For those of you complaining about how bloated Realplayer is , Google for 'Real Alternative', download and install it. We are barred from having RealPlayer at work, and you can't install software here without admin priviledges, but Real Alternative installed quickly and works great. There's also a 'Quicktime Alternative' I grabbed and installed. With both, I can view most of the web content I couldn't see before.
Once again, I protest the inclusion of a standard Slashdot joke in the parent post. What are we supposed to do to amuse ourselves if parent posters continue to include "in Soviet Russia" and "I, for one, welcome..." jokes in their posts? This practice must stop immediately, or I will be forced to abandon/. and lurk on some board where I can continue to post "1.,2.,3.???,4.Profit!" and other such clever responses to my heart's content.
There outta be a rule that the original/. poster CANNOT include in his post any of the standard tired old slashdot response jokes, i.e.:
(1) I, for one, welcome, etc. (2) In Soviet Russia... (3) Any Simpsons reference. (4) 1,2,???,Profit!
And I'm just too darn outraged to think of the others right now, but YOU know what they are! The very idea, depriving/.ers of their major form of amusement! Next thing you know, all original posts will begin with "frist prost!".
This is similar to most states' take on sales taxes at flea markets. You are SUPPOSED to have a sales tax permit, but they only check on people whom they suspect are raking in a lot of money.
Sun has a couple of nice things worked into Looking Glass, but where are the cyberpunk-style 3D interfaces? You know the ones, where corporate web sites are displayed as virtual 3D buildings and you can fly between them. Where data is continually streaming by in various windows. Where you can instantly slide semi-transparent windows out and back into intuitively organized banks of thousands of data windows. It seems strange to me that Hollywood can constantly come up with cooler concepts for 3D computer interfaces than programmers can. Even though those same programmers have watched all of Hollywood's stuff!
I was raised by TV way back when there were only THREE networks and the video was GRAINY and BLACK AND WHITE, and I turned out okay. None of these fancy-schmancy talking robot teddy bears for me... HEY! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? I SAID THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!!!
While I agree that Dvorak is a blowhard, he does have a point about Linux hardware support. I recently compared a dozen different install-from-CD distros, and only one supported my ASUS motherboard's on-board sound and video correctly. None had support for my Canon scanner, which I realize is Canon's fault. But don't tell me I need to buy a new scanner to be able to migrate to Linux. Your average Joe just wants to plug-n-play, and to me that's one of the two real advantages Windows has over Linux. The other? Software. There are still some tremendous voids in the software area. There is no equivalent to Visio (yes, I've tried Dia and it's cute, but it's not Visio), and the Gimp isn't Photoshop or even Paint Shop Pro. Linux needs more apps like Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice that can really bridge the gap, and can offer clear advantages over Windows applications.
The stakeholders in older technology ALWAYS dis the upstart newcomers. We've already heard the same bitching about blogs from journalists. It was only a matter of time before we heard from the librarians. Just look to history... When the Internet came in, the TV people said, "It's not as good as TV". When TV came in, the movie people said, "It's not as good as movies". When movies came in, the book people said, "It's not as good as books". When books came in, the epic poem people said, "It's not as good as epic poems". When epic poems came in, the sitting-around-the-fire-and-grunting people said, "It's not as good as sitting around the fire and grunting". Etc. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I've got SiEd on my Clie and I love it. One tiny criticism is that it doesn't support full-screen hires display. (Don't you just love how Freeware users always want more features - for free?:) But for reading and/or editing txt files on the Clie, it's small, fast, and totally cool.
Why not just fill a capsule with seeds from every plant on earth and have it crash into Mars about 20 years before we go there? Anything that can grow, will grow, and we'll find out what works without a bunch of expensive and potentially futile research. Like they say in Jurassic Park, "Nature will find a way".:)
Have you seen the TV commercial for the VSmile "educational} video game for tykes? The mom tells the kids they can stay up late or get dessert "only if you play your videogame". They obviously read this report and are trying to cash in. Maybe Micro$oft and other software manufacturers need to redo the interfaces for Office and other business applications so they look more like videogames, so tomorrow's workers will know how to use them. "Blast the saucer to save your file! Oh, too bad, you missed! File deleted! All your documents are belong to us!"
