Holy crap ! This thing actually installs itself as a device driver ? That can't be uninstalled ?!! Er, that's great. Is there a list of games that have been (or are going to be) released with this copy-protection system ? I want to make sure that I never, ever buy them. Dancing monkeys are bad enough, I don't need malware device drivers on top of everything else.
Brr, I am still having the shivers from that 7 Habits book. In it, the author included many condescending little platitudes, but the worst one was the chapter on how to talk to people.
Wrong way:
Son: Gee Dad, school is for the birds ! [I am not making this up] Father: Why would you say that ? Education is important, for the following reasons...
Right way:
Son: Gee Dad, school is for the birds ! Father: Why do you say that school is for the birds ? Son: Well, I feel as though no one understands me. Father: It appears that you feel that no one understands you. Why do you feel that way ? ...
It was downright frightening. Apparently, the right way to talk to people is to just rearrange their sentences a la Eliza (M-x doctor), paying no attention to any semantic content. In fact, I think I fed that conversation (the son's side) to Eliza, and got similar results.
My only hope for the future is that not many people took that book seriously. Yes, I would like the Turing Test to be successfull one day, but turning us all into mindless chatterbots is not it.
You got me: I am the lazy couch potato. I just want to play games, not spend hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours buying/fixing consoles that haven't been in production for 20 years. You got a problem with that ?
Wouldn't all NES/SNES games fit into this category ? Double Dragon, Final Fantasy, etc. etc... The only way to play them is on an emulator, which is illegal, I think.
Actually, if you read the article, you'll see that Java is actually faster than C++, at least according to the benchmarks.
The reason there are no 3d Java games is that raw speed is simply not enough -- you also need hardware acceleration (graphics, sound, etc.). Hardware acceleration is system-dependent, whereas Java is supposed to be system-independent, so Java can't do it. There were several attempts to marry Java to OpenGL or something like that, but none have been successful AFAIK.
Earthlink is, by far, the worst tech support bunch I've ever had to deal with.
Tech Support Guy: Ok, now here's what I want you to do. Reach behind the modem, and... Bugmaster: I've rebooted the modem about ten times already. The DSL light is still off. TSG: Well, do it once more for me sir, please. Bugmaster: Fine. Rebooted. DSL light still off. TSG: Ok, next thing we want to check is if there are any filters on the line... Bugmaster:*checks to see if any filters have magically sprouted overnight* No. TSG: In this case, it might be a bad phone cord. What I want you to do is replace the cord. Here's how to do it... Bugmaster: Fine, fine, it's replaced. DSL light is still off. Incidentally, last time I called you, I had the phone plugged into the cord that I have now replaced -- and I didn't hear any DSL carrier noise. So, now what ? TSG: Hm. Is the modem connected directly to the computer ? Bugmaster: Yes. TSG: What else is connected to the computer ? Bugmaster: Monitor, keyboard and printer. TSG: Ok, now what I want you to do is disconnect the printer. Bugmaster:*temporarily speechless*...What. TSG: Just follow the printer cord that leads to your computer, and disconnect it. Bugmaster: Is this step in your script designed specifically to waste my time ? TSG: Well, sometimes we find that extra devices connected to the computer cause interference, so why don't you... Bugmaster: No. Let's pretend this didn't work, and go on to the next step. TSG: But the printer... Bugmaster: NOW. TSG: Ok, the next thing I want you to do is check if you have sync at the NID. The NID is a small box on the side of your house where all the phone wires are going to. You'll need a pair of wire strippers. Bugmaster: You want me to rewire my phonebox. TSG: Yes. Bugmaster:*punches in adelphia.com on a dialup connection* Will that finally satisfy you ? To put it more succinctly, is there a point at which Earthlink will actually accept responsibility for their service ? TSG: Well, you see, we need to check the sync at the NID so that the next step is for you to call the phone company, and arrange for the next step with them. If that doesn't help, we'll escalate your request. Bugmaster:*clicks "order broadband"* I didn't think so. Tell you what. I am not going to rewire my phonebox at 3am. If there isn't a tech at my house tomorrow, I am cancelling my service. Thanks for your help.
That's actually a pretty novel way to approach the problem of creating Strong AI. Making smarter machines is hard, so what you do is dumb down the humans until even a coffee maker (or a grammar parser or whatever) would beat them in the Turing test. Damn, this is so sad.
How does this technology compare to Bayesian filters such as PopFile ? PopFile was not made by Apple, so clearly it doesn't have the cult appeal, but it has been working flawlessly for me for about a year now. What really irks me about this article is how it implies that Apple invented trainable filters -- where, in reality, this is very far from the truth. Apple does the same thing with pretty much everything it sells... sort of like Soviet Russia, who claimed to have invented flight, radio, transistors, and probably elephants too.
