I've seen a lot of Linux since I came to IBM at the beginning of the year, but since I'm working with Linux developers, that's hardly surprising. Most of them have either one Linux desktop or two workstations, one Windows and one Linux.
No idea how much of the corporation does use Linux, and the internal software pages mostly concern themselves with only Windows and AIX, but I've never gotten any "anti-Linux" vibes here. The closest I ever got was when I had to attend a session on open-source development at IBM. Seemed to be healthy paranoia - not "don't use and contribute to free software", but "if you contribute to free software at all let us know beforehand, so we can screen your work to make sure we don't violate any licenses."
That's a really good point. The Supreme Court of the US recently ruled that the media can do what they want with an illegally-produced recording so long as they weren't the ones who made the recording. So secretly record the police, then give the tape to the media if anything's awry. It's a little roundabout, but it's still a convenient way around a blatantly stupid Massachusetts ruling.
The lack of patches for console games can be a problem - I never went very far in Tomb Raider 4 for the Dreamcast precisely because the game froze or crashed more frequently than I could stand in a console game. Since there's no hope that the problems can be fixed in that game, it's extremely unlikely I'll ever get my money's worth from it. And thanks to store return policies for games, I could never return it - only sell it used.
I'm sure there's more incentive for developers to thoroughly test games for consoles (particularly since they usually need the console manufacturer's approval before marketing the game), but that incentive is no guarantee of stability. Better if developers for all platforms just figure out that not releasing a product before it's finished will result in poor sales for current and future titles.
And that will only happen if consumers remember which companies screwed them over with buggy products. Time will tell if that happens with FunCom.
The best system administrators are lazy. Give me nano (a more full-featured pico clone) any day. Coding is another matter, but for quick scripting and config files, nano is wonderfully laid-back.
In all fairness, I wouldn't say Mac OS X is "brand new" - the BSD and NeXT underpinnings are pretty mature. At the same time, this isn't just another Linux distribution - the human interface components are quite new, so yes, growing pains should be expected in some areas. If the multitasking had been incomplete on release I'd be surprised, but I'm not surprised that CD-R and DVD support hasn't been completely tacked onto the lower-level OS components whose invention predate publically-accessible CD-Rs and DVDs.
Besides, CD-R burning has never been a traditional OS component. Apple's only recently added it to iTunes, and only with the latest iMacs released their own software for burning non-audio CDs. Adaptec/Roxio Toast has been the standard for burning CD-Rs. At most, Apple may not have completely documented the API that Toast would need to access CD-Rs yet. Microsoft hasn't generally included their own CD burning software, either - the standard software for CD burning on Windows all comes from third parties. And for Linux, everything but the kernel is third-party.
And because I can't help but throw in my two cents about ejecting disks in OS X...It's not very intuitive at first. You need to either find something in a manual that mentions the trash can's change to an eject icon, or you need to have gotten used to dragging the disk to the trash under OS 9 and try it nuder OS X. It isn't intuitive if the only way you're going to find out about the feature without consulting a learned source is if you're in the habit of dragging things around on the screen willy-nilly and eyeballing the dock for changes.
Re:You Linux-loving morons, here's some reality
on
Qt for Mac
·
· Score: 1
Don't know how recent his figures are, but Steve Jobs was saying five percent on May 15:
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0105/15.mark et share.shtml
There's also a very unofficial estimation that figures overall percentage of Mac users to be higher than that - take it with a grain of salt, but it's always nice to be reminded that the number of computers sold isn't the best way to figure the number of actual users of an OS that are out there:
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0104/09.mark et share.shtml
Most complaints I've seen about Apple's frequent updates have been on the message boards at sites like MacCentral. The posters are Mac users who watch the news and download udates as soon as possible. The reason? Mac users are used to updates being released every few months. When a point-release comes out, it contains major bug fixes and performance enhancements, and newer software and hardware can sometimes require that update.
With Mac OS X, the updates have come more frequently because they're released more on a Unix schedule - a few components get updated, the kernel gets a few small fixes, and the update is made available for those who have been joshing for the small fixes in the update. Performance and stability is enhanced in each release, but it isn't the dramatic change Mac users have been used to.
