I don't get this. Look here, chaps, the problem with the voting in Florida was that it used a complicated mechanical system. What the hell is wrong with a simple pencil&piece of paper? It works here in Blighty without any problems. Aren't you just introducing needless complexity, and 'confusing' voters even more?
I can't help but think that the easy availability of information is dangerous. If you know nothing of your enemy, you do not engage him. If you know your enemy, then you do. The easy availability of information will surely lead to a more fraught and dangerous world.
Just think, the frequency of war and of genocide has been increasing in step with the availability of information. The invention of the printing press engulfed Europe in the Thirty Years War through protestantism. The telegraph allowed empires to straddle the world. I can't help but think that the Internet will plunge us into a conflageration the likes of which we have never seen before. What form it will take I do not know. I only hope I am not around when it happens.
A recent study by IBM showed that PostgreSQL has significant scalability problems when compared to MySQL. It seems obvious from this that PostgreSQL will be limited to the lower end of the market, and will never make it to the big time.
Also, thanks to the remarkable synergy that MySQL has with the commercial Website's staff (thats what my marketing manager says, anyway;), PostgreSQL will have difficulty generating the same loyal following. Lest we forget, technical superiority is only a very small part of the battle, you must also win Mind share. PostgreSQL is the BSD of the database world - limited to an irrelevent core market segment.
This is a good decision by AMD to drop the Mustang. The high end market does not yet trust AMD, and with good reason, considering certain fiascos in the past.
And the high end market is wedded to Intel, these people don't care about k00ln355, all they want is rock solid stability and trustworthyness. AMD would find it next to impossible to break into such a market, even if they had superior technology. The only way AMD can do it is by creeping gradually there, step by step. But will they attract anyone beyond the 5cr1pt k1dd135? Businessmen & women? I don't think they can at the moment.
I agree with you on this one. I'm saying that you should make the attempt to be 'childlike' while viewing the film. The better the film is, the easier this will be. But if you fail in your attempt, then the film is probably crap.
The reason I am suspicious of critics, and dislike a certain type of film criticism (intellectual type) has been motivated by a certain film critic I used to read in my Sunday paper.
She is called Anne Bilson, and writes in the Sunday Telegraph here in the UK. An example of her film criticism occured when 'Top Gun' was shown here in the UK a few months ago. She said that the film was an extended metaphor for Homosexuality. The relationship between Val Kilmner and Tom Cruise was clearly homosexual, she said. Tom Cruise's girlfriend is trying to keep him thouroughly heterosexual. But in the end, he goes the gay way "You can ride my tail anytime" says Kilmner. "No, you can ride mine" replies Cruise. I think she got this from a Tarantino skit, but she was serious. And all her film reviews are like that.
She just can't help inserting her own feminist opinions into the review. Anyway, I don't read her anymore, because that kind of criticism spoils the film and puts idiotic ideas in ones head.
My method is to approach each film as though I am a child. It usually leads to greater enjoyment. I only engage in some sort of intellectual analysis after I have seen it, and only if it was interesting enough to promote such thinking. (the Matrix might be a good example of this - it has some very interesting ideas).
As for BG, well, all I can say is that you must be a Silon if you don't appreciate its genius;-)
I agree with you, but here's a reason for why the Empire might build a Death Star:
Symbolism. Of course they could achieve the same physical effect with nuclear weapons, but would they get they same crushing psychological victory? The Death Star demonstrates the superiority of the Empire better than any poxy missiles. The Death Star helps make the Empire sexy.
Now if only when they used it on a planet, said planet did not completely disappear...It's like magic, the way that happens.
Point is, it doesn't matter. It is a good film, if you just take it at face value and don't expect every detail to be correct.
What are you talking about? I really liked Battlestar Galactica;) Especially the robotic pet dog - I was watching it the other day, its just like an Aibo - and the death of that honey Jane Seymour has just too much pathos for words. Pshaw! I defy anyone to say that Battlestar Galactica was bad.
More seriously, as I haven't seen Red Planet I'll have to bow to your opinion on that one.
But more generally I think my comments have some validity. I'm not saying that one should be undescriminatory about films, rather that one should rely on ones gut instinct. (I'm sounding a bit like the Queen now;). You should just sit down, watch a film and try and enjoy it for what it is, rather than starting an intellectual critique, which will spoil any film if taken too far, IMO. And if you don't like it on those terms, then it is awful.
