The article spent quite a bit of time on Microsoft's work on public preception, but there's almost no emphasis on the work Microsoft is doing to educate (subvert) the U.S. and other governments around to their way of thinking.
While I don't hold much hope of the antitrust trial helping to solve this problem one way or the other, what really can help this problem is if some of the larger linux shops... ARE YOU LISTENING, IBM?!?... will start dropping the Benjamins around Washington just like Microsoft's lobbies have been doing.
This is also a great opportunity to encourage the countries that are considering open source initiatives with promotions, recognition, and cooperative deals. It's also a great time to start building bonuses for international companies who use Linux and open-source software.
Think about all those Internet cafes in Mexico and Eastern Europe that use Linux and Star Office rather than trying to pirate MS Office. Wouldn't it be wonderful mindshare to maybe drop a few late-model or promo PC's on these guys to help speed adoption?
This is not going to be a hard thing to accomplish because no one company or individual will be the driving factor. It does need some big names to happen, however. Maybe if VA Linux ever comes out of Chapter 11, they can start doing some lobby work, maybe?
Freenet is doing some really amazing things along the lines of creating an alternate network of information that evades censorship and promotes personal anonymity and security. What it's not doing is finding ways for that network to be faster, both in terms of execution speed and adoption.
Mod me down for posting as a troll, but I'd much rather Freenet run as an optimized executable rather than Java classes. While Java proponents go on and on about how fast Java can be under the right circumstances, the overhead in terms of processor cycles and RAM required to run an app like Freenet on top of a JVM is still pretty staggering.
Of course the real bottleneck is the P2P aspect of the application itself. The current key system has no hope of ever being seriously adopted by the mainstream and an upload/propogation of a smallish webpage with a single on Freeweb ran about 35 hours over my cable connection.
Are we seriously considering adding SQL calls to this morass? C'mon guys. Work on basic functionality like increased key-search speeds and simplifying the key system for grandma to use before you start adding additional features.
I currently work as a networking professional at a growing financial institution, but before I worked at an ISP in texas. I spent quite a while in the support room.
Like any support department, it was fairly dead-end. You either learned-out or burned out. Despite this fact, life was fairly problematic in our particular department.
We had a saying that we were the red-headed bastard children of the organization. This was because we were at the bottom of the barrell. We always got the hand-me-down PC's, poorest, least usable office furniture, and what 'comfort' equipment such as microwave ovens, coffee machines and such from the other office that was broken, and could be 'written off' before we jury-rigged it back into operation.
We made less than the receptionist and the phone-billing jockies despite the fact that we could do their jobs but there was no way in hell they could do ours. We frequently did odd-job coding and repair work for the entire company, yet the head bean-counter repeated suggested eliminating our department and out-sourcing support because we generated no revenue. Our meager wages were a black hole of finance that made the company's bottom line look bad.
What the accountant didn't realize and what the company apparently still doesn't realize can be found with a simple 'like' query on the support-tracking database. Why do most customers sign up for our ISP service? We have superior support. Why do most customers quit our service for another ISP? They felt like they got poor tech support.
What you discover working in tech support for an ISP, is that you are the only real difference between your ISP and others. What our manager knew and what we knew was that there was a correspondance between customer churn-rate and how happy the support staff was. The week that our gaming privaleges were revoked, we lost more customers than the week we got them back. Of course our personal problems weren't supposed to carry over ot the phones, but mood does indeed matter. If we got more ram or newer processors, and could open unfamiliar applications more quickly, our customers felt like they were getting faster, better treatment.
One of our most successful techs was the guy who regularly brought his own cherried-out PC to work to play games. He did all his support work on his own box, and was able to do it quicker, better, and usually made the customer happier than when the rest of us tried to do the same thing on our hand-me-downs.
The bottom line is that you can't afford not to have a quality support department, and that means keeping your support staff happy. That doesn't necessarily mean allowing gaming at work, but it does mean new machines, comfortable office furniture and nice accoutrements such as a refigerator, coffee-bar, and a kitchen of some sort. Don't spoil your support staff, but they're just like the transmission in your car. Sure, it's the engine that does all of the work, but you'll be sorry when your gearbox goes out. Treat it well, and it will treat you well.
Several moments of weightlessness... Worth it?
on
To the Moon, Alice
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· Score: 5
Momentum will carry Walker and his capsule up to 32 miles, where he will experience several moments of weightlessness and then begin to fall back toward Earth.
Reporter: Since you've miraculously survived your voyage in Earthstar 1, we'd like to ask a few questions. Looking back on your project, what would you have done differently and what will you do differently when and if you try again.
Walker: (In a body cast) I think I'm going to spend a less time concentrating on those few moments of weightlessness and a little more time packing some reentry parachutes.