Well, for the record, his original comment didn't say anything like this -- so I'll respond to yours, instead.
I simply do not believe that the issue of GNU/OSS/Linux/whatever is as critically important as, say, slavery, war or dictatorial oppression. If I knew that my Windows desktop was being made by blood-soaked hands of little thirld-world children in Afghanistan or somewhere, then yes, it would be a sufficient deterrent for me not to use it.
But this is not the case. The Windows GUI is made by well-paid programmers (well, and tons of temps I suppose) who are far from starving. When you list Saddam's sins, "usng Windows to instill fear in populace" would not be one of them. No animal has ever been harmed in the making of Windows. Thus, the ideological issues are fairly peripheral to me.
I use Windows, and I eat meat. In some people's eyes, both of these things make me a monster. These people need to grow up, because there's real evil in this world -- and GUI is not it.
Would it not be better to (instead of monkey-jumping) spend time making sure that your tool is indeed the best tool for the job ? If achieving this is impossible in principle, then you're doomed anyway, right ?
When given a valuable product for nothing it is polite that you show a little gratitude.
The keyword here is valuable. If I don't find your product valuable, I won't use it -- no matter how much time you spent on it. Currently, I do not find any of the existing Linux desktops valuable (sshd is another story). Yes, they are given to me, but that doesn't mean I have to take them.
See, your post kind of brings up another point: I personally think that the "holier than thou" attitude of the OSS community stinks. They really do believe, for the most part, that by coding something in their spare time they are doing the world a great big favor. When you fail to give them due gratitude, they pout, or call you names, or try some sort of a guilt trip -- interpreting your disinterest as a personal attack (like this: "you have taken the right option by steering clear of Gnu/Linux because you are unable to meet these expectations."). That's kinda sad, now that I think about it.
Think of it this way: you know those ice-cream trucks thatn drive around suburbia ? As I see it, the OSS ice cream truck has ice cream that is free, that comes with assembly instructions and full chemical forumlae, and that looks and tastes like stale socks. The commercial ice cream cart sells Klondike bars for $3 apiece. Yes, the socky ice cream is free, but there's no way I'd eat it, slogans or no slogans.
Wait... so... you're equating OSS programmers to slaves ? Or are you equating commercial programmers to slaves ? Or are you just using some sort of "search and replace" feature in your browser instead of thinking about things ?
I personally don't care about ideology. Does the Java Desktop actually work ? Is it easier to use than Gnome/KDE ? That's all that matters to me.
Yes yes, I understand all about open source, fairness, and other GNU/Linuxy terms; and I understand that, in theory, I should immediately throw off my chains and start coding stuff gratis, because information wants to be free. However, in reality, Windows' proprietary desktop is still better than whatever Linux currently has to offer -- to speak nothing of OS X. So, I have a choice: become a martyr, and torture myself with GNU/Linux each day, in the name of the OSS ideology; or, forget the slogans and use the best tool for the job. My name is not "Ghandi", so I choose the second option.
I think a major reason why Linux is suffering on the desktop right now is that most OSS hackers expect people to choose the first option. Well, that's not going to happen. Most people are like me: selfish bastards who just want to get some work done, or play some game, or whatever. You can't win them over with just slogans.
Well, it technically still does have a refresh rate: the rate at which you can "flip pages". I assume that it's slower than the speed at which you can update a regular LCD, but really, I have no idea...
I was going to buy an iPod, but it's basically an expensive, disposable brick. Forget it. My player of choice is the Archos FM Recorder with Rockbox on it. It's reasonably small, sturdy, and it contains a 20 gig drive. The official Archos OS sucks ass, but Rockbox is ultra-fast, easy to use, and open-source to boot, which means I can write my own plugins (well, in theory). It comes with games, playlist editors, a text viewer, etc. There's no way iPod will ever be able to match that, especially considering the ~$120 price tag on eBay for Archos. Archos also makes a player called gMini 220, which has a neater form factor and a CF slot, but Rockbox is not available for it, and Archos's default OS sucks, so I can't recommend it.
It doesn't really need to be fast -- in a real book, you don't flip the pages all that often. Plus, this device uses power when changing the state of the pixels; my guess is that actual animation would drain its batteries fairly quickly.
Unfortunately, most modern games rely heavily on graphics and sound. For example, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Ico, Morrowind, even an older game like Deus Ex or Devil May Cry... They have great gameplay, but without the art and the environmental audio, they would be merely average.
Unfortunately, Linux can't support good graphics and audio. You can blame the hardware manufacturers, the lazy driver writers, RMS, XFree86, monkeys, whatever. The bottom line is, graphics and audio are out.
