What if it was the reverse. The DOJ gives MS leniency, but calls in a favor with the FBI to announce some "Magic Lantern" spyware, and suddenly open projects become very popular....
The real problem is the users themselves who are migrating from another operating system (typically an MS OS, although I'm sure this would apply to any other). While taking a Human Computer Interaction course not very long ago (early this year), the project we chose was to create a simple interface for the Linux lab, for new users.
Now, most users are familiar with buttons, right? Everyone who has used a modern GUI has seen and used and is familiar with buttons. So, we made a little app in QT 2.x that would have a screen with a few rows of labelled buttons. There would be categories (office apps, math and science apps, development apps, etc.), and the user could select a category and click the button of the app they wanted. You don't really get any easier than this.
The results were disturbing. Our team (made of mostly windows users) had little problem, since they had seen it in development. But almost no one else could use it! We tested on a decent number of people in the NT lab (since this was our target audience), gave them a few simple tasks (like "start a word processor"), and only a very small percentage could complete these tasks. They just couldn't handle something different.
This is the problem I see with making it "OK to be ignorant (about computers)". People can't really use a computer at all, they can only repeat a set of rote tasks to do what they want.
Using a computer isn't difficult. Understanding what is happening isn't difficult. Which OS you use, whether you have a GUI or a command line, is irrelevant. Most of the problem people have with "Linux is Difficult" stems from the fact that they only know a series of rote tasks on one platform, and these rote tasks don't work on Linux. (Even if they do, there is mental confusion simply because it isn't the platform they're used to... we tried this with GNOME and KDE as well, which are quite similar to what people here do, which is use the Start menu.) I have set up a Linux computer for my mom and sister, both of whom had no previous computer experience, and they had absolutely zero trouble using it. My dad, however, who had a deal of Windows experience, just couldn't handle it. (In fact, I had my sister edit a LaTeX document one time, just for kicks, and she picked up on the formatting codes without any explanation. She didn't get them all right, but she came very close.)
People don't like to change. They don't like to learn and adapt. But they should, even though they will make a fuss. We know they should. We are experienced, and we do know better than they. This is not an elitist attitude: we want them to learn too. (An elitist attitude would be that they are inferior and cannot, or should not, learn.) Making it OK to be ignorant is merely harmful for them and ourselves, as well.
I can't believe no one has mention Jak and Daxter for the PS2. This is a pretty incredible looking platformer/action-adventure. You can read the previews, but it looks to have the following prominent features:
Huge, seamless world. Apparently you can see distant areas of the island from any location.
Beatiful smooth graphics. The movies (see the bottom of the page) should make this obvious.
No load times. After playing things like GTA3, Ico, or MGS2, which have large areas and little or no load times, I believe this is possible, and it will certainly set a new standard for other games.
Brought to you by Naughty Dog Software, so expect much goodness.
According the the IGN preview (as well as other articles and interviews), the authors are fans of games like Zelda which also feature large expansive worlds, so that vision combined with NDS talent might produce a top-10 title.
IANAL, but this obviously doesn't have anything to do with copyright law. You can't resell copies of this software or otherwise infringe on their copyrights any more than you ever could. The GPL gives you rights to copy above and beyond copyright law, and when used it is the only source of those additional rights, so you follow the rules or don't play.
This ruling would just mean that you could go out and resell that RedHat or Debian CD you bought. And, gee, guess what... you already could.;-)
Building shared libraries on multiple systems is a task that many people face. Any time you expect to write a shared library and have it ported across various unix-like platforms, you have this problem. Getting shared libraries working across even a few platforms is difficult enough. Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD? Each have different requirements and quirks and (especially in the latter case) brokenness.
If you're just writing something on Linux with zero foresight as to portability, you might take the approach that "this doesn't matter," but that would be pretty naive.
