating system for themselves. To me it makes a lot more sense if you don't just have Windows OR Linux, but rather that you have Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, the Mac OS, AmigaDOS, and so on, and if they all have their attendant fan/developer base. That way each system has it's particular use or area of strengths, and work continues on developing others for other uses as well. It also means that the user is free to choose what he/she thinks is the best system for the task at hand. Things get done, people are happy, freedom is maintained, and the world keeps turning.;-)
If you have a singular or monolithic model, this doesn't happen...instead we very often get saddled with frozen, unchanging dinosaurs. Is this really what we want?
I was never a huge Buffy fan, but after a while I developed an appreciation for SMG's character, as one that I could relate to on a marginal level.
I don't know anything about whether Angel has been successful or not ratings wise, but personally I like the show for the most part. I tend to think of the show as a rather warped hybridisation of Star Trek, the Anne Rice novels/movies, and the movie The Craft. Lorne is far and away my favourite character, and the abstract (and occasionally demented) creativity of Whedon is certainly welcome.
I don't think it's too excessively dramatic to refer to this as the passing of an era though, because although I tended to consider Buffy more juvenile than Angel, (mainly due to Willow and her attendant lameness) it always amazed me how far Whedon was able to go with what was essentially a handful of wiccan, gothic, and Catholic stereotypes, at least at first. That takes creativity and persistence, two things we don't see enough of in television any more.
Also, Gellar might not be the greatest thespian the world has ever seen, but she definitely had guts and a a distinctive presence. In a time where more and more of what we're seeing has been recycled two, three, and four times, that also is becoming more rare and elusive...and it will be missed.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally I also tend to doubt that Microsoft had anything to do with the demise of Commodore in particular. The sales/distribution lines for Commodore software in particular were screwed...back in 1990 when I had an Amiga, the main reason why we pirated software was because at the time, piracy via user distribution was the only way to get it. Also, 1990-92 was when a lot of busts of people in the Amiga warez/cracking scene happened, and those who didn't get busted stopped releasing out of fear that they'd be next. With the piracy that had been the machine's main form of software distribution dying, and with IBM and Microsoft beginning to gain speed, gaining new converts to the Amiga format gradually became impossible.Yes, this is true. I've always realised that to a degree, the fanaticism of the Amiga users was indeed justified. Hardware wise anyway, the Amiga was for it's time an incredibly advanced design. Of course, these days we all have sound and video cards with dedicated chips and in some cases memory, and we think nothing of it. But at the time (late 80s, early 90s) such an idea was otherwise unheard of. The Amiga's CPU also leant a lot more heavily on it's sound/graphics processors as well...the CPU from memory was around 7 mHz, and on some models I saw the graphics and sound chips were the same speed. Because of this, although the XT's processor was the same speed as all three (around 18-21 mHz, from memory) the Amiga was able to do things graphically that the XT couldn't concieve of.
Microsoft and Apple might have developed the microcomputer software wise in the early days, but Commodore deserve an enormous amount of the credit for refining the hardware. The main reason why in a world without MS we'd still have less advanced hardware would simply be because we wouldn't need anything more powerful. Commodore's machines might have been very small on paper, but the hardware/software combo had a level of efficiency unheard of these days.
I'd possibly also go as far as to say that XP is the most decent platform to have come out of Redmond, at least that I've seen...although many seem to swear by Win2K. Of course, the issue of bloat with XP is worse than ever, but if that doesn't bother you it won't be a problem. Gaming support exists out of the box as well of course...you're right there. Getting most games working with Linux from what I've seen isn't too arduous...at least for me...but it probably wouldn't be at the level of something Joe Sixpack would want to do.Mmmmm...Let's see. *Total* customisability is probably the main thing I can think of. As a case in point, I installed Xandros recently and was put off by the level of bloat/instability I saw with KDE there, so for my upcoming non-distro custom install I'm going to have a stripped version of GNOME with Enlightenment, maybe Fvwm's dock if I can figure out how to incorporate it, and the GTK/KDE *libs* so I can run isolated apps from those two environments if I want to. The other reason why I want a custom install is because I want to learn about my processor and compile a kernel customised to it's particular strengths. The other thing is, if you design a system based intimately around your own particular hardware, keep the bloat out of X, and try and steer towards apps written along the lines of ESR's seperate app/frontend/protocol model, you will get a level of stability Windows won't be able to come anywhere near.I do understand this argument, and it's one which actually kept me from switching to Linux myself for a long time. However, my answer to it now is that I am going to spend two or so weeks of solid work initially to get the system exactly the way I want it, and I'm hoping that after I've done that, apart from incremental upgrades I'll never have to touch the fundamental layout again. Because it will also be tailored to exactly how I as an individual work, I also expect to achieve a level of productivity unattainable on anything from Microsoft, who adopt the one-size-fits-all philosophy.
