Actually the scratch monkey is more realistic than urban legend and refers to an experiment that went horribly wrong at the U of T in the early 80's. The scrach monkey refers to the premise that you should not conduct tests while valuable monkeys are attached to a machine (test in an isolated environment).
Here's the full story: http://www.mv.com/ipusers/arcade/monkey.ht m
There's been a lot of vaccum based robots already out on the market, and reasonably priced. If you're interested, the Cye robot came out a year or two ago (http://www.personalrobots.com/home.html) and offered a vaccum attachement as well as open source software (under agreement) that mapped out rooms. It also returns to the charger for you. Maybe if these two companies put their heads together they might have something.
This is typical of having a large site, offering it for free, yada, yada, yada. Always happens and we've been seeing it happen for a few months now. Seeing it happen on Slashdot is just something that was going to happen as it will everywhere.
However there are two problems to the subscription gig. First there's a huge issue with page views vs page count vs whatever. I can configure my threshold and viewing preferences so that any story I want to read, and complete comments, shows in one pass saving me a page hit but we all know that by the time you get to the bottom of the page and reload it, they'll be 10-100 new comments added and this can go on for several hours (depending on how popular the subject is). Also pages like this one where I'm entering my comment and will preview it and then it gets added, do all those count? I think you guys clearly need to define what is and what isn't counted.
However I don't believe that charging by the page is reasonable for a site like this. You get 300,000+ users so asking for even 10% of them to pay means a return of about $600,000 a year. You've been spinning along for quite some time now without having anyone foot the bill so why is now any different? The gravy train has run out. OSDN execs are saying "We want to make some ROI on this Slashdot thing". And 600K a year can't pay for the hardware? I'm no expert and I don't have the numbers for this site, but I seriously doubt 600K a year wouldn't cover the hardware, bandwidth and staff costs.
This drives me nuts. Everytime there's a flux in the economy, the RIAA uses it as a scapegoat to blame falling sales etc. etc. blah blah blah. Gimme a break.
"the study found that ownership of CD burners has nearly tripled since 1999"
Again with the analogy that more CD burners mean more piracy of songs. Again they fail to notice that the number of computers in the world is growing, operating systems and applications get larger, more people are backing up data to CD than before, etc. True, I think the number does contribute something but put it in perspective people.
"Global piracy on the physical side costs the recording industry over $4 billion* a year"
I still fail to see how anything except under-estimating production expenses or over-estimating demand will "cost" the recording industry money. So they're saying that $4 billion dollars worth of music *might* have been purchased instead of downloaded? Where do they get these numbers?
"DVD Video Continues Steady Increase"
Yeah, no shit. And DVD player sales continue to increase. Is piracy to blame because people can't rip DVDs very easily? So once DVD burners are the "in" thing, is the RIAA going to blame piracy on lower sales? No. DVDs will continue to flourish because more production companies are now seeing the need to create good quality and content DVDs. VHS sales are way down not due to piracy but to the fact that I'd rather spend my money on a DVD with commentary and extras than half that on just the movie. As more players get out there and more quality DVDs are released, the sales will increase. I don't need to be JoJo to figure that out. And yes, even when DVD burners outnumber CD burners, I predict that DVD sales will STILL increase each year (providing that studios don't stop making good content DVDs).
"Cassette Popularity Sharply Declines"
Oops. Guess we should blame piracy again here. Sales are down. Oh no! Sorry, just peeved at how they blame everything on piracy as usual, like how parents blame game companies on how they corrupt youth or something. When will the real players accept their own responsibilities. Silly, silly, silly.
If you picked up the Matrix redux DVD, it contains a TON of material on the movie and previews of the upcoming ones.
On the site play the shockwave game and once you get through the various stages you're given a password to access the Matrix book preview (which they discuss on the DVD). The book contains tons of pics and stuff from the movies, the anime shorts, storyboards and other great stuff.
A lot of e-mails have poured in from other sources and developers these past few hours. A call from an Microsoft employee also came in. The Japanese X-Box joypad should work with USA consoles. We'll confirm this tonight once our suppliers test the joypad with some USA games we shipped them earlier this week. If all is well, then our shipments of Japanese X-Box joypads won't go to waste after all.
Unfortunately this rules out us Canadians (or anyone outside the States) to get this. The auction will only ship to residents of the U.S.
I wonder about two things on this. First, it's a beta version basically. The first public release so I'm assuming they're going to hound the people that do eventually buy them with questionaires, follow them with cameras and generally keep track of what they're doing with them and how they find them. From this very limited audience they'll head back to the labs and make some tweaks and perhaps in a year or so they'll be ready for full scale deployment. While I see it as a good publicity stunt, don't you think that 3 is a somewhat limited number to allow out. Something more like 100 would be more useful for statistical analysis. Unless they're just going to put them out and not bother following up with the buyers, which I doubt.
Second what about the liabilities and general use of this device? Governments and cities have yet to adopt any kind of urban renewal laws that the product first claimed would happen. There are no laws about riding it in public so is there any fallout from you knocking down someone (or more than likely, half killing yourself with it). Sure there's only 3 and maybe that is better than 100 out on the streets, but perhaps people are going to stare at this when it comes buzzing down the street like a deer in the headlights and not get out of the way. Should be fun to watch in any case.