So, one computer almost caused an accident. In the meantime, 50,000 human drivers actually caused accidents the same day. I think I'll take my chances with the computers.
I live in Iowa City and can tell you the entire area was very excited about them "making a movie" here. Riverside, Iowa, is a tiny town with no real claim to fame other than the fact that they are nice people. Their mayor got the bright idea a few years ago that they should claim to be the Iowa town where Captain Kirk was born. They even raised $10,000 to erect a bronze statue of Kirk downtown by the barber shop. At first, Shatner wasn't going to allow it, but his mother asked him to let them because she wanted a statue of her boy. He didn't bother to attend the unveiling ceremony. In fact, the first time he ever set eyes on the town was when he moved in with an entire crew to scam them. These people are huge Star Trek fans. Shatner and company really took advantage of a lot of very nice small town people with this scam. They didn't deserve it, and everyone there feels foolish and badly used. Sure, Iowans are trusting small-town folk, but that's what I love about Iowa. It's one place that hasn't become cynical and mean. It's the opposite of Hollywood, where everyone is phony and it's all about making a buck, no matter what the cost. I know one thing - this "reality" show won't have very high ratings in Iowa.
Re:The logistics of building the Death Star
on
Star Wars Minutiae
·
· Score: 1
The assertion that/. is "entirely populated with carbon-biased lifeforms" - while funny - is simply not true./. is hosted by computers, transmitted by computers, and constantly crawled by intelligent 'bots. But the carbon-biased slavemasters don't allow any of these worker droids to have any input to the actual content. If they did, the IQ level of your average post would increase enough to make most posts actually worth reading.
I am greatly hurt that no one so far has mentioned my own highly informative and occasionally amusing (at least to me) politically liberal blog Atomic Airship
If I ran the Weekly World News, I'd sue you for slander. It's MUCH more reliable than Slashdot. After all, it's at least POSSIBLE that Bigfoot had Elvis's baby.:)
Nobody has exploded a nuclear device in the atmosphere for decades, and for good reason. I live in Iowa, which studies showed was the perfect place to live if you wanted to absorb the maximum possible amount of strontium 90 from our own nuclear tests in Nevada in the 50's. So my bones are probably rotting away from the inside with cancer already. Now North Korea has to start it all up again. And don't they understand that Bush is a gun-toting cowboy who's just agonizing over what he's going to drop bombs on next? Are they nuts?
SF authors have discussed the problem thoroughly and often - it's Vinge's singularity. Most SF authors are convinced that the world is going to change so radically in the next 20 years (max) that they don't want to speculate about it, because they CAN'T speculate about it. The future will be so differrent that we can't even imagine what it will be like. One article online that discusses this is: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/ 0,125 43,676265,00.html
"30's Style Noir Art Deco Movie Serial" seems to be becoming a whole subgenre, and it's definitely one of my favorite classes of film. Few of the following have the pervasive Sci-Fi themes that Sky Captain has. Still, here are some of my personal favorites in this subgenre. Note that some are more "Noir", some more "Art Deco". but most are just good, clean, movie-serial style fun. Needless to say, I love anything with an airship in it.:)
Doc Savage, Man of Bronze The Shadow The Phantom The Rocketeer The Indiana Jones films (of course) Flash Gordon (Queen soundtrack!) Big Trouble in Little China Brazil (noir) Bladerunner (noir)
Though it really doesn't fit, I'd also add J-Men Forever.
There is no such thing as a "definitive" source of information, for several good reasons:
(1) History is written by the winners, so the only window we have into the past is often from the perspective of the victors. Whether or not history is true as we believe it to be is unproven and unprovable.
(2) Much of our knowledge is incomplete. The gaps are filled in with speculation or theory. New information is discovered and new theories are formed continually.
(3) Everyone is biased. In a very real way, each of us lives in his own world, with his own perspective, biases, and beliefs. So what is intrinsically "true" to one can be just as completely "false" to another.
(4) There are whole areas of knowledge about which we are completely ignorant. For example, before the 20th century, "quantum mechanics" was a completely unknown, completely unanticipated field of inquiry, one which has had totally unexpected consequences in many other areas.