Although the Linux kernel revs very rapidly, being on the upgrade treadmill is a choice, and unless you're a developer it's not a good idea to be on it anyway. I can still to
Another point, and perhaps the most crucial one, is that if you buy Microsoft you're relying on their roadmap, and from what I've seen after 2000/XP, they really don't have one. With Linux, by contrast, the only real "roadmap" you follow is your own. Sure, other people decide which features they develop, (if you're not a programmer) but you decide which ones you install, and unlike with Windows, you also have the choice to remove them if they don't work. I do not believe Microsoft have a long-term future...It's not a case of Linux taking over the world, but rather a case of Microsoft having built a house of cards which is on the verge of collapsing on it's own...the company is creating it's own demise.
>years before the rest of the world gets sick of
>our shit and blows us off the face of the Earth
>with a massive trade war.. our economy is our
most vulnerable weakness...
The economy isn't America's only weakness. When it really comes down to it, the only real form of military superiority that the US has over *the rest of the planet* is nuclear...the army can only be in so many countries at once, and the population of the rest of the world is greater than the population of the army by a ratio of probably several hundred million to one. As Machiavelli repeatedly says in The Prince, the only thing a ruling power really needs to fear more than anything else is becoming widely hated...because once that happens, conspiracies, insurrections, and unrest start springing up in all directions. Americans need to realise more than anything else that their current President is leading them towards both national and international ruin, because the level of hatred that will eventually (and indeed already is, to a degree) be felt and expressed towards the country will reach a level such that not only will trade become increasingly difficult, but the military will also be overtaxed and unable to cope.
It would grieve me enormously to see such a scenario take place, as I have known many Americans online and have percieved most of them to be of as much value as other individuals from anywhere else in the world.
The most important thing is for the core minority of Americans who see themselves as superior to the rest of the planet to change this view, because it is quite simply incorrect. They do not have any greater level of intrinsic value than anyone else. America is not an entity apart...it is part of the planet the same as any other country, as are it's people...and it needs to learn to see itself as the rest of the planet's equal, rather than it's superior. If that can be done, peace both internationally and domestically will be achievable.
I'm not saying I advocate Microsoft here, but to me they should really stop doing these comparitive analyses from the point of view that even when they try and tilt them with propoganda, they still only really succeed in making themselves look bad and telling the world that they're frightened of Open Source. I'm sure anyone who read the original Halloween memorandum will remember VinodV's exhaustive analysis of Linux's strengths, and the areas in which Microsoft lags behind GNU/Linux. In doing so, he gave us probably a better piece of advocacy material than we could have written ourselves, and made Microsoft look terrible in the process.
If MS were intelligent, they'd shut up about this...because every time they try and make themselves out to have a superior system to GNU/Linux or it's applications, the only two things they do are either
a) Make themselves morally look bad by resorting to FUD and intimidation, not to mention the fact that this also reinforces the idea that they know they're losing, and
b) Draw attention to the monumental technical inferiority of their products. They do this because, presumably in trying to appear objective, they exhaustively list Linux's strengths in these comparisons. The problem for them is that once they do that, anyone with half a brain who reads them can see how much of a better deal they're getting with GNU/Linux than with anything Redmond could offer them.
Then again, it is really good for us because it means that when we're trying to convert people to GNU/Linux and away from Microsoft's products, all we really need to do is point them in some cases to Microsoft's own literature...so I know I shouldn't discourage it. I was just talking from MS's POV.
I just bought a copy of Xandros 2.0 the other day, and from what I've seen so far it's fantastic...I'm extremely happy with it. Installation is a breeze, and my jaw dropped when I saw how it automatically detected/configured my wretched WinModem. (which I feared would require a kernel recompile to get working, and although I'm definitely not a complete UNIX newb, I'm sufficiently non-programmatically oriented that that would have been somewhat daunting)
.debs, it's true...but I've been able to get an rpm to work with minimal tinkering, and I'm used to doing manual .configure/compiles with tarballs anywayz, to a degree.
