Michael Piller, "Star Trek" veteran and co-creator/executive producer of USA Network's hit series "The Dead Zone," died early Tuesday at his Los Angeles home after a long battle with cancer.
Whoa, that's horrible. (Yes, I checked Google news to verify it.) For those of you who don't know, Piller is most famous for authoring the hit two-part episode "Best of Both Worlds". The really funny part about that episode was that Piller was leaving Star Trek that season, so he wrote a cliffhanger that would be incredibly hard for the producers and writers to write their way out of. Then over the summer break, Roddenberry managed to convince Piller to come back, forcing Piller to work his way out of the mess he'd made!
Maybe we'd get far better televison if writers did that to each other more often.;-)
Oh, and before any wisecrackers decide to get smart with me, yes I'm well aware that the poem is actually called, "The Divine Comedy". It's just a joke. Laugh.:-)
Dante: Alright. You've heard about the news from Sun and IBM, right?
Me: No, not at all.
Dante: Well, apparently IBM is now bundling Solaris on some of its machines.
Me: No kidding? That's pretty shocking. But why does that bum you?
Dante: You see, me and my buddy Virgil just took another tour of hell. Sort of a "Dante's Inferno for the Modern Sinner" type of thing. We wanted everyone to know that hell is just as bad as before.
Me: And?
Dante: And we're having to change the name of the book. Hell is not only bad, it's worse than ever! The only down side is that "Dante's Not So Inferno" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Me: No! You don't mean...
Dante: That's right, hell has officially frozen over!
Ah. If there's anything I've learned about posting online, it's that you've gotta be obvious with those tipoffs, or it doesn't quite come through the way you mean it.:-)
But I found it ironic that someone might pay to be a guinea pig and find out in a real-world situation.
I think it's kind of a neat idea myself. How many times do car manufacturers release beta quality vehicles for drivers to shake out for them? (e.g. Oldsmobile is GM's beta program.) This way Honda will get the feedback it needs sooner, and without actually deploying a product. Plus they get free publicity for the unusal nature of the experiment.:-)
No kidding. I always hate it when the tempertures outside get below -200 C. Having to swim through the atmosphere makes me terribly cold by the time I get to work.
Charge them $500 a month to have the car blow up upon impact and kill the whole family.
Now there's a line of hyperbole if I've ever heard it. I imagine that they've done crash tests on this car to determine the exact dangers of this happening. At the very least, I've seen the early crash tests done to decide if hydrogen was feasible or not. The result of the tests was that *if* the hydrogen were to ignite, its direction (up) would be safe as long as the passengers weren't sitting on it. It actually ended up being *safer* than gasoline, as the gasoline cars continued burning long past the initial ignition.
First of all, there is no "Linux community" in that they have a single answer or position on things. I wish people would stop generalizing like that.
It's true that it's a generalization. However, my point is that enough of the community stands in the way of some forms of progress to prevent it. Generally Linux is seem as "Elite". Anything that bolsters that leetness is well received while anything that threatens it is heavily challenged by a portion of the community. It can be challenged so heavily, that it can give the impression that the challengers speak for the entire community. Their position also doesn't help the rest of the community in moving forward on many user-friendly ideas.
I would say Linux's answer has been: "If you move to Linux, your computer will run for years without getting slower, there is no risk of viruses or spyware, you can customize the look of your computer or just stick with the elegant default, the operating system comes with hundreds of applications that are of high quality and absolutely free."
That's a nice thing to say, but that's not the value proposition that's seen by much of the market. Plus it's blatently incorrect. There have been several Linux viruses thanks to security flaws, and your computer is just as much at risk of slowing down due to more background programs and desktop widgets being installed. Older Linux systems can also have a great number of compatibility problems stemming from their insisitence on installing everything in/usr or/usr/local.
You think Mac's don't have any viruses?
I think Mac OS X doesn't have any, primarily because not a single one has EVER been identified. Mac OS 9 and less were highly vulnerable, but the two systems are not the same.
friend of mine had OS 10.something destroyed by one
You're going to have to back this up with facts. For example, from this link: "As of now, there are no viruses for OS X Macintoshes."
Regardless of whether or not there will be any in the future, this is an exceptional marketing tool that draws in new users.
The article (follow-up here) was actually a front page story. I've posted it a few times since, but I didn't link to it because most people know what I'm talking about and would just get annoyed. The team is working on the project behind the scenes, but there's no official website yet. I'll probably move my blog to a personal website at some point so I can start sharing files of interest, including things we're working on.
