And he'd be an idiot to veto his own budget bill; that almost never happens.
Good god. THINK about who you're talking about. GWB IS and idiot. Really. He is an honest to god moron. I wish I could recall the commentator who said it...in the local paper several weeks ago was an item by a CONSERVATIVE commentator who spent some time at the White House covering GW and buds. He indicated that Bush lacks any and all curiousity about anything that he is ignorant of (cultures, technology, etc). He doesn't read - except for the bible and THAT doesn't count for shit. He barely made it through college, there by virtue of his father's coattails. His FATHER, though a dork, was intelligent. Clinton, though a fool, was frickin brilliant. Bush junior, well, let's face it. He is Cletus from the Simpson's.
cannot be imposed on 3rd party's who are not part to the contract, they can also not impose on the moral nature of free will (eg contracts to follow a religion, or to be a slave, or to give up your free speech rights etc...).
So, how is it that nondisclosure "agreements" are able to impose on the moral nature of free will (aka, squelch free speech rights)?
Their convicted illegal monopoly status/behavior is the precise point! As is their illegal BUNDLING
. It is the BUNDLING of M$ apps with their monopoly OS that has them in hot water in Europe. C'mon!
They improperly screwed IE so tightly into Windoze that it cannot REALLY be removed, not because it is properly a part of any OS, but because they wanted the unfair market advantage that this bundling/tie-in causes. This IS a problem. In the selling of their OEM software crap, OK, just provide M$ stuff on M$ CDs, but there can be no such inherent bundling on PCs, particularly if the PC maker wants to include RealPlayer or some other INSTEAD of MediaPlayer, etc. M$, however, ties their crap improperly to their OS so that it is virtually impossible to really remove anything (now). This was a last-minute "design" change on their part when they were getting nailed in court over IE just a few years ago. They argued that IE was an inextricable part of the OS and that removing it would break windoze. They subsequently went on to make this LIE truth by actually folding the code (unnecessarily and totally gratuitously) into subsequent windoze offerings.
It should take no more effort to install Realplayer than it takes to install MediaPlayer for the average person. It DOES become a hardache for people without access to broadband too. Replacing bundled IE or bundled Outlook, etc, becomes a massive pain with a non-broadband connection and it DOES give M$ unfair market advantage for their products. Illegitimate market advantage based on tie-in to their illegally maintained os monopoly. That is the point, the whole point, and nothing but the point.
Europe is calling them on it and they are ripe for nailing in this regard.
That deal with all services being on by default is kinda misleading. The reason is that several steps later in the install you get a list of the possible startup services, most set on, and you can now deselect the ones you don't want running. If someone just blows by this very obvious screen, then yes, selected services will be running upon reboot.
Kinda hard to miss this screen however. I always turn off everything except sshd, postfix, and a few other nice services.
In a word, no. Yes these things are "bundled" with most linux distros BUT they are many and varied...there is REAL choice. You are not expected nor forced (indirectly nor directly) to choose email client X, browser Y, etc. Even in cases where the choice is made for you (RedHat) it is still very much an option that you can easily not go with. Redhat doesn't fail to bundle the remaining apps, they just make a default choice for you.
M$ is a different fish. They use an (artificially created and illegally maintainted) OS monopoly to push THEIR apps on everyone else, making more money and increasing the breadth of the monopoly. They use illegal and unethical means to induce use of their products at the expense of everyone else (special tie-ins to their OS so their apps appear to work better than outsider apps, sometimes causing artificial breakage of competing apps to make it seem theirs is actually defective).
Given the (still) lack of choice in OS upon new PC purchase, they should be required to provide the competitor apps (free versions of Realplayer, quicktime player, mozilla, etc, and let people actually have/make choices). They mustn't be permitted to perpetuate artificial barriers for the use/adoption of competing tools/apps. It is the leveraging of one monopoly to produce more monopoly that is particularly naughty and a no-no.
In any case, an OS is NOT a web browser, media player, email client. An OS is an OS and these other things are SEPARATE and INDEPENDENT applications that work through the OS.
I thought the music industry was already that way. All rap and rappers look/sound alike (and that crap has been sticking around WAY too long...let's have a STYLE change, PLEASE). Brittney Spears and all the clonealikes. The boy-bands...all the same amorphous mass of gelatin pap. "Superstars" produced ala cookie-cutter assembly-line.
