So I guess when Janet Reno decided not to appoint an independent counsel to look into probable illegal activity (by Al Gore wasn't it?) that even the head of the FBI found warranted serious investigation -- it was because Bill Clinton had decided the issue.
I worked for a major valley computer company in 2000, and we had evaluated American Express's Blue as a possible companion to some of the ecommerce solutions we had wanted to develop.
Blue, and everything else I've seen since then aren't real solutions, they're just gimmicks. They need to support real SmartCards which offer strong encryption onboard and payment approval. The half-assed crap that they're pushing now is next to useless. The only benefit that I can see of Blue and its ilk is that they might have the opportunity to make SmartCard readers ubiquitous. From there, they could maybe begin to support SmartCards with the features that I mentioned above.
Dammit, I thought I had jon katz filtered out. What is this crap? I want a refund.
Anyway, while I'm here, I thought I'd throw out a reference to Affleck and Damon from the Filthy Critic in his review of Dogma, which was right on the money.
Ben "I still can't act" Affuck and Matt "My friend can't act" Damon are two fallen angels [...]
I semi-admired Smith's work before Dogma. Clerks was a diamond in the rough, and Chasing Amy dealt fairly intelligently with a sensitive subject. Even Smith panned Mall Rats as being the product of a studio that wouldn't let him have creative control.
Finally, Dogma came out. Here was Smith's opportunity to shine. He had the money to hire some big names, the clout to make the film he wanted, and it was based on a pointed look at religion and Catholicism -- a favorite subject of mine. But he blew it! Smith was okay when he was pushing the limits to gain some credibility, but now that he's made it, his self-congratulatory, 7-11 pseudo-intellectual rants are just lame.
I really wanted to like Smith's movies so much. There's a kernel in his work that I want to see flourish, but Smith's execution just leaves too much to be desired. The Filthy Critic really hits the nail on the head when he describes the problems with Dogma. I would recommend reading the review. It really rates a +5 Insightful.
I think I'm going to pass on JASBSB and maybe see it when it airs on HBO. Smith doesn't get me out to the theatres again until he gets a little hungrier.
But it irritates me when people act like "religous people" are any more stubborn about defending their views, even to the point of twisting truth, than "scientific" people.
I'm sorry, but that's been my experience after spending thousands of hours debating Creationism, Evolution, the validity of the Bible, and the utility of the Scientific Method. Religious people tend to play fast and loose with the facts much more consistently than non-religious people.
I think that it has a lot to do with perceived stakes. The scientist/atheist has only some pride at stake -- he doesn't believe in the supernatural, so the discussion for him can remain at an "academic level." Hell, most scientific types I know would be ecstatic to discover proof of the supernatural. I, personally, would give everything I had to learn that the promises of religion were true. Growing old and dying sucks -- who doesn't want to live forever in the light of a loving and sheltering God?
The religious person, on the other hand, has everything at stake. This person is defending the eternity of his soul. He has everything to lose if the scientific/atheistic viewpoint were to somehow win the day. Psychologically, he's in a complete panic when cornered. Everything he wants: that invisible buddy in the sky, everlasting life, justification for his whole existence - is bound up in his beliefs. He has to do absolutely everything to protect those beliefs for himself and in an attempt to "save" those around him. Lying is a small sacrifice to make when you're talking about saving someone else's soul, right?
Not to mention my irritation that the terms are used like they are somehow mutually exclusive.
Think about the ramifications of the word "supernatural", and then think about the Scientist's adherence to methods of uncovering the secrets of our "natural" world. The supernatural by definition is beyond "natural". It flies in the face of everything that science has uncovered so far about our universe. Why? Because there has been no consistently credible evidence for the supernatural. The supernatural are things that can never seem to be witnessed by the credible or proven in a laboratory. Now, that's not to say that I haven't known scientific types who also have unprovable religious beliefs. They definitely do exist. Usually, though, it's sort of an odd blind spot that the Scientist allows to exist. He'll be perfectly rational about the known universe, except when confronting his own religious beliefs. Ah well, no one is perfect.
Another data point to note is the percentage of scientists who are agnostic or atheistic. I think that number was around 80% the last time I saw the poll in Scientific American.
It's the #1 play in the religious handbook. Start a rumor about how the scientist/free-thinker renounced all of his heathenistic ways on his deathbed. Darwin is a fairly popular target for this, but I've also heard the exact same rumor directed at Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Paine.