Quite right. I don't go to the pictures to see a film that is scientifically correct in every detail. Who cares if its utterly wrong on every count? It's about suspension of disbelief.
I know that the people who read/. are among the most sceptical people on Earth, and rightly, but if you let that get in the way of watching some cheap film you're just an idiot.
Imagine if the original Star Wars was released today. Lots of people here on/. would doubtless flame it because of it's pathetic interpretation of physics and it's architypal characters.
But so what? doesn't anybody remember what it was to be a child and take these things at face value, for 90 minutes at least? If you let your intellect get in the way of enjoying a simple, unpretentious film & you don't enjoy it then I have no sympathy, I'm afraid. Criticising these things is just oh-so-smart intellectual masturbation.
Seems to me that the best resolution they can hope for is by country, at least in the case of residential users. As the majority of internet users are American, this would not seem to be very useful. Is having people wantonly able to attain what country I'm in really a privacy issue?P.
I don't see what the problem is. It just means that the parties are able to tailor their policies to the individual, and thats what democracy is all about, isn't it?
Increased data for the governers makes for better government. How are they supposed to govern without information about those they are governing, after all?
True, but at least in most Brain distributions it's easy to get a compatible finger driver. And the Brains kernel may be quite sluggish and large by most standards, but it generally acheives uptimes of 74 years!
However, the 'English' communication protocol it uses to network with other Brains is rather ambigous, and does not manage very high bit rates, but is nonetheless quite flexible and powerful, like an inferior version of Perl.
Another problem with the brain is the great many IRQS it uses, known as 'hormones'. They can wreak havoc, and are appalingly slow. The 'testosterone' & 'oestrogen' IRQs are among the worst offenders, sometimes rendering different Brains incompatible!
For the Brain to become a mainstream hardware platform it will have to overcome these problems, IMHO.
I agree. I'm actually proud of Blightys militaristic past. Thrashing the Fuzzy-Wuzzies with machine guns, Charge of the Light Brigade, blasting rebelious coolies out of cannons in the Indian Mutiny, beating the Luftwaffe. It's a wonderful tapestry of both the vile and the glorious, and represents us well. I hate the bloody 'Cool Brittania' crap, and Blairs endless handwringing. If he had his way we'd be a neutered substate of Europe, and all history books that dealt with anything prior to 1997 would be burned.Sod them, idiots.
Dear Mr Bones;), I have to say I found it quite difficult to reply to your post, not being quite sure what to say. Anyway, first off the bat, I'm not anti-catholic (even though I'm a Glasgow Rangers supporter;) and indeed I'm not particularly antireligious at all, as long as it does not try to constrain me or my beliefs. I suppose this could be termed as being 'liberal.'
It's interesting that you are converting to Catholicism, many people in this day and age seem to find the 'back-to-basics' idea of this quite appealing (including some South African members of my family). However, it seems to me that such people are in the minority. Many seem to be forming a church of one, if you like, where their beliefs are unique and they arrive at them on their own. But the majority find that religion has nothing to say for them any more, and indeed find the very idea of spirituality itslef rather creepy and wacky (in my experience anyway).
For myself, I think this is a good thing. Such matters should be up to the individual, and I think that this state of affairs has been arrived at through many factors, not just liberalism. People are no longer ostracised if they don't go to church, or if they think differently. Greater levels of education have empowered people to think for themselves and better communication has allowed them to get the information they need and come to their own conclusions. Can you honestly say this is a bad thing? For when you say there are not very many true christians, and lament the increase in liberalism, it sounds rather as though you do think it is a bad thing.(though I could be wrong).
Now, I think the internet will change religion & spirituality, by further accelerating and aiding these processes. I suppose traditional religion is faced with both a threat and an opportunity by the internet, but somehow I don't think it will succeed if it is totally inflexible regarding peoples beliefs.
Thats what I find so strange. I mean, here in Britain I have met a grand total of 1 person my age who is religious in my entire life. It just seems that 'spirituality' is almost completely redundant and irrelevant. Which is why it's a bit scary that probably the most powerful country in the world appears to be so religious. I just find it difficult to believe;)
It's interesting to me to see the different ways in which different nations can be said to be purposeless and jaded. Here in Britain, a government commisioned report came to the conclusion that the word 'British' is inherently racist. Britain is losing the sense of itself as a nation. In America, people are mistrustful of government, but many are still religious, so clearly the majority have a spiritual belief in something. In much of Western Europe, the church going part of the population numbers about 5%, whereas in America it is the Majority.