The music industry is the same as it was 2 years ago as it will be 2 years hence (there will STILL be rap and they will all STILL be the same) and there will STILL be boy bands and Brittney Spears clones.
Oh you of too much faith. With the way the US Patent Office (doesn't) work you really expect that M$ WONT get their patent through? The US Patent Office will let anything through unless it specifically says "perpetual motion machine" in the documents somewhere. The US Patent Office is broken, as is the entire patent and copyright system. Don't be so sure M$ wont get their patent(s)
I am leery of replacing money with anything else. Money, cold cash, is anonymous. One can purchase something without a paper trail pointing at you. Credit cards, check cards...they all scream your name and just give fodder to databanks that can be used to profile you, violate your privacy, or feed the tyranny of the Patriot Act I and II. No thank you.
If you insist on replacing money with something else, that something else better include an anonymous form equivalent to cash or it just wont cut it.
While I do believe it could be helpful to encourage private endeavors, I am also leery of this because of the profit motive.
NASA, being a publicly funded organization, does basic science and materials research as a matter of course. The results of such work are accessible to whoever wants it. A private endeavor would be more interested in making money and in patenting any and all data/materials/procedures they devise and would thus hide information from the public. Science and business is a BAD thing. It is bad for science in general. Science thrives in/requires an environment where the results of experiments are openly published and where others can continue or branch from those results with their own expermiments without fear of patent suites.
Corporations rarely do basic science but they ALWAYS tap into the results of basic science to drive their private (anti)science for profit. There is a place for this but it should not be the major source of scientific space research.
Ultimately, encourage private ventures but in no way depend upon them at the expense of public ventures where the data and materials science is open for view.
If the goal is Mars and it is longterm, as in 50 to 100 years, then it is over and can be forgotten. There is NO project in any country at any time in history with that sort of longterm plan. Such a plan is as silly as the economic plans set out by US Presidents in which they map out the deficit, etc, over a span of 20 to 30 years. Their plans are GONE they instant they are out of office. At that point, all bets are off and the new prez gets to set a bogus goal set off in the future when he/she will not be in office.
NASA needs to regroup and quit kissing political butt. They need to focus on what their intent/purpose really should be and then do that to the greatest extent possible. Scientific research/exploration is it. In most cases that means robots but in some cases it requires humans (as Benford mentions, no robot or series of robots can properly explore Mars the way a team of humans can). They need to go with the best means of putting robots in space but also make allowance for human cargo on occassion. This is not mutually exclusive. A good series of rockets of various sizes is all that is needed. The heavy lift boosters designed to haul heavy equipment, satellites, and humans aloft (to REAL orbits rather than the pathetic 200+/- mi orbits available to the shuttle).
They need to quit dinking with people in space and actually get on board to SOLVE the problems of humans in space, and that means research for that purpose rather than cutsy high school science projects with ants or bees, etc. There are a list of problems involved with having humans in space. Enumerate them and work on them with humans, period. The other crap is either not worth the expense of sending it into orbit or can be better performed by unmanned craft.
A real leader would dump the space station. It is a LOSER. The only way it could possibly be made useful is if it were squarely to become focused on testing humans-in-space problems...PERIOD. Give it the means to test centripedal gravity. Give it the means to develop closed biological support systems. That is all it should do...and get it into a frickin higher orbit.
If he's good (or bad) at it, he might even get a spot as a designer on Trading Spaces or While You Were Out. Wouldn't make him less gay(appearing) but it would be a cool gig.
Actually, I think it is too late for M$ to affect Apple by yanking Office (if they wanted to). Staroffice is getting quite mature and with a Mac version, it would be set to fill in for an Office gap. Dropping Office would likely increase the use of Staroffice/openoffice, not kill/hurt Apple.
Heh, the desktop PC market is not where the money is. The PC market is virtually glutted. The MONEY is in servers and the like and this is where M$ has a problem. OSS is doing very well in the server market. MOST of the internet is Unix/linux/BSD. Of this segment, linux is growing at the expense of Unix and M$.
The rest of your post is exactly why an OS should NOT cost money. The value-add/apps that run through the OS, perhaps, when appropriate (games, tax software where there will NEVER be an OSS alternative, etc) but the OS isn't really ideal for charging anymore. It is a commodity of low real value because they are a dime a dozen. There can be no major innovation in OSes that can justify continued high costs. There just isn't.
