Flame note, this is intended to be humor. I haven't gotten a chance to play with OS X, but it looks pretty cool.
Top 10 reasons Apple is a bit like Communism
10) Lots of cool intellectuals and artsy types seem to like it.
9) Fun to stick it to "Evil Abusive Capitalistic Monopolies".
8) Ton of zealots constantly proclaiming the beauty of the new revolution.
7) Everything seems to work together easily. However, you have to give up some choice.
6) Stores on the other side always seem better stocked and have better selections.
5) Goal is to make life as easy and fair as possible.
4) Hides much of the inner workings of the system so the people don't have to worry about them.
3) Although they do not admit it, most of their competitors have used at least some of their ideas.
2) While it looks like they were beaten in the 80's, may just be making a comeback.
1) Given history of past practices for the "greater good", scared to death of what the world would look like if they actually took over.
GenX--Living up to the "whiners" sterotype
on
Generation Wrecked
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
You cannot even *BEGIN* to compare this to the Great Depression.
See http://www.korpios.org/resurgent/Timeline.htm
Unemployment in 1933 was 24.9. 24.9 percent!!! GNP dropped 8.5 percent in 1931 and 13.4 in 1932.
Unemployment is 6-7% and our GDP rose by 1.2% last quarter. We are not in any sort of hardship by any means. Hardship is not being able to eat. Not being able to afford a new PS2 is not hardship.
For example, look at the quote "Salesclerks became programmers; coffee slingers morphed into experts in Java (computerese, that is)" So basically the dot-com bubble burst and things are getting back into reality.
And I love this one: "Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans". Hmm, maybe racking up $50,000 in student loans for an unmarketable degree was not a good idea. Who would have thought?
The reason is that it costs the cell phone company the same amount of money whether you call someone or recieve a call. It uses the same bandwidth after all.
If you made the person calling pay double, what happens when they call a land line phone? Do you have different pricing depending on who you call? If I am Sprint and the person I am calling is AT&T, how does AT&T pay Sprint's bandwidth? What if AT&T's bandwidth costs more than Sprint's and Sprint has to change it's charging depending on which cell phone company you are calling?
What happens in England if a land line person calls a cell phone? Do they have to pay for the cell phone charges?
It just seems easier to bill for the total amount you talk on a cell phone--calling or recieving.
Read the rest of his site to get an idea of just how to portray oneself as an American bigot.
Folks like Den Beste are the reason there are big problems within American culture with regards to xeno-relations.
I'm sick and tired of Americans being labeled bigots every time they refuse bend over, beg for forgiveness, and admit the rest of the world (mainly Europe) is superior.
Come on, like the countries in Europe don't act snotty about their culture and their accomplishments (see France for example). Try opening a non-French language store in France (not necessarily English either) or a non-Orthodox place of worship in Russia or Greece. In the 80's Japan shoved its economic and technical accomplishments in our faces on a daily basis. Japanese leaders called us lazy. There are plenty of examples of non-US pride.
American culture has problems with xeno-relations? Bullcrap. There is no other place on earth where so many different cultures exist together in relative tolerance. No other place where ideas and customs from different cultures are accepted and blended. Did you know after 9/11 there has been more violence against Jews in France than Muslims in the US? Research it yourself. You want to see xeno-relation problems? Try being a Catholic in Northern Ireland or a Muslim in Serbia.
Look, just because another country or countries criticize us or do things differently doesn't mean they are necessarily right. Remember that every country is looking out for their own interests. America is not perfect and we do thing for our own best interest. But this is a competitive world, lest you forget. Every country is proud of its accomplishments and every country tries to get ahead. Don't be a hypocrite and think the US has to play by some other special rules.
Mr. Linus, it is my understanding that you intend to write your own operating system from scratch. I just want you to know your "Linux" kernel is a stupid idea. Why don't you just buy Unix from one of the many vendors out there? It is a waste of your time and resources to try and reinvent the wheel.