In addition, a gaming platform is nothing without games (as Microsoft nearly found out -- there, but for the grace of bottomless pockets, goes the X-Box). Again, there are virtually no new games for Linux that are coming out (no, Tux Racer isn't new). Wine can run Windows games in emulation, but then you need to invest more in hardware, because emulation takes more memory and CPU... And, really, in that case there isn't much point, you might as well install WinXP.
However, I think there's a niche were Linux actually can be useful: emulators for old and low-powered game platforms, such as DOS, Win9x, Game Boy Advance, MAME, etc. I personally would love to have a little machine that can play C&C, Another World, Star Control 2, Final Fantasy Tactics, Defender, and other such games -- out of the box. So, while Linux will probably never become a widespread gaming platofrm, it may capture the emulation niche (like it's trying to capture the PVR niche right now), and that might be something to shoot for.
I think I'd prefer the serial cable... Is this a standard RS232 pinout ? Also, where can I get the custom software that controls the set top box through the cable ?
I've always wanted to set up my own PVR solution, but I have satellite. Will it work ? The site mentions something about some required IR blaster hardware (ugh) or a "serial cable" (sounds better, but huh ?). So, does anyone use BeyondTV with a satellite dish ? If so, what else would I have to buy and install ?
Well, not to mention that in System Shock 2, her voice actually gets completely corrupt... It sounds as though she has multiple personalities, most of which are totally insane. She still says rational things though, which makes it all the more frightening.
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Holy crap ! This thing actually installs itself as a device driver ? That can't be uninstalled ?!! Er, that's great. Is there a list of games that have been (or are going to be) released with this copy-protection system ? I want to make sure that I never, ever buy them. Dancing monkeys are bad enough, I don't need malware device drivers on top of everything else.
Does anyone have an idea of what still works ? Cygwin ? Opera ? Mozilla ? SharpReader ? ReGet ? WinAmp ? mplayerc ? vlc ? What ?
Just out of curiosity, how do I adjust the limit on the outbound connections ? Microsoft doesn't say.
Wrong way:
Right way: It was downright frightening. Apparently, the right way to talk to people is to just rearrange their sentences a la Eliza (M-x doctor), paying no attention to any semantic content. In fact, I think I fed that conversation (the son's side) to Eliza, and got similar results.My only hope for the future is that not many people took that book seriously. Yes, I would like the Turing Test to be successfull one day, but turning us all into mindless chatterbots is not it.
You got me: I am the lazy couch potato. I just want to play games, not spend hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours buying/fixing consoles that haven't been in production for 20 years. You got a problem with that ?
Wouldn't all NES/SNES games fit into this category ? Double Dragon, Final Fantasy, etc. etc... The only way to play them is on an emulator, which is illegal, I think.
Actually, if you read the article, you'll see that Java is actually faster than C++, at least according to the benchmarks. The reason there are no 3d Java games is that raw speed is simply not enough -- you also need hardware acceleration (graphics, sound, etc.). Hardware acceleration is system-dependent, whereas Java is supposed to be system-independent, so Java can't do it. There were several attempts to marry Java to OpenGL or something like that, but none have been successful AFAIK.
That's actually a pretty novel way to approach the problem of creating Strong AI. Making smarter machines is hard, so what you do is dumb down the humans until even a coffee maker (or a grammar parser or whatever) would beat them in the Turing test. Damn, this is so sad.
How does this technology compare to Bayesian filters such as PopFile ? PopFile was not made by Apple, so clearly it doesn't have the cult appeal, but it has been working flawlessly for me for about a year now. What really irks me about this article is how it implies that Apple invented trainable filters -- where, in reality, this is very far from the truth. Apple does the same thing with pretty much everything it sells... sort of like Soviet Russia, who claimed to have invented flight, radio, transistors, and probably elephants too.
I simply do not believe that the issue of GNU/OSS/Linux/whatever is as critically important as, say, slavery, war or dictatorial oppression. If I knew that my Windows desktop was being made by blood-soaked hands of little thirld-world children in Afghanistan or somewhere, then yes, it would be a sufficient deterrent for me not to use it.
But this is not the case. The Windows GUI is made by well-paid programmers (well, and tons of temps I suppose) who are far from starving. When you list Saddam's sins, "usng Windows to instill fear in populace" would not be one of them. No animal has ever been harmed in the making of Windows. Thus, the ideological issues are fairly peripheral to me.
I use Windows, and I eat meat. In some people's eyes, both of these things make me a monster. These people need to grow up, because there's real evil in this world -- and GUI is not it.
Would it not be better to (instead of monkey-jumping) spend time making sure that your tool is indeed the best tool for the job ? If achieving this is impossible in principle, then you're doomed anyway, right ?