Thus, the MacOS power users, the ones that check the news sites at least once a day for the latest and greatest, are having trouble adapting to the new model. They're expecting significant, noticeable improvements with each release. They haven't noticed that while the updates to OS 9 have come less frequently and been larger, the updates to components of OS 9 have been about as frequent as those to OS X - it's just that instead of getting an OS 9 point release to update TCP/IP, the system profiler, and game sprockets, those updates have been separate entries in the list of available updates. OS X's point releases have affected the same parts of the system, but have been wrapped into a single package. Since the same users who complain about the frequency of OS X's updates are the same ones who check the software update control panel and download every update, they just need to adjust to the new model to see that all Apple's done is bundle the updates they'd already been releasing frequently and bundled them with smaller fixes they usually wouldn't get until the next massive OS upgrade.
For my part, when I saw the frequent updates to OS X, I thought it was great - I'd already been a Linux user, so small, frequent updates are nothing new to me. But they are new to most people who have used Mac OS or Windows exclusively. The whines will stop with time, when they adjust to the "new" model.
Excerpting a work for the purpose of critique is considered fair use, and that criticism is itself a commercial venture for some. If I wanted to start a web site dedicated to reviewing DVDs, under current law the best I could do for those excerpts would be to film a TV when playing the DVD, and using those poor-quality excerpts. That might be good enough for the review, but it wouldn't be good enough to compete with a site that did a deal with the movie company to obtain a higher-quality excerpt. If I couldn't extract the higher-quality video myself, my competition would have an advantage. And if I'm at the mercy of the movie company to obtain a higher-quality excerpt, that could give the movie company influence over my review - a bad review, and they aren't likely to give me access to a high-quality excerpt I can post on my site. If copyright law is supposed to help the market and whatnot, then how would I be helped by being unable to obtain excerpts of competitive quality without having to submit to restrictions that could be imposed by the owner of the work being critiqued?
But ever since the flood of sub-par Episode 1 merchandise...
What the heck are you talking about? The Phantom Menace gave us some of the best movie merchandise ever! I mean, how can you top products like "Talkin' Hungry Hero Jar Jar", a plush doll with a retractable tongue that not only comes with little frog things with velcro that sticks to said tongue, but that also talks when you squeeze his hand? And I'm talking great lines like "Meesa wuvs you" and "Maxi big...da Force"!
There's also the Jar Jar Binks tongue candy (push a plunger, Jar Jar's mouth opens, and a candy tongue pokes out for children to eat), and the Queen Amidala inflatable chair! And don't forget the horde of merchandise that was released for the original trilogy to create interest for the new movie - without Episode I, we might never have received such bounty as "Jabba Glob", the Jabba doll that pukes slime when you push on his head!
I, for one, am praying that George Lucas will grace us with another merchandise bonanza when the next movie is due to be released. His merchandising creativity far surpasses anything I could ever hope to achieve - there's no way I could make this stuff up. Even better, you can pick up most of the really cool Episode I merchandise dirt cheap at toy stores right now - there's no better feeling than finding "Jabba Glob" for 3 bucks.
Don't forget the people saying, "There are a bunch of modules available for Perl, why should I use a language that doesn't have stuff like CPAN and mod_perl already written for me?"
It sounds like some of the less-convincing Windows advocacy. "There are a lot of programs available for Windows, why should I use an OS that doesn't have as many programs?" "Windows works well enough and a lot of people know it - why do we need another OS?" Those are just lazy attitudes - reject something new because it's new, not because of a comparison of its merits with what came before.
That's not to say "new" stuff doesn't have to justify its existence. It's just that "Something already does something like that" isn't a good enough reason to reject something new out of hand.
FYI, Valve, not Sierra cancelled the Mac Half-Life.
Very true.
They couldn't get it to a reasonable state on the Mac, and didn't want to ship anything half assed.
Kinda sorta, though most information on the cancellation is based in rumor anyway. Word was that the Mac version wouldn't be able to do network play with the PC version (due to instructions from Sierra not to spend the amount of development time necessary to make the platforms work together), and that's why Valve pulled the plug. Valve was also concerned that the port wouldn't have ongoing financial support, so it might not be updated as frequently as would be necessary.
Then shortly afterward they announced Half-Life for the Dreamcast. This was despite the lack of an update mechanism for games stored on the Dreamcast GD-ROM format. When asked about this by a Mac user, Gabe Newell of Valve replied that Sega had been aggressively helpful with the Dreamcast port, and that Apple hadn't been as forthcoming when it came to assistance with the Mac version. Which was odd, since Valve wasn't doing the port (Sierra had contracted that out to a Mac development house).