There are many things I have written that have been "reinventing the wheel", from a merge sort to converting a Windows BMP to JPEG. But I learned a ton from doing it. Heck if he just wants to write something just to learn more about 3D modeling, more power to him. And you never know if in 5 years we will be raving about a new open source 3D modeler giving 3DSMax a run for its money...
Congress controls the budget, not the president. Congress was mostly controlled by the Democrats at the time the dig was approved.
The President only gets to sign or veto whole spending bills. They have little control over the specifics. Presidents can send it back and say "you have spent too much" but it is politically impossible for him to say "take this out, put this in, take these 3 things out, put these two in". That is why I wish the President had a line-item budget veto. A Republican congress tried to give a Democrat president (Clinton) but was overturned on Constitutional grounds (probably for good technical reasons). But I wish they would amend the Constitution on this one.
From Alan Nugent, Chief technology officer, Novell
"Like Mr. Negroponte, Mr. Nugent thought people would be conversing with their computers years ago. He also thought computers would be able to emulate human thought. He says IBM's champion chess-playing computer is evidence of the progress that has been made, but the field still falls short of early expectations."
IBM's chess-playing computer was just a massive parallel search assisted by human generated heuristics. It was not progress into emulating human thought. The only thing it progressed was building a computer to play chess.
If this guys is Novell's CTO, that explains Novell's problems.
Re:How is it supposed to know what a "need" is?
on
Ready, Steady, Evolve
·
· Score: 2
But the point of the article was that the mutation was *not* an advantage currently (because it hadn't been "activated") but would be an advantage years later. So it didn't just happen, it happened many generations after.
But with so many possible mutations, how is it supposed to "know" which ones to keep handy? With Darwin, you know because you survive. You mutatate some claws, you get to live and reproduce. You mutate and are born missing your legs, you die and don't reproduce. There is a gradual single generation test.
But with this wrinkle in the theory, you may mutate and not know it is an advantage/disadvantage until much much later. As bad as the combinatorics were before, this adds several orders of magnitute to it.
Since evolution doesn't have a designer, how is evolution supposed to "know" what is going to be useful later? There could be billions of possible mutations. How is it supposed to test what is a useful mutation and what is not? And how is it supposed to "know" when to activate the mutation?
Ah yes, another lazy journalist who does not do their homework and who could care less about the story.
PCs and Consoles are completely different markets. Sure there is some cross-over, but the majority of PC gamers could care less about console ports and vice versa. In fact, most people who have enough money for a PC have enough for a console.
PC games have a wide variety of unique titles and are especially strong in the turn-based strategy, real-time strategy, free form role-playing (BG, NWN), and first person shooters. Consoles are strong in things like sports, mario-type platform, structured role-playing (FF). I don't want to play a FPS or a RTS game on a low-res screen with a console controller. Likewise when I play a sports game with friends I want to relax on the couch and not be huddled around a PC in the office.
This guy probably knows nothing about Civilization 3, Warcraft 3, Neverwinter Nights, The Sims, Dungeon Siege, Evercrack, Quake/Unreal/CounterStrike. I could go on and on.
Consoles have not gotten to the point where they are good for internet play either. Nor will they ever be good at creating custom content. Sorry, no custom clothing for your Sims. No Counter-Strike for your old FPS. No downloading of new adventures for Neverwinter Nights.
Where does it give the FBI the right to search library and bookstore records without a valid search warrants? I couldn't find library or bookstore mentioned and I could only find one unreleated reference to the work book.
I really wish when journalists mention that so-and-so law is evil they would be more specific as to which sections they are talking about. I'm not questioning whether those provisions are in there, I just want to read and judge them myself. For example, maybe the FBI is assuming authority that it really doesn't have.
Nowhere in the Bible does it mention the Earth's age. Sure some Jews/Christians believe it was only 6000 years, but there are plenty of others (like myself) who believe in the Bible and still believe the earth is quite a bit older.
Anyway when I read this: "when matter and light were only just beginning to separate from one another."