You'll never see someone go to greater lengths in a lie than when that someone is protecting his religious beliefs.
Even if the rumor were true -- what does it matter if someone in fear for his immortal soul makes a last-ditch effort to gain eternal salvation? His human weakness wouldn't hurt the soundness of his theories in any way.
Don't get me wrong, Fred Hoyle thought outside of the box and made some contributions -- but because of his contributions coupled with some of the whacked out things he's said, he has also been a detriment to the advancement of science.
Take a look at any Creationist/Evolutionist debate. The Creationists always quote Fred Hoyle, because the dumbass didn't really separate his wild speculation from his more grounded theories. Creationists use the words of a "noted astronomer" to advance their own non-scientific agenda.
Every time I read someone about to quote Fred Hoyle, I cringe, knowing that I'm about to sit through some bullshit foisted on us through the careless attitude toward science of one of "our own".
Gassee won't be seeing much of the ten million, if any. In order to get the backing to go public, you sell your soul to VC's. If it doesn't go well, they normally own everything. I'm sure that Gassee would have only benefited if Be had done fairly well.
Integrity means a lot, and so does reputation, and so does independence...
If what they were doing meant so much to them, they should have sold to Apple. Apple could have put the heart of the BeOS on millions of machines in a relatively short time. Instead, they're going to be forgotten in some corner of Palm, no more significant than WinCe or PalmOS. Bleah.
If you're a geek, you know that what motivates you is getting to build the next big one, not how much loot you get.
Don't think of money as little green bills. Think of money as freedom. Once you have enough money, you have the freedom to buy geeky toys out the wazoo, you have the freedom to sit at home and just work on the programming projects you love, because your income is assured. You have the freedom to financially help projects that satisfy your geekiness.
I haven't had time to do more than just glance at a few of the commentaries, and I'll go through it in more depth later -- but my initial impression is:
WHAT A BUNCH OF PRETENTIOUS WHINY ASS CAN'T GET THEIR OWN SHIT TOGETHER SOUR GRAPED LOSERS!
I mean, sure, criticism has its place. Just because someone makes more money than you do, or is more succesful in other ways, doesn't make them above criticism. I've been mightily critical of Apple in the past, and will continue to harp on them here and there. How much genius does it takes to see that multi-buttoned mice with mousewheels are a boon to productivity? Oh, man, and don't get me started on that stupid hockey-puck mouse that Steve just refused to discontinue, no matter how many people internal to Apple complained about it.
It's just the smell of arrogance that you get from reading a forum of "experts" on "Does Apple Matter," with the headline "expert" being Gil Amelio, the dumbass that almost finished destroying the company. He's like that idiot in every Mafia movie, than talks too much, thinks he knows too much, fucks up a lot, then he gets whacked. You maybe feel a bit sorry for him; but you know that if he hadn't been such a moron, he would have lived a lot longer.
</rant>
Yes, you're exactly right. I can tell you (having worked there), the NeXT guys completely received the red carpet treatment and more than their fair share of company resources... especially when you consider how fucking long it took them to ship OSX. They should have been able to get their shit together long before, if they had just planned things out better and not changed directions every five minutes.
There you go, if you start cartooning again, you can pick on him.
It's not about whether people take themselves seriously, it's about whether or not Berke feels that the farcical nature of the person or event goes beyond his ability to satirize it.
They are simply designing a free mod using ideas that have been aired on television.
Profit isn't the deciding factor. If Microsoft decides to clone StreetFighter and give it away for free in an effort to kill Capcom -- like they killed Netscape by giving IE away for free -- is that okay? They're not making a profit on it!
The issue of damage to the copyright holder has to be part of the discussion.
Liberalism is socialism. Conservatism is fascism. Vote Libertarian.
Nah, with the advent of the Ewoks, Lucas moved his focus toward a decidedly younger audience. I saw RotJ when I was a kid too, and those fuzzy, cutesy, JarJar precursors absolutely ruined the movie for me.
There are other qualitative and quantitative differences between the first movies and ep 1, but I've spent enough time discussing what went from a series that was targeted at 14-20 year olds to a series that's targeted for 6-12 year olds.
You'd think Linux and FreeBSD sucked or something.