See, your post kind of brings up another point: I personally think that the "holier than thou" attitude of the OSS community stinks. They really do believe, for the most part, that by coding something in their spare time they are doing the world a great big favor. When you fail to give them due gratitude, they pout, or call you names, or try some sort of a guilt trip -- interpreting your disinterest as a personal attack (like this: "you have taken the right option by steering clear of Gnu/Linux because you are unable to meet these expectations."). That's kinda sad, now that I think about it.
Think of it this way: you know those ice-cream trucks thatn drive around suburbia ? As I see it, the OSS ice cream truck has ice cream that is free, that comes with assembly instructions and full chemical forumlae, and that looks and tastes like stale socks. The commercial ice cream cart sells Klondike bars for $3 apiece. Yes, the socky ice cream is free, but there's no way I'd eat it, slogans or no slogans.
Wait... so... you're equating OSS programmers to slaves ? Or are you equating commercial programmers to slaves ? Or are you just using some sort of "search and replace" feature in your browser instead of thinking about things ?
Yes yes, I understand all about open source, fairness, and other GNU/Linuxy terms; and I understand that, in theory, I should immediately throw off my chains and start coding stuff gratis, because information wants to be free. However, in reality, Windows' proprietary desktop is still better than whatever Linux currently has to offer -- to speak nothing of OS X. So, I have a choice: become a martyr, and torture myself with GNU/Linux each day, in the name of the OSS ideology; or, forget the slogans and use the best tool for the job. My name is not "Ghandi", so I choose the second option.
I think a major reason why Linux is suffering on the desktop right now is that most OSS hackers expect people to choose the first option. Well, that's not going to happen. Most people are like me: selfish bastards who just want to get some work done, or play some game, or whatever. You can't win them over with just slogans.
Well, it technically still does have a refresh rate: the rate at which you can "flip pages". I assume that it's slower than the speed at which you can update a regular LCD, but really, I have no idea...
I was going to buy an iPod, but it's basically an expensive, disposable brick. Forget it. My player of choice is the Archos FM Recorder with Rockbox on it. It's reasonably small, sturdy, and it contains a 20 gig drive. The official Archos OS sucks ass, but Rockbox is ultra-fast, easy to use, and open-source to boot, which means I can write my own plugins (well, in theory). It comes with games, playlist editors, a text viewer, etc. There's no way iPod will ever be able to match that, especially considering the ~$120 price tag on eBay for Archos. Archos also makes a player called gMini 220, which has a neater form factor and a CF slot, but Rockbox is not available for it, and Archos's default OS sucks, so I can't recommend it.
It doesn't really need to be fast -- in a real book, you don't flip the pages all that often. Plus, this device uses power when changing the state of the pixels; my guess is that actual animation would drain its batteries fairly quickly.
These debunkings are making me very angry. Very angry indeed. Now I will have to use my Illidium PEW-6 explosive space modulator.
Unfortunately, Linux can't support good graphics and audio. You can blame the hardware manufacturers, the lazy driver writers, RMS, XFree86, monkeys, whatever. The bottom line is, graphics and audio are out.
In addition, a gaming platform is nothing without games (as Microsoft nearly found out -- there, but for the grace of bottomless pockets, goes the X-Box). Again, there are virtually no new games for Linux that are coming out (no, Tux Racer isn't new). Wine can run Windows games in emulation, but then you need to invest more in hardware, because emulation takes more memory and CPU... And, really, in that case there isn't much point, you might as well install WinXP.
However, I think there's a niche were Linux actually can be useful: emulators for old and low-powered game platforms, such as DOS, Win9x, Game Boy Advance, MAME, etc. I personally would love to have a little machine that can play C&C, Another World, Star Control 2, Final Fantasy Tactics, Defender, and other such games -- out of the box. So, while Linux will probably never become a widespread gaming platofrm, it may capture the emulation niche (like it's trying to capture the PVR niche right now), and that might be something to shoot for.
I think I'd prefer the serial cable... Is this a standard RS232 pinout ? Also, where can I get the custom software that controls the set top box through the cable ?
I've always wanted to set up my own PVR solution, but I have satellite. Will it work ? The site mentions something about some required IR blaster hardware (ugh) or a "serial cable" (sounds better, but huh ?). So, does anyone use BeyondTV with a satellite dish ? If so, what else would I have to buy and install ?
Actually yeah. I had to read that headline at least three times to figure it out. But then again, I haven't slept much...
Well, not to mention that in System Shock 2, her voice actually gets completely corrupt... It sounds as though she has multiple personalities, most of which are totally insane. She still says rational things though, which makes it all the more frightening.