I thought of this: Genesis 1:3 And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
I believe Genesis was inspired by God, but written though a person. I think the author of Genesis did a pretty good job trying to find words and descriptions for what they were shown.
IMHO, the episode Shuttlepod One was one of the best Star Trek episodes I've ever seen.
Basically Reed and Trip are on a shuttlepod out in the middle of nowhere and it looks like the Enterprise has been destroyed. The pod is damaged and they have a very limited amount of air left. And they are light years away from anything.
It was Sci-Fi at it's best, a human drama between Trip's completely irrational hope (although deep down he knows the truth) and Reed's attempt to prepare for their pending deaths. They deal with things like whether or not to be comfortable and just accept death or be miserable and squeeze out a few more hours.
I'll take one of those episodes over 10 technobabble shows anyday.
>for the future iraq victims
>for everyone that has ever died through the >hands of injustice, opression, agression and >that old capitalist tool: imperialism.
Darnit, why does everyone on Slashdot feel like they always have to pile on the political rhetoric thick and high no matter what the occasion. Can't we just take one day to drop the Right vs. Left crap and mourn for the dead?
I'm ashamed at this site sometimes, especially looking back at many of the high scoring posts from 9/11 that basically said we got what we deserved. Those women and men, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, just trying to mind their own business and go to work did not deserve to die a fiery death that day. Nor do they deserve to have their rememberance used as a launching point for cheap political attacks.
I love this quote from Dr. Moore: "Many factors including a lack of science education, a need to perpetuate themselves and "means justifies the end" thinking. The worst aspect is what I describe as the environmental movement has been hijacked by political activists who are using green rhetoric to cloak agendas that have more to do with anti-corporatism and class warfare than with ecology or the environment."
Remember this is the co-founder of Greenpeace. Not exactly your average "evil right-wing" nutcase.
What wars aren't resource wars? Despite all the "religion causes war" propaganda, if you look at the vast majority of wars they are for more land, people, food, iron, etc, etc, etc. It is never just "I hate you", it is "I hate you and you don't deserve the land you live on and the food you eat. So I'm going to take it from you."
I have to agree with you on the Lucasarts thing. Maniac Mansion was one of my first computer games and one of the games that got me hooked on computers in the first place. And I loved the early Star Wars games like XWing and Tie Fighter.
My opinion is they dumbed down their games too much. Instead of simulators like XWing they came out with a bunch of dumb arcade crap. I feel like puking every time I see those Star Wars Mortal Kombat ripoffs.
However one exception is the reciently released Jedi Outcast. It is incredible! The lightsaber control and force powers all make you feel like you are a Jedi in the movies. Nothing like running into a room filled with Stormtroopers, defecting their shots, and cutting them all down.:) The story is pretty good as well.
The problem for Lucasarts is that adventures don't sell nowadays. Even the best ones. Grim Fandango was a financial failure. But I guess with all the money Lucas is making from Episode 3 he can afford a loss here or there.
The magical "any day now" video on demand is here. On ATT Broadband in Atlanta I now have a certain selection of movies that are on VOD. It is $2.99 for an older movie and $3.99 for a newer one I believe. The coolest thing is that you can fast forward, rewind, pause, and stop and save for viewing later.
I believe TV shows can fall under the same model. Maybe the first show (the pilot) is free and each show afterwards is some cost. The cable companies can of course run package deals and such (50 shows a month for X dollars) and the cost may be pretty low if many people watch.
Interestingly, this model bypasses both TiVo's and commercial television's revenue models.
If they broke into the base, photocopied some records, and bragged about it noone would have even thought twice about their arrest. But now that it is electronic it is of some sort of interest to Slashdot? Very sad.
Look if you want the virtual world to be treated like the real world (privacy, source code = speech, etc) then you have to accept it works both ways. Breaking in electronically is the same as physically. It doesn't matter how "weak" the security is. Just because I can throw a brick through a window and rob a store, doesn't mean it is somehow the store's fault for having windows.