It's quite simple, really. Critchton is a MAN and as such there is no way he can conjure up a truly realistic woman. Equally so, a woman cannot possibly conjure up a truly realistic man. They are very mentally/emotionally different creatures incapable of fully understanding/experiencing the other's "reality".
That said, Crichton is a bit more hamfisted in his generation of pseudo-women than many (Clancy doesn't create even realistic men, only pseudo-superheros and supervillians).
You attract more flies with honey. As it is, I don't even bother with MPlayer. Xine, coupled with the gXine frontend, makes a fantastic video player as far as I'm concerned, and it's far more intuitive. I'll take a friendly project over a back-biting one any day.
Ahem. Flies are not butterflies, they tend to like what we would define as waste material. Rotting food, feces, are the preferred fly attractant. You will draw more flies with shit rather than honey. You will draw ants and perhaps bees with honey.
Does Xine play sorenson codec (QT)? I don't know so I ask. Can it play wma? If the answer is no to either question then I will stick with Mplayer. I have had no problems getting Mplayer working just fine. There are all those simple GUIs for it too. I see no way that it is less intuitive than Xine. Really.
Good job. You're on "the list" now. One false move now and you'll be picked up as a terrorist as it becomes convenient. Posting as anonymous coward didn't save you, Tom Ridge and the F.B.I. have you now.
Another term with Shrub and you will also be on the poo-poo list of the soon-to-be-formed Office of Religious Fidelity, praise JAY-SUS!
They are not designed so that you can really fly them. They were/are designed to fly themselves. You tell it where you want to go and it handles the rest.
I have followed this thing since its inception years ago. They were looking to create a means for travel for more than just a few people (though the cost ensures that only a few trust-fundies will ever own one so it doesn't matter as much). They knew it would make the skies too dangerous for most yahoos with a car to transfer into the air, plus it would be an FAA licensing nightmare. Thus, they intended to take it out of the owner's hands and make it automatic. You may "drive" it out of the garage and taxi a ways, but when it comes time to fly somewhere, the intent is you enter the destination and let it rip. It takes you there, flown by itself with inputs from a still nonexistent system for air traffic control. You as the passenger would simply sit there and read, look out the window, play video games, etc, until the thing got to the destination and landed - then you could have it to taxi/drive to a parking spot.
Give me total control over it - let ME fly the thing - and it becomes cool. Otherwise, its richboy trash.
Don't be so bothered about gcc3.2. It frickin BITES. If you are using XFS you are f*cked - it is incapable of compiling any kernel with XFS support. No doubt there are other things wrong with it beyond this one.
You are better off with a compiler that works. Stick with gcc-2.96. It's dependable and the same kernel that gcc3.2 choked on compiles fine with gcc2.96.
Microsoft is part of this? I don't understand. Microsoft is creating/producing DRM garbage that will do exactly what it appears to be helping to fight against in this collection of companies.
The hardware companies don't want DRM garbage forced into their hardware. OK. Good and makes sense. But M$ is devising an OS and system for doing the same thing yet they are part of this coalition?
I'd beg to differ. I live in a rural area where the is NO broadband (unless you want to shell out $70/month for satellite - but then satellite is useless for internet games). As there is no broadband and none coming in the near future, smallish rural town areas might see a reasonable level of interest in such a PC game room even if they had home PCs. Shell out for a (fractional) T1 (if available...I have been told by several different providers that I couldn't even pull a T1 where I live) and setup and you might get a decent regular showing from the youngins in the area.
Really big cities don't seem logical to me. In such places you can get broadband easily and groups of friends can get together and play together. It wouldn't be the crowded PC gaming room but it would be warmer and likely nicer and more comfortable (someone's den or basement).
There was a PC gaming room/shop for a little while in a mall area near where I lived in Salt Lake city several years ago. You could go there and play Quake, Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad (none of the fancy-smchmancy games like CS, Quake II, etc, back then) in networked play. It wasn't connected to the internet, just a local lan for localized lan parties/tournaments. They then built one or two other shops around the area and networked those so they could all take part in tournaments. They even shelled out for goggles - little LCD screen for each eye. Pretty neat when you got used to it but it left you disoriented and dizzy for a period after gaming when moving about the real world.