What is the trend in America regarding religion? Is it on the increase or on the decrease? It seems that many in Britain have quasi-religious beliefs, but define such things for themselves insofar as they do at all, is this happening in America?
I don't think a parliamentary system precludes the possibility of strong, stable rule from one party.
For example, her in Britain we have a parliamentary system, but thanks to the first past the post system of electing MP's, the winning party takes all. There has not been a coalition government since the early 1930's, I believe.
However, when you have a proportional representation system, whereby the MP's are selected proportionately to the vote in the country as a whole, then you tend to get unstable coalition governments frequently (think Italy) and it also separates the link between the MP (Member of Parliament;) and the constituency he represents. Instead of being loyal to his constituency, the people who voted for him, he is loyal to the party hierarchy, because they are the ones that selected him to be on the list of canditates.
Surprise surprise, the Third party here in the UK is revoltingly enthusiastic about this style.
Anyway, taking the world as a whole, parliamentary systems tend to be stable, as most of them are based on this model. It's only the Europeans that are enthusiastic about PR and coalitions, the fools.
It did have water, and does have water now. In fact, it has polar ice caps, I believe. The issue is whether it has liquid water, as wherever we have found liquid water, we have found life.
As to Earths water leaving the planet, I would say yes, it does, but only in very small amounts.There are water molecules present in the air all around us. The average velocity of any given molecule of air is ~330 metres/sec, the speed of sound. However, this is only the average. The velocities follow a standard distribution or Bell curve. Therefore an incredibly small number of molecules will attain escape velocity, and some of these molecules will be water molecules. If the altitude is high enough, the water molecule will be able to escape from the Earths gravity well entirely. This is why the moon cannot sustain an atmosphere - a small (but larger than Earths) proportion of the moons atmosphere would escape, and after a few million years it would be left with nothing.
The only other mechanism I can think of is through meteorite impact. Fragments of rock which contain embedded water could be hurled into space from such an impact. I doubt that water or Ice could do it by itself, due to boiling and mixing with the rest of the atmosphere.
Overall, then, bugger all water gets off Earth (or Mars), but a small teeny tiny bit does.
The water Mars once had is, for the most part, underneath the surface, much like permafrost. Frozen ice isn't much different from rock in a sense, it just gets churned up with all the other solids. However, because it is less dense, it does tend to stay towards the surface.
Why does the USA use the Electroral College system? I mean, I know very little about American politics, but this is the impression I have of the Electoral collage:
Each state casts it's votes in favour of a particular candidate. These votes determine the Electoral College, who then cast the vote for the state. This practice was brought in at the foundation of the USA because it was difficult to organise elections on such a large scale. The canditate with the majority of states in his belt becomes president.
Now, this is probably distorted and wrong, so please forgive me for that, but what I want to know is why don't they just count the votes for the entire country, and then empower the canditate with the most votes?
At the moment it seems that the voters are removed from the final decision by a layer of unnecessary apparatus. Of course, it may have advantages that I'm unaware of.(I remember trying to explain to an American why I thought an unelected House of Lords was a good thing. Sometimes these things can seem stupid on a Prima Facie basis, but nonetheless have surprising advantages.)
This reminds me of all the bizarre contests you get here in Blighty. For example, Dwarf throwing is a hearty contest, where contestants decide who can throw a dwarf the furthest.
And also Cheese rolling, where contestants roll large Stiltons downhill at great speed.Unfortunately this was banned by the local council of the county where it takes place, as being too dangerous, but I hear it's making a comeback.
And Golf, where, umm...Thats probably the most stupid;)
It'll be interesting to see what happens in the forthcoming console wars. On the hardware side, you have:
1)PC's in a plastic box - X-Box, IES. Superficially, these appear to be more powerful, boasting 733 & 600 MHz processors respectively. Only problem is, they are designed for use on applications, not games. The pc architecture is designed around manipulating small amounts of data with a lot of code, like MS-Word working on a document. They are not designed to process huge amounts of data with a small, looped amount of code.