Xandros also doesn't seem to have the problem you mentioned about SuSE not allowing other apps. It does prefer
My only real grizzle with Xandros is KDE, because last time I had Linux installed I was using Enlightenment, which is a lot prettier than KDE, if less user-friendly. Everything else though is fine...File Explorer works like a charm, and I'm currently in the process of installing the alphaware monstrosity that is WINE, in order to use a few of my beloved windows apps. Incidentally, if anyone feels like having a crack at getting RealDraw (http://www.mediachance.com/) working with WINE and posting the results, (I will be myself as well) I'd be much obliged. It's a truly fantastic little vector graphics app too, so you'd be doing yourself a favour at the same time.
>I can't be the only one who has noticed that major >product version numbers are a) inflated, and b) the >same (+- 1) as the competetors.
I think part of the reason for that is that (in theory, anywayz) Windows end-users are not used to having to download updates all the time. Because of this, the makers of a lot of the "Windows conversion" distros know that a Windows user isn't going to want to get on the treadmill. They're going to want to install the system out of the box, and not have to trawl the Internet hunting down libs for Application X. Therefore the problem is that the distro makers have to include absolutely EVERYTHING, including the kitchen sink, associated with whatever Linux apps are in a given release. In the case of the GUIs in particular like GNOME or KDE, that's a lot...and that is where your bloat comes from.
Also, Microsoft do still use version numbers internally...Look in the System part of the control panel on an XP machine sometime. The version numbers just aren't listed on the packaging...but they're still there.
It's funny...I remember a time (not so long ago, either) when diversity was encouraged in the Linux community. I'm assuming that the reason why unity has become the Holy Grail is because of the desire to convert Windows users to Linux.
I read a good article on madpenguin.org the other day though about how if a reasonably consistent, unified *interface* is maintained, it doesn't matter how many actual programs there are out there.
Also, methinks peeps need to keep in mind that the whole reason why Outlook Express and IE are now the target of so many viruses is precisely because nearly everyone and their dog uses just those two programs. Only having a single set of apps which everyone uses makes life a lot easier for the crackers, script kiddies, and virus writers, and a lot harder for everyone else.
If we want unity and consistency, I think we should aim for it primarily in the UI space. If we follow ESR's paradigm of creating the core program and UI as modules connected by protocols anywayz, we can have a boatload of different programs all doing different things, (diversity being a GOOD thing) but the UI can be consistent enough that Joe Sixpack will have absolutely no trouble using them. The bazaar lives on.
I went to the site, had a look, and downloaded an mp3 with recordings of ghost/human interactions. It's quite impressive, but there are a number of glitches...Most notably in the speed of the speech and pronunciation...the ghosts seem to skip the middle segment of certain words. It jumps a bit.
Of course, bugs are to be expected with any new thing and once they are ironed out, this could be an extremely impressive technology I think...one which I can see employed in a myriad of different applications. I thought the ability of the ghosts to interpret the wording of a user's requests was particularly impressive. Computer speech recognition and comprehension certainly seems to have come a long way. There is still some ground to be covered, but it's getting there.
Other reasons why although I'd consider Linux in the future, I don't use it now:-
(a) Virtually nonexistent font support in comparison to Windows. With some of the art stuff I do, I need decent font rendering...Maybe someone can give me some advice on this, but I haven't seen a means of supporting Windows/Apple fonts in Linux yet, or the anti-aliasing that Windows has.
(b) Games. Granted that there's a UT binary available for Linux, so that isn't so much a problem...but in terms of the larger development issue, you're not going to get the gaming industry on side in a big way until there is a Linux equivalent of DirectX. Having to develop/buy individual hardware drivers for games was one of the main things that made game development for DOS a pain...there's no way game companies are going to want to go back to that. I know about WINE, which I can use to emulate older games, but if the majority of programs I use are Windows-based anywayz, from that point of view it makes a lot more sense to simply use Windows itself.
Despite the cons though, there are reasons why I'd definitely be willing to at least consider reinstalling Linux at some point:-
(a) Greater security/stability. This one is a no-brainer, and probably the primary reason for using a non-Microsoft operating system. Virtually all of the viruses in existence from what I've read have been written to specifically target certain elements of Microsoft operating systems...and very often these targets are vulnerabilities which should not be present in the system.