Also, libtool does more than just implement a layer of portability for building shared libraries (which is its main goal). It has library dependency tracking, version maintenance, and a module loading API. These, coupled with the extreme ease of building a shared library when coupled with automake and autoconf, make it an indispensible tool.
Correct. While complying with the license. By not releasing the source, their right to use the source was gone, and the effectively stole.
Or they just broke the license and committed copyright infrigement. They didn't actually "take away" the code. I do agree they stole---they stole our rights given by the GPL.
Look at this way: You walk into a car dealership and take a car out for a test drive. Fine, right? There's nothing wrong with that; it's fully legal. Now what if you don't come back? That's grand theft. Try telling the judge you were just "test-driving" the car all the way to Mexico.
Well that's not really an accurate analogy, since you would have been taking away the car.
If license violation can be proved to be intentional, that would be considered stealing. Period. (Again, assuming the GPL holds up in court.)
Well IANAL so I can't tell you the legal term, but I don't think it would be stealing. You'd just be committing copyright infrigement. If the GPL doesn't "hold up" in court, it'd default to your basic copyright, which is "all rights reserved," so... you'd still be committing copyright infrigement.
I guess there's no such thing as identity theft, since the party whose identity I've used to gain goods and services is still in their possession...
Of course there is, just calling it "theft" is a misnomer. They're not stealing per se (unless they use the said information to take from the person whose identity they're using), they're illegally misrepresenting themselves, something like fraud. Of course, that's not what we call it, but the term does not change what it is.
Please don't generalize using your ideological beliefs. Theft is a legal matter, and there are many forms of it, not all of which involve the tangible...
I never said it must deal with the tangible. I said that to truly be theft, it must take away from a party. This is not the same as just taking without the "away" part. Remember, I said your rights are being stolen here. Rights are certainly not (directly) tangible items.
The GPL (the license mplayer is under) provides consent by the author for modification and redistribution provided they follow the GPL. If they do not, they are not acting under the provision of consent, and are STEALING the code...
Aside from Mplayer not actually being under the GPL per se, let's assume for the sake of discussion it is. Taking GPL code and using it in a non-GPL product is not "stealing code," it is copyright infringement. It is "stealing community rights." That's what I'm saying.
They took the entirety of the mplayer source, changed the output plugin for OS/2, and released it as binary-only. [...] They tried to pull a fast one on Mplayer using very little or no code of their own. I don't know if you call that imitation, I call it stealing.
They stole, but this is not what they stole. Using someone else's code is not stealing, since the party whose code is used does not lose their code. Under the GPL, this sort of using is encouraged. After all, this is one of the things Free Software is truly about. So they did not "take" Mplayer's code, or "steal" Mplayer's code, they used it, and that's fine.
But then, they stole. (If indeed this is what happened... that's what is claimed, and seems to be resolved, and we will for discussion assume it is the case.) They stole from the community the right and ability to reuse and modify the code. This is what the GPL is designed to protect. And this is where we must be careful.
Code cannot be stolen. No form of "intellectual property" can be stolen by being copied and used. This is not stealing, there is no loss. The loss and theft occurs when the right and ability to modify and use or reuse is taken away. This right is the only thing that can truly be taken away by theft. Let us all beware of such things.
This is a fairly blatant case of a false dichotomy. This basically implies that Gates and Microsoft created the current platform industry standard, but without Gates we would still be using punchcards and mainframes. This is, of course, ridiculous.
Microsoft has a long history of crushing competition, of course, even before it was Microsoft. We all know how DR-DOS, the main competitor back-in-the-day, ended up. Without Gates, DR-DOS would likely have been the operating system of the x86. Microsoft did not invent MS-DOS, either, as we all know (being bought from the QDOS people). Microsoft did not invent the home computer either, that was Atari, or Commodore, or even Apple.
In short, Microsoft has never made an original move in its existance that would indicate that, without its presence, the technology and market conditions would be the same or better than they currently are.