No, I don't think it's really about the fragmentation. It's about the mindset. You can always teach someone to use a modern Linux distro, as many anecdotes have recounted. As long as you're there to answer questions, the users can make it through the difficult parts. The problem is that this isn't 1995 anymore. Back then GUIs were a new thing for the IBM PC, and everyone was willing to seek out a local computer geek to help them make it work. Now that users are comfortable in Windows, however, why should they switch to a completely different system that requires them to relearn how to do everything?
Apple has answered that question. "If you move to the Mac, your applications are simple to install, your files are well laid out, the computer self-manages itself, the user interface is less confusing, you can quickly search for files, organize them in new way, nearly all maintenence is automatic, the system is free of spyware and viruses, AND you can still use Microsoft Office!."
The Linux community's answer has been, "Hey, we don't have viruses either! Erm... except for those one or two. But someone released an anti-virus that spread itself to eliminate the first virus! Oh, and did I mention that it's free! And you can have a home server!"
Unfortunately, the Linux answer has not been very appealing to the market.
This link contains a great analogy of the situation.
Welcome to the Chicken and Egg problem. Hardware manufacturers and Software producers are not going to support Linux until it's popular. Yet Linux won't become popular until the Hardware and Software vendors support it. As a result, you need to make the product more attractive to users in another way.
Apple has the right idea. By pushing the technology far ahead of the competition, they convince users to accept some of the shortcomings in exchange for a large number of features unavailable on other platforms. This increases the Mac user base, forcing the Hardware and Software vendors to support them.
I know in my own personal case, I could run regularly Linux right now if I wanted to. The problem is that my kids have a large number of educational titles and other kids' software (no, they don't operate correctly under WINE) that they must reboot to use. If I leave the system in Linux, I hear no end of complaining from my wife who has to reboot the next day.
Now I (and a few others) have suggested methods by which the Linux Desktop could pull ahead of Windows, and possibly even the Mac. My own suggestions would be distro specific and would not harm any existing distros. Yet the community resists such changes strongly, stating that "Linux is perfect the way it is". Many automatically assume things I didn't say, based on their past experience.
So in the meantime, I and my small team will attempt to implement these ideas whenever we have sufficient time. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to reconcile our schedules, and without more volunteers I fear that the project will not get done in time to make a difference. Which is really too bad, as I feel that it could make Linux a significant competitior in the Desktop market.
I did consider that, but it seems a bit unlikely. I never browse with IE, nor do any of the other users on this computer. There's not even an icon for it. Plus the computer is new.
The the *only* possible way I can think of that it got in (if it is indeed pre-existing) is through these SOBs. I had to remove some "free" bundled software (that they didn't warn you about, or give you the option not to install) that came with it. It's people like this that make me wish there was a national anti-spyware bill.:-/
Okay, I just tried it again. No spyware this time. Then again, the screen was all messed up last time, so maybe they were having a hiccup of some sort.
Honestly, after two minutes of using it I realized that the whole Windows Live thing is just an attempt to compete with Google Homepage. Hopefully Microsoft will show a bit more imagination with Office Live.:-/
Sadly, that tired old Flash animation doesn't apply too much anymore.
Only the blue screens. The "accessing A:" and "Cannot find CD named HomeConstruction" feel all too familiar. Not to mention, "Cannot delete because the file is in use." Or the 500+ popups for the same thing. (There's a bug in explorer where you can manage to cause more than one delete confirm box to show up when using the Shift+Delete combination. The first one works, and the rest error out when you try to delete.) Plus I think the whole "Order Food" program is particularly apt for the issues you're having with live.com...
Remember when Microsoft was going to do this last time? Supposedly Office was going to be sold to users on an ASP (as in Application Service Provider) basis. You'd pay your monthly fee and you'd get to keep running your software. The market didn't care so much for this extortion^W business plan, and Microsoft decided to move to their "forced upgrade" cycles.
BTW, if anyone is interested, you're not missing anything on live.com. I just went there in IE and it immediately tried to install a bunch of spyware crapola. I was not amused. On the bright side, there's a category for Slashdot!
Flat shaded games don't generally count in the "Which one was first?" war. If you count them, then you can go all the way back to the 70's when the Atari came out.
The reality is that the term "First Person Shooter" was created for Doom. It was then retroactively applied to Wolf3D as they are in the same linage. Everyone then forgot about the existance of Ultima Underworld, Catacombs 3D, and Hovertank. (Even though the latter two were Id products.)