Recently I saw a review of Xerox working on electronic paper. Yes, it's been around for a few years and will still take a few more to be useable. The demo was for signage in a clothing store. Each 6"x9" piece would be "updated" via a wireless connection from a handheld device. The text on the paper instantly changed to a new price. Pretty good stuff all around.
So what does this have to do with Harry Potter and eBooks. I don't see eBooks surviving for the plain reason that I'm not going to sit at my desk, lug around a lap top or even squint at a palm top to read a book. Not only that but the storage involved for a full book isn't small potatoes on my 2mb Palm. Keeping around 100 novels that I could read at will isn't going to happen.
However, with some more advances in the technology I do see electronic paper as a substitue. By downloading the electronic book from Amazon.com then sending it to my electronic paper, I can now read it like it's a real book. The advantage is that a) it's lighter because it can be a single sheet that just flips between pages b) it can have some features like remembering where I left off or giving me a summary of the book to jump around in and c) it's cheap (or should be by the time the technology gets there) and I can carry it around and even buy a book at a real bookstore, except that they'll just beam a copy of Harry Potter X to my electronic paper instead of getting a disk or paper copy.
I still don't think this will ever replace the traditional kill-a-tree approach to publishing, but it might be more acceptable than a traditonal ebook.
Learn to read what the post is about and what the product is. This is not from Microsoft not will it screw up Linux in any way. It's a bunch of C++ objects that look like Direct3D, but really OpenGL underneath. It's not MS APIs in the least since there is not COM component there and MS doesn't control anything. Get a life.
This is not some kind of holy grail that everyone is looking for so stop it right now. OpenGL, which is a far better API IMO (and John Carmack thinks so too!) is and has always been the defacto standard portable API to code against. I will admit that recently with DX8, things got more in line with OpenGL and the D3D API is better than it was, but it's still COM based and completely not portable (among other problems). This product is just a wrapper to make COM look like C++ objects and underneath, make OpenGL calls.
So what does this give us? It does NOT give us a WINE implementation of being able to run DirectX apps. Yes, you could integrate the code into WINE but it's meant to wrap functions at the source level, not the executable level. It does give us a wrapper that DirectX code can, for the most part, compile against and product a working Linux/BeOS/Mac exectuable. So for the game developers it might mean their DirectX code will compile on other platforms, but any good game company would have abstracted out their graphics code so it would be API independant. That's what most of them do already and some do offer OpenGL/DirectX selection for rendering. Why they don't produce Linux versions of their apps if they can simply call OpenGL instead isn't clear, but that's their decision.
So are developers going to take DirectX code and compile against this to produce Linux OpenGL executables? I doubt it. Anyone who has coded their graphics sub-system directly against DirectX has probably coded other parts directly against the Windows API and if they haven't ported it to Linux already, they probably won't. Those that already have a clear decoupling of the graphics and the API don't need to and again, if they haven't ported they still won't for whatever reason (most likely support/business cases/etc)
On the flipside, I do applaud what these guys did as it is a big undertaking to wrap a system as big and complex as Direct3D so congrats and perhaps for the garage developer, it might be useful but to those people I say just code in OpenGL in the first place.
liB
Link to timeline
on
A Loki Timeline
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Hmmm... maybe the PlayStation will have enough horsepower to drive VMWare running under Linux with a guest operating system of Windows 98. Now all those Windows games will be available on the PlayStation? Well, we can dream can't we?
I find it somewhat disturbing that in the year 2002, after we've put men on other planets, taken photos of galaxies millions of light years away and split the atom, we cannot determine the path of a plummeting object.
CNN (and other sources including NASA) are reporting a 9 hour window on when it could fall. With all the scientific minds and all the great algorithms we have, we can't determine when something like this will happen? Or is it that unimportant to bother getting out the slide rule and doing some calculations? And then there's where. A 1000 mile path that nobody seems to have any clue where it might land. We can't figure out a simple trajectory?
Doesn't this disturb anyone that chunks of metal up to 100lbs is going to be dropping on our heads shortly? True, the chances of getting hit are probably a billion to one, but they say that about lightning as well. Well, it'll be a fun light show and we can always hope it lands in Redmond or somewhere insignifigant.
Is it just me or are these articles written by people that have a poor grasp of the English language? I can understand it comes out of China (or seems to indicate that) but I read the article "Making a Living with Free Software" and it seems to be a collection of one sentance paragraphs. Not to mention the fact that it doesn't even answer the original question. The article talks about writing free software, which I do on a regular basis (about 10 projects on the go right now), but never talks about making a living with it. It's a long diatribe about the freedom of writing free software and overusing the words "metaphor" and "freedom" way too much. There's no mention of how you can make a living off it (which isn't possible AFAIK). In any case, the magazine (and I'll use that term loosely) isn't really that impressive both visually or literally.
Maybe I'm being a little harsh here but I thought the point of this operating system was to run Windows apps under Linux?