Hmm... Nope. I don't see it in the old testament anywhere. There's no evidence that it's unethical. Even despite the fact that these kiddos now have a better (Unfair) chance of having their own kiddos one day, I don't see how it is in any way unethical.
Now 'Stupid' is another matter altogether. Think about it for a second. Haven't the vast majority of gene scientists come forth to agree with the fact that the complexity of the human genome lies not in the number of genes that exist, but in the way they interact?
Who's to say that having an extra set of Mitochondrial DNA won't snafu those interactions somehow? Yeah, it's nice to think "Hey, that's where the problem is, so why don't we replace those parts", but where the hell is the animal testing to see what happens when baby mice and rhesus monkeys have too many Mitochondria? I see no references to the research in the (very sensational) BBC article.
Also, there's the fact of 'Natural Selection' to consider. Something is wrong with those genes if they're not being passed on. Now these kids have a set of 'bad' Mitochondrial DNA along with their 'good' M-DNA. That gets passed on to their kids, and so on. What other problems are lurking in that 'bad' DNA along with infertility? A tendancy toward cancer? Schizophrenic or psychotic behavior? Yeah, it's harsh to say that you can't reproduce because you got damaged genes, but hey, You're genes are damaged! Are you really sure you want to give those to your kids anyway?
There are a *lot* of really good options for people who want kids but can't have them. It is more difficult to adopt than it is to just have a child, but there are millions of homeless children all around the world.
Rather than making it easier for people with bad genes to have children, why don't we concentrate on streamlining the adoption process and make it easier for people to adopt children from underprivaleged nations around the world? Let's have social justice before we start muckign around in the old gene-code there, pals.
Hmmm... I can set set up my web server in CA or TX and be subject to all sorts of corporate and government bully boy tactics, or I can pay slightly more and set up a hosting deal in Copenhagen and be protected under their favorable sharing laws. I can put up all my favorite MP3's up on my website or share them via a shell account, and fear little or no reprecussion.
Hmmm... I think I'll setup in Texas... NOT!
When Perl moves at the speed of Java
on
Apocalypse 2
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· Score: 2
Please, Larry, just don't make us set up virtual machines and class paths to make use of all the new OO junk that is creeping into Perl.
I think is what Mundie is trying to announce. Of course their 'Shared Source' is a load of crap, but I get the hint that Microsoft is truly starting to realize that a lot of their potential developer base gets more serious systems development done with OSS tools and libraries. They're trying to treat the Open Source philosiphy the same way they treated Java. Embrace Open Source and 'fix' it, until it benefits Microsoft.
Doesn't matter how good a console is if it has no games . ..
While I agree that Microsoft is (once again) using their monopoly power to leverage games, it's worth noting that there's really no way to say which title is going to be big and which isn't.
For example, Daikatana was supposed to be super-big, and fell flatter than John Romero's ego. If Microsoft had done the same thing here, they would have been stuck with an incredible bomb while everyone was playing the 'Sleeper' titles that they missed.
Sure, you can accuse them of cashing in on name recognition, but the truth of the matter is that movie-based video games tend to do very poorly, with the notable exception of Starwars stuff. Some of the Trek stuff does okay, too, but M$ was in bed with Paramount quite a while before any of the Trek games hit the shelf.
Long and short is the fact marketroids have the intelligence of sea slugs and just because someone *says* something's going to be a hit, and even if they license it, it just ain't so.
Morpheus: It's a prison for your mind. You can see it all around you. It's there when you go to church or pay your taxes.
Neo: But what is it, really? When you get right down to it.
Morpheus: No one can be told what the matrix is, but I can tell you this: You see that little paperclip guy?
Neo: Yeah...
Morphus: Part of the matrix. That annoying sound you get when you start your computer? Also part of the matrix. That smiling guy who asks 'Where do you want to go today?"
Neo: (gulps, realizing the severity of Morpheus's words.)
How do lines 20000 through 20025 of say Microsoft Word 2000 express something?
You might as well ask if pages 50-75 of 'War and Peace' express anything. Sure, there are a few random ideas in those few pages, but nothing concrete. Nothing you can base an ideologcial argument on, but if you read the whole of 'War and Peace', it's an entirely different matter.
Same thing for MSWord. What's the point, plot and climax, you ask? "Bill beleives that Word is the best, nay *only*, word processing program you'll ever need. It's chock full of features and paperclips to help you through your busy workday and if you don't agree with us, well ALL YOUR WORD PROCESSOR ARE BELONG TO MICROSOFT!!!!"
Turn that around and apply it to DeCSS. What was young Jon's point when he wrote the code?