Sorry. This presupposes that the children will benefit from being inundated with MS software. In the long run, they won't. Neither does the rest of the world: that's what this case is about. Your statements sound reasonable, until you realize that they presuppose what they're trying to show. That doesn't work.
Would that be the New New Economy or the Old New Economy?
*runs*
Re:Why no animated window widgets?
on
KDE 3.0 Screenshots
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Try M-x dancing-midgets-mode
;-)
Microsoft is irrelevant.
on
XBox Released
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· Score: 2
Admittedly, I am biased against Microsoft. I want them to fail. So what? Objectivity is impossible for anyone, and at least I'm honest about my bias.
But all that doesn't matter. (Mostly.) The XBOX gets so much criticism, not because it's Microsoft, but because it really does suck. There's nothing it has that a stale PC from a year or more ago doesn't, or couldn't with a little money. The games are mediocre at best, the hardware is crap, and thus few console gamers show interest. The fact it's Microsoft is just the cherry on the icing of this fruitcake.
Friends and I have always thought something like this would be nifty---something like a virtual keyboard you could type in the air---although when I saw this announcement I wondered if it would actually be as practical from an HCI standpoint. After all, there's no real tactile feedback to tell you if you've hit the right "key," as far as I can tell. This sort of feedback is important, moreso than visual feedback (since unless you can't touchtype, you don't need to see the keyboard: try typing in the dark), especially to avert Repetitive Stress Injury.
On the other hand, just to test the concept, I tried "typing" on a flat surface, and it seemed fairly intuitive. This is probably better in this respace than an "air keyboard", since you at least feel the contact of the desk. (Assuming you can't type in the air with this product, although there doesn't seem to be a reason why not, they say "any flat surface".)
Now what would be nifty is a roll-up guide you could "type" on to get both visual feedback and a soft touch. This would solve hunting and pecking problems, too.:-)
I'd really love to have one of these, since they seem to solve most portability problems, and since it seems you can tweak the virtual keyboard's size (layout, etc.), it'd make the ultimate evolution in keyboards. (No more need for a "flex" keyboard, just mold a surface...)
Microsoft is good at one thing: spin control. Even if they get hacked and everyone's data gets stolen, what do they do? Take the blame? Admit they're not very good at this security thing? Decide Passport wasn't a good idea?
Yeah right. Instead, they can simply spin it as "terrorism". That's right---you and your data have been the victims of a terrorist-hacker attack. Computer crimes are terrorism. You are a hapless victim. Microsoft is a hapless victim. Are they to blame? Who would blame the victims of a terrorist attack? Would you blame the people in the WTC buildings for the attack that got them killed?
Now whose fault does it look like? Certainly no-one would blame MS. They've provided this great service and now for their insight, innovation, and generosity, are the victims of terror. Right. How many people will learn a lesson from this? They'll just want more draconian laws passed, harsher measures taken against these "computer terrorists".
If you REALLY want gtk, check this.
on
GNU Emacs 21
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· Score: 4, Informative
Gtk/XEmacs is available here if you really want gtk. Unfortunately this is based on an earlier version of XEmacs (21.1.12, current is like 22 something I believe), but it does look nifty and fit with your other gtk apps if you have any. There are a few minor caveats:
A few (very) minor visual bugs, most notably if you hide the toolbar, the minibuffer is too big.
No pseudotransparency.;-)
The upgrade to 22 might outweigh the pretty visuals.
It does look nifty, though (depending on your taste), as screenshots indicate.
A friend of mine (Nathan Anderson) wrote something that I believe is quite like this, and posted it right here to slashdot, a number of years ago. Here is the article. Judge for yourself. When he sees this he'll probably post something about it as well. Does this count as prior art?
This isn't a renderfarm node, it'd be a workstation. That's the thing you do your modelling work on.