"Windows Media 7.1 doesn't install (it detects an unsupported operating system), Norton Anti Virus 2002 doesn't work, ICQ2001B installs perfectly but doesn't run, Windows Media 6.4 installs okay, even installs new codecs, but when it needs to start playing from the network it says that the address is not found."
Okay, I'll give you the fact that's its a beta product but remember this is a beta you have to pay for. I would expect it to be able to at least do something? It can't even install Internet Explorer. The review doesn't seem to mention any Windows app it can run. The issue of having to run everything as root is obviously scary. Let's say that if (and that's a big IF) you can run Outlook as your mail client then now that app has root access to your system. Not a very fuzzy feeling in my tummy over that.
So yes, a beta product that doesn't work very well. No surprise there. However compared to other Windows/Other-OS efforts like WINE for Linux and Odin for OS/2, this falls really short. Odin at least can run most Win32 apps and you can even run Visual C++ under it. That's pretty impressive. This isn't especially if I have to pay for it to try it out.
The whole Lindows thing is just another bad effort at diverting focus away from the real Linux underneath. With the recent demise of Loki and people turning to Transgamer, it will always be a Windows world, even if it looks like KDE on top.
Even though this has been available since Oct, it's the first I've seen of it. I think it's a great resource. Long dead sites that are no longer there now can be found for historical purposes. The interesting thing is that the links on the page are also updated to link to the archived versions. What I found it useful for was building a history page of what my site looked like over the years. Lots of great uses for this so hope it stays up!
I mean it. Stop milking a dead horse with geriatric sequals or puzzling over who to get to play Indy and get to work on the DVDs!
We've been waiting forever for these things and Harrison Ford isn't getting any younger. As well, his mind's not what it used to be and who can remember what happeneded 20 years ago in the middle of the Tunisia desert?
A nice 3 package DVD with full commentary, deleted scenes and a new documentary is greatly needed to keep things alive. What? You have enough time to put together a $60 million dollar sequal but not enough to sit down for a few hours and talk about your work Spielburg?? Sheesh...
I've been collecting comics for over 20 years now. I also drew comics years ago when they were 75c for the book instead of the $5+ that you see now. Never mind that.
The existance of web comics (i.e. comics in some downloadable medium, say PDF) cannot co-exist with real comics without having diverse effects. If I can download a PDF of X-Men 118 for $1.50 then why is the original $25? Sure it's a collectable, but there's the rub. Let's say a few years/months off in the future Marvel decides to digitize it's entire line. Paper costs are too high and print runs are abolished. All comics are put online for you to download for a minimum fee. Of course now Marvel has a problem that they're not about to recoup any costs from comic shops for the printing since there is none. Sure it's cheap to distribute but now there are also 10,000 copies of it floating around on Morpheus and peoples websites. Where's the collectable value in that?
Personally I'd like to have my collection in digital form and maybe that's the alternative. Just scan the whole lot of them and stash the originals away until they're worth $10,000 on eBay. The collecting of comics is what is the focus. Sure the content is important to a certain extent, but look at the rush (and increase in value) when a John Byrne, Neal Adams or Michael Turner book goes up on the block. The book has some value and that value is meant to increase because of various things. Resale value, content, character, artist/writer, scarcity, etc. Now imagine again if all books (or even some of them) were in PDF format. There's no real sense in obtaining it except for just reading and admiring the artwork. Anyone can own a copy just by downloading it and wheres the fun in that? Then what happens at conventions when your favorite writer/artist is scheduled? You print off a copy at Kinkos and bring it in to be signed?
One thing is possible here. The expandibility of the comic book to an electronic medium. Remember when everyone bought VHS movies just to own them? Now everyone is buying DVD to get the extra content. Imagine if you could download your own PDF comic of X-Men and view it in pencil, ink, color or production mode? Maybe even have the pre-production sketches that went into the making of the comic. Now THAT would be something to own. Let's see the media extended rather than transferred.
Anyways, whatever business model a comic company thinks they can fit into cannot measure up to the collectable value of a true comic book. The online guys that are selling content are doing so because they don't live in the same universe Marvel, DC and others do and don't distribute millions of copies each week.
Okay, I'll admit. I was curious in looking at the clips. The screenshots looked interesting even if it was anime pr0n. I downloaded and watched the demo clip and frankly the animation isn't half bad. I used to work in animation and some of the movement isn't bad. There are some horrible parts, but for the most part (again, besides that it's pr0n) it's actually a half-decent effort.
Animation wise.
Sound wise. Well, that's a whole 'nuther story. The dialog is pathetic, the music equally worse and the sound effects are pretty much non-existant. If the filmmakers just turned their efforts in making a real anime short instead of this lame-ass ripoff then it would be something to be admired. Get a half decent sound engineer and some music to play that's appropriate and a decent script and they'll be laughing.
I think this is an interesting idea but has a few flaws.
First they ask that your swap image be at least 1gb in size. I don't know about everyone else, but my linux partition is just 2gb so that's half of my disk already. I know, I know, these days everyone has 30, 40, and 60gb drives so it's not a big deal. Maybe it's just time for me to get more iron.
