The Matrix, much like Star Wars, is really a fantasy movie that's trying to tell a story that's almost wholly removed from science fiction (in the traditional "fiction with loads of science in it" sense).
Finally! I thought I was the only one noticing this disturbing trend; namely that "science fiction" is becoming more "fiction" and less "science". Not that I don't mind a good fantasy every once in a while, but come on, science can be entertaining too.
Am I one of the few people who thoroughly enjoyed Greg Egan's "Diaspora" and other books like it because it heaps on the science with no apologies? Why can't we have more good movies with a better basis in reality?
If someone hacks my *private* network or illegally obtains my private encryption keys, then *that's* an invasion of my privacy.
Sending or receiving unencrypted packets is like sending a postcard: it's not sealed, and it's not illegal for the letter carrier to read it. Sending an encrypted packet is like sending a letter. It's illegal for the letter carrier to open it.
Pardon my cynicism, but how far do you think you'd get in a case brought against the US government if you just happened to catch them sniffing packets on your so called "private" network?
I've long believed that on the 'net, there is no law. You want privacy/security, you use the highest encryption available. It then is no longer a question of whether it is illegal or not, it becomes a question of whether or not it's possible to crack it. A "technical solution to a social problem" if you will. The law can go fuck itself at that point.
No, but a lot of the idiots who cry "hipcrosy!" think that slashdot is one voice. This is the problem with people today, and especially with the idea of corporations as entities: people perceive that just because a member of a group says something, that is the opinion of the whole group. This is obviously untrue in almost all cases, as no two people are exactly alike.
So, just to sum things up: when someone posts "The MPAA is evil!" and then someone else posts "Oooh, Star Wars is coming out!", unless they are the same person it is not hipocrisy. People are not the same, especially hackers and the other types that frequent slashdot. Get used to it.
Up until this point, you had me agreeing with you.
It used to be I would agree with you, or at least not contradict you outright. But recently, I've been forced to deal with Microsoft's products. Now I know better. Just for reference, I've been a rabid OS/2 user, a Mac admin (and programmer), and I'm still currently a Linux guru. Microsoft's products have by far been the least superior of any software I have ever used. To put it another way, Microsoft's products are not superior to anything I've ever seen.
Microsoft has succeeded on anti-competitive practices alone, which is sad, because with their power and resources they could do so much more. But I guess that wouldn't be profitable, now would it?
Anybody who says 'boo' to the opposite is a heathen devil sodomite who buggers little boys and votes for Al Gore.
Tell me about it. You think it's hard putting up with Americans when you live in another country? Try living in the same country with them, then getting lumped in with them. Talk about stranger in a strange land . ..
Seriously, folks, is the corporate world so seriously screwed up that no-one is capable of this?
In a word, yes. This is why smart, productive people (hackers) are getting laid off while incompetent, useless people (management) are getting raises and bonuses.
Wow, I'm surprised I didn't think of this before. Well, here goes.
Item the first: the economy is doing shitty in America. Many people have been laid off (myself included). But then companies are turning around and hiring off shore to replace the exact positions they just shitcanned!
Item the second: civil liberties are being trampled on left and right in America. Pretty soon it will be Orwell's 1984 if the corporations keep getting their way.
Conclusion: Move to another country. You get a job (because you are now "off-shore") and you won't have your civil liberties trampled on! What a deal!
Anyway, Microsoft is losing money per console sold, not including what they are spending advertising and support. Reports have it fall between $50 to $105 lost per console. MS has only said that they are losing money, and won't comment on how much.
I might add, this article was written before they dropped the price, so tack on another $100 USD to that estimate.
And as to your saying that it's "just some post from a guy who owns a rental store", well, that's more than we can say for you, isn't it? Tell you what, when you run a successful video game rental store for a number of YEARS, I might just believe something you have to say.
I know he's rather reclusive, but I would love to see him interviewed. While I haven't heard much of his stuff, I am a fan and admire his abilities and DIY attitude.
Is there any way we might get him to do an interview? Aphex, if you're reading, would you please consider doing a slashdot interview?