I don't think that anyone's saying they suck. It's just that a lot of people have been waiting for someone to put together the power of UNIX beneath an easy-to-use GUI, coupled with application support that still only seems to exist in the commercial OS arena. Apple appears to be the first company to pull it off. Linux and *BSD still have their places, but I - for one - want to "have it all". If I have to pay a slight cash premium to get it, so be it.
Also, consider this: I get paid $100/hour for consulting. What does it cost me to muck around with my X configuration for a few hours to get it to work with my video card? (Not to mention my sound card configuration and the extra screwing around that you always have to do when installing any peripheral under Linux) A few hours of not having to screw with that stuff, and the Apple hardware suddenly isn't a premium investment after all. In my business, I really have to consider the Total Cost of Ownership.
Sorry, but proprietary is going the way of the dinosaur.
Says you. Personally, I love open standards and open software - but they haven't been the answer to everything. Despite the fact that the GNU project has been around for every bit as long as the Mac (since 1984), they still don't have an OS that my mom could install and use. Why is that? Will they ever put together a total user experience like Microsoft, Apple, and to some exten Be have? I hope they will, but who knows? Maybe the whole Free/free software model will never provide a viable alternative to the commercial software world.
I have computer needs now, though, and I'm not going to let software religion get in the way of meeting those needs.
I just sold my DUAL G4 533 because it was the worst OS I have ever used in reguards to:
Apple sort of screwed people by releasing OSX too early. I don't blame you for being angry with them, and I wouldn't disagree with the problems that you've experienced.
However, even before OSX hit the stores, all of the Mac sites were abuzz with OSX's deficiencies. Anyone with a web browser could have seen that OSX wasn't ready for prime time.
I decided to sit on the sidelines and wait until the reports improved. Sure enough, 10.1 looks like the "real thing", and I'll re-evaluate the situation in September.
Why does Slashdot even give crackpots like this a voice? It's typical cold fusion, room temperature super conductors, perpetual motion engine bull shit. It's one guy claiming to have obtained a result that even he admits contradicts general relativity.
Sure, sometimes these fantastic paradigm-shifting things happen. But when it's this far fetched, how about waiting for at least a little peer review?
We now return to your regularly scheduled "Oh gee, what if Superman fought Gandalf" speculation.
Re:Therein lies the dilemna
on
Mac Rants
·
· Score: 2
The rant lays out a good question, then.
Too bad Wasson doesn't so much ask that question as just spew his opinion that the practice of using Photoshop for performance comparisons is bullshit.
Too bad that his setup to that opinion is misleading. Apple hasn't said (as far as I've seen) that lower clock frequencies are necessarily better. They've only pointed out that clock frequency can be extremely misleading when judging performance, and they're exactly right. The sad thing is that most consumers don't get it.
Also, Wasson takes a swipe at Apple's decision to discontinue floppy support. I can't express to you how happy I am to be rid of those useless little plastic floppies. They hardly held enough data to matter except for when swapping maybe one file. Since Apple has had built-in networking since 1984, the time to get rid of the floppy has long since past. Besides, these days I can just burn a CD/RW if I have a real need to transfer some data by hand.
After writing an SNMP management console with an ASN.1 parser, I have nightmares about the protocol. Sure, it's very efficient yet flexible, but it makes all sorts of neural connections happen in your brain that are better left open.:P
Since XML was designed for humans to be able to look at to a certain extent, why not just have a standard compreession method that's included with all XML parsers? Whenever you transmit or save the XML file, it should be saved in the compressed format.
Re:Code Red Self Test
on
Code Redux
·
· Score: 3, Funny
How about if someone just writes a Code Red version that instead of doing something nefarious just puts up a dialog that says: "Hey, you fucking moron! Patch your crappy IIS server so that you don't get some version of Code Red."
Better yet, why not just run the patch installer for them?
Attention, Slashdot member. This is a code RED ALERT. Someone, somewhere in the world has come up with an alternate data delivery system that could conceivably (if they somehow force everyone on the planet to use their system) abridge your rights.
Please ignore reason in this instance.
Please ignore the fact that this new delivery method is fairly analogous to existing delivery methods for library books, movie videos, and carpet cleaners.
Please ignore the fact that this is just a product or service and not an act of the US Congress.
Please ignore the fact that many similar attempts at keeping a hand in your wallet have failed (see Circuit City's DivX "standard") by just letting the market decide.
