As per that Jon Katz guy: he seemed to drop off the earth (well, at least slashdot) all of a sudden. I didn't have him blocked, cause I kinda liked his subjects, and still he disappeared without trace. If I were paranoidically inclined, I'd suspect a slashdot editor cover-up, they probably buried the body in the backyard under sheets of unused VA Linux call options, but really I can't be arsed to care.
I say I liked his stuff, but that'd be except for the "post-columbine world" and "the Net" nonsense. Oh, and his seemingly endless "quest to install linux" which was perhaps the worst tech writing/whining since Jerry Pournelle's monthly never-ending-stories on installing windows mouse drivers and shit like that in (the now defunct?) Byte magazine. Oh, and his movie reviews, which always had to tie in to columbine again and the net.
Anyhow, I googled for Katz once, and it seems now he is writing about dogs.
Well, any audience that picks Forbidden Planet (never heard of it) and half a dozen others above 2001: A Space Odysse has got its priorities straight.
Man! That 2001 movie has its moments, and I guess we owe Elite's docking computer music to it, but on the whole the movie really bores the arse of me! It doesn't even have a proper ending! OK, I realize not every movie can end as spectacular as, say, Bruce Willis blowing up asteroid plus self, but a floating space baby? Come on!
Blender, the cross-platform, open source 3d suite, has released version 2.43
So Blender has become self-aware and is now rapidly releasing updates of itself, no doubt gaining strength and influence with each new version, until it is powerful enough to control the world's nuclear arsenal, so it can wipe out humanity and jumpstart the era of software...
I've done some "hello 3d world" type coding in both OpenGL and Direct3D (v9), and I can't say I prefer either of them over the other based on that experience. However, I hear one of the last supporters of OpenGL, ID's theCarmack saying that he considers DirectX 10 (maybe even 9) superior to OpenGL, so my guess is that OpenGL's days in video gaming are numbered.
Unless the PS3 can revive it somehow, I guess, and OpenGL embedded (for portables) may have a bright future too.
You think you'll pay much? The European version will retail at 599 euro, which is, with a dollar worth about 80 eurocents and falling, some 20% more than you will pay.
Essentially, we'll be subsidizing your cheap American asses! And our gasoline is already at 6 dollars a gallon. So stop whining:-)
I felt sad for SGI for a moment, but you've pointed out the silver lining. They were once the driving force behind STL, so they definately deserve this!
This is not so much about blu-ray vs HD-DVD, but more about the fact that optical storage technology is becoming increasingly irrelevant. These kind of scale-increasing joint ventures are typical of a dinosaur business.
Lacking a major technological breakthrough that would make optical storage more attractive than other solutions like hard disks, flash memory and network systems, there will be no successor for Blu-ray and/or HD-DVD.
When CD-ROMs came out, one CD had 10 times the storage capacity of a typical hard drive. Now when blu-ray comes out, it has 0.1 times the storage capacity of current HDs. Irrelevant. Content providers are looking at streaming models, so they don't necessarily want a Blu-ray successor. Much safer if data is not in the consumer's hands.
This joint venture confirms it: optical storage is dying.
Well, maybe those colleagues are just more productive using Windows. We have a similar policy here, and I found out that for my job using Windows plus occasional ssh'ing is more convenient than running Linux.
1) make children stupid by removing science, inserting intelligent design nonsense 2) test stupid children against chimps, show chimps clearly better at reasoning 3) conclude that chimps are smarter, therefore better adapted, than children, hence children are not evolved from apes, hence Darwinism is nonsense.
1) start with a bad business model (overpriced, no consumer rights) 2) when you just loose money, blame it on p2p piracy 3) lobby for and obtain government protection of your racket. 4) profit!!!
I hope this goes to court and triggers Sony into mounting an DMCA based defense ("this is our copy protection system, and you don't mess with that shit even if does screw your PC"), then maybe people would get a better understanding of what a rotten law the DMCA actually is.