Anyways, the big feature this distro seems to be claiming is the automatic (and seamless updates). You can run this "sorcery update" command in a cron job at night and have a brand spanking new system the next morning. While this sounds like the cats meow, what if I don't want the latest and greatest? I personally don't to live on the bleeding edge and don't always want the lastest. Also, who decides what's the latest? The latest beta? Is it running the 2.4.17 kernel or something even newer? What version of KDE does it have?
It's also a huge distribution and requires a dedicated weekend to get up and running. The name implies that it's something that a beginner could sit down and startup with, but this is not the case. If you're looking for a simple install, stick with Mandrake/RedHat or something. If you have a few gigs to chew up and a weekend to burn, maybe give it a try.
Okay, maybe I'm confused over a few things here but I'm failing to see the point of this project?
WindowMaker has already been around for awhile and comes with it's own GNUstep like interface (or it is it's own GNUstep interface if you want to split hairs). If you don't like WindowMaker, then use AfterStep which again gives you the NeXT type interface (dock, clip, etc.). Either of these can be installed onto any Linux distro. You can install RedHat and get all the cool hardware detection with it and just don't install KDE/Gnome/etc. then grab the latest WindowMaker/AfterStep files and you have the same thing this is offering. So where's the magic?
Some of the features it's touting:
Uses the latest linux kernels and its latest features (ie: pure devfs, framebuffer)
Great, except according to some people here it has a lot of problems just installing. Besides, in a few weeks (or whenever the next update happens) the latest kernels will be out of date. You may as well just ftp your own kernels and compile them for your own system.
Graphical Boot-Up (no confusing Linux kernel messages)
Personally I like seeing the messages boot up so I know what sub-systems and modules are being loaded. If my sound module fails at least I know it.
Kept as simple as possible (no GNOME, no KDE, etc, just GNUstep)
Just install any linux distro without KDE/Gnome and slap on WindowMaker/AfterStep and you get the same thing right? So how is this a selling feature?
So we've already got this if you want it. Just go and grab whatever window manager suits your taste. If this is a move towards Mac OS X compatibility then great, but it seems like a very small step as there is a LOT of work ahead to even get something close to that.
Personally it just seems like a waste to bundle it with yet another copy of Linux. Separate it out (unless there's something special you're doing with the kernal) as a download so anyone can grab it in less than 10 minutes and let us decide which kernel to use for the base.
At the very least, toss up a few screenshots, make the download availalbe in a few formats and provide a little more information about what features this has or will have. What's the big picture and where is it leading?
It just seems so silly to keep playing these platform war games on and on. Today we basically have 3 major platforms. *nix, Windows and Mac. While there are cross platform tools for all (VirtualPC, VMWare, Basilisk, WINE) they're all trying to do the same thing. I want my mail client to run on (insert platform here) but I still want to play kick-ass games and they're only availalble on (insert platform here). ARGH!
I'm really getting sick of everyone trying to build the ultimate boat that can house every frikin' application ever made. Let's call a spade a spade and deal with reality folks. Let the user use the platform that is best for him. If he's a power user who doesn't mind there's not a lot of game support available, then pick Linux. If he needs to interoperate with other Windows boxes, choose it. If his software collection is full of Mac stuff, go for it. We're just continously shooting ourselves in the foot trying to mimic/emulate/whatever plaform a on platform b. And the results are never as good as the real thing. It's like asking VHS to play Beta tapes or something. What's the point?
True, I would like to have one single platform I can do everything on, but in all reality, I don't think that's ever going to happen. The WINE guys have done a bang-up job and deserve a huge amount of respect for what they've accomplished so far. And maybe some day WINE will run Windows based OpenGL or DirectX games perfectly, but until then, deal with the issue. I'm perfectly happy with running a dual boot setup here. This whole Lindows thing seems pretty silly. Standing on the laurels of others (WINE) and taking credit for an operating system they haven't built yet there they are claiming "Look at us, we're so innovative". So now we have Lindows doing it's thing, Transgamer doing another thing with DirectX games and WINE, WINE itself and god knows what other forks are being created everyday. Enough is enough.
"The MTV article says that NSYNC asked for the part; an article in a UK tabloid says Lucas asked them."
I read this a few days ago that the members of N'Sync were friends with Lucas' daughter and they they kept begging her for a part. Lucas' finally gave in but apparently they're only in the scene for a few seconds until they get blasted by battle droids.
I think this is a nice product, but XUnit is still more flexible in regression and repetition testing. First off, this requires Python and an interface to Python from your application. That's not something I want to add to my system just to do testing. XUnit has basically been ported to every known language out there and is integrated into the languge. Also the way that you specify tests is maintained in a database. In a team development environment, you now have to have the db engine installed in everyone's workspace. While the db and python approach might offer a few more options maintenance wise, it makes things more complicated than they have to. XUnit has proven itself to be an excellent means of testing so if this is something new to you, try it out first before leaping into other technologies. No db or external language needed. Just my 2c worth on a quiet Christmas eve.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually the scratch monkey is more realistic than urban legend and refers to an experiment that went horribly wrong at the U of T in the early 80's. The scrach monkey refers to the premise that you should not conduct tests while valuable monkeys are attached to a machine (test in an isolated environment).
t m
Here's the full story:
http://www.mv.com/ipusers/arcade/monkey.h
There's been a lot of vaccum based robots already out on the market, and reasonably priced. If you're interested, the Cye robot came out a year or two ago (http://www.personalrobots.com/home.html) and offered a vaccum attachement as well as open source software (under agreement) that mapped out rooms. It also returns to the charger for you. Maybe if these two companies put their heads together they might have something.