The Emotion Engine CPUs blow away a GeForce3, to speak nothing of a crappy GeForce2 MX. (I've got a gf2mx, in addition to rendering quality being crap, full of artifacts, it's generally not all that fast.) If you want a renderfarm box, the best video card in the world is irrelevant, because the rendering would be done in software, not realtime. (For this, yes, a stripped-down Athlon with fast ethernet and a local disk cache would be the way to go.)
But you can't put together a PC to touch a PS2 for realtime rendering. Those specialized CPU's are what make all the difference. Higher MHz ratings are completely irrelevant here.
RAM might need addressing, but then again if you make a specialized modelling suite (or adapt one), you should be able to work within the given constraints. (Remember, you can stream geometry and textures as you're rendering; keeping everything in RAM isn't necessary.)
Oh, and the $200 kit included keyboard, mouse, and svga adaptor (in addition to hdd and ethernet). It already has a DVD/CD-ROM, sound, USB, firewire. There's no way you can throw together a system (even a generic one, ignoring the special graphics and sound effects capabilities of the PS2), minus the monitor, for $500, that would approach the completeness of the PS2 solution.
The PS2 has a 256-bit pipeline, a specialized graphics CPU, and basically enough bandwidth to make your PC look like a gameboy. You could "cobble together" one of these as a Linux workstation for $500 ($300 PS2, $200 linux kit, including hdd, eth, Linux, X, GL and everything you need to program it, including the bare specialized hardware... and that's before any rumored price drop). The system would rival a SGI workstation for realtime graphics processing power. For $500. (Of course, you need to throw in some software, but you need to do that with the SGI's, too.) You could barely buy a GeForce3 for that. The PC solution would cost at least a grand, and wouldn't be nearly as powerful.
Sony is already making high end boxes using 8x of the CPUs in a PS2. Licensing the CPU technology. Just think of the PS2 + Linux as the "low end" graphics workstation, perfect for hobbiests, small businesses, etc.
It's not a toy by any means. Just because they market it to play games, doesn't mean there's not some serious technology in this box.
One Word: DivX. People will simply not stand for such a thing, especially if it offers no added benefits (lots of high-demand content only available in this format is what it takes). I think everyone has been used to media they own indefinitely with (at least perceived) unlimited access that anything that infringes on these givens won't be accepted without major incentive. Incentive I don't think can be accomplished (but never say never, right?). It's sickening to see ("consumers will be able to enjoy [..] for a full 10 hours", "Adobe applauds RosettaBooks"), but who will buy it? Especially for a buck, when you can get a "real live" paperback for $5-6 more. And if it's not the same book, there are thousands of other books worth reading.
For instance, DVDs are accepted because most people don't run into region coding problems, and those that do can pretty easily overcome them (although people might wake up if Joe Sixpack starts getting prosecuted). DivX's weren't, because the restrictions crossed the line.
Another example might be Pay-Per-View TV. I'm not sure how popular this is, but my guess is that going to the store and renting something that can be viewed multiple times and at the leisure of the viewer is still more popular. (I don't think this is exactly an analogous situation, but enough mportant elements are there to make it potentially interesting).
I'm not worried about this. It'll probably die the same death a thousand other Really Stupid Ideas have. If anything, I'd be worried that this will stigmatize books in a digital format even further.
I already get prerecorded voice messages. Talk about the ultimate annoyance: phone spam is bad enough, but you don't even have someone on the other end whose time you can waste, mind you can play with, and other... er, someone on the other end to demand you're taken off their lists, etc.
Thus, it is very interesting to learn about this part of the TCPA... any idea who I can file a formal complaint with next time I get one of these calls?
After getting sick of some popup ads, I was pointed at The Internet Junkbuster, which, as the name implies, gets rid of the junk. Completely. I haven't seen an ad since I installed it. It's free, it's GPL'd, it does the job, and it's easy to install. What more could you ask for?
Think earth, with the oceans dried up a lot. That's what I thought when I saw it. Besides, if this is taking your typical evolutionary view of planetary development, how else would you get identical flora and fauna?