These shops lasted about a year, year-and-a-half. Not sure if they could be tried again only with full internet access. I think it would require several things to work out well: 1) LOCATION (a good location is a must), 2) atmosphere (it needs to be attractive to the users, a place they would feel comfortable hanging out), 3) upkeep (gotta maintain the hardware in good shape and keep a decent selection of software).
I think the margin would be tough. Charge enough for rent, equipment upgrade/maintenance and profit while having the right number of PCs/consoles available to be a draw to groups of friends without also breaking the bank.
Setup a few of these in Vegas so parents can dump their kids there while they go and burn up their kid's college money at the crap table. That would almost assure that it makes money. Problem is, you'd likely be part of a casino or quickly crushed by casinos who would then do it themselves if your shop actually worked out.
Wrongo marylou. It doesn't take mental maturity to pay taxes. It doesn't take rational thinking ability either. A person's brain doesn't fully develop ALLOWING rational thought in the first place until into their early 20's. That is a fact. No matter how you whine or cry or cuss about it, biologically a person who is 16, 17, 18, 19, etc, etc are NOT biologically capable of fully rational thought. It is worse the lower in age you go from around 23 or so. Thus, to be really in tune with biological fact, the rights of individuals should only be gradually increased towards full independence sometime around 23 years of age.
Just a note for you, though it is now too late, and those like you seeking to simply get training to do computer programming. Don't go to a university, go to a tech school/trade school. A university, by its very name, is not a tech school/trade school. It exists to teach you more than just how to get a job in field X. It is there to broaden your mind (Gasp! Even BEYOND computers!), challenge your preconceptions, expose you to many different ideas and people. That is the heart of a university.
If you are simply interested in maintaining a narrow field of view, narrow interests, and avoid education, go to a tech or trade school and you will learn only programming or only business, etc, and not have to exercise your mind nor expand your horizons. You can learn to code to your hearts content and never ever have to have your politics, mores, etc, challenged by reality, culture, and/or variety.
You're RIGHT! We better not EVER go to war for ANY reason because someone who isn't a direct combatant might get killed!
Welcome to the real world. The goal is to minimize civilian causualties. They cannot be absolutely avoided, that is the nature of war. Always has been and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Get over it.
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And he'd be an idiot to veto his own budget bill; that almost never happens.
Good god. THINK about who you're talking about. GWB IS and idiot. Really. He is an honest to god moron. I wish I could recall the commentator who said it...in the local paper several weeks ago was an item by a CONSERVATIVE commentator who spent some time at the White House covering GW and buds. He indicated that Bush lacks any and all curiousity about anything that he is ignorant of (cultures, technology, etc). He doesn't read - except for the bible and THAT doesn't count for shit. He barely made it through college, there by virtue of his father's coattails. His FATHER, though a dork, was intelligent. Clinton, though a fool, was frickin brilliant. Bush junior, well, let's face it. He is Cletus from the Simpson's.
cannot be imposed on 3rd party's who are not part to the contract, they can also not impose on the moral nature of free will (eg contracts to follow a religion, or to be a slave, or to give up your free speech rights etc...).
So, how is it that nondisclosure "agreements" are able to impose on the moral nature of free will (aka, squelch free speech rights)?
Their convicted illegal monopoly status/behavior is the precise point! As is their illegal BUNDLING
. It is the BUNDLING of M$ apps with their monopoly OS that has them in hot water in Europe. C'mon!They improperly screwed IE so tightly into Windoze that it cannot REALLY be removed, not because it is properly a part of any OS, but because they wanted the unfair market advantage that this bundling/tie-in causes. This IS a problem. In the selling of their OEM software crap, OK, just provide M$ stuff on M$ CDs, but there can be no such inherent bundling on PCs, particularly if the PC maker wants to include RealPlayer or some other INSTEAD of MediaPlayer, etc. M$, however, ties their crap improperly to their OS so that it is virtually impossible to really remove anything (now). This was a last-minute "design" change on their part when they were getting nailed in court over IE just a few years ago. They argued that IE was an inextricable part of the OS and that removing it would break windoze. They subsequently went on to make this LIE truth by actually folding the code (unnecessarily and totally gratuitously) into subsequent windoze offerings.
It should take no more effort to install Realplayer than it takes to install MediaPlayer for the average person. It DOES become a hardache for people without access to broadband too. Replacing bundled IE or bundled Outlook, etc, becomes a massive pain with a non-broadband connection and it DOES give M$ unfair market advantage for their products. Illegitimate market advantage based on tie-in to their illegally maintained os monopoly. That is the point, the whole point, and nothing but the point.