Thus the bitterness Mac users feel over the Half-Life issue - the information about the cancellation was sketchy and conflicting, and later Sierra Mac cancellations, such as Pharaoh and Tribes 2, haven't fostered any goodwill for Sierra or its subsidiaries among the Mac community. Concern about the Mac-PC networking compatibility in Half-Life multiplayer was understandable, but considering how close Half-Life had been to completion it might have been sound to release the single-player version of the game, particularly since Sierra paid the company doing the Mac port in full for their work, the same amount they would have received had the port been completed and released. And had Sierra not given the shortsighted instructions to neglect the networking code in the port, Valve might not have canned the project. Then Sierra might not have come across as being unenthusiastic about the Macintosh platform, and might not be such easy targets for sniping Mac users.
Even LucasArts has started to return to the Mac (through Aspyr), while Sierra is releasing Tribes 2 for Linux through Loki, but hasn't done anything similar for the larger Mac gaming market. Weird stuff.
I dunno, I kind of liked the assistant that came with the Macintosh version of Office. Never found anything to like about the other assistants, but the Banana PC Jr. 9000 was darned cute...
I couldn't find any info in the article if there is no support for DVD or just no DVD player bundled.
No player - I've been using the OS X Beta on a G4 with a DVD-ROM drive, and had no problem accessing DvDs. You can always dual-boot with Mac OS 9 to play DVDs until OS X gets that feature - it's not hard to do (just install Mac OS 9 on a separate drive or partition). I know I'll be dual-booting to the classic Mac OS for a while anyway, since not all hardware is going to be supported in Mac OS X for a while, and I'm sure a lot of 3D-accelerated games will play better under straight Mac OS 9 without going through the compatibility layer.
Before the introduction of the car, travel was usually done in groups on large ships or trains. Pollution problems were limited because of the consolidation.
Before the introduction of the car, travel was also done on horses or in horse-drawn carriages. Pollution was in the form of manure on the streets, and was a major issue before the car made the abundance of horses in cities unecessary. Before the domestication of the horse, pollution was limited because of the lack of travel.
Unfortunately, what probably will happen is that Sony will drop the ball this year.
Sony's already dropped the ball this year. They released an expensive console with supplies so limited that you have to pre-order a system. Buying figures in Japan show that most people bought it as a casual gaming system and are using it more for the DVD capabilities. They managed to drive the Dreamcast off by just being the successor to the Playstation, but the way they've rushed it out the door they've guaranteed that it will be extremely difficult to make money off selling games for the PS2. That will drive developers to other platforms, and gamers will either migrate to another platform or give up and just play PC games.
The Xbox might attract its share of the market, but I think Nintendo will be able to compete against them. Nintendo's been in the console market for a good long time, has good brand recognition despite mistakes made with the N64, and gamers playing a Nintendo wouldn't be constantly reminded by the name on the console that they could be playing PC games instead of buying more console games.;)
Well, if you're dying to get a console that's a pretty color, then go with the N64.;) Otherwise, the Dreamcast has better graphics (especially if you get an S-Video or VGA output cable for it), better sound, and some great games out and on the way. The N64 has a couple Zelda games, and those alone make the N64 worth buying, but I own both consoles and have been more impressed with the Dreamcast's games.
A similar question was asked about emulation on the Mac - many were afraid that Windows emulation and Playstation emulation would keep games from being ported. In the end, it didn't make a difference - an increasing number of games are being ported to the Mac, despite emulation products.
Setting aside the probability that emulation will usually be slower than a native port, people will still favor native applications because they'll be easier to work with. The interface will be more like what they're used to on their native platform, and they won't have to do anything special to run the native software. Emulation is good for accessing applications and games you can't normally use on your system, but won't be favored by most users. Native ports are in no danger of losing significant sales to emulators.
The weird position some techies get into with the "scum-bucket" companies is the schizophrenic nature of some of these big companies. Take IBM as an example (I'm contracting there now). On the one hand, IBM is championing CPRM for the ATA spec, something I find objectionable. On the other hand, IBM is a huge proponent of open-source and Linux. I still haven't figured out whether I should feel bad about working for them because they're a "bad guy", or good about working for them because they're a "good guy".
The parody protection stuff is usually brought up when copyright is in question. Obscenity is different - if it's legally "obscene", it stops being protected speech. You can parody a web site and justify basing your web page on theirs by saying the parody is fair use and doesn't violate the site's copyright, but if you do it in such a way that it's obscene, you're nabbed for the obscenity.