Perhaps it went something like this:
"Damn, I wish I could watch DVD's under Linux. This is such a pain in the but because Linux doesn't even understand the filesystem. Because I've got some mad haXXor skeelz, however, I *will* watch my DVD's under Linux, even though I have to circumvent both Linux's inability to read DVDfs and this really crappy layer of encryption that doesn't really do anything."
Breathily, the blue giant star leaned over the black hole, his eyes locked upon her event horizon. She stared lovingly into his corona as he began to caress her singularity with strong, hot tendrils of superheated gas and waves of intense gravity. With a grin of pleasure, he reached back and whipped her with his accreting mass.
"Please," the black hole whispered, letting the supergiant know she was ready for his super-dense mass and fusion-powered passion.
They began slowly, but quickly worked up to almost 27,000 revolutions per minute. After just a short while, she began to flash her x-rays in unsteady spasms of delight and joy. She twisted the fabric of space-time beneath her in ecstacy...
Suddenly, she realized that the blue supergiant had gone.
"Hello?" she cried out. "Where did you go? Damn it! I lose more stars that way..."
I've been thinking about this, and I beleive that one should seriously consider the benifits to this software before installing:
Let's do the math, shall we?
- Linux itself is free, depending on how you got your distribution. If you downloaded it, or got it from a friend, then yes, it didn't cost you anything. Otherwise, you paid a nominal fee for manuals and packaging from one of the for-profit vendors. I've seen these run anywhere from $7 - $75, depending on what you get.
- Windows is not free, but a Windows 2000 Professional license costs about $200. I think that's an upgrade fee. This may become quite a bit more expensive with the.Net-style leasing program that Microsoft wants to introduce.
- SBS is almost certainly *not* free, if I know IBM. Even if it is free, they'll have to make it free for all platforms since you can't really realease source without expecting ports.
- A Linux server takes some time and effort to learn to use and administer. It's designed for developers and people who value control and power over ease of use. RPM and apt-get have made installations a little easier, but still difficult when you compare them to...
- A Windows box, which takes very little time to learn to use and administer. Installshield installations are uniformly bad, but rarely go wrong and trash a system or application due to user error.
- Many business owners, when faced with the task of maintaining a computer system for the first time, would likely have to hire a Linux system adminsitrator for $30k-80k a year for even a single Linux system.
- This probably would not be the case with a Windows system. Even MSSQL server has a default installshield installation which makes it usuable by most off-the-shelf applications which require database connectivity. Here, I'm thinking about the basic helpdesk and inventory packages I've seen. Trackit-Pro and McCafee helpdesk both install on default MSSQL installations if I'm not mistaken.
It looks like our Windows-based small business may pay more initially for a small-business type solution, but probably won't have as high a total cost of ownership as our Linux-based small business, assuming low, but equal knowledge of computer systems and operating-systems.
Assuming that our entrepeneur is also a Linux hacker, he could probably make this work, but the bottom line here is that most small business owners will probably have an easier and less expensive time in the long run if they set up Windows-based systems.
This boils down to the fact that most Linux distributions are still geared toward development purposes while Microsoft has been busy making sure that the business world gets what they need and want from Redmond.
There's an episode of the Pretty Sammy (an anime based loosely on Tenchi Muyou) in which Sammy and Tenchi fight Biff Standard, a man who dreams of installing his Standard OS on every PC in the world.
Tenchi becomes a hunted criminal and purchases a stolen copy of 'Bannana OS', which has some great multimedia features and can run his mother's kareoke program.
Sammy battles with Pixy Misa, who helps Biff to install his 'Standard OS' on every computer in Shinjuku. Sammy wins, destroying Biff Standard's giant robot of standardization, but Biff just gets up again afterwards and starts selling his OS again.
The moral of the story: If even super-powered magical girls can't stop Microsoft, then the DOJ doesn't stand a chance.
Yesterday, I was rather dissapointed to read the story and had already fixed the researchers in my mind as having 'knuckled under' and ready to debase themselves in favor of the RIAA and their megabucks.
When I read the story today, I realized that the system *does* work for those who know how to use and abuse it. I think it's still quite a tossup as to wether anything will actually come of this, but it's nice to see that the bowing down on the part of the researcher was a tactic and nothing more.
Keep fighting the good fight, guys!
Wasn't there an article just yesterday about a new litho technology that allowed chipmakers to etch on the molocule-size scale?
Faster transistors may give you a few more FpS in the FPS of your choice (I made a funny!) but Nanotube-transistors have a much greater application than speeding up existing technology. This kind of logic device can be used in small and nano-sized robots, increasing the range of tasks they can do and making them more controllable.
Ultimately, this is going to be the kind of advance we site as making the artery-scraper nanites and nerve-tissue replacements possible. Don't limit yourselves to thinking *solely* about data processing when new logic devices come along.