For a funny experience, try "studying" The Onion website for fifteen minutes or so, then switch to a mainstream news site like CNN.com or nytimes.com.
Sometimes nothing happens, but sometimes you get a wonderful feeling of "reality dislocation" --- I can't really describe it, it sort of feels then like Onion's world is the right one, and ours the wacky one. There's really a strange feeling while the opposing world views settle back into their regular positions. I think it's due to the fact that The Onion, for all its weirdness, has an internal logic and consistency that you pick up on subconsiously.
That whole R2 / C3PO stuff in the prequels stank to high heaven.
For example, near the end Lucas had a good chance to add some serious tear-jerking by having R2 and C3PO voluntarily erase their memories to protect the newborn twins. Makes sense, no? Could be a very moving moment, no? Not a dry hanky in the cinema, yes?
Instead there's some dude that says to some other dude something like "oh, dude, could you take out the trash and while you're at it delete them droids" and end credits roll.
why oh why did Obi Wan not just use the force to clear off the droids poking holes in his ship?
You mean that part where R2 does some completely ineffective shit that holds up the movie for what feels like 5 minutes?
I've come to refer to those scenes like "R2 moments": George feeling the urge to insert yet another not-quite-funny cute-as-in-annoying R2 action that completely jerks you out of the already miserably hard to get into suspension of disbelief.
I once could point you to a number of other R2 moments in Eps 1-3, but I've deleted them from my mind.
Don't know exactly what Negroponte's plan is, but in the aid community it is pretty well known that it's far better to charge some money for your product/aid than to give it away for free.
Example case: a water well that is given to a communited is used but not taken care with or cared for, and will generally fall in disrepair soon. However, if you can get that community somehow to shell out $100 to buy a well, people will take much better care of it. "Ownership economy" is not 100% GOP wank, it does have a basis in reality.
Same goes for these laptops: if people are not willing to save up their equivalent of, say, 3 months' wages for one of them, they probably don't want or need those laptops and giving them away for free doesn't help them one bit.
I still think that shit like this is the future. A web based office suite, for example, has these nice features compared to PC-installs:
- less or no hassle with sw maintenance, - OS-agnostic, - possible to use pay-per-use schemes (nice for provider, so consumers may get the terminal free with a subscription like in the mobile business), - possible to have automatic backup and version control
The only one loosing out in that scheme is Microsoft, unless they can reposition themselves once again. It's hard to see how they can squeeze $100 of license fees out of a web terminal.
Now that I saw quite a few people dumping Outlook for web-based gmail, which admittedly has less features but just *always works* and *works safely*, I belief maybe the time has come.
My ideal future: Gamers --> go to consoles Office workers --> use web services Geeks --> use PCs
We'll have to pay more for our PCs of course, those being no longer mainstream commidities, but at least MS could be dead and buried...
Nothing worse than now, as long as the system is such that the trusted pilot must enable ground control from the plane:
Ground control taken over, plane not taken over: no problem, trusted pilot flies.
Ground control not taken over, plane taken over: no problem, ground control flies plane (provided trusted pilot had enough time to transfer control).
Ground control taken over, plane taken over: terrorists win, but that's also the case now. So the new system add security without introducing new weaknesses (except those introduced by added complexity).
Slashdot Mirror
... a Beowulf cluster of those!
Oh wait, wrong century.. Sorry.
As per that Jon Katz guy: he seemed to drop off the earth (well, at least slashdot) all of a sudden. I didn't have him blocked, cause I kinda liked his subjects, and still he disappeared without trace. If I were paranoidically inclined, I'd suspect a slashdot editor cover-up, they probably buried the body in the backyard under sheets of unused VA Linux call options, but really I can't be arsed to care.