2)PSX2 & (to a lesser degree perhaps) the dreamcast. These are designed, especially the PSX2, with games in mind from the ground up.They have huge bus bandwidth, and can chuck data around at a phenominal rate. In the case of the PSX2, this has been really radical, and Software Houses are reporting problems trying to come to terms with this new paradigm. It's quite unlike anything they have had to deal with before.
On the software side, however:
1)X-Box, IES. Who knows? Microsoft have demonstrated some games at trade shows and the like, but so far it has all been vapourware. However, they have pots of cash, and real develepor muscle, so they should have some good stuff out for release. As for the IES, I really have no idea.
2)PSX2. Most of the games so far are pretty unimpressive, and the software houses are having difficulties as noted above.
3)Dreamcast. It's here now, with a head start and a crop of good games, with more in the pipeline. According to some sources, the games it has presently are also technically superior to the PSX2's.
Ultimately, it's the strength of the software that will win the day. I can't see the PSX having anything to shout about for a good while yet, especially considering Sony is'nt primarily a software developer, unlike Sega and Microsoft.I don't think the IES will make it, it just can't compete with the forces arrayed against it, be they marketing or financial. I think, in 18 months time, the PSX2 will be the next Nintendo64, and we will be looking at a straight fight between Sega and Microsoft, and possibly Nintendo.
Re:I read this a while ago; not that impressed, al
on
Look to Windward
·
· Score: 2
There is a suggestion of this. The Minds are always plotting and scheming against each other, and aren't above all out conflict and betrayal (Excession). So maybe they will overreach themselves oneday...
I really like the exchanges between the Minds in Excession, all that cynicism and scheming is remarkably similar to Trolltalk at times;)
It seems to me that the only thing that keeps the Culture going is it's own belief in it's moral superiority. So if this belief were shattered, by some demonstration, then the Culture would disintigrate. The only thing that could destroy the Culture then, is the Culture itself, because the immoral act would have to be by the Culture.
I've got a theory about this. I remember reading in one of his books that the Culture had sent an expedition to the Andromeda Galaxy - and were worried about a possible 'Outside Context Problem' when they get there. So, Aliens from Andromeda do it. Or the Sublimed.
Slashdot Mirror
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Just think, the frequency of war and of genocide has been increasing in step with the availability of information. The invention of the printing press engulfed Europe in the Thirty Years War through protestantism. The telegraph allowed empires to straddle the world. I can't help but think that the Internet will plunge us into a conflageration the likes of which we have never seen before. What form it will take I do not know. I only hope I am not around when it happens.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Also, thanks to the remarkable synergy that MySQL has with the commercial Website's staff (thats what my marketing manager says, anyway;), PostgreSQL will have difficulty generating the same loyal following. Lest we forget, technical superiority is only a very small part of the battle, you must also win Mind share. PostgreSQL is the BSD of the database world - limited to an irrelevent core market segment.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
And the high end market is wedded to Intel, these people don't care about k00ln355, all they want is rock solid stability and trustworthyness. AMD would find it next to impossible to break into such a market, even if they had superior technology. The only way AMD can do it is by creeping gradually there, step by step. But will they attract anyone beyond the 5cr1pt k1dd135? Businessmen & women? I don't think they can at the moment.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
The reason I am suspicious of critics, and dislike a certain type of film criticism (intellectual type) has been motivated by a certain film critic I used to read in my Sunday paper.
She is called Anne Bilson, and writes in the Sunday Telegraph here in the UK. An example of her film criticism occured when 'Top Gun' was shown here in the UK a few months ago. She said that the film was an extended metaphor for Homosexuality. The relationship between Val Kilmner and Tom Cruise was clearly homosexual, she said. Tom Cruise's girlfriend is trying to keep him thouroughly heterosexual. But in the end, he goes the gay way "You can ride my tail anytime" says Kilmner. "No, you can ride mine" replies Cruise. I think she got this from a Tarantino skit, but she was serious. And all her film reviews are like that.
She just can't help inserting her own feminist opinions into the review. Anyway, I don't read her anymore, because that kind of criticism spoils the film and puts idiotic ideas in ones head.
My method is to approach each film as though I am a child. It usually leads to greater enjoyment. I only engage in some sort of intellectual analysis after I have seen it, and only if it was interesting enough to promote such thinking. (the Matrix might be a good example of this - it has some very interesting ideas).