That hospital is focusing on clinical applications, like superimposing information about a patient, including vital signs and medical images, onto a surgeon's field of view.
Boy howdy... From what I know, nerve fibers were about the same thickness as human hair, right? Especially in tight places like the hands. It also seems like there are any number of delicate blood vessles, nerve tissues, tendons, etc, that would be about the same size as an 800x600 pixel. I don't know about you, but I would much rather my doctor get a possibly distracting earful of my vital signs if my chest is hanging open than have them superimposed over the top of my delicate internals.
Okay, this rocks. Assuming Sony will get this out in multilingual formats, this will *really* help speed acceptance and build an incredible amature developer base for new games and apps.
Nintendo currently requires you to buy or lease an expensive (bigger than my yearly salary) SGI-based development kit. Playstation 1 requires you to buy a $2k PCI card for a PC. (Last I heard. It may have come down quite a bit) Microsoft's going to let you develop on a PC, but let's be honest here. How many developers have the best 3D gaming platform money can buy?
Letting users run linux and a HDD *on* a PS2, however, means that entriprising hackers can start building games and/or other apps. What's *really* great about this is the fact that quite a few of these new apps are going to be written for the X environment on the Linux kit. It seems to me like that would make it an easy port to GTK, etc...
Ohayou gozaimasu, our Nihonjin friends. How about some prelim reports on the functionality once you get your hands on these guys?
Well, I wanted to talk about personality rather than productivity, but you have a valid point here. There was only one Einstein. There is only one Hawking. Before you are gone, you will see at least a dozen Britney Spears and NSYNC. Actually, these two aren't the first in the queue. Let's go back and Talk about Tiffany and New Kids on the Block if we're going to talk about corporate clones.
The fact that most scientists are snooty, eletist bastards who have incredible opinions of themselves and most musicians with contracts have been taught from line one that they would be nothing without their distributors and agents and should never question the wisdom of large corporations.
Now, the scientists in our audience shouldn't take this as a flame because it's precisely the reason why they can pull off a boycott of their 'distributors' and make it work while all the artists, musicians and singers can't quite manage.
So, a honeynet is just like any other firewall protected network, except for the fact that people are actually paying attention to network security?
While I don't think I agree with the effectiveness of a 'dedicated' honeynet over any other real network, this does bring to light the interesting effect this will have on network security in general. Right now, l33t k1dd3z have a 'you can't catch me' attitude. Witness the recent exploits of a Welsh hacker who thought that he was so far above the law that he could do what he wanted to any website he wanted in the name of his own little sense of morality.
Most of these kids *know*, not just think, that they are never going to be caught.
As more and more business and organizatons employ honeypots and 'honeynets', trying to catch crackers before they crack, more and more cases of idiots like these are going to get in trouble for breaking the law. Rooting a server is going to be seen less and less like fairly innocent grafitti and more and more like knocking over a convenience store and beating up the clerk, and then walking out with only a slushee. People will still do it, but attacks will be fewer and further between, and the people who get cracked will be those who've invited it by not putting up the equivalents of bullet-proof glass and panic alarms.
Why should my wife and I have 2 PC's at home when 1 has all the processing power we need?
You mean you don't want to play games at all? Oh wait, you're on Mac... forget I said anything.
Seriously, if you're going to use your OSX system for networking and development, there probably isn't any reason you should not divvy up your system as stated. The technical challenge here is that I dont think Mac Finder will do it. You'll have to figure out how to get X to run separate window managers on different monitors and have each instance talk to different keyboards and mice on the USB bus. Hard, but probably not impossible.
If you're planning on *ever* using *any* of MacOS's multimedia features, forget about it. Save yourself the headache and go buy two computers. You'll never get the multimedia performance you should if your computer is busy running two desktops.
After downloading and playing with this for an hour or so, I can vouch that it's heads and above the complexity required to use Freenet. Unfortuneately, it's still far, *far* too complex for the 'average user' to use, which IMHO, will limit it from becoming as popular as Napster or even Gnutella. At one point, the instructions for setting up the publisher app requests the user to make sure that settings match an INI file in the freenet installation folder. Another point instructs the user to change their browser proxy settings.
While it can be argued that this is a good 'moron filter', I know plenty of artists, writers, and activists with little or no computer skills who bought a computer so that they could use Frontpage or a similiar tool to publish their websites and share their thoughts. It seems like these are the people that Freenet *should* best serve to keep their identities secret and thoughts alive. Unfortuneately, the Freeweb apps are still so complex that I don't think anyone but a developer/hacker could use it.
Slashdot Mirror
The article spent quite a bit of time on Microsoft's work on public preception, but there's almost no emphasis on the work Microsoft is doing to educate (subvert) the U.S. and other governments around to their way of thinking.