This is typical of having a large site, offering it for free, yada, yada, yada. Always happens and we've been seeing it happen for a few months now. Seeing it happen on Slashdot is just something that was going to happen as it will everywhere.
However there are two problems to the subscription gig. First there's a huge issue with page views vs page count vs whatever. I can configure my threshold and viewing preferences so that any story I want to read, and complete comments, shows in one pass saving me a page hit but we all know that by the time you get to the bottom of the page and reload it, they'll be 10-100 new comments added and this can go on for several hours (depending on how popular the subject is). Also pages like this one where I'm entering my comment and will preview it and then it gets added, do all those count? I think you guys clearly need to define what is and what isn't counted.
However I don't believe that charging by the page is reasonable for a site like this. You get 300,000+ users so asking for even 10% of them to pay means a return of about $600,000 a year. You've been spinning along for quite some time now without having anyone foot the bill so why is now any different? The gravy train has run out. OSDN execs are saying "We want to make some ROI on this Slashdot thing". And 600K a year can't pay for the hardware? I'm no expert and I don't have the numbers for this site, but I seriously doubt 600K a year wouldn't cover the hardware, bandwidth and staff costs.
liB
This drives me nuts. Everytime there's a flux in the economy, the RIAA uses it as a scapegoat to blame falling sales etc. etc. blah blah blah. Gimme a break.
"the study found that ownership of CD burners has nearly tripled since 1999"
Again with the analogy that more CD burners mean more piracy of songs. Again they fail to notice that the number of computers in the world is growing, operating systems and applications get larger, more people are backing up data to CD than before, etc. True, I think the number does contribute something but put it in perspective people.
"Global piracy on the physical side costs the recording industry over $4 billion* a year"
I still fail to see how anything except under-estimating production expenses or over-estimating demand will "cost" the recording industry money. So they're saying that $4 billion dollars worth of music *might* have been purchased instead of downloaded? Where do they get these numbers?
"DVD Video Continues Steady Increase"
Yeah, no shit. And DVD player sales continue to increase. Is piracy to blame because people can't rip DVDs very easily? So once DVD burners are the "in" thing, is the RIAA going to blame piracy on lower sales? No. DVDs will continue to flourish because more production companies are now seeing the need to create good quality and content DVDs. VHS sales are way down not due to piracy but to the fact that I'd rather spend my money on a DVD with commentary and extras than half that on just the movie. As more players get out there and more quality DVDs are released, the sales will increase. I don't need to be JoJo to figure that out. And yes, even when DVD burners outnumber CD burners, I predict that DVD sales will STILL increase each year (providing that studios don't stop making good content DVDs).
"Cassette Popularity Sharply Declines"
Oops. Guess we should blame piracy again here. Sales are down. Oh no! Sorry, just peeved at how they blame everything on piracy as usual, like how parents blame game companies on how they corrupt youth or something. When will the real players accept their own responsibilities. Silly, silly, silly.
liB
If you picked up the Matrix redux DVD, it contains a TON of material on the movie and previews of the upcoming ones.
On the site play the shockwave game and once you get through the various stages you're given a password to access the Matrix book preview (which they discuss on the DVD). The book contains tons of pics and stuff from the movies, the anime shorts, storyboards and other great stuff.
You can access the book preview URL directly here:v iew.html
http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/cmp/bookpre
Enjoy!
liB
An update at 14:28 EST on the site says:
A lot of e-mails have poured in from other sources and developers these past few hours. A call from an Microsoft employee also came in. The Japanese X-Box joypad should work with USA consoles. We'll confirm this tonight once our suppliers test the joypad with some USA games we shipped them earlier this week. If all is well, then our shipments of Japanese X-Box joypads won't go to waste after all.
liB
Unfortunately this rules out us Canadians (or anyone outside the States) to get this. The auction will only ship to residents of the U.S.
I wonder about two things on this. First, it's a beta version basically. The first public release so I'm assuming they're going to hound the people that do eventually buy them with questionaires, follow them with cameras and generally keep track of what they're doing with them and how they find them. From this very limited audience they'll head back to the labs and make some tweaks and perhaps in a year or so they'll be ready for full scale deployment. While I see it as a good publicity stunt, don't you think that 3 is a somewhat limited number to allow out. Something more like 100 would be more useful for statistical analysis. Unless they're just going to put them out and not bother following up with the buyers, which I doubt.
Second what about the liabilities and general use of this device? Governments and cities have yet to adopt any kind of urban renewal laws that the product first claimed would happen. There are no laws about riding it in public so is there any fallout from you knocking down someone (or more than likely, half killing yourself with it). Sure there's only 3 and maybe that is better than 100 out on the streets, but perhaps people are going to stare at this when it comes buzzing down the street like a deer in the headlights and not get out of the way. Should be fun to watch in any case.
liB
Recently I saw a review of Xerox working on electronic paper. Yes, it's been around for a few years and will still take a few more to be useable. The demo was for signage in a clothing store. Each 6"x9" piece would be "updated" via a wireless connection from a handheld device. The text on the paper instantly changed to a new price. Pretty good stuff all around.