Current car layouts (gear shifter generally obvious, steering wheel, key ignition in one of several common places, etc) are not "intuitive", either. Rather, they're "comfortable", because they don't deviate much from what you've been driving.
This goes back to one of my favorite quotes:
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
-- Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on intuitivenes
In other words, you'll get electrocuted, and your body will be ripped apart by the rapidly changing electric and magnetic fields.
Am I the only person who saw that and instantly relished the thought of having a handheld weapon that uses strangelets as its projectiles? After the awful thought of "that must be painful!", of course.
Dibs on placing my bet that this will be the next popular weapon in a FPS or Descent clone.
"What this world needs is a five dollar strangelet weapon!" -/me after this article
. . . then you'll love this. It basically takes a few weblogs (aka blogs, journals, diaries, etc) and blends them together, albeit a little less randomly. Enjoy.
Hmm, methinks thou misunderstands, but I believe this is my fault, as I was not entirely clear in my line of thought. Allow me to elaborate:
I was saying that most people who disagree with Stallman appear to attack him rather than his ideas. This appears to be to me because they can't come up with any reasonable arguments against his ideas, therefore they start calling names in the hope that this will somehow prove what he is saying is wrong.
My view of ideas is that although they cannot originate without conciousness, that does not mean that they are neccesarily tied to a conciousness. This leads to an interesting conundrum in which ideas are tied to conciousness, yet their credibility is not tied to the credibility of the originator. Ideas must be evaluated on their own separately from who originated them. The only reason to look at who originated them is to analyse how they originated and what biases may have been in effect at the time the idea was created.
Sorry if this sounds a little long winded and overly philosophical; I've been reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" recently.
As this is one of my few comments that has garnered any response, I thought I'd do the courtesy of replying, at least to the general riff-raff that seem to be against my little request.
First, I would like to point out, that it was simply a request. If you don't want to GPL your code, fine. I was only asking you to do yourself a favor.
Second: it would seem that most people's "argument" against my request is that I'm a zealot. Nice line of reasoning guys, real smart to use an ad hominem attack. I'll bet you called people who disagreed with you in high school "fags" as well.
Stallman is just another extremist with a useful ideal but no practical value.
I've always found it interesting how people who don't agree with Stallman like to attack him. In other words, almost all attacks against Stallman's ideas are ad hominem, because they can't come up with any logical reasons why his ideas are wrong.
As an ad hominem attack of my own, your confusing of left wing politics with anarchism does nothing to increase your credibility. Try being informed next time.
Microsoft has been known in the past to include BSD code. (It's TCP/IP stack is one example.) This "habit" is probably why they don't like GPL code - they prefer to quietly integrate the code.
This is a good point - and one I'd like to expound upon.
I would like to ask every software developer who reads this to please do themselves and everyone else a favor: GPL your code. Even if it's already BSD.
Why do this? Because of situations like the above. Microsoft can leech off of your honest and hard work without ever contributing anything back to the community. They can (and have) also screwed over their customers with monopolistic practices and shitty license agreements. I believe that this would have been much more difficult if they had had to make all their code on their own, instead of stealing it.
Some will cry "but you can't SELL GPLed software!" This is a fallacy. There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits you from selling your software. If you are really worried about losing profits, just sell the binaries - and release the source code to paying customers who ask. By the rules of the GPL, this is completely allowable. You only have to give the source to people that you gave the binaries to.
Why not just get an el cheapo dvd standalone unit for your TV. You get a remote and probably a bigger picture. Why would anyone watch DVDs on their computer, Gnu/Linux or Windows?
Consider my current plan for building my own home theater: put together an high end box with an awesome graphics card, surround sound card and speakers, and a digital projector. Sure, the projector will probably cost at least $2,000 (USD), but you will have a picture bigger than any monitor or TV and higher quality than any TV. That, and I can use it as a home stereo to play CDs and MP3s/OGG, with nifty graphical plugins projected onto the wall of my living room! And imagine playing games on this system as well!
Getting back to the topic, most programmers seem to lack the discipline characteristic of engineers -- and that includes many engineers when they do programming.