While I don't hold much hope of the antitrust trial helping to solve this problem one way or the other, what really can help this problem is if some of the larger linux shops... ARE YOU LISTENING, IBM?!?... will start dropping the Benjamins around Washington just like Microsoft's lobbies have been doing.
This is also a great opportunity to encourage the countries that are considering open source initiatives with promotions, recognition, and cooperative deals. It's also a great time to start building bonuses for international companies who use Linux and open-source software.
Think about all those Internet cafes in Mexico and Eastern Europe that use Linux and Star Office rather than trying to pirate MS Office. Wouldn't it be wonderful mindshare to maybe drop a few late-model or promo PC's on these guys to help speed adoption?
This is not going to be a hard thing to accomplish because no one company or individual will be the driving factor. It does need some big names to happen, however. Maybe if VA Linux ever comes out of Chapter 11, they can start doing some lobby work, maybe?
Freenet is doing some really amazing things along the lines of creating an alternate network of information that evades censorship and promotes personal anonymity and security. What it's not doing is finding ways for that network to be faster, both in terms of execution speed and adoption. Mod me down for posting as a troll, but I'd much rather Freenet run as an optimized executable rather than Java classes. While Java proponents go on and on about how fast Java can be under the right circumstances, the overhead in terms of processor cycles and RAM required to run an app like Freenet on top of a JVM is still pretty staggering. Of course the real bottleneck is the P2P aspect of the application itself. The current key system has no hope of ever being seriously adopted by the mainstream and an upload/propogation of a smallish webpage with a single on Freeweb ran about 35 hours over my cable connection. Are we seriously considering adding SQL calls to this morass? C'mon guys. Work on basic functionality like increased key-search speeds and simplifying the key system for grandma to use before you start adding additional features.
I currently work as a networking professional at a growing financial institution, but before I worked at an ISP in texas. I spent quite a while in the support room.
Like any support department, it was fairly dead-end. You either learned-out or burned out. Despite this fact, life was fairly problematic in our particular department.
We had a saying that we were the red-headed bastard children of the organization. This was because we were at the bottom of the barrell. We always got the hand-me-down PC's, poorest, least usable office furniture, and what 'comfort' equipment such as microwave ovens, coffee machines and such from the other office that was broken, and could be 'written off' before we jury-rigged it back into operation.
We made less than the receptionist and the phone-billing jockies despite the fact that we could do their jobs but there was no way in hell they could do ours. We frequently did odd-job coding and repair work for the entire company, yet the head bean-counter repeated suggested eliminating our department and out-sourcing support because we generated no revenue. Our meager wages were a black hole of finance that made the company's bottom line look bad.
What the accountant didn't realize and what the company apparently still doesn't realize can be found with a simple 'like' query on the support-tracking database. Why do most customers sign up for our ISP service? We have superior support. Why do most customers quit our service for another ISP? They felt like they got poor tech support.
What you discover working in tech support for an ISP, is that you are the only real difference between your ISP and others. What our manager knew and what we knew was that there was a correspondance between customer churn-rate and how happy the support staff was. The week that our gaming privaleges were revoked, we lost more customers than the week we got them back. Of course our personal problems weren't supposed to carry over ot the phones, but mood does indeed matter. If we got more ram or newer processors, and could open unfamiliar applications more quickly, our customers felt like they were getting faster, better treatment.
One of our most successful techs was the guy who regularly brought his own cherried-out PC to work to play games. He did all his support work on his own box, and was able to do it quicker, better, and usually made the customer happier than when the rest of us tried to do the same thing on our hand-me-downs.
The bottom line is that you can't afford not to have a quality support department, and that means keeping your support staff happy. That doesn't necessarily mean allowing gaming at work, but it does mean new machines, comfortable office furniture and nice accoutrements such as a refigerator, coffee-bar, and a kitchen of some sort. Don't spoil your support staff, but they're just like the transmission in your car. Sure, it's the engine that does all of the work, but you'll be sorry when your gearbox goes out. Treat it well, and it will treat you well.
Momentum will carry Walker and his capsule up to 32 miles, where he will experience several moments of weightlessness and then begin to fall back toward Earth.
Reporter: Since you've miraculously survived your voyage in Earthstar 1, we'd like to ask a few questions. Looking back on your project, what would you have done differently and what will you do differently when and if you try again.
Walker: (In a body cast) I think I'm going to spend a less time concentrating on those few moments of weightlessness and a little more time packing some reentry parachutes.
Hmm... Nope. I don't see it in the old testament anywhere. There's no evidence that it's unethical. Even despite the fact that these kiddos now have a better (Unfair) chance of having their own kiddos one day, I don't see how it is in any way unethical.