The trick here is that if it really is a "parody", then that implies some value and intent to the page that doesn't exclusively appeal to prurient interest. That would keep it from being legally obscene.
There might be no action, true, but as the article says, it would look bad if they backed down from such a clear victory. Plus Ashcroft's appointment isn't exactly guaranteed - he's very conservative, Republicans don't have a strong majority in Congress, and above all, he lost his Senate race to a dead guy.
How bad is that, anyway? Bush lost the popular vote, won Florida through a controversial Supreme Court ruling, and now he's trying to appoint someone who lost an election to a dead candidate as attorney general. You'd think he wouldn't go out of his way to make his job any harder...
But this would raise the question: "If you can come to the same conclusion now without invoking the Florida Constitution, then why did you mention it at all the first time you ruled?"
The Florida Supreme Court could have been expected to be in a hurry to hand down their original ruling. The Federal Supreme Court wanted clarification from the lower court. This way, the Florida Supreme Court can turn their ruling into a judgment on conflicting laws (the original deadline had been established by law before the laws allowing for the hand recounts, for example). That alteration would move the ruling to a more obvious case of judicial review, which allows the Federal Supreme Court to avoid striking it down and weakening the power of the courts.
You keep using the term 'self-declared winner'. It seems to me that GWB has been declared the winner in Florida by the consitutional officer empowered to do so in Florida.
It fits in well enough with the intent of the article - just mentally change "self-declared" to "declared by an official who worked on that candidate's campaign".
What I find intriguing about the whole affair is that Florida's Sunshine Laws leave room for the press to go in later and count all the ballots for themselves. The fervent Republican opposition to hand recounts could really turn public opinion against them if (and only if) a recount by the press demonstrates a clear swing for Gore.
Why bring Chani into the plot as a servent (or I at least think that is Chani, if not, who is she and why bother)?
I hope that wasn't Chani - she definitely shouldn't be working as a servant in the palace. The servant, whoever she was, did serve a purpose in the scene with the hunter-seeker - since they were avoiding the use of voice-overs, the only way to let the audience know about the hunter-seeker was to have Paul explain it to another character.
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For my part, I'd love to see IBM port Notes to Linux just so I don't have to use WINE to read internal email...
I've seen a lot of Linux since I came to IBM at the beginning of the year, but since I'm working with Linux developers, that's hardly surprising. Most of them have either one Linux desktop or two workstations, one Windows and one Linux.
No idea how much of the corporation does use Linux, and the internal software pages mostly concern themselves with only Windows and AIX, but I've never gotten any "anti-Linux" vibes here. The closest I ever got was when I had to attend a session on open-source development at IBM. Seemed to be healthy paranoia - not "don't use and contribute to free software", but "if you contribute to free software at all let us know beforehand, so we can screen your work to make sure we don't violate any licenses."
once the news media gets a copy who gives a crap
That's a really good point. The Supreme Court of the US recently ruled that the media can do what they want with an illegally-produced recording so long as they weren't the ones who made the recording. So secretly record the police, then give the tape to the media if anything's awry. It's a little roundabout, but it's still a convenient way around a blatantly stupid Massachusetts ruling.
The lack of patches for console games can be a problem - I never went very far in Tomb Raider 4 for the Dreamcast precisely because the game froze or crashed more frequently than I could stand in a console game. Since there's no hope that the problems can be fixed in that game, it's extremely unlikely I'll ever get my money's worth from it. And thanks to store return policies for games, I could never return it - only sell it used.
I'm sure there's more incentive for developers to thoroughly test games for consoles (particularly since they usually need the console manufacturer's approval before marketing the game), but that incentive is no guarantee of stability. Better if developers for all platforms just figure out that not releasing a product before it's finished will result in poor sales for current and future titles.
And that will only happen if consumers remember which companies screwed them over with buggy products. Time will tell if that happens with FunCom.
The best system administrators are lazy. Give me nano (a more full-featured pico clone) any day. Coding is another matter, but for quick scripting and config files, nano is wonderfully laid-back.
What, now you're going after the Poles? Jeez, maybe there is something to this "racist" accusation...
In all fairness, I wouldn't say Mac OS X is "brand new" - the BSD and NeXT underpinnings are pretty mature. At the same time, this isn't just another Linux distribution - the human interface components are quite new, so yes, growing pains should be expected in some areas. If the multitasking had been incomplete on release I'd be surprised, but I'm not surprised that CD-R and DVD support hasn't been completely tacked onto the lower-level OS components whose invention predate publically-accessible CD-Rs and DVDs.