And sure I am concerned about military security. And it is disturbing someone could hack into it. But that doesn't give ForensicTec the right to go hacking it. I'm worried about airline security but I can't take it upon myself to see if I can get a gun through security.
Interestingly enough, our word Algebra comes from the book Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala written by a Middle-Eastern man named Abu Abd-Allah ibn Musa al'Khwarizmi around 830.
Before someone writes that smug, self-righteous, "there have been no gameplay advances in years" post let me head them off at the pass by saying two words.
Your wrong.
I can't believe the incredible about of really good and *different* 3d shooters I have played in the past 3 years. They are too numerous to mention. There is Counter Strike's complete revolution of internet play (buying weapons instead of them just laying around, asymmetric goals, mission based play, etc). There is System Shock 2's and Deus Ex's mixing of shooter and RPG. There is the Thief's series and Deus Ex's use of stealth (more in the Thief series obviously but you could go through a good bit of Deus Ex w/o firing a shot). One of my favorite 3d shooters of the past couple years is Jedi Knight II which is the most immersive games I have ever played. I felt like I was a Jedi. The list goes on and on.
So before you comment on the supposed sad state of gaming, try playing some games first.
Slashdot Mirror
Flame note, this is intended to be humor. I haven't gotten a chance to play with OS X, but it looks pretty cool.
Top 10 reasons Apple is a bit like Communism
10) Lots of cool intellectuals and artsy types seem to like it.
9) Fun to stick it to "Evil Abusive Capitalistic Monopolies".
8) Ton of zealots constantly proclaiming the beauty of the new revolution.
7) Everything seems to work together easily. However, you have to give up some choice.
6) Stores on the other side always seem better stocked and have better selections.
5) Goal is to make life as easy and fair as possible.
4) Hides much of the inner workings of the system so the people don't have to worry about them.
3) Although they do not admit it, most of their competitors have used at least some of their ideas.
2) While it looks like they were beaten in the 80's, may just be making a comeback.
1) Given history of past practices for the "greater good", scared to death of what the world would look like if they actually took over.
You cannot even *BEGIN* to compare this to the Great Depression.
See http://www.korpios.org/resurgent/Timeline.htm
Unemployment in 1933 was 24.9. 24.9 percent!!! GNP dropped 8.5 percent in 1931 and 13.4 in 1932.
Unemployment is 6-7% and our GDP rose by 1.2% last quarter. We are not in any sort of hardship by any means. Hardship is not being able to eat. Not being able to afford a new PS2 is not hardship.
For example, look at the quote "Salesclerks became programmers; coffee slingers morphed into experts in Java (computerese, that is)" So basically the dot-com bubble burst and things are getting back into reality.
And I love this one: "Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans". Hmm, maybe racking up $50,000 in student loans for an unmarketable degree was not a good idea. Who would have thought?
The reason is that it costs the cell phone company the same amount of money whether you call someone or recieve a call. It uses the same bandwidth after all.
If you made the person calling pay double, what happens when they call a land line phone? Do you have different pricing depending on who you call? If I am Sprint and the person I am calling is AT&T, how does AT&T pay Sprint's bandwidth? What if AT&T's bandwidth costs more than Sprint's and Sprint has to change it's charging depending on which cell phone company you are calling?
What happens in England if a land line person calls a cell phone? Do they have to pay for the cell phone charges?
It just seems easier to bill for the total amount you talk on a cell phone--calling or recieving.
Read the rest of his site to get an idea of just how to portray oneself as an American bigot.
Folks like Den Beste are the reason there are big problems within American culture with regards to xeno-relations.
I'm sick and tired of Americans being labeled bigots every time they refuse bend over, beg for forgiveness, and admit the rest of the world (mainly Europe) is superior.
Come on, like the countries in Europe don't act snotty about their culture and their accomplishments (see France for example). Try opening a non-French language store in France (not necessarily English either) or a non-Orthodox place of worship in Russia or Greece. In the 80's Japan shoved its economic and technical accomplishments in our faces on a daily basis. Japanese leaders called us lazy. There are plenty of examples of non-US pride.