He's referring to Catacomb 3D, presumably a sequel. Although a lot of people consider Ultima Underworld (1992) to be the first true FPS, even though Wolf3D was the first truely immersive one.
I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to grasp the wording.
Does your raytracing program explain in detail that it will install drivers? Do you explicitly agree to having those drivers installed? Yes? Then there's no problem.
The only problem is if your raytracing program wants to install drivers but doesn't tell you that it's going to do so. Then it would fall afoul of the proposed law. Personally, I think that's a good thing. There's way too much crap out there that I simply wouldn't install if I knew it was going to mess with my computer. RealPlayer is a great example. Another example is the Battle for Moscow game I installed. (There was no warning whatsoever that it would install a crapload of spyware. Took me a good half-hour to eradicate all of it.) iTunes would have to be properly labeled. Etc, etc, etc.
If we're lucky, such a law might even convince providers to stop adding their "oh so useful" (but not in actuality) icon to the system tray.
Quake 4? Stand out? It's a rehash of a rehash of a rehash.
That's beside the point. Quake 4 has brand recognition, as well as an association with Doom 3 to carry it. Serious Sam, OTOH, was an underdog the first time, and will be an underdog this time as well.
At this point, though, IBM's not interested in any settlement that doesn't include an admission by SCO that they never had any evidence.
If a judge states that there's no infringement, then the point is moot. Legally, there is no infringement. If SCO pursues a settlement, then IBM would most likely make an full acceptance of the court's ruling a part of the settlement (i.e. No appeals) and ask for a set of specific concessions. (A bit like the concessions made at the end of the USL vs. BSD case.) Thus there would be no question over who has the rights to the code. I sincerely doubt that IBM would force SCO to admit to wrong-doing, as that could cause SCO to face criminal charges.
Slashdot Mirror
Michael Piller, "Star Trek" veteran and co-creator/executive producer of USA Network's hit series "The Dead Zone," died early Tuesday at his Los Angeles home after a long battle with cancer.
;-)
Whoa, that's horrible. (Yes, I checked Google news to verify it.) For those of you who don't know, Piller is most famous for authoring the hit two-part episode "Best of Both Worlds". The really funny part about that episode was that Piller was leaving Star Trek that season, so he wrote a cliffhanger that would be incredibly hard for the producers and writers to write their way out of. Then over the summer break, Roddenberry managed to convince Piller to come back, forcing Piller to work his way out of the mess he'd made!
Maybe we'd get far better televison if writers did that to each other more often.
Oh, and before any wisecrackers decide to get smart with me, yes I'm well aware that the poem is actually called, "The Divine Comedy". It's just a joke. Laugh. :-)
Me: Hey Dante, what's wrong?
Dante: Oh nothing, nothing at all.
Me: Come on, you can't fool me. Something's up.
Dante: Alright. You've heard about the news from Sun and IBM, right?
Me: No, not at all.
Dante: Well, apparently IBM is now bundling Solaris on some of its machines.
Me: No kidding? That's pretty shocking. But why does that bum you?
Dante: You see, me and my buddy Virgil just took another tour of hell. Sort of a "Dante's Inferno for the Modern Sinner" type of thing. We wanted everyone to know that hell is just as bad as before.
Me: And?
Dante: And we're having to change the name of the book. Hell is not only bad, it's worse than ever! The only down side is that "Dante's Not So Inferno" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Me: No! You don't mean...
Dante: That's right, hell has officially frozen over!
It was a joke.
:-)
:-)
Ah. If there's anything I've learned about posting online, it's that you've gotta be obvious with those tipoffs, or it doesn't quite come through the way you mean it.
But I found it ironic that someone might pay to be a guinea pig and find out in a real-world situation.
I think it's kind of a neat idea myself. How many times do car manufacturers release beta quality vehicles for drivers to shake out for them? (e.g. Oldsmobile is GM's beta program.) This way Honda will get the feedback it needs sooner, and without actually deploying a product. Plus they get free publicity for the unusal nature of the experiment.
No kidding. I always hate it when the tempertures outside get below -200 C. Having to swim through the atmosphere makes me terribly cold by the time I get to work.
Charge them $500 a month to have the car blow up upon impact and kill the whole family.
Now there's a line of hyperbole if I've ever heard it. I imagine that they've done crash tests on this car to determine the exact dangers of this happening. At the very least, I've seen the early crash tests done to decide if hydrogen was feasible or not. The result of the tests was that *if* the hydrogen were to ignite, its direction (up) would be safe as long as the passengers weren't sitting on it. It actually ended up being *safer* than gasoline, as the gasoline cars continued burning long past the initial ignition.
