True. True. But, the big thing is: ENCRYPTION IS *NOT* FOR NEWBIES. The current methods of encryption are too hard to deal with for newbies (just like most of the other Open Source stuff, which some of you can't seem to understand-- that's why Linux is not any time soon going to take on Windows! NT, maybe. But not Consumer Windows or even Consumer MacOS. If Microsoft dies completely, Apple takes over.). We're getting there, but it is going to take some work.
You can feel it... something big is going to happen... and maybe this feeling is just because you've got your freon pumping air conditioner on a little high, but maybe, just maybe, the old sci-fi writers were correct in realizing that the 20?? years would be important dates in History. Right now, humanity is still Xenophobic, Stuck on a Single Blue Orb, and Largely Ignorant of the power of the Internet and Science... How long do you think this will last?
I think Sci-Fi Weekly said it, but the movie, from what I have heard, simply reeks of sequelism. I've heard that there are a lot of questions without answers, and there is a lot of opportunity for well written prequels and sequels... and from the quantity of Titan A.E. literature, and the names of the authors gracing their covers, I am sure that we can expect much more in the future from this new, and unique, franchise.
Sheesh! Many of us adventure gamers have known about this since April 1st or so... when Cyan posted a fishy joke Press Release (go to their site and read it... it's quite... weird). Then some mysterious 'employee' leaked some photos and a quick abrubt ending movie file. Then at E3 the game was officially announced as "Myst Dimensions", and will be out in the fall! Then, come Spring "Myst 3: Exile" from Presto comes out! Myst 3 looks incredible and has a new villian. Of course, it will be pre-rendered, but check it out at Myst3.com anyway.
The game will use the original "plot" of the Myst... as well as those 5 ages we remember so well... but there will be an additional age built specifically for the new engine. Also, many new puzzles to make use of the engine I'm sure.
Everybody thinks that Sony was the first to say, Hey, we might license out tech! Actually, this first came up from Nintendo as they were building the prototype specs for "Dolphin" way back when. They have out sourced most of the hardware (like MS's X-Box, maybe?)... IBM is doing the 0.18 micron main CPU... ArtX is returning to do the Graphics and Sound Processors... and Matsushita or Mitsubishi, or someone, is licensing the DVD hardware. This hardware company, though, was also interested in licensing from Nintendo the proprietary format of the disks in the hopes of putting the capabilities of playing Nintendo games on their DVD players. Nintendo thought it was an interesting idea, but I am not sure if they decided either way...
On a side note, I do think it would be great to have one console capable of playing Nintendo, X-Box, Dreamcast, and PS2 games, and it seems that all of the companies are interested/able to license their tech!... but I don't think it will happen due to incompatibilities in the architecture, esp. when it comes to 3D processing. It may happen, and I hope it does... but then you have to have at least to on chip OSes... Windows 2000 GCE (Game Console Edition for lack of a better name) for Dreamcast/X-Box and then an Emulating system for Dolphin/PS2.
It's still highly possible, it's just improbable, though, that a company would want to take on all the effort and licensing fees to try, and still make it for a decent price.
Basically, I think the console systems are becoming more and more like Cheap PCs with great hardware, and I think that soon Consoles and PCs will start merging into hybrid systems... and perhaps, the easiest way to get all the consoles into one box, would be to do it as a PC (with some extra hardware)...
I like the idea (I'm pretty sure it was slashdotted some time ago...) of LCD display embedded into prescription glasses... the company was already selling it for $40K or so... and you could use auto-stereoscopy and transparency to do some really cool things... like, how about floating labels that tell you the names of guests at a party, and you can turn it off with a command?