(b) The ability to create a completely custom installation from scratch, having everything I do want and nothing I don't, which again is something extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have with Windows. The half-dozen or so times I've installed Linux, despite it at times being a gruelling process I have greatly enjoyed customising the system...Choosing which window manager, and specific set of other applications I was going to use. It is a liberating, refreshing, and confidence-building experience.
In short, I like very much what I've seen of Linux...I feel very positive about it, especially considering that the first system I ever used the Internet on was FreeBSD...so I'm somewhat accustomed to a UNIX environment anywayz. The amount that I've used Windows in the last 10 years has admittedly caused me to become mentally lazy, but there are also times when I simply find myself wanting to *do something* and not worry about the technical particulars. If Linux can get to the point where that is a bit more possible, I'll definitely be interested.
The good thing about this particular game is that there are so many different character paths available. In my experience it's not so much games that women don't like, as it is combat/violence. It's entirely possible to play a totally trade/crafting based character in UO who doesn't need to engage in any conflict whatsoever. There are also at least three different forms of in game communication, as well as the ability to leave text messages in the form of virtual books for each other.
If teledildonics/cybersex are what you're looking for, then UO might not be the best avenue, but if you want text-based communication with what can be genuinely memorable shared experiences, it's perfect. I've been playing the game for around six months myself now, and consider it to be some of the most enjoyable gaming-related time I've spent...Britannia really is a wonderful place. :)
If you do decide to check out the game, come and have a look sometime for my character, Petrus Laredes, who you can often find hanging around the Haven bank on the Lake Superior server. I'll be more than happy to show you and your girlfriend around.
Consider that id eventually opened the source of both Doom and Quake, and that originally these two games were their flagship moneymakers. In doing so, in my mind id proved three things:- (a) That they'd already made more money than they could need or know what to do with, (b) That once they had established their livelihoods, that they wished to contribute to the future of first-person gaming, and (c) That although earning a living was important to them, (we all need to eat and pay the bills) finding a means of expression for their phenomonal levels of intelligence and creativity, contributing a form of entertainment to the world, and enjoying themselves in the process was the primary motivation in persuing their enterprise.
We need to remember that perhaps unlike the RIAA or MPAA, the gaming industry is populated by some of the most intelligent, lucid, and conscious human beings alive today. Active copy protection is in place for the first 2-3 years of a game, because yes, games do take time and money to make, (if you know anything about the industry, you'll know it's typically large amounts of both) and the people involved want to get something back for their efforts. After that time however (typically after a game hits "platinum" status sales wise) and it is assumed that no more income can be reasonably expected from the title, then in most cases the copy protection is removed, and in some instances the source of the game itself is opened, as we have seen. The copy protection of both the original Unreal Tournament and Half-Life was removed in later patches.
It might be true that Microsoft are planning on making their own products more closed and crippled, but in looking at this, you need to look at the history of individual companies. Fascist behaviour is par for the course in Microsoft's case in particular, but just because that's the norm for their behaviour, that doesn't mean it's that way for everybody.
I can't emphasise enough that (at least in my opinion) id and Epic represent two of the most intellectually and creatively gifted groups of human beings that I've ever heard of. The RIAA might be unreasoning, jackbooted idiots, but these two companies aren't, and that being the case they know that binding up the mod scene and doing other such things would only be shooting themselves in the foot. After all, let us not forget that Steven Polge, Epic's own AI programmer, was initially recognised due to a modification he made for the first Quake game, the Reaper Bot. The gaming industry trying to kill modding would be a case of them biting the hand that feeds them, and I believe they would be highly conscious of that fact.
I've said it before and I'll say it again...FreeBSD is the real man's UNIX. Linux is a toy...a well-meaning toy, to be sure...but a toy by comparison, none the less. 'Nuff said.
I will never understand why Quake 2 in particular has had as much developer/mod author attention as has seemed to. I also don't know what id were smoking when they released it...it was by far their weakest release, IMHO. The in-game AI was horrible, and the graphical engine itself was worse. To prove my point, it's worth remembering that the original Half-Life was built on a heavily modded version of Quake *1*, and that looked, played, and just generally *was* infinitely superior to Q2 in every possible way.
Q1 was IMNSHO id's crowning achievement, and remains the best multiplayer experience I've ever had.
>Olga is an artist, a dramatic actress, a theatre >costumier, she loves drawing fairies and elves >and illustrating Tolkien, she also specializes >in the history of arts and culture and loves >mythology and collects cosmogonical mythos. They >both are elves: his name is Elenhil Laiquendo >and her one is Elgaladna Findilauriel.