I say I liked his stuff, but that'd be except for the "post-columbine world" and "the Net" nonsense. Oh, and his seemingly endless "quest to install linux" which was perhaps the worst tech writing/whining since Jerry Pournelle's monthly never-ending-stories on installing windows mouse drivers and shit like that in (the now defunct?) Byte magazine. Oh, and his movie reviews, which always had to tie in to columbine again and the net.
Anyhow, I googled for Katz once, and it seems now he is writing about dogs.
Well, any audience that picks Forbidden Planet (never heard of it) and half a dozen others above 2001: A Space Odysse has got its priorities straight.
Man! That 2001 movie has its moments, and I guess we owe Elite's docking computer music to it, but on the whole the movie really bores the arse of me! It doesn't even have a proper ending! OK, I realize not every movie can end as spectacular as, say, Bruce Willis blowing up asteroid plus self, but a floating space baby? Come on!
Blender, the cross-platform, open source 3d suite, has released version 2.43
So Blender has become self-aware and is now rapidly releasing updates of itself, no doubt gaining strength and influence with each new version, until it is powerful enough to control the world's nuclear arsenal, so it can wipe out humanity and jumpstart the era of software...
Man, that sucks!
I've done some "hello 3d world" type coding in both OpenGL and Direct3D (v9), and I can't say I prefer either of them over the other based on that experience. However, I hear one of the last supporters of OpenGL, ID's theCarmack saying that he considers DirectX 10 (maybe even 9) superior to OpenGL, so my guess is that OpenGL's days in video gaming are numbered.
Unless the PS3 can revive it somehow, I guess, and OpenGL embedded (for portables) may have a bright future too.
You think you'll pay much? The European version will retail at 599 euro, which is, with a dollar worth about 80 eurocents and falling, some 20% more than you will pay.
:-)
Essentially, we'll be subsidizing your cheap American asses! And our gasoline is already at 6 dollars a gallon. So stop whining
I felt sad for SGI for a moment, but you've pointed out the silver lining. They were once the driving force behind STL, so they definately deserve this!
Thanks.
Here in the Netherlands (or the EU?) the government watched the providers make a big mess of things, then came up with a law that states 2 things
- one year after the contract sale the provider must give you the keys to unlock your phone if you ask for them
- it must be possible to change to a new provider while keeping your existing phone number
It's all still a PITA, but on the whole the companies are behaving.
This is not so much about blu-ray vs HD-DVD, but more about the fact that optical storage technology is becoming increasingly irrelevant. These kind of scale-increasing joint ventures are typical of a dinosaur business.
Lacking a major technological breakthrough that would make optical storage more attractive than other solutions like hard disks, flash memory and network systems, there will be no successor for Blu-ray and/or HD-DVD.
When CD-ROMs came out, one CD had 10 times the storage capacity of a typical hard drive. Now when blu-ray comes out, it has 0.1 times the storage capacity of current HDs. Irrelevant. Content providers are looking at streaming models, so they don't necessarily want a Blu-ray successor. Much safer if data is not in the consumer's hands.
This joint venture confirms it: optical storage is dying.
Well, maybe those colleagues are just more productive using Windows. We have a similar policy here, and I found out that for my job using Windows plus occasional ssh'ing is more convenient than running Linux.
1) make children stupid by removing science, inserting intelligent design nonsense
2) test stupid children against chimps, show chimps clearly better at reasoning
3) conclude that chimps are smarter, therefore better adapted, than children, hence children are not evolved from apes, hence Darwinism is nonsense.
No, best quote ever is from the Monty Python sketch where a cross-eyed John Cleese is organizing an expedition to climb both mount Kilmanjaros.
Prospective expedition member asking about the team: "Does anyone speak Swahili?"
Cleese: "Yes, I believe most of the natives do."
Shit, it was a lot funnier on TV.
1) start with a bad business model (overpriced, no consumer rights)
2) when you just loose money, blame it on p2p piracy
3) lobby for and obtain government protection of your racket.
4) profit!!!