Please ignore the fact that many people may actually like the reduced pricing structure enabled by this delivery method, and that this may actually turn out to be a Good Thing(tm).
ALERT ALERT. Attention Slashdot member. This is a code RED ALERT. Please proceed to the Slashdot posting web interface and begin ranting. While posting, please also cast negative aspersions on the following people or topics: the RIAA, the MPAA, the DMCA, Bill Gates, and George Bush.
well... have you ever considered the fact that the first three were, too? and that you like them now because you saw them when you were kids?
I've considered it, but it doesn't stand up to reason:
I saw Return of the Jedi when I was a kid too, and that yucky sappy Ewok theme that was pointed at 10-year-olds was a big disappointment even then. George Lucas' expansion on that theme through the embodiment of Jar Jar marks a clear dilineation between the good of the originals versus the lackluster quality of Episode I.
There are quantifiable differences between the original couple of Star Wars movies and the latter couple.
Think of the use of slapstick comedy in the former ones versus the latter ones. R2D2 may have gotten fried or fallen over, but that was pretty much it. Jar Jar and the other computer animated characters were used incessantly for slapstick humor.
Think of the use of clever dialog in the first trilogy, then name just one piece of clever dialog to come out of Episode I. Episode I in general had very little dialog. It was too packed with computer animations to have much dialog, and when it was used, it was just bland filler.
Finally, take a close look at the characters. Compare the spunky Princess Leia to the boring Padme -- where Princess Leia had to show a lot of fire and guts in facing Vader then escaping the Death Star, Padme was just kinda "there" (a very cute "there", but still just "there"). Compare the informative wise Obi Wan Kenobe played by Alec Guiness to the dreadfully predictable and uninteresting Qui-Gon. Where oh where in Episode I was there anyone even half as interesting as Han Solo?
Granted, if I were seeing A New Hope for the first time today, it wouldn't be the awe-inspiring film that it was when I was much younger. It would, however be far more entertaining than The Phantom Menace.
Slashdot Mirror
So I guess when Janet Reno decided not to appoint an independent counsel to look into probable illegal activity (by Al Gore wasn't it?) that even the head of the FBI found warranted serious investigation -- it was because Bill Clinton had decided the issue.
:P
Oh, I see how that logic works.
I worked for a major valley computer company in 2000, and we had evaluated American Express's Blue as a possible companion to some of the ecommerce solutions we had wanted to develop.
Blue, and everything else I've seen since then aren't real solutions, they're just gimmicks. They need to support real SmartCards which offer strong encryption onboard and payment approval. The half-assed crap that they're pushing now is next to useless. The only benefit that I can see of Blue and its ilk is that they might have the opportunity to make SmartCard readers ubiquitous. From there, they could maybe begin to support SmartCards with the features that I mentioned above.
Criticize Kevin Smith, and I'm a troll? Piece of shit moderator you are.
Reminds me to metamoderate more often.
Dammit, I thought I had jon katz filtered out. What is this crap? I want a refund.
Anyway, while I'm here, I thought I'd throw out a reference to Affleck and Damon from the Filthy Critic in his review of Dogma, which was right on the money.
Ben "I still can't act" Affuck and Matt "My friend can't act" Damon are two fallen angels [...]
I semi-admired Smith's work before Dogma. Clerks was a diamond in the rough, and Chasing Amy dealt fairly intelligently with a sensitive subject. Even Smith panned Mall Rats as being the product of a studio that wouldn't let him have creative control.
Finally, Dogma came out. Here was Smith's opportunity to shine. He had the money to hire some big names, the clout to make the film he wanted, and it was based on a pointed look at religion and Catholicism -- a favorite subject of mine. But he blew it! Smith was okay when he was pushing the limits to gain some credibility, but now that he's made it, his self-congratulatory, 7-11 pseudo-intellectual rants are just lame.
I really wanted to like Smith's movies so much. There's a kernel in his work that I want to see flourish, but Smith's execution just leaves too much to be desired. The Filthy Critic really hits the nail on the head when he describes the problems with Dogma. I would recommend reading the review. It really rates a +5 Insightful.
I think I'm going to pass on JASBSB and maybe see it when it airs on HBO. Smith doesn't get me out to the theatres again until he gets a little hungrier.
But it irritates me when people act like "religous people" are any more stubborn about defending their views, even to the point of twisting truth, than "scientific" people.