;-)
>
>so elves do get laid,
I sincerely hope they *don't* get laid. Crackpots like these two reproducing is really not what the rest of the planet needs...the world is crazy enough.
http://www.math.com/
http://homeschooling.about.com/cs/math/index.htm?t erms=math
http://homeschooling.about.com/cs/science/
http://physics.about.com/
What is Science?
Even on the off chance that the About network doesn't have all the information you need, they have a large number of links to sites with relevant information across the Web, so there's a very good chance that you will be able to use them to find what you are looking for.
Also...although these are not strictly an answer to your question, I would still heartily encourage you to follow the links to these (listed in a suggested order of reading...my probably misguided opinion only) text files, web pages, and books, as I think they could be of enormous benefit to both your children and yourself...indeed, anyone who wishes to read them. Although I understand that several of these could possibly only be understood at tertiary level, they also as far as I know are not normally included in *general* curriculums, and IMHO they should be.
It used to be in the past that the education systems of most nations didn't want us to know the why (philosophy, religion, history, political theory) of life, but were content enough to let us know the how. (Science without analysis, numeracy and literacy skills, etc) Now however we are seeing that primarily in America, but also in other places, government education departments no longer even want to allow people to know the how.
Mathematics is part of the how - a means to an end, a way of solving problems - but it is not a destination in itself. The material I've given you links to in my second section is concerned with finding out *why* - "Why am I here? Who am I? How do I know what reality is? What do I want to do with my life? What moral values do I believe in?"
The answers to these questions are far more important than becoming merely literate or mathematically capable for their own sake. Figure out what your purpose is first, and the rest, although still requiring work, will be relatively easy. That is what the links in the second list will help you do, and it's not something you'll be taught to do in any contemporary public school, either...Governments consider people with purpose to be highly dangerous.
>position of regulatory bodies and courts in both
>the U.S. and in the E.U. that have, are and will
>consider Microsoft to be using its monopoly
>position to compete unfairly. If people believe
>there is any semblance of serious competition,
>then they will be less likely to want to
>interfere with the marketplace.
Granted, and for anyone familiar with Gates' past tactics or at least his public way of thinking (doing an author search for him on Amazon and getting some of the titles that come up will help) it is predictable that he would have made this move.
However, it is worth realising that by doing this he is robbing Peter to pay Paul, proverbially speaking. He might be using one enemy (Linux) in order to try and stall another (the DOJ, international equivalents) but the very fact that he is required to do this demonstrates that his overall (economic, ideological etc) campaign is becoming by necessity defensive, on multiple fronts. Anyone familiar with the Art of War will remember a couple of key points relevant here:-
Personally I have tended to believe that Microsoft have been on their way out since around September 1997 (the release of IE 4) and to my mind, situations like this one only serve to validate that belief. In his book The Road Ahead, Bill talks about individuals who've been able to come up with a single technological innovation but have been sidelined by an inability to diversify once their initial product became obsolete. If Microsoft stay in the OS game, Bill will be in danger of not heeding his own advice here.
The development of the XBox was something which I will admit I wasn't expecting, and neither were a lot of other people, I suspect. The point with the XBox however is that it demonstrates that Microsoft at least on some level understand what they need to do. Long term, the commercial OS market is going to dry up...People have demonstrated in sufficient numbers that they both do not want and do not need to pay for an operating system in particular, so if Microsoft want to survive, they're going to have to come up with either software that people will pay for, or proprietary/tied software/hardware products...and not just a PC in console's clothing like the XBox itself.
The OS market (in the old sense, at least) is on the way out. IMHO Microsoft should at least try to cut it's losses there and use whatever money it has left from OS sales to move to another market. If they move too far away, they risk screwing up their brand recognition...but their traditional dabbling in small hardware (mice, keyboards, joysticks) means they could get into integrated hardware.
Of course this would also mean however that they are no longer in a monopoly position. But a realistic appraisal of the situation would I think show that they aren't really still in a monopoly position right now, or that if they are, its' days are numbered. The company basically needs to choose whether it wants to prosper at a somewhat lower level than what it is used to, or face a slow and ignominious downfall due to an unwillingness to see which way the wind is blowing.