Are you shitting me? I don't know about you, but every piece of software I've ever seen written by an "engineer" (including EE's) was complete and utter crap with no regard whatsoever for good program design and a severe lack of understanding about the systems they were programming in.
Don't get me wrong - I've seen shit code from "computer scientists" as well. But usually these people had just switched from another major because CS made more money, and had no experience programming at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally! I thought I was the only one noticing this disturbing trend; namely that "science fiction" is becoming more "fiction" and less "science". Not that I don't mind a good fantasy every once in a while, but come on, science can be entertaining too.
Am I one of the few people who thoroughly enjoyed Greg Egan's "Diaspora" and other books like it because it heaps on the science with no apologies? Why can't we have more good movies with a better basis in reality?
Sending or receiving unencrypted packets is like sending a postcard: it's not sealed, and it's not illegal for the letter carrier to read it. Sending an encrypted packet is like sending a letter. It's illegal for the letter carrier to open it.
Pardon my cynicism, but how far do you think you'd get in a case brought against the US government if you just happened to catch them sniffing packets on your so called "private" network?
I've long believed that on the 'net, there is no law. You want privacy/security, you use the highest encryption available. It then is no longer a question of whether it is illegal or not, it becomes a question of whether or not it's possible to crack it. A "technical solution to a social problem" if you will. The law can go fuck itself at that point.
"You changed your name _to_ latrine?"
"Yeah, it used to be Shithouse."
"Good change. That's a *good* change!"
No, but a lot of the idiots who cry "hipcrosy!" think that slashdot is one voice. This is the problem with people today, and especially with the idea of corporations as entities: people perceive that just because a member of a group says something, that is the opinion of the whole group. This is obviously untrue in almost all cases, as no two people are exactly alike.
So, just to sum things up: when someone posts "The MPAA is evil!" and then someone else posts "Oooh, Star Wars is coming out!", unless they are the same person it is not hipocrisy. People are not the same, especially hackers and the other types that frequent slashdot. Get used to it.
Up until this point, you had me agreeing with you.
It used to be I would agree with you, or at least not contradict you outright. But recently, I've been forced to deal with Microsoft's products. Now I know better. Just for reference, I've been a rabid OS/2 user, a Mac admin (and programmer), and I'm still currently a Linux guru. Microsoft's products have by far been the least superior of any software I have ever used. To put it another way, Microsoft's products are not superior to anything I've ever seen.
Microsoft has succeeded on anti-competitive practices alone, which is sad, because with their power and resources they could do so much more. But I guess that wouldn't be profitable, now would it?
Tell me about it. You think it's hard putting up with Americans when you live in another country? Try living in the same country with them, then getting lumped in with them. Talk about stranger in a strange land . .
In a word, yes. This is why smart, productive people (hackers) are getting laid off while incompetent, useless people (management) are getting raises and bonuses.
Item the first: the economy is doing shitty in America. Many people have been laid off (myself included). But then companies are turning around and hiring off shore to replace the exact positions they just shitcanned!
Item the second: civil liberties are being trampled on left and right in America. Pretty soon it will be Orwell's 1984 if the corporations keep getting their way.
Conclusion: Move to another country. You get a job (because you are now "off-shore") and you won't have your civil liberties trampled on! What a deal!
To the original poster, and I block quoteth from my originally referenced article:
I might add, this article was written before they dropped the price, so tack on another $100 USD to that estimate.
And as to your saying that it's "just some post from a guy who owns a rental store", well, that's more than we can say for you, isn't it? Tell you what, when you run a successful video game rental store for a number of YEARS, I might just believe something you have to say.
I just *love* how the link supporting your argument is to an msn.com site. Let's try something different, shall we? How about an independant analysis?
Oh, I don't know, maybe someone who knows what the Hell they're talking about, unlike you.
Is there any way we might get him to do an interview? Aphex, if you're reading, would you please consider doing a slashdot interview?
This goes back to one of my favorite quotes:
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
-- Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on intuitivenes
. . . and it's so true . . .