I'm sorry, but that's been my experience after spending thousands of hours debating Creationism, Evolution, the validity of the Bible, and the utility of the Scientific Method. Religious people tend to play fast and loose with the facts much more consistently than non-religious people.
I think that it has a lot to do with perceived stakes. The scientist/atheist has only some pride at stake -- he doesn't believe in the supernatural, so the discussion for him can remain at an "academic level." Hell, most scientific types I know would be ecstatic to discover proof of the supernatural. I, personally, would give everything I had to learn that the promises of religion were true. Growing old and dying sucks -- who doesn't want to live forever in the light of a loving and sheltering God?
The religious person, on the other hand, has everything at stake. This person is defending the eternity of his soul. He has everything to lose if the scientific/atheistic viewpoint were to somehow win the day. Psychologically, he's in a complete panic when cornered. Everything he wants: that invisible buddy in the sky, everlasting life, justification for his whole existence - is bound up in his beliefs. He has to do absolutely everything to protect those beliefs for himself and in an attempt to "save" those around him. Lying is a small sacrifice to make when you're talking about saving someone else's soul, right?
Not to mention my irritation that the terms are used like they are somehow mutually exclusive.
Think about the ramifications of the word "supernatural", and then think about the Scientist's adherence to methods of uncovering the secrets of our "natural" world. The supernatural by definition is beyond "natural". It flies in the face of everything that science has uncovered so far about our universe. Why? Because there has been no consistently credible evidence for the supernatural. The supernatural are things that can never seem to be witnessed by the credible or proven in a laboratory. Now, that's not to say that I haven't known scientific types who also have unprovable religious beliefs. They definitely do exist. Usually, though, it's sort of an odd blind spot that the Scientist allows to exist. He'll be perfectly rational about the known universe, except when confronting his own religious beliefs. Ah well, no one is perfect.
Another data point to note is the percentage of scientists who are agnostic or atheistic. I think that number was around 80% the last time I saw the poll in Scientific American.
It's the #1 play in the religious handbook. Start a rumor about how the scientist/free-thinker renounced all of his heathenistic ways on his deathbed. Darwin is a fairly popular target for this, but I've also heard the exact same rumor directed at Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Paine.
You'll never see someone go to greater lengths in a lie than when that someone is protecting his religious beliefs.
Even if the rumor were true -- what does it matter if someone in fear for his immortal soul makes a last-ditch effort to gain eternal salvation? His human weakness wouldn't hurt the soundness of his theories in any way.
Don't get me wrong, Fred Hoyle thought outside of the box and made some contributions -- but because of his contributions coupled with some of the whacked out things he's said, he has also been a detriment to the advancement of science.
Take a look at any Creationist/Evolutionist debate. The Creationists always quote Fred Hoyle, because the dumbass didn't really separate his wild speculation from his more grounded theories. Creationists use the words of a "noted astronomer" to advance their own non-scientific agenda.
Every time I read someone about to quote Fred Hoyle, I cringe, knowing that I'm about to sit through some bullshit foisted on us through the careless attitude toward science of one of "our own".
In the year 2018, all countries will move off various gold and government-issued currency standards.
The Everquest platinum piece will be the new basis for the global economy.
frankly, past the first ten million
Gassee won't be seeing much of the ten million, if any. In order to get the backing to go public, you sell your soul to VC's. If it doesn't go well, they normally own everything. I'm sure that Gassee would have only benefited if Be had done fairly well.
Integrity means a lot, and so does reputation, and so does independence...
If what they were doing meant so much to them, they should have sold to Apple. Apple could have put the heart of the BeOS on millions of machines in a relatively short time. Instead, they're going to be forgotten in some corner of Palm, no more significant than WinCe or PalmOS. Bleah.
If you're a geek, you know that what motivates you is getting to build the next big one, not how much loot you get.
Don't think of money as little green bills. Think of money as freedom. Once you have enough money, you have the freedom to buy geeky toys out the wazoo, you have the freedom to sit at home and just work on the programming projects you love, because your income is assured. You have the freedom to financially help projects that satisfy your geekiness.
I haven't had time to do more than just glance at a few of the commentaries, and I'll go through it in more depth later -- but my initial impression is:
WHAT A BUNCH OF PRETENTIOUS WHINY ASS CAN'T GET THEIR OWN SHIT TOGETHER SOUR GRAPED LOSERS!