American culture has problems with xeno-relations? Bullcrap. There is no other place on earth where so many different cultures exist together in relative tolerance. No other place where ideas and customs from different cultures are accepted and blended. Did you know after 9/11 there has been more violence against Jews in France than Muslims in the US? Research it yourself. You want to see xeno-relation problems? Try being a Catholic in Northern Ireland or a Muslim in Serbia.
Look, just because another country or countries criticize us or do things differently doesn't mean they are necessarily right. Remember that every country is looking out for their own interests. America is not perfect and we do thing for our own best interest. But this is a competitive world, lest you forget. Every country is proud of its accomplishments and every country tries to get ahead. Don't be a hypocrite and think the US has to play by some other special rules.
Brian Ellenberger
Mr. Linus, it is my understanding that you intend to write your own operating system from scratch. I just want you to know your "Linux" kernel is a stupid idea. Why don't you just buy Unix from one of the many vendors out there? It is a waste of your time and resources to try and reinvent the wheel.
There are many things I have written that have been "reinventing the wheel", from a merge sort to converting a Windows BMP to JPEG. But I learned a ton from doing it. Heck if he just wants to write something just to learn more about 3D modeling, more power to him. And you never know if in 5 years we will be raving about a new open source 3D modeler giving 3DSMax a run for its money...
Brian Ellenberger
Congress controls the budget, not the president. Congress was mostly controlled by the Democrats at the time the dig was approved.
The President only gets to sign or veto whole spending bills. They have little control over the specifics. Presidents can send it back and say "you have spent too much" but it is politically impossible for him to say "take this out, put this in, take these 3 things out, put these two in". That is why I wish the President had a line-item budget veto. A Republican congress tried to give a Democrat president (Clinton) but was overturned on Constitutional grounds (probably for good technical reasons). But I wish they would amend the Constitution on this one.
Brian Ellenberger
From Alan Nugent, Chief technology officer, Novell
"Like Mr. Negroponte, Mr. Nugent thought people would be conversing with their computers years ago. He also thought computers would be able to emulate human thought. He says IBM's champion chess-playing computer is evidence of the progress that has been made, but the field still falls short of early expectations."
IBM's chess-playing computer was just a massive parallel search assisted by human generated heuristics. It was not progress into emulating human thought. The only thing it progressed was building a computer to play chess.
If this guys is Novell's CTO, that explains Novell's problems.
But the point of the article was that the mutation was *not* an advantage currently (because it hadn't been "activated") but would be an advantage years later. So it didn't just happen, it happened many generations after.
But with so many possible mutations, how is it supposed to "know" which ones to keep handy? With Darwin, you know because you survive. You mutatate some claws, you get to live and reproduce. You mutate and are born missing your legs, you die and don't reproduce. There is a gradual single generation test.
But with this wrinkle in the theory, you may mutate and not know it is an advantage/disadvantage until much much later. As bad as the combinatorics were before, this adds several orders of magnitute to it.
Since evolution doesn't have a designer, how is evolution supposed to "know" what is going to be useful later? There could be billions of possible mutations. How is it supposed to test what is a useful mutation and what is not? And how is it supposed to "know" when to activate the mutation?
Ah yes, another lazy journalist who does not do their homework and who could care less about the story.
PCs and Consoles are completely different markets. Sure there is some cross-over, but the majority of PC gamers could care less about console ports and vice versa. In fact, most people who have enough money for a PC have enough for a console.
PC games have a wide variety of unique titles and are especially strong in the turn-based strategy, real-time strategy, free form role-playing (BG, NWN), and first person shooters. Consoles are strong in things like sports, mario-type platform, structured role-playing (FF). I don't want to play a FPS or a RTS game on a low-res screen with a console controller. Likewise when I play a sports game with friends I want to relax on the couch and not be huddled around a PC in the office.