The three moons bit probably isn't that far fetched either, we could always get moons from elsewhere.;-) That's the hardest part, I'll admit.
Finally, the future apes might very well have been more technically advanced... and we just saw a portion of the world that wasn't as technologically outgoing. This is especially feasible if you look at the clothing of many of the apes... obviously mass fabricated. (Leather jackets, other machined textiles, etc. Imports.)
OTOH, knowing the ape personalities, it's also not too far of a stretch to see a technological decline, especially if advanced weapons were once available (blowing each other to bits, new dark ages, etc.). Question of how they got there in the first place remains to be answered.
Heck, I dunno. Doesn't seem to hang together in any respect, trying to make it hang together is impossible, but the time changes did seem fairly logical from what they said.;-) The harder you think, the less sense it makes, which is usually a good sign of a bad movie.
Slashdot Mirror
What if it was the reverse. The DOJ gives MS leniency, but calls in a favor with the FBI to announce some "Magic Lantern" spyware, and suddenly open projects become very popular....
...naw. ;-)
The real problem is the users themselves who are migrating from another operating system (typically an MS OS, although I'm sure this would apply to any other). While taking a Human Computer Interaction course not very long ago (early this year), the project we chose was to create a simple interface for the Linux lab, for new users.
Now, most users are familiar with buttons, right? Everyone who has used a modern GUI has seen and used and is familiar with buttons. So, we made a little app in QT 2.x that would have a screen with a few rows of labelled buttons. There would be categories (office apps, math and science apps, development apps, etc.), and the user could select a category and click the button of the app they wanted. You don't really get any easier than this.
The results were disturbing. Our team (made of mostly windows users) had little problem, since they had seen it in development. But almost no one else could use it! We tested on a decent number of people in the NT lab (since this was our target audience), gave them a few simple tasks (like "start a word processor"), and only a very small percentage could complete these tasks. They just couldn't handle something different.
This is the problem I see with making it "OK to be ignorant (about computers)". People can't really use a computer at all, they can only repeat a set of rote tasks to do what they want.
Using a computer isn't difficult. Understanding what is happening isn't difficult. Which OS you use, whether you have a GUI or a command line, is irrelevant. Most of the problem people have with "Linux is Difficult" stems from the fact that they only know a series of rote tasks on one platform, and these rote tasks don't work on Linux. (Even if they do, there is mental confusion simply because it isn't the platform they're used to... we tried this with GNOME and KDE as well, which are quite similar to what people here do, which is use the Start menu.) I have set up a Linux computer for my mom and sister, both of whom had no previous computer experience, and they had absolutely zero trouble using it. My dad, however, who had a deal of Windows experience, just couldn't handle it. (In fact, I had my sister edit a LaTeX document one time, just for kicks, and she picked up on the formatting codes without any explanation. She didn't get them all right, but she came very close.)
People don't like to change. They don't like to learn and adapt. But they should, even though they will make a fuss. We know they should. We are experienced, and we do know better than they. This is not an elitist attitude: we want them to learn too. (An elitist attitude would be that they are inferior and cannot, or should not, learn.) Making it OK to be ignorant is merely harmful for them and ourselves, as well.
I can't believe no one has mention Jak and Daxter for the PS2. This is a pretty incredible looking platformer/action-adventure. You can read the previews, but it looks to have the following prominent features:
According the the IGN preview (as well as other articles and interviews), the authors are fans of games like Zelda which also feature large expansive worlds, so that vision combined with NDS talent might produce a top-10 title.
IANAL, but this obviously doesn't have anything to do with copyright law. You can't resell copies of this software or otherwise infringe on their copyrights any more than you ever could. The GPL gives you rights to copy above and beyond copyright law, and when used it is the only source of those additional rights, so you follow the rules or don't play.