Besides, CD-R burning has never been a traditional OS component. Apple's only recently added it to iTunes, and only with the latest iMacs released their own software for burning non-audio CDs. Adaptec/Roxio Toast has been the standard for burning CD-Rs. At most, Apple may not have completely documented the API that Toast would need to access CD-Rs yet. Microsoft hasn't generally included their own CD burning software, either - the standard software for CD burning on Windows all comes from third parties. And for Linux, everything but the kernel is third-party.
And because I can't help but throw in my two cents about ejecting disks in OS X...It's not very intuitive at first. You need to either find something in a manual that mentions the trash can's change to an eject icon, or you need to have gotten used to dragging the disk to the trash under OS 9 and try it nuder OS X. It isn't intuitive if the only way you're going to find out about the feature without consulting a learned source is if you're in the habit of dragging things around on the screen willy-nilly and eyeballing the dock for changes.
Don't know how recent his figures are, but Steve Jobs was saying five percent on May 15:
k et share.shtml
k et share.shtml
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0105/15.mar
There's also a very unofficial estimation that figures overall percentage of Mac users to be higher than that - take it with a grain of salt, but it's always nice to be reminded that the number of computers sold isn't the best way to figure the number of actual users of an OS that are out there:
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0104/09.mar
Most complaints I've seen about Apple's frequent updates have been on the message boards at sites like MacCentral. The posters are Mac users who watch the news and download udates as soon as possible. The reason? Mac users are used to updates being released every few months. When a point-release comes out, it contains major bug fixes and performance enhancements, and newer software and hardware can sometimes require that update.
With Mac OS X, the updates have come more frequently because they're released more on a Unix schedule - a few components get updated, the kernel gets a few small fixes, and the update is made available for those who have been joshing for the small fixes in the update. Performance and stability is enhanced in each release, but it isn't the dramatic change Mac users have been used to.
Thus, the MacOS power users, the ones that check the news sites at least once a day for the latest and greatest, are having trouble adapting to the new model. They're expecting significant, noticeable improvements with each release. They haven't noticed that while the updates to OS 9 have come less frequently and been larger, the updates to components of OS 9 have been about as frequent as those to OS X - it's just that instead of getting an OS 9 point release to update TCP/IP, the system profiler, and game sprockets, those updates have been separate entries in the list of available updates. OS X's point releases have affected the same parts of the system, but have been wrapped into a single package. Since the same users who complain about the frequency of OS X's updates are the same ones who check the software update control panel and download every update, they just need to adjust to the new model to see that all Apple's done is bundle the updates they'd already been releasing frequently and bundled them with smaller fixes they usually wouldn't get until the next massive OS upgrade.
For my part, when I saw the frequent updates to OS X, I thought it was great - I'd already been a Linux user, so small, frequent updates are nothing new to me. But they are new to most people who have used Mac OS or Windows exclusively. The whines will stop with time, when they adjust to the "new" model.
Excerpting a work for the purpose of critique is considered fair use, and that criticism is itself a commercial venture for some. If I wanted to start a web site dedicated to reviewing DVDs, under current law the best I could do for those excerpts would be to film a TV when playing the DVD, and using those poor-quality excerpts. That might be good enough for the review, but it wouldn't be good enough to compete with a site that did a deal with the movie company to obtain a higher-quality excerpt. If I couldn't extract the higher-quality video myself, my competition would have an advantage. And if I'm at the mercy of the movie company to obtain a higher-quality excerpt, that could give the movie company influence over my review - a bad review, and they aren't likely to give me access to a high-quality excerpt I can post on my site. If copyright law is supposed to help the market and whatnot, then how would I be helped by being unable to obtain excerpts of competitive quality without having to submit to restrictions that could be imposed by the owner of the work being critiqued?
But ever since the flood of sub-par Episode 1 merchandise...
What the heck are you talking about? The Phantom Menace gave us some of the best movie merchandise ever! I mean, how can you top products like "Talkin' Hungry Hero Jar Jar", a plush doll with a retractable tongue that not only comes with little frog things with velcro that sticks to said tongue, but that also talks when you squeeze his hand? And I'm talking great lines like "Meesa wuvs you" and "Maxi big...da Force"!