Now 'Stupid' is another matter altogether. Think about it for a second. Haven't the vast majority of gene scientists come forth to agree with the fact that the complexity of the human genome lies not in the number of genes that exist, but in the way they interact?
Who's to say that having an extra set of Mitochondrial DNA won't snafu those interactions somehow? Yeah, it's nice to think "Hey, that's where the problem is, so why don't we replace those parts", but where the hell is the animal testing to see what happens when baby mice and rhesus monkeys have too many Mitochondria? I see no references to the research in the (very sensational) BBC article.
Also, there's the fact of 'Natural Selection' to consider. Something is wrong with those genes if they're not being passed on. Now these kids have a set of 'bad' Mitochondrial DNA along with their 'good' M-DNA. That gets passed on to their kids, and so on. What other problems are lurking in that 'bad' DNA along with infertility? A tendancy toward cancer? Schizophrenic or psychotic behavior? Yeah, it's harsh to say that you can't reproduce because you got damaged genes, but hey, You're genes are damaged! Are you really sure you want to give those to your kids anyway?
There are a *lot* of really good options for people who want kids but can't have them. It is more difficult to adopt than it is to just have a child, but there are millions of homeless children all around the world.
Rather than making it easier for people with bad genes to have children, why don't we concentrate on streamlining the adoption process and make it easier for people to adopt children from underprivaleged nations around the world? Let's have social justice before we start muckign around in the old gene-code there, pals.
Hmmm... I can set set up my web server in CA or TX and be subject to all sorts of corporate and government bully boy tactics, or I can pay slightly more and set up a hosting deal in Copenhagen and be protected under their favorable sharing laws. I can put up all my favorite MP3's up on my website or share them via a shell account, and fear little or no reprecussion.
Hmmm... I think I'll setup in Texas... NOT!
Please, Larry, just don't make us set up virtual machines and class paths to make use of all the new OO junk that is creeping into Perl.
I think is what Mundie is trying to announce. Of course their 'Shared Source' is a load of crap, but I get the hint that Microsoft is truly starting to realize that a lot of their potential developer base gets more serious systems development done with OSS tools and libraries. They're trying to treat the Open Source philosiphy the same way they treated Java. Embrace Open Source and 'fix' it, until it benefits Microsoft.
Doesn't matter how good a console is if it has no games . . .
While I agree that Microsoft is (once again) using their monopoly power to leverage games, it's worth noting that there's really no way to say which title is going to be big and which isn't.
For example, Daikatana was supposed to be super-big, and fell flatter than John Romero's ego. If Microsoft had done the same thing here, they would have been stuck with an incredible bomb while everyone was playing the 'Sleeper' titles that they missed.
Sure, you can accuse them of cashing in on name recognition, but the truth of the matter is that movie-based video games tend to do very poorly, with the notable exception of Starwars stuff. Some of the Trek stuff does okay, too, but M$ was in bed with Paramount quite a while before any of the Trek games hit the shelf.
Long and short is the fact marketroids have the intelligence of sea slugs and just because someone *says* something's going to be a hit, and even if they license it, it just ain't so.
Morpheus: It's a prison for your mind. You can see it all around you. It's there when you go to church or pay your taxes.
Neo: But what is it, really? When you get right down to it.
Morpheus: No one can be told what the matrix is, but I can tell you this: You see that little paperclip guy?
Neo: Yeah...
Morphus: Part of the matrix. That annoying sound you get when you start your computer? Also part of the matrix. That smiling guy who asks 'Where do you want to go today?"
Neo: (gulps, realizing the severity of Morpheus's words.)
Read the article here, which is surprisingly accurate and non-biased.
How do lines 20000 through 20025 of say Microsoft Word 2000 express something?
You might as well ask if pages 50-75 of 'War and Peace' express anything. Sure, there are a few random ideas in those few pages, but nothing concrete. Nothing you can base an ideologcial argument on, but if you read the whole of 'War and Peace', it's an entirely different matter.
Same thing for MSWord. What's the point, plot and climax, you ask? "Bill beleives that Word is the best, nay *only*, word processing program you'll ever need. It's chock full of features and paperclips to help you through your busy workday and if you don't agree with us, well ALL YOUR WORD PROCESSOR ARE BELONG TO MICROSOFT!!!!"
Turn that around and apply it to DeCSS. What was young Jon's point when he wrote the code? Perhaps it went something like this:
"Damn, I wish I could watch DVD's under Linux. This is such a pain in the but because Linux doesn't even understand the filesystem. Because I've got some mad haXXor skeelz, however, I *will* watch my DVD's under Linux, even though I have to circumvent both Linux's inability to read DVDfs and this really crappy layer of encryption that doesn't really do anything."
Hmmm....