So what does this have to do with Harry Potter and eBooks. I don't see eBooks surviving for the plain reason that I'm not going to sit at my desk, lug around a lap top or even squint at a palm top to read a book. Not only that but the storage involved for a full book isn't small potatoes on my 2mb Palm. Keeping around 100 novels that I could read at will isn't going to happen.
However, with some more advances in the technology I do see electronic paper as a substitue. By downloading the electronic book from Amazon.com then sending it to my electronic paper, I can now read it like it's a real book. The advantage is that a) it's lighter because it can be a single sheet that just flips between pages b) it can have some features like remembering where I left off or giving me a summary of the book to jump around in and c) it's cheap (or should be by the time the technology gets there) and I can carry it around and even buy a book at a real bookstore, except that they'll just beam a copy of Harry Potter X to my electronic paper instead of getting a disk or paper copy.
I still don't think this will ever replace the traditional kill-a-tree approach to publishing, but it might be more acceptable than a traditonal ebook.
liB
Learn to read what the post is about and what the product is. This is not from Microsoft not will it screw up Linux in any way. It's a bunch of C++ objects that look like Direct3D, but really OpenGL underneath. It's not MS APIs in the least since there is not COM component there and MS doesn't control anything. Get a life.
liB
This is not some kind of holy grail that everyone is looking for so stop it right now. OpenGL, which is a far better API IMO (and John Carmack thinks so too!) is and has always been the defacto standard portable API to code against. I will admit that recently with DX8, things got more in line with OpenGL and the D3D API is better than it was, but it's still COM based and completely not portable (among other problems). This product is just a wrapper to make COM look like C++ objects and underneath, make OpenGL calls.
So what does this give us? It does NOT give us a WINE implementation of being able to run DirectX apps. Yes, you could integrate the code into WINE but it's meant to wrap functions at the source level, not the executable level. It does give us a wrapper that DirectX code can, for the most part, compile against and product a working Linux/BeOS/Mac exectuable. So for the game developers it might mean their DirectX code will compile on other platforms, but any good game company would have abstracted out their graphics code so it would be API independant. That's what most of them do already and some do offer OpenGL/DirectX selection for rendering. Why they don't produce Linux versions of their apps if they can simply call OpenGL instead isn't clear, but that's their decision.
So are developers going to take DirectX code and compile against this to produce Linux OpenGL executables? I doubt it. Anyone who has coded their graphics sub-system directly against DirectX has probably coded other parts directly against the Windows API and if they haven't ported it to Linux already, they probably won't. Those that already have a clear decoupling of the graphics and the API don't need to and again, if they haven't ported they still won't for whatever reason (most likely support/business cases/etc)
On the flipside, I do applaud what these guys did as it is a big undertaking to wrap a system as big and complex as Direct3D so congrats and perhaps for the garage developer, it might be useful but to those people I say just code in OpenGL in the first place.
liB
The link to the actual timeline is here:
http://www.linuxgames.com/articles/lokitimeline/
liB
Hmmm... maybe the PlayStation will have enough horsepower to drive VMWare running under Linux with a guest operating system of Windows 98. Now all those Windows games will be available on the PlayStation? Well, we can dream can't we?
liB
I find it somewhat disturbing that in the year 2002, after we've put men on other planets, taken photos of galaxies millions of light years away and split the atom, we cannot determine the path of a plummeting object.
CNN (and other sources including NASA) are reporting a 9 hour window on when it could fall. With all the scientific minds and all the great algorithms we have, we can't determine when something like this will happen? Or is it that unimportant to bother getting out the slide rule and doing some calculations? And then there's where. A 1000 mile path that nobody seems to have any clue where it might land. We can't figure out a simple trajectory?
Doesn't this disturb anyone that chunks of metal up to 100lbs is going to be dropping on our heads shortly? True, the chances of getting hit are probably a billion to one, but they say that about lightning as well. Well, it'll be a fun light show and we can always hope it lands in Redmond or somewhere insignifigant.
liB
Is it just me or are these articles written by people that have a poor grasp of the English language? I can understand it comes out of China (or seems to indicate that) but I read the article "Making a Living with Free Software" and it seems to be a collection of one sentance paragraphs. Not to mention the fact that it doesn't even answer the original question. The article talks about writing free software, which I do on a regular basis (about 10 projects on the go right now), but never talks about making a living with it. It's a long diatribe about the freedom of writing free software and overusing the words "metaphor" and "freedom" way too much. There's no mention of how you can make a living off it (which isn't possible AFAIK). In any case, the magazine (and I'll use that term loosely) isn't really that impressive both visually or literally.
liB
Maybe I'm being a little harsh here but I thought the point of this operating system was to run Windows apps under Linux?
"Windows Media 7.1 doesn't install (it detects an unsupported operating system), Norton Anti Virus 2002 doesn't work, ICQ2001B installs perfectly but doesn't run, Windows Media 6.4 installs okay, even installs new codecs, but when it needs to start playing from the network it says that the address is not found."