This ruling would just mean that you could go out and resell that RedHat or Debian CD you bought. And, gee, guess what... you already could. ;-)
Building shared libraries on multiple systems is a task that many people face. Any time you expect to write a shared library and have it ported across various unix-like platforms, you have this problem. Getting shared libraries working across even a few platforms is difficult enough. Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD? Each have different requirements and quirks and (especially in the latter case) brokenness.
If you're just writing something on Linux with zero foresight as to portability, you might take the approach that "this doesn't matter," but that would be pretty naive.
Also, libtool does more than just implement a layer of portability for building shared libraries (which is its main goal). It has library dependency tracking, version maintenance, and a module loading API. These, coupled with the extreme ease of building a shared library when coupled with automake and autoconf, make it an indispensible tool.
Or they just broke the license and committed copyright infrigement. They didn't actually "take away" the code. I do agree they stole---they stole our rights given by the GPL.
Well that's not really an accurate analogy, since you would have been taking away the car.
Well IANAL so I can't tell you the legal term, but I don't think it would be stealing. You'd just be committing copyright infrigement. If the GPL doesn't "hold up" in court, it'd default to your basic copyright, which is "all rights reserved," so... you'd still be committing copyright infrigement.
Of course there is, just calling it "theft" is a misnomer. They're not stealing per se (unless they use the said information to take from the person whose identity they're using), they're illegally misrepresenting themselves, something like fraud. Of course, that's not what we call it, but the term does not change what it is.
I never said it must deal with the tangible. I said that to truly be theft, it must take away from a party. This is not the same as just taking without the "away" part. Remember, I said your rights are being stolen here. Rights are certainly not (directly) tangible items.
Aside from Mplayer not actually being under the GPL per se, let's assume for the sake of discussion it is. Taking GPL code and using it in a non-GPL product is not "stealing code," it is copyright infringement. It is "stealing community rights." That's what I'm saying.
They stole, but this is not what they stole. Using someone else's code is not stealing, since the party whose code is used does not lose their code. Under the GPL, this sort of using is encouraged. After all, this is one of the things Free Software is truly about. So they did not "take" Mplayer's code, or "steal" Mplayer's code, they used it, and that's fine.
But then, they stole. (If indeed this is what happened... that's what is claimed, and seems to be resolved, and we will for discussion assume it is the case.) They stole from the community the right and ability to reuse and modify the code. This is what the GPL is designed to protect. And this is where we must be careful.
Code cannot be stolen. No form of "intellectual property" can be stolen by being copied and used. This is not stealing, there is no loss. The loss and theft occurs when the right and ability to modify and use or reuse is taken away. This right is the only thing that can truly be taken away by theft. Let us all beware of such things.
This is a fairly blatant case of a false dichotomy. This basically implies that Gates and Microsoft created the current platform industry standard, but without Gates we would still be using punchcards and mainframes. This is, of course, ridiculous.
Microsoft has a long history of crushing competition, of course, even before it was Microsoft. We all know how DR-DOS, the main competitor back-in-the-day, ended up. Without Gates, DR-DOS would likely have been the operating system of the x86. Microsoft did not invent MS-DOS, either, as we all know (being bought from the QDOS people). Microsoft did not invent the home computer either, that was Atari, or Commodore, or even Apple.
In short, Microsoft has never made an original move in its existance that would indicate that, without its presence, the technology and market conditions would be the same or better than they currently are.
There is always someone else.
Sorry. This presupposes that the children will benefit from being inundated with MS software. In the long run, they won't. Neither does the rest of the world: that's what this case is about. Your statements sound reasonable, until you realize that they presuppose what they're trying to show. That doesn't work.
Would that be the New New Economy or the Old New Economy?
*runs*
Try M-x dancing-midgets-mode
Admittedly, I am biased against Microsoft. I want them to fail. So what? Objectivity is impossible for anyone, and at least I'm honest about my bias.