Europe is calling them on it and they are ripe for nailing in this regard.
That deal with all services being on by default is kinda misleading. The reason is that several steps later in the install you get a list of the possible startup services, most set on, and you can now deselect the ones you don't want running. If someone just blows by this very obvious screen, then yes, selected services will be running upon reboot.
Kinda hard to miss this screen however. I always turn off everything except sshd, postfix, and a few other nice services.
In a word, no. Yes these things are "bundled" with most linux distros BUT they are many and varied...there is REAL choice. You are not expected nor forced (indirectly nor directly) to choose email client X, browser Y, etc. Even in cases where the choice is made for you (RedHat) it is still very much an option that you can easily not go with. Redhat doesn't fail to bundle the remaining apps, they just make a default choice for you.
M$ is a different fish. They use an (artificially created and illegally maintainted) OS monopoly to push THEIR apps on everyone else, making more money and increasing the breadth of the monopoly. They use illegal and unethical means to induce use of their products at the expense of everyone else (special tie-ins to their OS so their apps appear to work better than outsider apps, sometimes causing artificial breakage of competing apps to make it seem theirs is actually defective).
Given the (still) lack of choice in OS upon new PC purchase, they should be required to provide the competitor apps (free versions of Realplayer, quicktime player, mozilla, etc, and let people actually have/make choices). They mustn't be permitted to perpetuate artificial barriers for the use/adoption of competing tools/apps. It is the leveraging of one monopoly to produce more monopoly that is particularly naughty and a no-no.
In any case, an OS is NOT a web browser, media player, email client. An OS is an OS and these other things are SEPARATE and INDEPENDENT applications that work through the OS.
I thought the music industry was already that way. All rap and rappers look/sound alike (and that crap has been sticking around WAY too long...let's have a STYLE change, PLEASE). Brittney Spears and all the clonealikes. The boy-bands...all the same amorphous mass of gelatin pap. "Superstars" produced ala cookie-cutter assembly-line.
The music industry is the same as it was 2 years ago as it will be 2 years hence (there will STILL be rap and they will all STILL be the same) and there will STILL be boy bands and Brittney Spears clones.
Lay off the music industry. It is tired and dead.
Oh you of too much faith. With the way the US Patent Office (doesn't) work you really expect that M$ WONT get their patent through? The US Patent Office will let anything through unless it specifically says "perpetual motion machine" in the documents somewhere. The US Patent Office is broken, as is the entire patent and copyright system. Don't be so sure M$ wont get their patent(s)
I am leery of replacing money with anything else. Money, cold cash, is anonymous. One can purchase something without a paper trail pointing at you. Credit cards, check cards...they all scream your name and just give fodder to databanks that can be used to profile you, violate your privacy, or feed the tyranny of the Patriot Act I and II. No thank you.
If you insist on replacing money with something else, that something else better include an anonymous form equivalent to cash or it just wont cut it.
While I do believe it could be helpful to encourage private endeavors, I am also leery of this because of the profit motive.
NASA, being a publicly funded organization, does basic science and materials research as a matter of course. The results of such work are accessible to whoever wants it. A private endeavor would be more interested in making money and in patenting any and all data/materials/procedures they devise and would thus hide information from the public. Science and business is a BAD thing. It is bad for science in general. Science thrives in/requires an environment where the results of experiments are openly published and where others can continue or branch from those results with their own expermiments without fear of patent suites.
Corporations rarely do basic science but they ALWAYS tap into the results of basic science to drive their private (anti)science for profit. There is a place for this but it should not be the major source of scientific space research.
Ultimately, encourage private ventures but in no way depend upon them at the expense of public ventures where the data and materials science is open for view.
If the goal is Mars and it is longterm, as in 50 to 100 years, then it is over and can be forgotten. There is NO project in any country at any time in history with that sort of longterm plan. Such a plan is as silly as the economic plans set out by US Presidents in which they map out the deficit, etc, over a span of 20 to 30 years. Their plans are GONE they instant they are out of office. At that point, all bets are off and the new prez gets to set a bogus goal set off in the future when he/she will not be in office.