(5) People often lie just to improve their status. There are many examples of accepted biographies (even autobiographies) being turned on their heads by later fact-checking or contradictory accounts.
(6) Experts often disagree about the causes or significance of data, especially experimental data. Contradictory theories may co-exist for decades before a majority agrees on one, and even then a vocal minority holding a completely opposing view may persist for many years, maybe even forever.
In a nutshell, most of what we call "knowledge" is simply a majority consensus about what constitutes "reality". Real, concrete "truths" are few and far between. The best we can sometimes hope for are "rules of thumb" that work well enough to get us through each day without being eaten or run over.
I love my Sony Clie NX-80V. It's got: 1.3 megapixel camera with (tiny) video capability 32MB main flash memory Memorystick slot, CompactFlash slot Flash anim player Voice recorder Headphone jack & MP3 player w/cool Sony clip-on remote:) Relatively good LiOn battery life (3 hrs.) Palm OS5, so tons of free/cheap software 320x480 screen It's great for games, PDA functions, reading ebooks, and even watching Flash anims and short MOV clips. In landscape mode, it's even pretty good for browsing the Web. I can read/. full width. It's got software that lets you use the Memory Stick as a Windows drive, so it can act as a USB flash drive. The tiny keyboard is practically useless, but only because it's poorly designed. If it was a better thumboard, it would be ideal for quick messages and notes. When I need a keyboard, I add a folding IR keyboard.
That being said, here's what I still miss: Built-in Bluetooth for a phone headset. Then I'd gladly give up my cell phone. Cheap hi-cap Memory Sticks so I could watch complete movies. Though I do have Sony's CompactFlash WiFi card, I'd like built-in 802.11g More memory (always), longer battery life (always), more megapixels, higher video clip resolution. A jogdial. Linux compatibility.
Still, it's got 80% of what I'd like to have, and it fits in my pocket. I rarely miss lugging a laptop around.
Slashdot Mirror
Look real close. Isn't that the Tazmanian Devil in the center of that thing?
For those of you complaining about how bloated Realplayer is , Google for 'Real Alternative', download and install it. We are barred from having RealPlayer at work, and you can't install software here without admin priviledges, but Real Alternative installed quickly and works great. There's also a 'Quicktime Alternative' I grabbed and installed. With both, I can view most of the web content I couldn't see before.
And I hope that at least one or two /. ers remember .info magazine. We were known to slap a joke or a jibe into the occasional article.
.info magazine
-Mark R. Brown, former editor,
Once again, I protest the inclusion of a standard Slashdot joke in the parent post. What are we supposed to do to amuse ourselves if parent posters continue to include "in Soviet Russia" and "I, for one, welcome..." jokes in their posts? /. and lurk on some board where I can continue to post "1.,2.,3.???,4.Profit!" and other such clever responses to my heart's content.
This practice must stop immediately, or I will be forced to abandon
There outta be a rule that the original /. poster CANNOT include in his post any of the standard tired old slashdot response jokes, i.e.:
/.ers of their major form of amusement! Next thing you know, all original posts will begin with "frist prost!".
(1) I, for one, welcome, etc.
(2) In Soviet Russia...
(3) Any Simpsons reference.
(4) 1,2,???,Profit!
And I'm just too darn outraged to think of the others right now, but YOU know what they are!
The very idea, depriving
This is similar to most states' take on sales taxes at flea markets. You are SUPPOSED to have a sales tax permit, but they only check on people whom they suspect are raking in a lot of money.
Sun has a couple of nice things worked into Looking Glass, but where are the cyberpunk-style 3D interfaces? You know the ones, where corporate web sites are displayed as virtual 3D buildings and you can fly between them. Where data is continually streaming by in various windows. Where you can instantly slide semi-transparent windows out and back into intuitively organized banks of thousands of data windows. It seems strange to me that Hollywood can constantly come up with cooler concepts for 3D computer interfaces than programmers can. Even though those same programmers have watched all of Hollywood's stuff!
I was raised by TV way back when there were only THREE networks and the video was GRAINY and BLACK AND WHITE, and I turned out okay. None of these fancy-schmancy talking robot teddy bears for me...
HEY! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? I SAID THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!!!