Breathily, the blue giant star leaned over the black hole, his eyes locked upon her event horizon. She stared lovingly into his corona as he began to caress her singularity with strong, hot tendrils of superheated gas and waves of intense gravity. With a grin of pleasure, he reached back and whipped her with his accreting mass.
"Please," the black hole whispered, letting the supergiant know she was ready for his super-dense mass and fusion-powered passion.
They began slowly, but quickly worked up to almost 27,000 revolutions per minute. After just a short while, she began to flash her x-rays in unsteady spasms of delight and joy. She twisted the fabric of space-time beneath her in ecstacy...
Suddenly, she realized that the blue supergiant had gone.
"Hello?" she cried out. "Where did you go? Damn it! I lose more stars that way..."
I've been thinking about this, and I beleive that one should seriously consider the benifits to this software before installing:
.Net-style leasing program that Microsoft wants to introduce.
Let's do the math, shall we?
- Linux itself is free, depending on how you got your distribution. If you downloaded it, or got it from a friend, then yes, it didn't cost you anything. Otherwise, you paid a nominal fee for manuals and packaging from one of the for-profit vendors. I've seen these run anywhere from $7 - $75, depending on what you get.
- Windows is not free, but a Windows 2000 Professional license costs about $200. I think that's an upgrade fee. This may become quite a bit more expensive with the
- SBS is almost certainly *not* free, if I know IBM. Even if it is free, they'll have to make it free for all platforms since you can't really realease source without expecting ports.
- A Linux server takes some time and effort to learn to use and administer. It's designed for developers and people who value control and power over ease of use. RPM and apt-get have made installations a little easier, but still difficult when you compare them to...
- A Windows box, which takes very little time to learn to use and administer. Installshield installations are uniformly bad, but rarely go wrong and trash a system or application due to user error.
- Many business owners, when faced with the task of maintaining a computer system for the first time, would likely have to hire a Linux system adminsitrator for $30k-80k a year for even a single Linux system.
- This probably would not be the case with a Windows system. Even MSSQL server has a default installshield installation which makes it usuable by most off-the-shelf applications which require database connectivity. Here, I'm thinking about the basic helpdesk and inventory packages I've seen. Trackit-Pro and McCafee helpdesk both install on default MSSQL installations if I'm not mistaken.
It looks like our Windows-based small business may pay more initially for a small-business type solution, but probably won't have as high a total cost of ownership as our Linux-based small business, assuming low, but equal knowledge of computer systems and operating-systems.
Assuming that our entrepeneur is also a Linux hacker, he could probably make this work, but the bottom line here is that most small business owners will probably have an easier and less expensive time in the long run if they set up Windows-based systems.
This boils down to the fact that most Linux distributions are still geared toward development purposes while Microsoft has been busy making sure that the business world gets what they need and want from Redmond.
Take a note, Linux developers.
There's an episode of the Pretty Sammy (an anime based loosely on Tenchi Muyou) in which Sammy and Tenchi fight Biff Standard, a man who dreams of installing his Standard OS on every PC in the world.
Tenchi becomes a hunted criminal and purchases a stolen copy of 'Bannana OS', which has some great multimedia features and can run his mother's kareoke program.
Sammy battles with Pixy Misa, who helps Biff to install his 'Standard OS' on every computer in Shinjuku. Sammy wins, destroying Biff Standard's giant robot of standardization, but Biff just gets up again afterwards and starts selling his OS again.
The moral of the story: If even super-powered magical girls can't stop Microsoft, then the DOJ doesn't stand a chance.
Yesterday, I was rather dissapointed to read the story and had already fixed the researchers in my mind as having 'knuckled under' and ready to debase themselves in favor of the RIAA and their megabucks. When I read the story today, I realized that the system *does* work for those who know how to use and abuse it. I think it's still quite a tossup as to wether anything will actually come of this, but it's nice to see that the bowing down on the part of the researcher was a tactic and nothing more. Keep fighting the good fight, guys!
Wasn't there an article just yesterday about a new litho technology that allowed chipmakers to etch on the molocule-size scale?
Faster transistors may give you a few more FpS in the FPS of your choice (I made a funny!) but Nanotube-transistors have a much greater application than speeding up existing technology. This kind of logic device can be used in small and nano-sized robots, increasing the range of tasks they can do and making them more controllable.
Ultimately, this is going to be the kind of advance we site as making the artery-scraper nanites and nerve-tissue replacements possible. Don't limit yourselves to thinking *solely* about data processing when new logic devices come along.
That hospital is focusing on clinical applications, like superimposing information about a patient, including vital signs and medical images, onto a surgeon's field of view.