No. Geez, doesn't anyone watch "South Park" anymore? It was explained quite clearly that the cause of spontaneous combustion was holding farts in.
Am I the only person who saw that and instantly relished the thought of having a handheld weapon that uses strangelets as its projectiles? After the awful thought of "that must be painful!", of course.
Dibs on placing my bet that this will be the next popular weapon in a FPS or Descent clone.
"What this world needs is a five dollar strangelet weapon!" -
On the other hand, proving Martin Luther King Jr is the spawn of Satan is quite difficult, it takes about 100 times as much research!
As for the Aryan Brotherhood I figure a lot of it is "see article on Adolph Hitler" so they can save duplicate research.
Also, for your masochistic programming pleasure, you may be interested in the polyglot list and the quine page.
For even more zany programming fun, check out Esoteric topics in Computer Programming. Oh, and my own pathetic attempt at a similar page, Miscreant Programming Languages.
. . . then you'll love this. It basically takes a few weblogs (aka blogs, journals, diaries, etc) and blends them together, albeit a little less randomly. Enjoy.
Hmm, methinks thou misunderstands, but I believe this is my fault, as I was not entirely clear in my line of thought. Allow me to elaborate:
I was saying that most people who disagree with Stallman appear to attack him rather than his ideas. This appears to be to me because they can't come up with any reasonable arguments against his ideas, therefore they start calling names in the hope that this will somehow prove what he is saying is wrong.
My view of ideas is that although they cannot originate without conciousness, that does not mean that they are neccesarily tied to a conciousness. This leads to an interesting conundrum in which ideas are tied to conciousness, yet their credibility is not tied to the credibility of the originator. Ideas must be evaluated on their own separately from who originated them. The only reason to look at who originated them is to analyse how they originated and what biases may have been in effect at the time the idea was created.
Sorry if this sounds a little long winded and overly philosophical; I've been reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" recently.
First, I would like to point out, that it was simply a request. If you don't want to GPL your code, fine. I was only asking you to do yourself a favor.
Second: it would seem that most people's "argument" against my request is that I'm a zealot. Nice line of reasoning guys, real smart to use an ad hominem attack. I'll bet you called people who disagreed with you in high school "fags" as well.
I've always found it interesting how people who don't agree with Stallman like to attack him. In other words, almost all attacks against Stallman's ideas are ad hominem, because they can't come up with any logical reasons why his ideas are wrong.
As an ad hominem attack of my own, your confusing of left wing politics with anarchism does nothing to increase your credibility. Try being informed next time.
This is a good point - and one I'd like to expound upon.
I would like to ask every software developer who reads this to please do themselves and everyone else a favor: GPL your code. Even if it's already BSD.
Why do this? Because of situations like the above. Microsoft can leech off of your honest and hard work without ever contributing anything back to the community. They can (and have) also screwed over their customers with monopolistic practices and shitty license agreements. I believe that this would have been much more difficult if they had had to make all their code on their own, instead of stealing it.
Some will cry "but you can't SELL GPLed software!" This is a fallacy. There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits you from selling your software. If you are really worried about losing profits, just sell the binaries - and release the source code to paying customers who ask. By the rules of the GPL, this is completely allowable. You only have to give the source to people that you gave the binaries to.
Consider my current plan for building my own home theater: put together an high end box with an awesome graphics card, surround sound card and speakers, and a digital projector. Sure, the projector will probably cost at least $2,000 (USD), but you will have a picture bigger than any monitor or TV and higher quality than any TV. That, and I can use it as a home stereo to play CDs and MP3s/OGG, with nifty graphical plugins projected onto the wall of my living room! And imagine playing games on this system as well!
You obviously don't understand anarchism.
Are you shitting me? I don't know about you, but every piece of software I've ever seen written by an "engineer" (including EE's) was complete and utter crap with no regard whatsoever for good program design and a severe lack of understanding about the systems they were programming in.
Don't get me wrong - I've seen shit code from "computer scientists" as well. But usually these people had just switched from another major because CS made more money, and had no experience programming at all.