As for BG, well, all I can say is that you must be a Silon if you don't appreciate its genius ;-)
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Symbolism. Of course they could achieve the same physical effect with nuclear weapons, but would they get they same crushing psychological victory? The Death Star demonstrates the superiority of the Empire better than any poxy missiles. The Death Star helps make the Empire sexy.
Now if only when they used it on a planet, said planet did not completely disappear...It's like magic, the way that happens.
Point is, it doesn't matter. It is a good film, if you just take it at face value and don't expect every detail to be correct.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
More seriously, as I haven't seen Red Planet I'll have to bow to your opinion on that one.
But more generally I think my comments have some validity. I'm not saying that one should be undescriminatory about films, rather that one should rely on ones gut instinct. (I'm sounding a bit like the Queen now;). You should just sit down, watch a film and try and enjoy it for what it is, rather than starting an intellectual critique, which will spoil any film if taken too far, IMO. And if you don't like it on those terms, then it is awful.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I know that the people who read /. are among the most sceptical people on Earth, and rightly, but if you let that get in the way of watching some cheap film you're just an idiot.
Imagine if the original Star Wars was released today. Lots of people here on /. would doubtless flame it because of it's pathetic interpretation of physics and it's architypal characters.
But so what? doesn't anybody remember what it was to be a child and take these things at face value, for 90 minutes at least? If you let your intellect get in the way of enjoying a simple, unpretentious film & you don't enjoy it then I have no sympathy, I'm afraid. Criticising these things is just oh-so-smart intellectual masturbation.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Increased data for the governers makes for better government. How are they supposed to govern without information about those they are governing, after all?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
However, the 'English' communication protocol it uses to network with other Brains is rather ambigous, and does not manage very high bit rates, but is nonetheless quite flexible and powerful, like an inferior version of Perl.
Another problem with the brain is the great many IRQS it uses, known as 'hormones'. They can wreak havoc, and are appalingly slow. The 'testosterone' & 'oestrogen' IRQs are among the worst offenders, sometimes rendering different Brains incompatible!
For the Brain to become a mainstream hardware platform it will have to overcome these problems, IMHO.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
He just doesn't understand British humour ;)
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
It's interesting that you are converting to Catholicism, many people in this day and age seem to find the 'back-to-basics' idea of this quite appealing (including some South African members of my family). However, it seems to me that such people are in the minority. Many seem to be forming a church of one, if you like, where their beliefs are unique and they arrive at them on their own. But the majority find that religion has nothing to say for them any more, and indeed find the very idea of spirituality itslef rather creepy and wacky (in my experience anyway).
For myself, I think this is a good thing. Such matters should be up to the individual, and I think that this state of affairs has been arrived at through many factors, not just liberalism. People are no longer ostracised if they don't go to church, or if they think differently. Greater levels of education have empowered people to think for themselves and better communication has allowed them to get the information they need and come to their own conclusions. Can you honestly say this is a bad thing? For when you say there are not very many true christians, and lament the increase in liberalism, it sounds rather as though you do think it is a bad thing.(though I could be wrong).
Now, I think the internet will change religion & spirituality, by further accelerating and aiding these processes. I suppose traditional religion is faced with both a threat and an opportunity by the internet, but somehow I don't think it will succeed if it is totally inflexible regarding peoples beliefs.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
What is the trend in America regarding religion? Is it on the increase or on the decrease? It seems that many in Britain have quasi-religious beliefs, but define such things for themselves insofar as they do at all, is this happening in America?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
For example, her in Britain we have a parliamentary system, but thanks to the first past the post system of electing MP's, the winning party takes all. There has not been a coalition government since the early 1930's, I believe.
However, when you have a proportional representation system, whereby the MP's are selected proportionately to the vote in the country as a whole, then you tend to get unstable coalition governments frequently (think Italy) and it also separates the link between the MP (Member of Parliament;) and the constituency he represents. Instead of being loyal to his constituency, the people who voted for him, he is loyal to the party hierarchy, because they are the ones that selected him to be on the list of canditates.
Surprise surprise, the Third party here in the UK is revoltingly enthusiastic about this style.
Anyway, taking the world as a whole, parliamentary systems tend to be stable, as most of them are based on this model. It's only the Europeans that are enthusiastic about PR and coalitions, the fools.