Boy howdy... From what I know, nerve fibers were about the same thickness as human hair, right? Especially in tight places like the hands. It also seems like there are any number of delicate blood vessles, nerve tissues, tendons, etc, that would be about the same size as an 800x600 pixel. I don't know about you, but I would much rather my doctor get a possibly distracting earful of my vital signs if my chest is hanging open than have them superimposed over the top of my delicate internals.
Okay, this rocks. Assuming Sony will get this out in multilingual formats, this will *really* help speed acceptance and build an incredible amature developer base for new games and apps.
Nintendo currently requires you to buy or lease an expensive (bigger than my yearly salary) SGI-based development kit. Playstation 1 requires you to buy a $2k PCI card for a PC. (Last I heard. It may have come down quite a bit) Microsoft's going to let you develop on a PC, but let's be honest here. How many developers have the best 3D gaming platform money can buy?
Letting users run linux and a HDD *on* a PS2, however, means that entriprising hackers can start building games and/or other apps. What's *really* great about this is the fact that quite a few of these new apps are going to be written for the X environment on the Linux kit. It seems to me like that would make it an easy port to GTK, etc...
Ohayou gozaimasu, our Nihonjin friends. How about some prelim reports on the functionality once you get your hands on these guys?
Well, I wanted to talk about personality rather than productivity, but you have a valid point here. There was only one Einstein. There is only one Hawking. Before you are gone, you will see at least a dozen Britney Spears and NSYNC. Actually, these two aren't the first in the queue. Let's go back and Talk about Tiffany and New Kids on the Block if we're going to talk about corporate clones.
The fact that most scientists are snooty, eletist bastards who have incredible opinions of themselves and most musicians with contracts have been taught from line one that they would be nothing without their distributors and agents and should never question the wisdom of large corporations.
Now, the scientists in our audience shouldn't take this as a flame because it's precisely the reason why they can pull off a boycott of their 'distributors' and make it work while all the artists, musicians and singers can't quite manage.
So, a honeynet is just like any other firewall protected network, except for the fact that people are actually paying attention to network security?
While I don't think I agree with the effectiveness of a 'dedicated' honeynet over any other real network, this does bring to light the interesting effect this will have on network security in general. Right now, l33t k1dd3z have a 'you can't catch me' attitude. Witness the recent exploits of a Welsh hacker who thought that he was so far above the law that he could do what he wanted to any website he wanted in the name of his own little sense of morality.
Most of these kids *know*, not just think, that they are never going to be caught.
As more and more business and organizatons employ honeypots and 'honeynets', trying to catch crackers before they crack, more and more cases of idiots like these are going to get in trouble for breaking the law. Rooting a server is going to be seen less and less like fairly innocent grafitti and more and more like knocking over a convenience store and beating up the clerk, and then walking out with only a slushee. People will still do it, but attacks will be fewer and further between, and the people who get cracked will be those who've invited it by not putting up the equivalents of bullet-proof glass and panic alarms.
Why should my wife and I have 2 PC's at home when 1 has all the processing power we need?
You mean you don't want to play games at all? Oh wait, you're on Mac... forget I said anything.
Seriously, if you're going to use your OSX system for networking and development, there probably isn't any reason you should not divvy up your system as stated. The technical challenge here is that I dont think Mac Finder will do it. You'll have to figure out how to get X to run separate window managers on different monitors and have each instance talk to different keyboards and mice on the USB bus. Hard, but probably not impossible.
If you're planning on *ever* using *any* of MacOS's multimedia features, forget about it. Save yourself the headache and go buy two computers. You'll never get the multimedia performance you should if your computer is busy running two desktops.
...And switch packets in five seconds
...And compile mass libraries of MP3s and warez despite industry controls
...And put giant arms on space stations that make the space shuttle arm look like a grasshopper leg
...And sequence the entire human genome
...And make god games that can seriously damage your view of reality.
Why the HELL am I still getting emails that start like "Looking for HOT, HORNY Teens? Look no further!!!!!!"
After downloading and playing with this for an hour or so, I can vouch that it's heads and above the complexity required to use Freenet. Unfortuneately, it's still far, *far* too complex for the 'average user' to use, which IMHO, will limit it from becoming as popular as Napster or even Gnutella. At one point, the instructions for setting up the publisher app requests the user to make sure that settings match an INI file in the freenet installation folder. Another point instructs the user to change their browser proxy settings.
While it can be argued that this is a good 'moron filter', I know plenty of artists, writers, and activists with little or no computer skills who bought a computer so that they could use Frontpage or a similiar tool to publish their websites and share their thoughts. It seems like these are the people that Freenet *should* best serve to keep their identities secret and thoughts alive. Unfortuneately, the Freeweb apps are still so complex that I don't think anyone but a developer/hacker could use it.
I dunno. Maybe I'm being too harsh.