Only Ford is bullish, and believe they will be in the open market by 2010. If they can avoid bankruptcy.
That's GM, not Ford. Ford has been very quiet on the whole thing, but is still working on the technology.
First of all, there is no "Linux community" in that they have a single answer or position on things. I wish people would stop generalizing like that.
/usr or /usr/local.
It's true that it's a generalization. However, my point is that enough of the community stands in the way of some forms of progress to prevent it. Generally Linux is seem as "Elite". Anything that bolsters that leetness is well received while anything that threatens it is heavily challenged by a portion of the community. It can be challenged so heavily, that it can give the impression that the challengers speak for the entire community. Their position also doesn't help the rest of the community in moving forward on many user-friendly ideas.
I would say Linux's answer has been: "If you move to Linux, your computer will run for years without getting slower, there is no risk of viruses or spyware, you can customize the look of your computer or just stick with the elegant default, the operating system comes with hundreds of applications that are of high quality and absolutely free."
That's a nice thing to say, but that's not the value proposition that's seen by much of the market. Plus it's blatently incorrect. There have been several Linux viruses thanks to security flaws, and your computer is just as much at risk of slowing down due to more background programs and desktop widgets being installed. Older Linux systems can also have a great number of compatibility problems stemming from their insisitence on installing everything in
You think Mac's don't have any viruses?
I think Mac OS X doesn't have any, primarily because not a single one has EVER been identified. Mac OS 9 and less were highly vulnerable, but the two systems are not the same.
friend of mine had OS 10.something destroyed by one
You're going to have to back this up with facts. For example, from this link: "As of now, there are no viruses for OS X Macintoshes."
Regardless of whether or not there will be any in the future, this is an exceptional marketing tool that draws in new users.
The article (follow-up here) was actually a front page story. I've posted it a few times since, but I didn't link to it because most people know what I'm talking about and would just get annoyed. The team is working on the project behind the scenes, but there's no official website yet. I'll probably move my blog to a personal website at some point so I can start sharing files of interest, including things we're working on.
No, I don't think it's really about the fragmentation. It's about the mindset. You can always teach someone to use a modern Linux distro, as many anecdotes have recounted. As long as you're there to answer questions, the users can make it through the difficult parts. The problem is that this isn't 1995 anymore. Back then GUIs were a new thing for the IBM PC, and everyone was willing to seek out a local computer geek to help them make it work. Now that users are comfortable in Windows, however, why should they switch to a completely different system that requires them to relearn how to do everything?
Apple has answered that question. "If you move to the Mac, your applications are simple to install, your files are well laid out, the computer self-manages itself, the user interface is less confusing, you can quickly search for files, organize them in new way, nearly all maintenence is automatic, the system is free of spyware and viruses, AND you can still use Microsoft Office!."
The Linux community's answer has been, "Hey, we don't have viruses either! Erm... except for those one or two. But someone released an anti-virus that spread itself to eliminate the first virus! Oh, and did I mention that it's free! And you can have a home server!"
Unfortunately, the Linux answer has not been very appealing to the market.
This link contains a great analogy of the situation.
Welcome to the Chicken and Egg problem. Hardware manufacturers and Software producers are not going to support Linux until it's popular. Yet Linux won't become popular until the Hardware and Software vendors support it. As a result, you need to make the product more attractive to users in another way.
Apple has the right idea. By pushing the technology far ahead of the competition, they convince users to accept some of the shortcomings in exchange for a large number of features unavailable on other platforms. This increases the Mac user base, forcing the Hardware and Software vendors to support them.
I know in my own personal case, I could run regularly Linux right now if I wanted to. The problem is that my kids have a large number of educational titles and other kids' software (no, they don't operate correctly under WINE) that they must reboot to use. If I leave the system in Linux, I hear no end of complaining from my wife who has to reboot the next day.
Now I (and a few others) have suggested methods by which the Linux Desktop could pull ahead of Windows, and possibly even the Mac. My own suggestions would be distro specific and would not harm any existing distros. Yet the community resists such changes strongly, stating that "Linux is perfect the way it is". Many automatically assume things I didn't say, based on their past experience.
So in the meantime, I and my small team will attempt to implement these ideas whenever we have sufficient time. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to reconcile our schedules, and without more volunteers I fear that the project will not get done in time to make a difference. Which is really too bad, as I feel that it could make Linux a significant competitior in the Desktop market.