This guy probably knows nothing about Civilization 3, Warcraft 3, Neverwinter Nights, The Sims, Dungeon Siege, Evercrack, Quake/Unreal/CounterStrike. I could go on and on.
Consoles have not gotten to the point where they are good for internet play either. Nor will they ever be good at creating custom content. Sorry, no custom clothing for your Sims. No Counter-Strike for your old FPS. No downloading of new adventures for Neverwinter Nights.
Brian Ellenberger
Here is the text of the Patriot Act:/ ~c1073P4rg4
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?c107:./temp
Where does it give the FBI the right to search library and bookstore records without a valid search warrants? I couldn't find library or bookstore mentioned and I could only find one unreleated reference to the work book.
I really wish when journalists mention that so-and-so law is evil they would be more specific as to which sections they are talking about. I'm not questioning whether those provisions are in there, I just want to read and judge them myself. For example, maybe the FBI is assuming authority that it really doesn't have.
Nowhere in the Bible does it mention the Earth's age. Sure some Jews/Christians believe it was only 6000 years, but there are plenty of others (like myself) who believe in the Bible and still believe the earth is quite a bit older.
Anyway when I read this:
"when matter and light were only just beginning to separate from one another."
I thought of this:
Genesis 1:3 And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
I believe Genesis was inspired by God, but written though a person. I think the author of Genesis did a pretty good job trying to find words and descriptions for what they were shown.
Saved By Grace,
Brian Ellenberger
IMHO, the episode Shuttlepod One was one of the best Star Trek episodes I've ever seen.
Basically Reed and Trip are on a shuttlepod out in the middle of nowhere and it looks like the Enterprise has been destroyed. The pod is damaged and they have a very limited amount of air left. And they are light years away from anything.
It was Sci-Fi at it's best, a human drama between Trip's completely irrational hope (although deep down he knows the truth) and Reed's attempt to prepare for their pending deaths. They deal with things like whether or not to be comfortable and just accept death or be miserable and squeeze out a few more hours.
I'll take one of those episodes over 10 technobabble shows anyday.
Brian Ellenberger
Take a look at the picture on http://www.nintendo.com/news/news_articles.jsp?art icleID=7318
Maybe it is the angle, but that e-reader looks about as big as the Gameboy Advanced itself.
Neat idea but I'm not so sure about the execution.
>for the future iraq victims >for everyone that has ever died through the >hands of injustice, opression, agression and >that old capitalist tool: imperialism.
Darnit, why does everyone on Slashdot feel like they always have to pile on the political rhetoric thick and high no matter what the occasion. Can't we just take one day to drop the Right vs. Left crap and mourn for the dead?
I'm ashamed at this site sometimes, especially looking back at many of the high scoring posts from 9/11 that basically said we got what we deserved. Those women and men, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, just trying to mind their own business and go to work did not deserve to die a fiery death that day. Nor do they deserve to have their rememberance used as a launching point for cheap political attacks.
Brian Ellenberger>Isn't Multics the legendary debacle that never >turned into a usable product?
Nope. Multics begat Unix. Thompson took many of the lessons learned from Multics and used them in writing Unix.
Brian Ellenberger
Now if we can only convince Environmentalists that wind power is a good idea.
Think I'm smoking crack? Well check out this story from the NY Times about the enviro fight against windmills in Cherry Valley, NY:. html?ex=1031568343&ei=1&en=0920b9cbdc48601 9
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/28/nyregion/28WIND
And there is this story about enviros against wind power in Moosic Mountain Ridge, Philadelphia
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/3693755.htm
If you want a good site to view on how the Enviromentalists have shifted from Science to Socialistic Demigogery check out this site from GreenPeace co-founder Patrick Moore:t rickmoore.html
http://www.fcpp.org/publications/conversations/pa
I love this quote from Dr. Moore:
"Many factors including a lack of science education, a need to perpetuate themselves and "means justifies the end" thinking. The worst aspect is what I describe as the environmental movement has been hijacked by political activists who are using green rhetoric to cloak agendas that have more to do with anti-corporatism and class warfare than with ecology or the environment."