There's also the Jar Jar Binks tongue candy (push a plunger, Jar Jar's mouth opens, and a candy tongue pokes out for children to eat), and the Queen Amidala inflatable chair! And don't forget the horde of merchandise that was released for the original trilogy to create interest for the new movie - without Episode I, we might never have received such bounty as "Jabba Glob", the Jabba doll that pukes slime when you push on his head!
I, for one, am praying that George Lucas will grace us with another merchandise bonanza when the next movie is due to be released. His merchandising creativity far surpasses anything I could ever hope to achieve - there's no way I could make this stuff up. Even better, you can pick up most of the really cool Episode I merchandise dirt cheap at toy stores right now - there's no better feeling than finding "Jabba Glob" for 3 bucks.
Don't forget the people saying, "There are a bunch of modules available for Perl, why should I use a language that doesn't have stuff like CPAN and mod_perl already written for me?"
It sounds like some of the less-convincing Windows advocacy. "There are a lot of programs available for Windows, why should I use an OS that doesn't have as many programs?" "Windows works well enough and a lot of people know it - why do we need another OS?" Those are just lazy attitudes - reject something new because it's new, not because of a comparison of its merits with what came before.
That's not to say "new" stuff doesn't have to justify its existence. It's just that "Something already does something like that" isn't a good enough reason to reject something new out of hand.
FYI, Valve, not Sierra cancelled the Mac Half-Life.
Very true.
They couldn't get it to a reasonable state on the Mac, and didn't want to ship anything half assed.
Kinda sorta, though most information on the cancellation is based in rumor anyway. Word was that the Mac version wouldn't be able to do network play with the PC version (due to instructions from Sierra not to spend the amount of development time necessary to make the platforms work together), and that's why Valve pulled the plug. Valve was also concerned that the port wouldn't have ongoing financial support, so it might not be updated as frequently as would be necessary.
Then shortly afterward they announced Half-Life for the Dreamcast. This was despite the lack of an update mechanism for games stored on the Dreamcast GD-ROM format. When asked about this by a Mac user, Gabe Newell of Valve replied that Sega had been aggressively helpful with the Dreamcast port, and that Apple hadn't been as forthcoming when it came to assistance with the Mac version. Which was odd, since Valve wasn't doing the port (Sierra had contracted that out to a Mac development house).
Thus the bitterness Mac users feel over the Half-Life issue - the information about the cancellation was sketchy and conflicting, and later Sierra Mac cancellations, such as Pharaoh and Tribes 2, haven't fostered any goodwill for Sierra or its subsidiaries among the Mac community. Concern about the Mac-PC networking compatibility in Half-Life multiplayer was understandable, but considering how close Half-Life had been to completion it might have been sound to release the single-player version of the game, particularly since Sierra paid the company doing the Mac port in full for their work, the same amount they would have received had the port been completed and released. And had Sierra not given the shortsighted instructions to neglect the networking code in the port, Valve might not have canned the project. Then Sierra might not have come across as being unenthusiastic about the Macintosh platform, and might not be such easy targets for sniping Mac users.
Even LucasArts has started to return to the Mac (through Aspyr), while Sierra is releasing Tribes 2 for Linux through Loki, but hasn't done anything similar for the larger Mac gaming market. Weird stuff.
I dunno, I kind of liked the assistant that came with the Macintosh version of Office. Never found anything to like about the other assistants, but the Banana PC Jr. 9000 was darned cute...
I couldn't find any info in the article if there is no support for DVD or just no DVD player bundled.
No player - I've been using the OS X Beta on a G4 with a DVD-ROM drive, and had no problem accessing DvDs. You can always dual-boot with Mac OS 9 to play DVDs until OS X gets that feature - it's not hard to do (just install Mac OS 9 on a separate drive or partition). I know I'll be dual-booting to the classic Mac OS for a while anyway, since not all hardware is going to be supported in Mac OS X for a while, and I'm sure a lot of 3D-accelerated games will play better under straight Mac OS 9 without going through the compatibility layer.
Before the introduction of the car, travel was usually done in groups on large ships or trains. Pollution problems were limited because of the consolidation.
Before the introduction of the car, travel was also done on horses or in horse-drawn carriages. Pollution was in the form of manure on the streets, and was a major issue before the car made the abundance of horses in cities unecessary. Before the domestication of the horse, pollution was limited because of the lack of travel.
Happy to help. ;)
Unfortunately, what probably will happen is that Sony will drop the ball this year.