>So, once again, I challenge you. Instead of >saying shit like, "The government is >fucked." "Politicians are idiots." and comparing >the government of the greatest nation on the >planet to the fucking Nazis for fucks' sake
In terms of solutions to terrorism...One thing I can promise you is that repressive measures on the part of a centralised government most certainly is NOT the solution. Quite the opposite, actually. If you've read anything about geurilla warfare, you'll know that a geurilla army/terrorist organisation is structurally the opposite of a government. Things are done at an individual level, rather than at a group level...and so because of that, it needs to be responded to on an individual level.
I definitely agree with the idea that individual people should report anything they find suspicious (large quantities of incendiary material/nitrate bearing fertiliser being purchased from supermarkets, garden shops etc as an admittedly rather dumb, but definitely possible example) to the authorities...but I do not believe in a mechanised information gathering system. It will draw in vast amounts of innocuous information as well as terrorism-related material, and there is also (and I shouldn't need to even point this out) astronomical potential for abuse.
Advocating that we resort to fascism as an answer to these kinds of problems is not an objective response. It is also not the response of someone who values being a free individual, able to make their own decisions about how they live their life. I can honestly say that I understand why someone could be afraid of having freedom...there is nothing more terrifying. I have never seen the concept of freedom more aptly illustrated than in the scene in The Matrix where Neo first wakes up in his pod, and looks over the side to see the billions of other pods, above and below him.
Freedom means more than anything else, being subjected to the naked truth about the nature of reality. Not hiding from that, not running from it. Looking it in the face, and resolving that you alone will be the author of your own destiny, even despite the amount of resistance you will encounter to that. I realise that only the very smallest minority of human beings have had or will have the courage to truly do this, and I lament that you quite obviously do not, as I grieve for every other such individual I encounter. If it is any consolation, the hell that you are going to ultimately end up inhabiting, assuming you do not change your mindset (whether it be spiritual, psychological, or physical) as a result will be very well populated. You most definitely will not be alone.
Simple. Less demand.
UNIX/Linux (IMHO anyway) are traditionally used primarily by highly left brained people (programmers and so on) who don't feel a need for a GUI. The only real reason why any GUI development has been done for Linux at all that I can see has been for the purpose of promoting the OS to non-technical end users...people who customarily use Windows, and therefore are used to a GUI.
Also...in terms of the next wave of UI innovations, the films Minority Report and Johnny Mneumonic feature some good ideas...the use of gloves and gestures etc...but for that we need advances in the area of hardware itself.
Except for mouse driven gesture tech, my guess is we've pretty much hit a ceiling in terms of what we can do with conventional hardware in this regard...To go further will mean we use new hardware and change the fundamental nature of user interfaces themselves...go from the traditional window-type interface to something truly virtual. Considering how long the ideas for this have been around, it's amazing really that we haven't done it yet.
To clarify, I don't think relativism in particular is *always* a bad thing. Smallville is a very good example of how it's used in a highly interesting way.
;-)
In that show, at least from what I've seen, Lex Luthor isn't always simply "evil." Sometimes he's against Clarke...other times he and Clarke seem to be the best of friends. It seems to depend on the situation, how he's feeling at the time, and the weather, among other things.
I don't think XBox Linux is a useless idea at all...it has some great potential uses.
;-)
;-)
Consider that an XBox goes for around $400 AUD (probably 'bout $200 US, depending on how the market's doing on a given day.) This means that you can get yourself a very nice 700 MHz setup, fully hardware compatible with PC architecture (after some tweaking anywayz) for peanuts compared to what you'll pay for a fully fledged PC. The XBox's games have proven what a 700 MHz processor is capable of, especially with NVidia's graphics card, and it's no joke. The system is more than capable of serving as a Web/mail/news server...or another potential use is that you could have yourself a 4 node low-end render farm for home 3d animation work for $1600 or so AUD, with particularly munchy video cards as well ($800 US, assuming the pricing is roughly equivalent over there). Not too damn bad, if you ask me.
Given how compatible the XBox has proven after modifications, it's a great way to put together a dirt cheap system with all that legacy doorstop hardware you've got gathering dust in the spare room, too. Web servers, proxy servers, low-end word processing/office work, legacy gaming, car/mobile computers/entertainment systems/GPS, the aforementioned graphical use in numbers...buy one and set up an entry-level Web-surfing computer for Grandma...She'll love the fact that she can watch her favourite movies on DVD on it as well.
Some people need to dig down into their feeble little minds and pull out some creativity, methinks.