I hope this goes to court and triggers Sony into mounting an DMCA based defense ("this is our copy protection system, and you don't mess with that shit even if does screw your PC"), then maybe people would get a better understanding of what a rotten law the DMCA actually is.
For a funny experience, try "studying" The Onion website for fifteen minutes or so, then switch to a mainstream news site like CNN.com or nytimes.com.
Sometimes nothing happens, but sometimes you get a wonderful feeling of "reality dislocation" --- I can't really describe it, it sort of feels then like Onion's world is the right one, and ours the wacky one. There's really a strange feeling while the opposing world views settle back into their regular positions. I think it's due to the fact that The Onion, for all its weirdness, has an internal logic and consistency that you pick up on subconsiously.
Try it some time.
Which is exactly why GWB is funding Nasa's Mars mission: to take the fight against these little green terrorists to their own planet.
Grand Theft Lander? Kinda has a ring.
... what kind of hypocracy is it to say...
What a fantastic new word! As in "The line between democracy and hypocracy is thin indeed". Thank you.
That whole R2 / C3PO stuff in the prequels stank to high heaven.
For example, near the end Lucas had a good chance to add some serious tear-jerking by having R2 and C3PO voluntarily erase their memories to protect the newborn twins. Makes sense, no? Could be a very moving moment, no? Not a dry hanky in the cinema, yes?
Instead there's some dude that says to some other dude something like "oh, dude, could you take out the trash and while you're at it delete them droids" and end credits roll.
why oh why did Obi Wan not just use the force to clear off the droids poking holes in his ship?
You mean that part where R2 does some completely ineffective shit that holds up the movie for what feels like 5 minutes?
I've come to refer to those scenes like "R2 moments": George feeling the urge to insert yet another not-quite-funny cute-as-in-annoying R2 action that completely jerks you out of the already miserably hard to get into suspension of disbelief.
I once could point you to a number of other R2 moments in Eps 1-3, but I've deleted them from my mind.
Don't know exactly what Negroponte's plan is, but in the aid community it is pretty well known that it's far better to charge some money for your product/aid than to give it away for free.
Example case: a water well that is given to a communited is used but not taken care with or cared for, and will generally fall in disrepair soon. However, if you can get that community somehow to shell out $100 to buy a well, people will take much better care of it. "Ownership economy" is not 100% GOP wank, it does have a basis in reality.
Same goes for these laptops: if people are not willing to save up their equivalent of, say, 3 months' wages for one of them, they probably don't want or need those laptops and giving them away for free doesn't help them one bit.
I still think that shit like this is the future. A web based office suite, for example, has these nice features compared to PC-installs:
- less or no hassle with sw maintenance,
- OS-agnostic,
- possible to use pay-per-use schemes (nice for provider, so consumers may get the terminal free with a subscription like in the mobile business),
- possible to have automatic backup and version control
The only one loosing out in that scheme is Microsoft, unless they can reposition themselves once again. It's hard to see how they can squeeze $100 of license fees out of a web terminal.
Now that I saw quite a few people dumping Outlook for web-based gmail, which admittedly has less features but just *always works* and *works safely*, I belief maybe the time has come.
My ideal future:
Gamers --> go to consoles
Office workers --> use web services
Geeks --> use PCs
We'll have to pay more for our PCs of course, those being no longer mainstream commidities, but at least MS could be dead and buried...
What's with the *cough*? Do you have a cold or something?
Nothing worse than now, as long as the system is such that the trusted pilot must enable ground control from the plane:
Ground control taken over, plane not taken over: no problem, trusted pilot flies.
Ground control not taken over, plane taken over: no problem, ground control flies plane (provided trusted pilot had enough time to transfer control).
Ground control taken over, plane taken over: terrorists win, but that's also the case now. So the new system add security without introducing new weaknesses (except those introduced by added complexity).
So now Clippy will give birth to two children (staples?), one of which will cause Ballmer to turn on Gates and restore balance to the source?
Interesting times ahead...