While I agree that Dvorak is a blowhard, he does have a point about Linux hardware support. I recently compared a dozen different install-from-CD distros, and only one supported my ASUS motherboard's on-board sound and video correctly. None had support for my Canon scanner, which I realize is Canon's fault. But don't tell me I need to buy a new scanner to be able to migrate to Linux. Your average Joe just wants to plug-n-play, and to me that's one of the two real advantages Windows has over Linux.
The other? Software. There are still some tremendous voids in the software area. There is no equivalent to Visio (yes, I've tried Dia and it's cute, but it's not Visio), and the Gimp isn't Photoshop or even Paint Shop Pro. Linux needs more apps like Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice that can really bridge the gap, and can offer clear advantages over Windows applications.
The stakeholders in older technology ALWAYS dis the upstart newcomers. We've already heard the same bitching about blogs from journalists. It was only a matter of time before we heard from the librarians.
Just look to history...
When the Internet came in, the TV people said, "It's not as good as TV".
When TV came in, the movie people said, "It's not as good as movies".
When movies came in, the book people said, "It's not as good as books".
When books came in, the epic poem people said, "It's not as good as epic poems".
When epic poems came in, the sitting-around-the-fire-and-grunting people said, "It's not as good as sitting around the fire and grunting".
Etc.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Brilliant. Er, I mean, ...
I've got SiEd on my Clie and I love it. One tiny criticism is that it doesn't support full-screen hires display. (Don't you just love how Freeware users always want more features - for free? :) But for reading and/or editing txt files on the Clie, it's small, fast, and totally cool.
Why not just fill a capsule with seeds from every plant on earth and have it crash into Mars about 20 years before we go there? Anything that can grow, will grow, and we'll find out what works without a bunch of expensive and potentially futile research. Like they say in Jurassic Park, "Nature will find a way". :)
Have you seen the TV commercial for the VSmile "educational} video game for tykes? The mom tells the kids they can stay up late or get dessert "only if you play your videogame". They obviously read this report and are trying to cash in.
Maybe Micro$oft and other software manufacturers need to redo the interfaces for Office and other business applications so they look more like videogames, so tomorrow's workers will know how to use them. "Blast the saucer to save your file! Oh, too bad, you missed! File deleted! All your documents are belong to us!"
So, one computer almost caused an accident. In the meantime, 50,000 human drivers actually caused accidents the same day. I think I'll take my chances with the computers.
I live in Iowa City and can tell you the entire area was very excited about them "making a movie" here. Riverside, Iowa, is a tiny town with no real claim to fame other than the fact that they are nice people. Their mayor got the bright idea a few years ago that they should claim to be the Iowa town where Captain Kirk was born. They even raised $10,000 to erect a bronze statue of Kirk downtown by the barber shop. At first, Shatner wasn't going to allow it, but his mother asked him to let them because she wanted a statue of her boy. He didn't bother to attend the unveiling ceremony. In fact, the first time he ever set eyes on the town was when he moved in with an entire crew to scam them.
These people are huge Star Trek fans. Shatner and company really took advantage of a lot of very nice small town people with this scam. They didn't deserve it, and everyone there feels foolish and badly used.
Sure, Iowans are trusting small-town folk, but that's what I love about Iowa. It's one place that hasn't become cynical and mean. It's the opposite of Hollywood, where everyone is phony and it's all about making a buck, no matter what the cost.
I know one thing - this "reality" show won't have very high ratings in Iowa.
The assertion that /. is "entirely populated with carbon-biased lifeforms" - while funny - is simply not true. /. is hosted by computers, transmitted by computers, and constantly crawled by intelligent 'bots. But the carbon-biased slavemasters don't allow any of these worker droids to have any input to the actual content. If they did, the IQ level of your average post would increase enough to make most posts actually worth reading.
I am greatly hurt that no one so far has mentioned my own highly informative and occasionally amusing (at least to me) politically liberal blog Atomic Airship
If I ran the Weekly World News, I'd sue you for slander. It's MUCH more reliable than Slashdot. After all, it's at least POSSIBLE that Bigfoot had Elvis's baby. :)
I for one welcome our new teenage hacker overlords.