NASA needs to regroup and quit kissing political butt. They need to focus on what their intent/purpose really should be and then do that to the greatest extent possible. Scientific research/exploration is it. In most cases that means robots but in some cases it requires humans (as Benford mentions, no robot or series of robots can properly explore Mars the way a team of humans can). They need to go with the best means of putting robots in space but also make allowance for human cargo on occassion. This is not mutually exclusive. A good series of rockets of various sizes is all that is needed. The heavy lift boosters designed to haul heavy equipment, satellites, and humans aloft (to REAL orbits rather than the pathetic 200+/- mi orbits available to the shuttle).
They need to quit dinking with people in space and actually get on board to SOLVE the problems of humans in space, and that means research for that purpose rather than cutsy high school science projects with ants or bees, etc. There are a list of problems involved with having humans in space. Enumerate them and work on them with humans, period. The other crap is either not worth the expense of sending it into orbit or can be better performed by unmanned craft.
A real leader would dump the space station. It is a LOSER. The only way it could possibly be made useful is if it were squarely to become focused on testing humans-in-space problems...PERIOD. Give it the means to test centripedal gravity. Give it the means to develop closed biological support systems. That is all it should do...and get it into a frickin higher orbit.
If he's good (or bad) at it, he might even get a spot as a designer on Trading Spaces or While You Were Out. Wouldn't make him less gay(appearing) but it would be a cool gig.
Actually, I think it is too late for M$ to affect Apple by yanking Office (if they wanted to). Staroffice is getting quite mature and with a Mac version, it would be set to fill in for an Office gap. Dropping Office would likely increase the use of Staroffice/openoffice, not kill/hurt Apple.
Heh, the desktop PC market is not where the money is. The PC market is virtually glutted. The MONEY is in servers and the like and this is where M$ has a problem. OSS is doing very well in the server market. MOST of the internet is Unix/linux/BSD. Of this segment, linux is growing at the expense of Unix and M$.
The rest of your post is exactly why an OS should NOT cost money. The value-add/apps that run through the OS, perhaps, when appropriate (games, tax software where there will NEVER be an OSS alternative, etc) but the OS isn't really ideal for charging anymore. It is a commodity of low real value because they are a dime a dozen. There can be no major innovation in OSes that can justify continued high costs. There just isn't.
It's quite simple, really. Critchton is a MAN and as such there is no way he can conjure up a truly realistic woman. Equally so, a woman cannot possibly conjure up a truly realistic man. They are very mentally/emotionally different creatures incapable of fully understanding/experiencing the other's "reality".
That said, Crichton is a bit more hamfisted in his generation of pseudo-women than many (Clancy doesn't create even realistic men, only pseudo-superheros and supervillians).
Religious fantasy has also killed a goodly number, partially overlapping with political theory.
And also, will it shoot potatos?
Certainly. Pealed and boiled, ready for mashing (on impact)
You attract more flies with honey. As it is, I don't even bother with MPlayer. Xine, coupled with the gXine frontend, makes a fantastic video player as far as I'm concerned, and it's far more intuitive. I'll take a friendly project over a back-biting one any day.
Ahem. Flies are not butterflies, they tend to like what we would define as waste material. Rotting food, feces, are the preferred fly attractant. You will draw more flies with shit rather than honey. You will draw ants and perhaps bees with honey.
Does Xine play sorenson codec (QT)? I don't know so I ask. Can it play wma? If the answer is no to either question then I will stick with Mplayer. I have had no problems getting Mplayer working just fine. There are all those simple GUIs for it too. I see no way that it is less intuitive than Xine. Really.
Good job. You're on "the list" now. One false move now and you'll be picked up as a terrorist as it becomes convenient. Posting as anonymous coward didn't save you, Tom Ridge and the F.B.I. have you now.
Another term with Shrub and you will also be on the poo-poo list of the soon-to-be-formed Office of Religious Fidelity, praise JAY-SUS!
They are not designed so that you can really fly them. They were/are designed to fly themselves. You tell it where you want to go and it handles the rest.
I have followed this thing since its inception years ago. They were looking to create a means for travel for more than just a few people (though the cost ensures that only a few trust-fundies will ever own one so it doesn't matter as much). They knew it would make the skies too dangerous for most yahoos with a car to transfer into the air, plus it would be an FAA licensing nightmare. Thus, they intended to take it out of the owner's hands and make it automatic. You may "drive" it out of the garage and taxi a ways, but when it comes time to fly somewhere, the intent is you enter the destination and let it rip. It takes you there, flown by itself with inputs from a still nonexistent system for air traffic control. You as the passenger would simply sit there and read, look out the window, play video games, etc, until the thing got to the destination and landed - then you could have it to taxi/drive to a parking spot.