Remember this is the co-founder of Greenpeace. Not exactly your average "evil right-wing" nutcase.
Brian Ellenberger
Here is the first ebay post dated 1995/09/12 from google groups: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=pierre-120995 2317370001%40pierre.vip.best.com
The patent was filed November 7, 1995. Sorry, two months too late!
What wars aren't resource wars? Despite all the "religion causes war" propaganda, if you look at the vast majority of wars they are for more land, people, food, iron, etc, etc, etc. It is never just "I hate you", it is "I hate you and you don't deserve the land you live on and the food you eat. So I'm going to take it from you."
Brian Ellenberger
>S&M also features some cool mini-games like >the "whack-a-mole"
I can't figure out whether you are talking about a game or an "alternative lifestyle".
I have to agree with you on the Lucasarts thing. Maniac Mansion was one of my first computer games and one of the games that got me hooked on computers in the first place. And I loved the early Star Wars games like XWing and Tie Fighter.
:) The story is pretty good as well.
My opinion is they dumbed down their games too much. Instead of simulators like XWing they came out with a bunch of dumb arcade crap. I feel like puking every time I see those Star Wars Mortal Kombat ripoffs.
However one exception is the reciently released Jedi Outcast. It is incredible! The lightsaber control and force powers all make you feel like you are a Jedi in the movies. Nothing like running into a room filled with Stormtroopers, defecting their shots, and cutting them all down.
The problem for Lucasarts is that adventures don't sell nowadays. Even the best ones. Grim Fandango was a financial failure. But I guess with all the money Lucas is making from Episode 3 he can afford a loss here or there.
Brian Ellenberger
The magical "any day now" video on demand is here. On ATT Broadband in Atlanta I now have a certain selection of movies that are on VOD. It is $2.99 for an older movie and $3.99 for a newer one I believe. The coolest thing is that you can fast forward, rewind, pause, and stop and save for viewing later.
I believe TV shows can fall under the same model. Maybe the first show (the pilot) is free and each show afterwards is some cost. The cable companies can of course run package deals and such (50 shows a month for X dollars) and the cost may be pretty low if many people watch.
Interestingly, this model bypasses both TiVo's and commercial television's revenue models.
Brian Ellenberger
If they broke into the base, photocopied some records, and bragged about it noone would have even thought twice about their arrest. But now that it is electronic it is of some sort of interest to Slashdot? Very sad.
Look if you want the virtual world to be treated like the real world (privacy, source code = speech, etc) then you have to accept it works both ways. Breaking in electronically is the same as physically. It doesn't matter how "weak" the security is. Just because I can throw a brick through a window and rob a store, doesn't mean it is somehow the store's fault for having windows.
And sure I am concerned about military security. And it is disturbing someone could hack into it. But that doesn't give ForensicTec the right to go hacking it. I'm worried about airline security but I can't take it upon myself to see if I can get a gun through security.
Brian Ellenberger
Interestingly enough, our word Algebra comes from the book Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala written by a Middle-Eastern man named Abu Abd-Allah ibn Musa al'Khwarizmi around 830.
Brian Ellenberger
Before someone writes that smug, self-righteous, "there have been no gameplay advances in years" post let me head them off at the pass by saying two words.
Your wrong.
I can't believe the incredible about of really good and *different* 3d shooters I have played in the past 3 years. They are too numerous to mention. There is Counter Strike's complete revolution of internet play (buying weapons instead of them just laying around, asymmetric goals, mission based play, etc). There is System Shock 2's and Deus Ex's mixing of shooter and RPG. There is the Thief's series and Deus Ex's use of stealth (more in the Thief series obviously but you could go through a good bit of Deus Ex w/o firing a shot). One of my favorite 3d shooters of the past couple years is Jedi Knight II which is the most immersive games I have ever played. I felt like I was a Jedi. The list goes on and on.
So before you comment on the supposed sad state of gaming, try playing some games first.
Brian Ellenberger