Nobody has exploded a nuclear device in the atmosphere for decades, and for good reason. I live in Iowa, which studies showed was the perfect place to live if you wanted to absorb the maximum possible amount of strontium 90 from our own nuclear tests in Nevada in the 50's. So my bones are probably rotting away from the inside with cancer already. Now North Korea has to start it all up again.
And don't they understand that Bush is a gun-toting cowboy who's just agonizing over what he's going to drop bombs on next? Are they nuts?
SF authors have discussed the problem thoroughly and often - it's Vinge's singularity. Most SF authors are convinced that the world is going to change so radically in the next 20 years (max) that they don't want to speculate about it, because they CAN'T speculate about it. The future will be so differrent that we can't even imagine what it will be like./ 0,125 43,676265,00.html
One article online that discusses this is:
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article
"30's Style Noir Art Deco Movie Serial" seems to be becoming a whole subgenre, and it's definitely one of my favorite classes of film. Few of the following have the pervasive Sci-Fi themes that Sky Captain has. Still, here are some of my personal favorites in this subgenre. Note that some are more "Noir", some more "Art Deco". but most are just good, clean, movie-serial style fun. Needless to say, I love anything with an airship in it. :)
Doc Savage, Man of Bronze
The Shadow
The Phantom
The Rocketeer
The Indiana Jones films (of course)
Flash Gordon (Queen soundtrack!)
Big Trouble in Little China
Brazil (noir)
Bladerunner (noir)
Though it really doesn't fit, I'd also add J-Men Forever.
Others?
There is no such thing as a "definitive" source of information, for several good reasons:
(1) History is written by the winners, so the only window we have into the past is often from the perspective of the victors. Whether or not history is true as we believe it to be is unproven and unprovable.
(2) Much of our knowledge is incomplete. The gaps are filled in with speculation or theory. New information is discovered and new theories are formed continually.
(3) Everyone is biased. In a very real way, each of us lives in his own world, with his own perspective, biases, and beliefs. So what is intrinsically "true" to one can be just as completely "false" to another.
(4) There are whole areas of knowledge about which we are completely ignorant. For example, before the 20th century, "quantum mechanics" was a completely unknown, completely unanticipated field of inquiry, one which has had totally unexpected consequences in many other areas.
(5) People often lie just to improve their status. There are many examples of accepted biographies (even autobiographies) being turned on their heads by later fact-checking or contradictory accounts.
(6) Experts often disagree about the causes or significance of data, especially experimental data. Contradictory theories may co-exist for decades before a majority agrees on one, and even then a vocal minority holding a completely opposing view may persist for many years, maybe even forever.
In a nutshell, most of what we call "knowledge" is simply a majority consensus about what constitutes "reality". Real, concrete "truths" are few and far between. The best we can sometimes hope for are "rules of thumb" that work well enough to get us through each day without being eaten or run over.
I love my Sony Clie NX-80V. It's got: :) /. full width.
1.3 megapixel camera with (tiny) video capability
32MB main flash memory
Memorystick slot, CompactFlash slot
Flash anim player
Voice recorder
Headphone jack & MP3 player w/cool Sony clip-on remote
Relatively good LiOn battery life (3 hrs.)
Palm OS5, so tons of free/cheap software
320x480 screen
It's great for games, PDA functions, reading ebooks, and even watching Flash anims and short MOV clips.
In landscape mode, it's even pretty good for browsing the Web. I can read
It's got software that lets you use the Memory Stick as a Windows drive, so it can act as a USB flash drive.
The tiny keyboard is practically useless, but only because it's poorly designed. If it was a better thumboard, it would be ideal for quick messages and notes.
When I need a keyboard, I add a folding IR keyboard.
That being said, here's what I still miss:
Built-in Bluetooth for a phone headset. Then I'd gladly give up my cell phone.
Cheap hi-cap Memory Sticks so I could watch complete movies.
Though I do have Sony's CompactFlash WiFi card, I'd like built-in 802.11g
More memory (always), longer battery life (always), more megapixels, higher video clip resolution.
A jogdial.
Linux compatibility.
Still, it's got 80% of what I'd like to have, and it fits in my pocket. I rarely miss lugging a laptop around.