But all that doesn't matter. (Mostly.) The XBOX gets so much criticism, not because it's Microsoft, but because it really does suck. There's nothing it has that a stale PC from a year or more ago doesn't, or couldn't with a little money. The games are mediocre at best, the hardware is crap, and thus few console gamers show interest. The fact it's Microsoft is just the cherry on the icing of this fruitcake.
Friends and I have always thought something like this would be nifty---something like a virtual keyboard you could type in the air---although when I saw this announcement I wondered if it would actually be as practical from an HCI standpoint. After all, there's no real tactile feedback to tell you if you've hit the right "key," as far as I can tell. This sort of feedback is important, moreso than visual feedback (since unless you can't touchtype, you don't need to see the keyboard: try typing in the dark), especially to avert Repetitive Stress Injury.
On the other hand, just to test the concept, I tried "typing" on a flat surface, and it seemed fairly intuitive. This is probably better in this respace than an "air keyboard", since you at least feel the contact of the desk. (Assuming you can't type in the air with this product, although there doesn't seem to be a reason why not, they say "any flat surface".) Now what would be nifty is a roll-up guide you could "type" on to get both visual feedback and a soft touch. This would solve hunting and pecking problems, too. :-)
I'd really love to have one of these, since they seem to solve most portability problems, and since it seems you can tweak the virtual keyboard's size (layout, etc.), it'd make the ultimate evolution in keyboards. (No more need for a "flex" keyboard, just mold a surface...)
Nifty.
Because when KDE copies, everyone benefits. It's Free Software. When Microsoft steals, Microsoft benefits. Simple as that.
Microsoft is good at one thing: spin control. Even if they get hacked and everyone's data gets stolen, what do they do? Take the blame? Admit they're not very good at this security thing? Decide Passport wasn't a good idea?
Yeah right. Instead, they can simply spin it as "terrorism". That's right---you and your data have been the victims of a terrorist-hacker attack. Computer crimes are terrorism. You are a hapless victim. Microsoft is a hapless victim. Are they to blame? Who would blame the victims of a terrorist attack? Would you blame the people in the WTC buildings for the attack that got them killed?
Now whose fault does it look like? Certainly no-one would blame MS. They've provided this great service and now for their insight, innovation, and generosity, are the victims of terror. Right. How many people will learn a lesson from this? They'll just want more draconian laws passed, harsher measures taken against these "computer terrorists".
Gtk/XEmacs is available here if you really want gtk. Unfortunately this is based on an earlier version of XEmacs (21.1.12, current is like 22 something I believe), but it does look nifty and fit with your other gtk apps if you have any. There are a few minor caveats:
It does look nifty, though (depending on your taste), as screenshots indicate.
A friend of mine (Nathan Anderson) wrote something that I believe is quite like this, and posted it right here to slashdot, a number of years ago. Here is the article. Judge for yourself. When he sees this he'll probably post something about it as well. Does this count as prior art?
This isn't a renderfarm node, it'd be a workstation. That's the thing you do your modelling work on.
The Emotion Engine CPUs blow away a GeForce3, to speak nothing of a crappy GeForce2 MX. (I've got a gf2mx, in addition to rendering quality being crap, full of artifacts, it's generally not all that fast.) If you want a renderfarm box, the best video card in the world is irrelevant, because the rendering would be done in software, not realtime. (For this, yes, a stripped-down Athlon with fast ethernet and a local disk cache would be the way to go.)
But you can't put together a PC to touch a PS2 for realtime rendering. Those specialized CPU's are what make all the difference. Higher MHz ratings are completely irrelevant here.
RAM might need addressing, but then again if you make a specialized modelling suite (or adapt one), you should be able to work within the given constraints. (Remember, you can stream geometry and textures as you're rendering; keeping everything in RAM isn't necessary.)
Oh, and the $200 kit included keyboard, mouse, and svga adaptor (in addition to hdd and ethernet). It already has a DVD/CD-ROM, sound, USB, firewire. There's no way you can throw together a system (even a generic one, ignoring the special graphics and sound effects capabilities of the PS2), minus the monitor, for $500, that would approach the completeness of the PS2 solution.