Sony's already dropped the ball this year. They released an expensive console with supplies so limited that you have to pre-order a system. Buying figures in Japan show that most people bought it as a casual gaming system and are using it more for the DVD capabilities. They managed to drive the Dreamcast off by just being the successor to the Playstation, but the way they've rushed it out the door they've guaranteed that it will be extremely difficult to make money off selling games for the PS2. That will drive developers to other platforms, and gamers will either migrate to another platform or give up and just play PC games.
The Xbox might attract its share of the market, but I think Nintendo will be able to compete against them. Nintendo's been in the console market for a good long time, has good brand recognition despite mistakes made with the N64, and gamers playing a Nintendo wouldn't be constantly reminded by the name on the console that they could be playing PC games instead of buying more console games. ;)
Well, if you're dying to get a console that's a pretty color, then go with the N64. ;) Otherwise, the Dreamcast has better graphics (especially if you get an S-Video or VGA output cable for it), better sound, and some great games out and on the way. The N64 has a couple Zelda games, and those alone make the N64 worth buying, but I own both consoles and have been more impressed with the Dreamcast's games.
A similar question was asked about emulation on the Mac - many were afraid that Windows emulation and Playstation emulation would keep games from being ported. In the end, it didn't make a difference - an increasing number of games are being ported to the Mac, despite emulation products.
Setting aside the probability that emulation will usually be slower than a native port, people will still favor native applications because they'll be easier to work with. The interface will be more like what they're used to on their native platform, and they won't have to do anything special to run the native software. Emulation is good for accessing applications and games you can't normally use on your system, but won't be favored by most users. Native ports are in no danger of losing significant sales to emulators.
The weird position some techies get into with the "scum-bucket" companies is the schizophrenic nature of some of these big companies. Take IBM as an example (I'm contracting there now). On the one hand, IBM is championing CPRM for the ATA spec, something I find objectionable. On the other hand, IBM is a huge proponent of open-source and Linux. I still haven't figured out whether I should feel bad about working for them because they're a "bad guy", or good about working for them because they're a "good guy".
The parody protection stuff is usually brought up when copyright is in question. Obscenity is different - if it's legally "obscene", it stops being protected speech. You can parody a web site and justify basing your web page on theirs by saying the parody is fair use and doesn't violate the site's copyright, but if you do it in such a way that it's obscene, you're nabbed for the obscenity.
The trick here is that if it really is a "parody", then that implies some value and intent to the page that doesn't exclusively appeal to prurient interest. That would keep it from being legally obscene.
There might be no action, true, but as the article says, it would look bad if they backed down from such a clear victory. Plus Ashcroft's appointment isn't exactly guaranteed - he's very conservative, Republicans don't have a strong majority in Congress, and above all, he lost his Senate race to a dead guy.
How bad is that, anyway? Bush lost the popular vote, won Florida through a controversial Supreme Court ruling, and now he's trying to appoint someone who lost an election to a dead candidate as attorney general. You'd think he wouldn't go out of his way to make his job any harder...
But this would raise the question: "If you can come to the same conclusion now without invoking the Florida Constitution, then why did you mention it at all the first time you ruled?"
The Florida Supreme Court could have been expected to be in a hurry to hand down their original ruling. The Federal Supreme Court wanted clarification from the lower court. This way, the Florida Supreme Court can turn their ruling into a judgment on conflicting laws (the original deadline had been established by law before the laws allowing for the hand recounts, for example). That alteration would move the ruling to a more obvious case of judicial review, which allows the Federal Supreme Court to avoid striking it down and weakening the power of the courts.
You keep using the term 'self-declared winner'. It seems to me that GWB has been declared the winner in Florida by the consitutional officer empowered to do so in Florida.
It fits in well enough with the intent of the article - just mentally change "self-declared" to "declared by an official who worked on that candidate's campaign".
What I find intriguing about the whole affair is that Florida's Sunshine Laws leave room for the press to go in later and count all the ballots for themselves. The fervent Republican opposition to hand recounts could really turn public opinion against them if (and only if) a recount by the press demonstrates a clear swing for Gore.
Why bring Chani into the plot as a servent (or I at least think that is Chani, if not, who is she and why bother)?
I hope that wasn't Chani - she definitely shouldn't be working as a servant in the palace. The servant, whoever she was, did serve a purpose in the scene with the hunter-seeker - since they were avoiding the use of voice-overs, the only way to let the audience know about the hunter-seeker was to have Paul explain it to another character.