I did consider that, but it seems a bit unlikely. I never browse with IE, nor do any of the other users on this computer. There's not even an icon for it. Plus the computer is new.
:-/
The the *only* possible way I can think of that it got in (if it is indeed pre-existing) is through these SOBs. I had to remove some "free" bundled software (that they didn't warn you about, or give you the option not to install) that came with it. It's people like this that make me wish there was a national anti-spyware bill.
Okay, I just tried it again. No spyware this time. Then again, the screen was all messed up last time, so maybe they were having a hiccup of some sort.
:-/
Honestly, after two minutes of using it I realized that the whole Windows Live thing is just an attempt to compete with Google Homepage. Hopefully Microsoft will show a bit more imagination with Office Live.
Didn't you get all the popups of some sort of "Windows Registry Fixer" thing trying to run? The darn thing wouldn't leave me alone.
Sadly, that tired old Flash animation doesn't apply too much anymore.
Only the blue screens. The "accessing A:" and "Cannot find CD named HomeConstruction" feel all too familiar. Not to mention, "Cannot delete because the file is in use." Or the 500+ popups for the same thing. (There's a bug in explorer where you can manage to cause more than one delete confirm box to show up when using the Shift+Delete combination. The first one works, and the rest error out when you try to delete.) Plus I think the whole "Order Food" program is particularly apt for the issues you're having with live.com...
Did you actually follow the link I posted, or did you miss the joke entirely?
Do you have Flash installed in Opera?
It works! Really! All you need is the flash plugin, and even FireFox can run Microsoft Windows Live!
Remember when Microsoft was going to do this last time? Supposedly Office was going to be sold to users on an ASP (as in Application Service Provider) basis. You'd pay your monthly fee and you'd get to keep running your software. The market didn't care so much for this extortion^W business plan, and Microsoft decided to move to their "forced upgrade" cycles.
BTW, if anyone is interested, you're not missing anything on live.com. I just went there in IE and it immediately tried to install a bunch of spyware crapola. I was not amused. On the bright side, there's a category for Slashdot!
Flat shaded games don't generally count in the "Which one was first?" war. If you count them, then you can go all the way back to the 70's when the Atari came out.
The reality is that the term "First Person Shooter" was created for Doom. It was then retroactively applied to Wolf3D as they are in the same linage. Everyone then forgot about the existance of Ultima Underworld, Catacombs 3D, and Hovertank. (Even though the latter two were Id products.)
He's referring to Catacomb 3D, presumably a sequel. Although a lot of people consider Ultima Underworld (1992) to be the first true FPS, even though Wolf3D was the first truely immersive one.
I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to grasp the wording.
Does your raytracing program explain in detail that it will install drivers? Do you explicitly agree to having those drivers installed? Yes? Then there's no problem.
The only problem is if your raytracing program wants to install drivers but doesn't tell you that it's going to do so. Then it would fall afoul of the proposed law. Personally, I think that's a good thing. There's way too much crap out there that I simply wouldn't install if I knew it was going to mess with my computer. RealPlayer is a great example. Another example is the Battle for Moscow game I installed. (There was no warning whatsoever that it would install a crapload of spyware. Took me a good half-hour to eradicate all of it.) iTunes would have to be properly labeled. Etc, etc, etc.
If we're lucky, such a law might even convince providers to stop adding their "oh so useful" (but not in actuality) icon to the system tray.
Quake 4? Stand out? It's a rehash of a rehash of a rehash.
That's beside the point. Quake 4 has brand recognition, as well as an association with Doom 3 to carry it. Serious Sam, OTOH, was an underdog the first time, and will be an underdog this time as well.
Shouln't they have called it "Son of Sam"?
:-) )
Nah. They should have called it, "Serious Sam: The Serious Little Monkey".
( Sorry, for some reason that stuck in my head after I read the headline.
At this point, though, IBM's not interested in any settlement that doesn't include an admission by SCO that they never had any evidence.
If a judge states that there's no infringement, then the point is moot. Legally, there is no infringement. If SCO pursues a settlement, then IBM would most likely make an full acceptance of the court's ruling a part of the settlement (i.e. No appeals) and ask for a set of specific concessions. (A bit like the concessions made at the end of the USL vs. BSD case.) Thus there would be no question over who has the rights to the code. I sincerely doubt that IBM would force SCO to admit to wrong-doing, as that could cause SCO to face criminal charges.