Okay, I'll give you the fact that's its a beta product but remember this is a beta you have to pay for. I would expect it to be able to at least do something? It can't even install Internet Explorer. The review doesn't seem to mention any Windows app it can run. The issue of having to run everything as root is obviously scary. Let's say that if (and that's a big IF) you can run Outlook as your mail client then now that app has root access to your system. Not a very fuzzy feeling in my tummy over that.
So yes, a beta product that doesn't work very well. No surprise there. However compared to other Windows/Other-OS efforts like WINE for Linux and Odin for OS/2, this falls really short. Odin at least can run most Win32 apps and you can even run Visual C++ under it. That's pretty impressive. This isn't especially if I have to pay for it to try it out.
The whole Lindows thing is just another bad effort at diverting focus away from the real Linux underneath. With the recent demise of Loki and people turning to Transgamer, it will always be a Windows world, even if it looks like KDE on top.
liB
Even though this has been available since Oct, it's the first I've seen of it. I think it's a great resource. Long dead sites that are no longer there now can be found for historical purposes. The interesting thing is that the links on the page are also updated to link to the archived versions. What I found it useful for was building a history page of what my site looked like over the years. Lots of great uses for this so hope it stays up!
liB
I mean it. Stop milking a dead horse with geriatric sequals or puzzling over who to get to play Indy and get to work on the DVDs!
We've been waiting forever for these things and Harrison Ford isn't getting any younger. As well, his mind's not what it used to be and who can remember what happeneded 20 years ago in the middle of the Tunisia desert?
A nice 3 package DVD with full commentary, deleted scenes and a new documentary is greatly needed to keep things alive. What? You have enough time to put together a $60 million dollar sequal but not enough to sit down for a few hours and talk about your work Spielburg?? Sheesh...
liB
I've been collecting comics for over 20 years now. I also drew comics years ago when they were 75c for the book instead of the $5+ that you see now. Never mind that.
The existance of web comics (i.e. comics in some downloadable medium, say PDF) cannot co-exist with real comics without having diverse effects. If I can download a PDF of X-Men 118 for $1.50 then why is the original $25? Sure it's a collectable, but there's the rub. Let's say a few years/months off in the future Marvel decides to digitize it's entire line. Paper costs are too high and print runs are abolished. All comics are put online for you to download for a minimum fee. Of course now Marvel has a problem that they're not about to recoup any costs from comic shops for the printing since there is none. Sure it's cheap to distribute but now there are also 10,000 copies of it floating around on Morpheus and peoples websites. Where's the collectable value in that?
Personally I'd like to have my collection in digital form and maybe that's the alternative. Just scan the whole lot of them and stash the originals away until they're worth $10,000 on eBay. The collecting of comics is what is the focus. Sure the content is important to a certain extent, but look at the rush (and increase in value) when a John Byrne, Neal Adams or Michael Turner book goes up on the block. The book has some value and that value is meant to increase because of various things. Resale value, content, character, artist/writer, scarcity, etc. Now imagine again if all books (or even some of them) were in PDF format. There's no real sense in obtaining it except for just reading and admiring the artwork. Anyone can own a copy just by downloading it and wheres the fun in that? Then what happens at conventions when your favorite writer/artist is scheduled? You print off a copy at Kinkos and bring it in to be signed?
One thing is possible here. The expandibility of the comic book to an electronic medium. Remember when everyone bought VHS movies just to own them? Now everyone is buying DVD to get the extra content. Imagine if you could download your own PDF comic of X-Men and view it in pencil, ink, color or production mode? Maybe even have the pre-production sketches that went into the making of the comic. Now THAT would be something to own. Let's see the media extended rather than transferred.
Anyways, whatever business model a comic company thinks they can fit into cannot measure up to the collectable value of a true comic book. The online guys that are selling content are doing so because they don't live in the same universe Marvel, DC and others do and don't distribute millions of copies each week.
Just my 2c
liB
Okay, I'll admit. I was curious in looking at the clips. The screenshots looked interesting even if it was anime pr0n. I downloaded and watched the demo clip and frankly the animation isn't half bad. I used to work in animation and some of the movement isn't bad. There are some horrible parts, but for the most part (again, besides that it's pr0n) it's actually a half-decent effort.
Animation wise.
Sound wise. Well, that's a whole 'nuther story. The dialog is pathetic, the music equally worse and the sound effects are pretty much non-existant. If the filmmakers just turned their efforts in making a real anime short instead of this lame-ass ripoff then it would be something to be admired. Get a half decent sound engineer and some music to play that's appropriate and a decent script and they'll be laughing.
liB
I think this is an interesting idea but has a few flaws.
First they ask that your swap image be at least 1gb in size. I don't know about everyone else, but my linux partition is just 2gb so that's half of my disk already. I know, I know, these days everyone has 30, 40, and 60gb drives so it's not a big deal. Maybe it's just time for me to get more iron.