I mean, sure, criticism has its place. Just because someone makes more money than you do, or is more succesful in other ways, doesn't make them above criticism. I've been mightily critical of Apple in the past, and will continue to harp on them here and there. How much genius does it takes to see that multi-buttoned mice with mousewheels are a boon to productivity? Oh, man, and don't get me started on that stupid hockey-puck mouse that Steve just refused to discontinue, no matter how many people internal to Apple complained about it.
It's just the smell of arrogance that you get from reading a forum of "experts" on "Does Apple Matter," with the headline "expert" being Gil Amelio, the dumbass that almost finished destroying the company. He's like that idiot in every Mafia movie, than talks too much, thinks he knows too much, fucks up a lot, then he gets whacked. You maybe feel a bit sorry for him; but you know that if he hadn't been such a moron, he would have lived a lot longer.
</rant>
Sorry, I'll go chill out for a bit.
Yes, you're exactly right. I can tell you (having worked there), the NeXT guys completely received the red carpet treatment and more than their fair share of company resources... especially when you consider how fucking long it took them to ship OSX. They should have been able to get their shit together long before, if they had just planned things out better and not changed directions every five minutes.
that probably now regrets not selling to them for $125 million when he could
You bet your sweet ass he does!
$125 million (when he owned more of the company, I'll bet) or $11 million... hmmm, which would I choose?
My browser has trouble opening that URL. It comes back with the error message:
:)
480: Unparseable oxymoronic URL - pick "Christian" or "Science", but not both.
Think it's available in a Google cache somewhere?
There you go, if you start cartooning again, you can pick on him.
It's not about whether people take themselves seriously, it's about whether or not Berke feels that the farcical nature of the person or event goes beyond his ability to satirize it.
If I was George Lucas I would stop right after Attack of the clones and NEVER make the 3rd one. How cruel would that be?
Oh, please, Jesus. Make him stop before releasing this one.
They are simply designing a free mod using ideas that have been aired on television.
Profit isn't the deciding factor. If Microsoft decides to clone StreetFighter and give it away for free in an effort to kill Capcom -- like they killed Netscape by giving IE away for free -- is that okay? They're not making a profit on it!
The issue of damage to the copyright holder has to be part of the discussion.
Liberalism is socialism. Conservatism is fascism. Vote Libertarian.
Amen, brother. I can agree with that one.
Nah, with the advent of the Ewoks, Lucas moved his focus toward a decidedly younger audience. I saw RotJ when I was a kid too, and those fuzzy, cutesy, JarJar precursors absolutely ruined the movie for me.
There are other qualitative and quantitative differences between the first movies and ep 1, but I've spent enough time discussing what went from a series that was targeted at 14-20 year olds to a series that's targeted for 6-12 year olds.
You'd think Linux and FreeBSD sucked or something.
I don't think that anyone's saying they suck. It's just that a lot of people have been waiting for someone to put together the power of UNIX beneath an easy-to-use GUI, coupled with application support that still only seems to exist in the commercial OS arena. Apple appears to be the first company to pull it off. Linux and *BSD still have their places, but I - for one - want to "have it all". If I have to pay a slight cash premium to get it, so be it.
Also, consider this: I get paid $100/hour for consulting. What does it cost me to muck around with my X configuration for a few hours to get it to work with my video card? (Not to mention my sound card configuration and the extra screwing around that you always have to do when installing any peripheral under Linux) A few hours of not having to screw with that stuff, and the Apple hardware suddenly isn't a premium investment after all. In my business, I really have to consider the Total Cost of Ownership.
Sorry, but proprietary is going the way of the dinosaur.
Says you. Personally, I love open standards and open software - but they haven't been the answer to everything. Despite the fact that the GNU project has been around for every bit as long as the Mac (since 1984), they still don't have an OS that my mom could install and use. Why is that? Will they ever put together a total user experience like Microsoft, Apple, and to some exten Be have? I hope they will, but who knows? Maybe the whole Free/free software model will never provide a viable alternative to the commercial software world.
I have computer needs now, though, and I'm not going to let software religion get in the way of meeting those needs.
I just sold my DUAL G4 533 because it was the worst OS I have ever used in reguards to:
Apple sort of screwed people by releasing OSX too early. I don't blame you for being angry with them, and I wouldn't disagree with the problems that you've experienced.