Give me total control over it - let ME fly the thing - and it becomes cool. Otherwise, its richboy trash.
Don't be so bothered about gcc3.2. It frickin BITES. If you are using XFS you are f*cked - it is incapable of compiling any kernel with XFS support. No doubt there are other things wrong with it beyond this one.
You are better off with a compiler that works. Stick with gcc-2.96. It's dependable and the same kernel that gcc3.2 choked on compiles fine with gcc2.96.
Microsoft is part of this? I don't understand. Microsoft is creating/producing DRM garbage that will do exactly what it appears to be helping to fight against in this collection of companies.
The hardware companies don't want DRM garbage forced into their hardware. OK. Good and makes sense. But M$ is devising an OS and system for doing the same thing yet they are part of this coalition?
I'd beg to differ. I live in a rural area where the is NO broadband (unless you want to shell out $70/month for satellite - but then satellite is useless for internet games). As there is no broadband and none coming in the near future, smallish rural town areas might see a reasonable level of interest in such a PC game room even if they had home PCs. Shell out for a (fractional) T1 (if available...I have been told by several different providers that I couldn't even pull a T1 where I live) and setup and you might get a decent regular showing from the youngins in the area.
Really big cities don't seem logical to me. In such places you can get broadband easily and groups of friends can get together and play together. It wouldn't be the crowded PC gaming room but it would be warmer and likely nicer and more comfortable (someone's den or basement).
There was a PC gaming room/shop for a little while in a mall area near where I lived in Salt Lake city several years ago. You could go there and play Quake, Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad (none of the fancy-smchmancy games like CS, Quake II, etc, back then) in networked play. It wasn't connected to the internet, just a local lan for localized lan parties/tournaments. They then built one or two other shops around the area and networked those so they could all take part in tournaments. They even shelled out for goggles - little LCD screen for each eye. Pretty neat when you got used to it but it left you disoriented and dizzy for a period after gaming when moving about the real world.
These shops lasted about a year, year-and-a-half. Not sure if they could be tried again only with full internet access. I think it would require several things to work out well: 1) LOCATION (a good location is a must), 2) atmosphere (it needs to be attractive to the users, a place they would feel comfortable hanging out), 3) upkeep (gotta maintain the hardware in good shape and keep a decent selection of software).
I think the margin would be tough. Charge enough for rent, equipment upgrade/maintenance and profit while having the right number of PCs/consoles available to be a draw to groups of friends without also breaking the bank.
Setup a few of these in Vegas so parents can dump their kids there while they go and burn up their kid's college money at the crap table. That would almost assure that it makes money. Problem is, you'd likely be part of a casino or quickly crushed by casinos who would then do it themselves if your shop actually worked out.
Wrongo marylou. It doesn't take mental maturity to pay taxes. It doesn't take rational thinking ability either. A person's brain doesn't fully develop ALLOWING rational thought in the first place until into their early 20's. That is a fact. No matter how you whine or cry or cuss about it, biologically a person who is 16, 17, 18, 19, etc, etc are NOT biologically capable of fully rational thought. It is worse the lower in age you go from around 23 or so. Thus, to be really in tune with biological fact, the rights of individuals should only be gradually increased towards full independence sometime around 23 years of age.
Just a note for you, though it is now too late, and those like you seeking to simply get training to do computer programming. Don't go to a university, go to a tech school/trade school. A university, by its very name, is not a tech school/trade school. It exists to teach you more than just how to get a job in field X. It is there to broaden your mind (Gasp! Even BEYOND computers!), challenge your preconceptions, expose you to many different ideas and people. That is the heart of a university.
If you are simply interested in maintaining a narrow field of view, narrow interests, and avoid education, go to a tech or trade school and you will learn only programming or only business, etc, and not have to exercise your mind nor expand your horizons. You can learn to code to your hearts content and never ever have to have your politics, mores, etc, challenged by reality, culture, and/or variety.
You're RIGHT! We better not EVER go to war for ANY reason because someone who isn't a direct combatant might get killed!
Welcome to the real world. The goal is to minimize civilian causualties. They cannot be absolutely avoided, that is the nature of war. Always has been and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Get over it.