The PS2 has a 256-bit pipeline, a specialized graphics CPU, and basically enough bandwidth to make your PC look like a gameboy. You could "cobble together" one of these as a Linux workstation for $500 ($300 PS2, $200 linux kit, including hdd, eth, Linux, X, GL and everything you need to program it, including the bare specialized hardware... and that's before any rumored price drop). The system would rival a SGI workstation for realtime graphics processing power. For $500. (Of course, you need to throw in some software, but you need to do that with the SGI's, too.) You could barely buy a GeForce3 for that. The PC solution would cost at least a grand, and wouldn't be nearly as powerful.
Sony is already making high end boxes using 8x of the CPUs in a PS2. Licensing the CPU technology. Just think of the PS2 + Linux as the "low end" graphics workstation, perfect for hobbiests, small businesses, etc.
It's not a toy by any means. Just because they market it to play games, doesn't mean there's not some serious technology in this box.
One Word: DivX. People will simply not stand for such a thing, especially if it offers no added benefits (lots of high-demand content only available in this format is what it takes). I think everyone has been used to media they own indefinitely with (at least perceived) unlimited access that anything that infringes on these givens won't be accepted without major incentive. Incentive I don't think can be accomplished (but never say never, right?). It's sickening to see ("consumers will be able to enjoy [..] for a full 10 hours", "Adobe applauds RosettaBooks"), but who will buy it? Especially for a buck, when you can get a "real live" paperback for $5-6 more. And if it's not the same book, there are thousands of other books worth reading.
For instance, DVDs are accepted because most people don't run into region coding problems, and those that do can pretty easily overcome them (although people might wake up if Joe Sixpack starts getting prosecuted). DivX's weren't, because the restrictions crossed the line.
Another example might be Pay-Per-View TV. I'm not sure how popular this is, but my guess is that going to the store and renting something that can be viewed multiple times and at the leisure of the viewer is still more popular. (I don't think this is exactly an analogous situation, but enough mportant elements are there to make it potentially interesting).
I'm not worried about this. It'll probably die the same death a thousand other Really Stupid Ideas have. If anything, I'd be worried that this will stigmatize books in a digital format even further.
I already get prerecorded voice messages. Talk about the ultimate annoyance: phone spam is bad enough, but you don't even have someone on the other end whose time you can waste, mind you can play with, and other ... er, someone on the other end to demand you're taken off their lists, etc.
Thus, it is very interesting to learn about this part of the TCPA... any idea who I can file a formal complaint with next time I get one of these calls?
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After getting sick of some popup ads, I was pointed at The Internet Junkbuster , which, as the name implies, gets rid of the junk. Completely. I haven't seen an ad since I installed it. It's free, it's GPL'd, it does the job, and it's easy to install. What more could you ask for?
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Think earth, with the oceans dried up a lot. That's what I thought when I saw it. Besides, if this is taking your typical evolutionary view of planetary development, how else would you get identical flora and fauna?
The three moons bit probably isn't that far fetched either, we could always get moons from elsewhere. ;-) That's the hardest part, I'll admit.
Finally, the future apes might very well have been more technically advanced... and we just saw a portion of the world that wasn't as technologically outgoing. This is especially feasible if you look at the clothing of many of the apes... obviously mass fabricated. (Leather jackets, other machined textiles, etc. Imports.)
OTOH, knowing the ape personalities, it's also not too far of a stretch to see a technological decline, especially if advanced weapons were once available (blowing each other to bits, new dark ages, etc.). Question of how they got there in the first place remains to be answered.
Heck, I dunno. Doesn't seem to hang together in any respect, trying to make it hang together is impossible, but the time changes did seem fairly logical from what they said. ;-) The harder you think, the less sense it makes, which is usually a good sign of a bad movie.
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I must have missed something then. How is this established...?
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