As to Earths water leaving the planet, I would say yes, it does, but only in very small amounts.There are water molecules present in the air all around us. The average velocity of any given molecule of air is ~330 metres/sec, the speed of sound. However, this is only the average. The velocities follow a standard distribution or Bell curve. Therefore an incredibly small number of molecules will attain escape velocity, and some of these molecules will be water molecules. If the altitude is high enough, the water molecule will be able to escape from the Earths gravity well entirely. This is why the moon cannot sustain an atmosphere - a small (but larger than Earths) proportion of the moons atmosphere would escape, and after a few million years it would be left with nothing.
The only other mechanism I can think of is through meteorite impact. Fragments of rock which contain embedded water could be hurled into space from such an impact. I doubt that water or Ice could do it by itself, due to boiling and mixing with the rest of the atmosphere.
Overall, then, bugger all water gets off Earth (or Mars), but a small teeny tiny bit does.
The water Mars once had is, for the most part, underneath the surface, much like permafrost. Frozen ice isn't much different from rock in a sense, it just gets churned up with all the other solids. However, because it is less dense, it does tend to stay towards the surface.
Each state casts it's votes in favour of a particular candidate. These votes determine the Electoral College, who then cast the vote for the state. This practice was brought in at the foundation of the USA because it was difficult to organise elections on such a large scale. The canditate with the majority of states in his belt becomes president.
Now, this is probably distorted and wrong, so please forgive me for that, but what I want to know is why don't they just count the votes for the entire country, and then empower the canditate with the most votes?
At the moment it seems that the voters are removed from the final decision by a layer of unnecessary apparatus. Of course, it may have advantages that I'm unaware of.(I remember trying to explain to an American why I thought an unelected House of Lords was a good thing. Sometimes these things can seem stupid on a Prima Facie basis, but nonetheless have surprising advantages.)
And also Cheese rolling, where contestants roll large Stiltons downhill at great speed.Unfortunately this was banned by the local council of the county where it takes place, as being too dangerous, but I hear it's making a comeback.
And Golf, where, umm...Thats probably the most stupid;)
1)PC's in a plastic box - X-Box, IES. Superficially, these appear to be more powerful, boasting 733 & 600 MHz processors respectively. Only problem is, they are designed for use on applications, not games. The pc architecture is designed around manipulating small amounts of data with a lot of code, like MS-Word working on a document. They are not designed to process huge amounts of data with a small, looped amount of code.
2)PSX2 & (to a lesser degree perhaps) the dreamcast. These are designed, especially the PSX2, with games in mind from the ground up.They have huge bus bandwidth, and can chuck data around at a phenominal rate. In the case of the PSX2, this has been really radical, and Software Houses are reporting problems trying to come to terms with this new paradigm. It's quite unlike anything they have had to deal with before.
On the software side, however:
1)X-Box, IES. Who knows? Microsoft have demonstrated some games at trade shows and the like, but so far it has all been vapourware. However, they have pots of cash, and real develepor muscle, so they should have some good stuff out for release. As for the IES, I really have no idea.
2)PSX2. Most of the games so far are pretty unimpressive, and the software houses are having difficulties as noted above.
3)Dreamcast. It's here now, with a head start and a crop of good games, with more in the pipeline. According to some sources, the games it has presently are also technically superior to the PSX2's.
Ultimately, it's the strength of the software that will win the day. I can't see the PSX having anything to shout about for a good while yet, especially considering Sony is'nt primarily a software developer, unlike Sega and Microsoft.I don't think the IES will make it, it just can't compete with the forces arrayed against it, be they marketing or financial. I think, in 18 months time, the PSX2 will be the next Nintendo64, and we will be looking at a straight fight between Sega and Microsoft, and possibly Nintendo.
I really like the exchanges between the Minds in Excession, all that cynicism and scheming is remarkably similar to Trolltalk at times ;)
It seems to me that the only thing that keeps the Culture going is it's own belief in it's moral superiority. So if this belief were shattered, by some demonstration, then the Culture would disintigrate. The only thing that could destroy the Culture then, is the Culture itself, because the immoral act would have to be by the Culture.
I'm sorry, but the logical operator 'AND' is now patented. You will hear from Intels lawyers in the morning.
I've got a theory about this. I remember reading in one of his books that the Culture had sent an expedition to the Andromeda Galaxy - and were worried about a possible 'Outside Context Problem' when they get there. So, Aliens from Andromeda do it. Or the Sublimed.