Anyways, the big feature this distro seems to be claiming is the automatic (and seamless updates). You can run this "sorcery update" command in a cron job at night and have a brand spanking new system the next morning. While this sounds like the cats meow, what if I don't want the latest and greatest? I personally don't to live on the bleeding edge and don't always want the lastest. Also, who decides what's the latest? The latest beta? Is it running the 2.4.17 kernel or something even newer? What version of KDE does it have?
It's also a huge distribution and requires a dedicated weekend to get up and running. The name implies that it's something that a beginner could sit down and startup with, but this is not the case. If you're looking for a simple install, stick with Mandrake/RedHat or something. If you have a few gigs to chew up and a weekend to burn, maybe give it a try.
liB
Okay, maybe I'm confused over a few things here but I'm failing to see the point of this project?
WindowMaker has already been around for awhile and comes with it's own GNUstep like interface (or it is it's own GNUstep interface if you want to split hairs). If you don't like WindowMaker, then use AfterStep which again gives you the NeXT type interface (dock, clip, etc.). Either of these can be installed onto any Linux distro. You can install RedHat and get all the cool hardware detection with it and just don't install KDE/Gnome/etc. then grab the latest WindowMaker/AfterStep files and you have the same thing this is offering. So where's the magic?
Some of the features it's touting:
Uses the latest linux kernels and its latest features (ie: pure devfs, framebuffer)
Great, except according to some people here it has a lot of problems just installing. Besides, in a few weeks (or whenever the next update happens) the latest kernels will be out of date. You may as well just ftp your own kernels and compile them for your own system.
Graphical Boot-Up (no confusing Linux kernel messages)
Personally I like seeing the messages boot up so I know what sub-systems and modules are being loaded. If my sound module fails at least I know it.
Kept as simple as possible (no GNOME, no KDE, etc, just GNUstep)
Just install any linux distro without KDE/Gnome and slap on WindowMaker/AfterStep and you get the same thing right? So how is this a selling feature?
So we've already got this if you want it. Just go and grab whatever window manager suits your taste. If this is a move towards Mac OS X compatibility then great, but it seems like a very small step as there is a LOT of work ahead to even get something close to that.
Personally it just seems like a waste to bundle it with yet another copy of Linux. Separate it out (unless there's something special you're doing with the kernal) as a download so anyone can grab it in less than 10 minutes and let us decide which kernel to use for the base.
At the very least, toss up a few screenshots, make the download availalbe in a few formats and provide a little more information about what features this has or will have. What's the big picture and where is it leading?
liB
It just seems so silly to keep playing these platform war games on and on. Today we basically have 3 major platforms. *nix, Windows and Mac. While there are cross platform tools for all (VirtualPC, VMWare, Basilisk, WINE) they're all trying to do the same thing. I want my mail client to run on (insert platform here) but I still want to play kick-ass games and they're only availalble on (insert platform here). ARGH!
I'm really getting sick of everyone trying to build the ultimate boat that can house every frikin' application ever made. Let's call a spade a spade and deal with reality folks. Let the user use the platform that is best for him. If he's a power user who doesn't mind there's not a lot of game support available, then pick Linux. If he needs to interoperate with other Windows boxes, choose it. If his software collection is full of Mac stuff, go for it. We're just continously shooting ourselves in the foot trying to mimic/emulate/whatever plaform a on platform b. And the results are never as good as the real thing. It's like asking VHS to play Beta tapes or something. What's the point?
True, I would like to have one single platform I can do everything on, but in all reality, I don't think that's ever going to happen. The WINE guys have done a bang-up job and deserve a huge amount of respect for what they've accomplished so far. And maybe some day WINE will run Windows based OpenGL or DirectX games perfectly, but until then, deal with the issue. I'm perfectly happy with running a dual boot setup here. This whole Lindows thing seems pretty silly. Standing on the laurels of others (WINE) and taking credit for an operating system they haven't built yet there they are claiming "Look at us, we're so innovative". So now we have Lindows doing it's thing, Transgamer doing another thing with DirectX games and WINE, WINE itself and god knows what other forks are being created everyday. Enough is enough.
Let Linux be Linux.
liB
"The MTV article says that NSYNC asked for the part; an article in a UK tabloid says Lucas asked them."
I read this a few days ago that the members of N'Sync were friends with Lucas' daughter and they they kept begging her for a part. Lucas' finally gave in but apparently they're only in the scene for a few seconds until they get blasted by battle droids.
liB
I think this is a nice product, but XUnit is still more flexible in regression and repetition testing. First off, this requires Python and an interface to Python from your application. That's not something I want to add to my system just to do testing. XUnit has basically been ported to every known language out there and is integrated into the languge. Also the way that you specify tests is maintained in a database. In a team development environment, you now have to have the db engine installed in everyone's workspace. While the db and python approach might offer a few more options maintenance wise, it makes things more complicated than they have to. XUnit has proven itself to be an excellent means of testing so if this is something new to you, try it out first before leaping into other technologies. No db or external language needed. Just my 2c worth on a quiet Christmas eve.
liB
I decided to go hunting for noteworthy appearances in Usenet history myself and found this posting:
7 .2 1.NEUMANN%40KL.SRI.COM
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1245494618
It's the first mention of Kevin Mitnick I can find (1986) but I know he was poking around before then. Anyone find anything earlier?
liB