Cartoons during the 80s anyway (when I was watching them) typically had very morally absolutist/dualistic themes permeating their storylines. You had a group that was identified as "good," another group that was identified as "bad," and the line between the two was very clearly defined. This of course was before the advent of postmodernism, which includes among other things the concept of moral relativism...ergo, the concept that there's no such thing as moral absolutes. The other thing that was different is that back then the entire concept of political correctness didn't exist either. Society now is so inundated with the clamouring cries of this or that minority group that it's virtually impossible to conceive of a storyline for just about anything without the risk of offending *someone*. I'm not sure why it's happened in the last 20 years, but before about 1990, people used to be nowhere near as easily offended as they are now. There's talk of releasing watered down versions of The Lord of The Rings, the Bible, and pretty much everything in between in order to make them bland and as inoffensive as possible.
The bottom line is that if you can't say something without having to worry that it's going to bring all sorts of crap down on your head because of possibly offending the gay movement or some other equally paranoid, emotive, and fanatical minority group, you most likely will end up not saying anything at all. To me, this has far more wide-ranging implications also than just the death of cartoons...we're talking about freedom of expression as a whole.
>since 94 (or whenever Warcraft 2 was released),
>you fucks. You'll get no money from me until you
This is true. I'm not boycotting Blizzard, but to a large extent *gameplay wise* Diablo 2 as it currently stands is mainstream RPG lite. The LOD game expansion only really made the game worth looking at..."Classic" Diablo 2 was almost completely unplayable to my mind, due to very rapid onset of boredom. The game is phenomenally well packaged, with outstanding MAX work, it's true...including raising the bar as far as in-game cinematics are concerned...and it's also true that on a purely stat level, some of the weapons are nice...but I can't remember the last RPG I've seen for the PC that didn't have substantially better gameplay than D2...It's mind-numbingly repetitive for my money.
The annoying thing is, that while they got some things right, it could have been a much better game than it was...Some ideas for Diablo 3:- (assuming it ever happens, of course)
Blizzard obviously
I'm leaving a wakeup call for when somebody from Dell says or does something intelligent. I have a feeling I'll probably beat Rip Van Winkle's record in the meantime. ;-)
Can someone please explain to me why unity is always considered mandatory??
;-)
I really don't understand what is supposed to drive genuine innovation if we demand that everyone (as much as possible, anywayz) is under one banner and doing the same thing. Why is having many different P2P protocols a bad thing? I always thought that this kind of diversity meant that, even if eventually there had to be only one, having large numbers initially would better facilitate the selection process.
Read Darwin, people. Genuine technological development does not come about from rigid unity, but rather just the opposite. You have as many different prototypes, re-interpretations, code forks, or versions of whatever it is you're developing as possible. That way the most suitable model/s for the task are identified over time. The relevant salvageable features of the less suitable models can be taken and added to the more suitable ones, and the less suitable ones eventually fall away by themselves...naturally.
This goes back to the entire Linux vs Windows question, where the thing people complain about is the idea of only having one system (Windows) where they can't make any of the decisions concerning the operating system for themselves.
To me it makes a lot more sense if you don't just have Windows OR Linux, but rather that you have Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, the Mac OS, AmigaDOS, and so on, and if they all have their attendant fan/developer base. That way each system has it's particular use or area of strengths, and work continues on developing others for other uses as well. It also means that the user is free to choose what he/she thinks is the best system for the task at hand. Things get done, people are happy, freedom is maintained, and the world keeps turning.
If you have a singular or monolithic model, this doesn't happen...instead we very often get saddled with frozen, unchanging dinosaurs. Is this really what we want?
I don't know anything about whether Angel has been successful or not ratings wise, but personally I like the show for the most part. I tend to think of the show as a rather warped hybridisation of Star Trek, the Anne Rice novels/movies, and the movie The Craft. Lorne is far and away my favourite character, and the abstract (and occasionally demented) creativity of Whedon is certainly welcome.
I don't think it's too excessively dramatic to refer to this as the passing of an era though, because although I tended to consider Buffy more juvenile than Angel, (mainly due to Willow and her attendant lameness) it always amazed me how far Whedon was able to go with what was essentially a handful of wiccan, gothic, and Catholic stereotypes, at least at first. That takes creativity and persistence, two things we don't see enough of in television any more.
Also, Gellar might not be the greatest thespian the world has ever seen, but she definitely had guts and a a distinctive presence. In a time where more and more of what we're seeing has been recycled two, three, and four times, that also is becoming more rare and elusive...and it will be missed.