However, even before OSX hit the stores, all of the Mac sites were abuzz with OSX's deficiencies. Anyone with a web browser could have seen that OSX wasn't ready for prime time.
I decided to sit on the sidelines and wait until the reports improved. Sure enough, 10.1 looks like the "real thing", and I'll re-evaluate the situation in September.
Why does Slashdot even give crackpots like this a voice? It's typical cold fusion, room temperature super conductors, perpetual motion engine bull shit. It's one guy claiming to have obtained a result that even he admits contradicts general relativity.
Sure, sometimes these fantastic paradigm-shifting things happen. But when it's this far fetched, how about waiting for at least a little peer review?
We now return to your regularly scheduled "Oh gee, what if Superman fought Gandalf" speculation.
The rant lays out a good question, then.
Too bad Wasson doesn't so much ask that question as just spew his opinion that the practice of using Photoshop for performance comparisons is bullshit.
Too bad that his setup to that opinion is misleading. Apple hasn't said (as far as I've seen) that lower clock frequencies are necessarily better. They've only pointed out that clock frequency can be extremely misleading when judging performance, and they're exactly right. The sad thing is that most consumers don't get it.
Also, Wasson takes a swipe at Apple's decision to discontinue floppy support. I can't express to you how happy I am to be rid of those useless little plastic floppies. They hardly held enough data to matter except for when swapping maybe one file. Since Apple has had built-in networking since 1984, the time to get rid of the floppy has long since past. Besides, these days I can just burn a CD/RW if I have a real need to transfer some data by hand.
After writing an SNMP management console with an ASN.1 parser, I have nightmares about the protocol. Sure, it's very efficient yet flexible, but it makes all sorts of neural connections happen in your brain that are better left open. :P
Since XML was designed for humans to be able to look at to a certain extent, why not just have a standard compreession method that's included with all XML parsers? Whenever you transmit or save the XML file, it should be saved in the compressed format.
How about if someone just writes a Code Red version that instead of doing something nefarious just puts up a dialog that says: "Hey, you fucking moron! Patch your crappy IIS server so that you don't get some version of Code Red."
Better yet, why not just run the patch installer for them?
Please ignore reason in this instance.
- Please ignore the fact that this new delivery method is fairly analogous to existing delivery methods for library books, movie videos, and carpet cleaners.
- Please ignore the fact that this is just a product or service and not an act of the US Congress.
- Please ignore the fact that many similar attempts at keeping a hand in your wallet have failed (see Circuit City's DivX "standard") by just letting the market decide.
- Please ignore the fact that many people may actually like the reduced pricing structure enabled by this delivery method, and that this may actually turn out to be a Good Thing(tm).
ALERT ALERT. Attention Slashdot member. This is a code RED ALERT. Please proceed to the Slashdot posting web interface and begin ranting. While posting, please also cast negative aspersions on the following people or topics: the RIAA, the MPAA, the DMCA, Bill Gates, and George Bush.I've considered it, but it doesn't stand up to reason:
I saw Return of the Jedi when I was a kid too, and that yucky sappy Ewok theme that was pointed at 10-year-olds was a big disappointment even then. George Lucas' expansion on that theme through the embodiment of Jar Jar marks a clear dilineation between the good of the originals versus the lackluster quality of Episode I.
There are quantifiable differences between the original couple of Star Wars movies and the latter couple.
- Think of the use of slapstick comedy in the former ones versus the latter ones. R2D2 may have gotten fried or fallen over, but that was pretty much it. Jar Jar and the other computer animated characters were used incessantly for slapstick humor.
- Think of the use of clever dialog in the first trilogy, then name just one piece of clever dialog to come out of Episode I. Episode I in general had very little dialog. It was too packed with computer animations to have much dialog, and when it was used, it was just bland filler.
- Finally, take a close look at the characters. Compare the spunky Princess Leia to the boring Padme -- where Princess Leia had to show a lot of fire and guts in facing Vader then escaping the Death Star, Padme was just kinda "there" (a very cute "there", but still just "there"). Compare the informative wise Obi Wan Kenobe played by Alec Guiness to the dreadfully predictable and uninteresting Qui-Gon. Where oh where in Episode I was there anyone even half as interesting as Han Solo?
Granted, if I were seeing A New Hope for the first time today, it wouldn't be the awe-inspiring film that it was when I was much younger. It would, however be far more entertaining than The Phantom Menace.