Here in Kentucky, we like to have governments as small as possible. We have the third highest number of counties in a state, the only states above us are Alaska and Texas. I live in Jeffersontown, a "rich" city that makes up part of the Louisville area. Jtown has spent a lot of money improving the town... they've built a nice baseball park for the little leagues, and just completed two gyms for basketball and whatnot, they've even within the past couple of years rebuilt the Jtown Public Library and purchased our small subdivision's 'club' which almost went bankrupt or something to that affect. The town has even paid to help get some of the roads better building new sections and such without using federal money. I was thinking along the lines you were... only, I was thinking on a smaller scale. Louisville itself has been working on a project called e-Mainstreet to renovate Main Street and try to bring in more tech-centric companies... I think that the state and city governments could offer to pay for more of a high-speed backbone to run through the state from more "backboney" cities like Chicago and St. Louis. I think that they could also offer tax incentives/rebates to local ISPs if they offer lower prices to local businesses and people. I think that Jtown could form it's own Coop/ISP and offer very low cost/free access to T-1/T-3 lines for local business and people, wiring the town just like with any other utility. I've heard that a few other cities have taken this approach. I think it would work, and it would certainly change the face of the Internet... heck, why pay lots of money for space in the Silicon Valley when you can get cheaper space in the Ohio Valley?
Why not use DVD for digital moving of films... They've paid what can only be millions of dollars to have a high amount of control in DVD, but now they are saying, hey, instead of using this nice cheap technology we've developed, we're just going to go ahead and waste some Internet time and bandwith. If I were a studio technologist right now, I would be laughing my donkey off.
Most major groups have political lobbying groups in Washington... why don't we Geeks? Let's turn it into a POLITICAL MOVEMENT... Let's get Techno-Saavy people in high positions. We can make it larger than the CDA Blue Ribbon movement... We can make the '60s look like a small domestic problem compared to it. Do you know how many people INTERNATIONALLY would be willing to fight... they realize how much American political desicions affect the Internet... they realize it sometimes more than we ourselves do. I think that maybe we should even have a Third House of Congress; a Geek Senate... an Internet Senate that only needs to vote on Internet/Computing related issues. Why not? JOIN THE FIGHT: GET MORE GEEKS IN WASHINGTON D.C.!! WorldMaker
My only guess on a way to make pbForth easier for non-Geeks would be to create an IDE similar to Lego's that comes with MindStorms, but make it teach pbForth as it went, as well as give you a choice to switch between "Code" views and "Graphic" views... Anyone interested in outdoing Lego's IDE for pbForth? WorldMaker
Who's going to sponsor this project (like Microsoft and TerraServer)? It seems to me like a major server should be set up, but that it would need to be big, close to the backbone, and quick because it would get a lot of translation work (if it did well). As a fan of Artificial Linguistics, I have to ask... Should the "main" server support adding new languages? What about artificial languages like Esperanto, Lojban, Klingon, or even languages that are less well known? Should a Language Suggestion function be present? Or even a language addition utility? WorldMaker
Science-Fiction has discussed this for decades... Time is most probably an illusion of perception caused by that dimension being "larger" than what our minds are willing to perceive. The proof just shows how much smarter SF guys are. ; )
You do know whos selling the system don't you? Amiga is owned by one of the best PC Clone manufacturers, Gateway. I'm not sure about the Amiga name, being too young, but lets hope that Gateways standards are there!
Yeah, and most Sci-Fi writers in the 60s and 70s wanted the UN to become the global government and take over the world (so that it would be a better place)... Niven's UN (with Secretary Generals being hereditary like kings) is one of the most interesting in this department. Perhaps the UN and Interpol should get their acts together and set up a Government-Free center of the Internet. Or perhaps not. What I suggest is we, the people of the Internet, declare that the Internet is a seperate, virtual soveriegn with no ties to any other countries government, and with its own Government of sorts, with a Court System (IRC you in court mister! courts.internet.gov #Trademark!:), and with rights and laws.
Even more off-topic, the oldest coaster at the local park (Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom), the Vampire (which has been having problems lately) was built by the same company (I think... at least they are both Norwegian or something?) and has the same exact layout, only the Vampire is a normal sit-down coaster and Face-Off is an inverted Face-to-Face coaster.
I am a book lover, and for those who love books, there are still alternatives to Amazon's bookstore... BarnesAndNoble.Com, and my personal favorite, Borders.Com which is a nice site with a great passion for books, that cares about its fellow book lovers. On the Frontpage it advertises books only, because books are what people want when they come to the site. Sure you can go to the Video and Music sections, but these come second, and Borders knows it and cares!
I've only been able to find the later ones in my local bookstore. I started with Maskerade and Jingo. I found them both funny (Maskerade you did have to know a little at least about American Broadway which was a surprise coming from a British author!), and I have been reading them backwards from there. I'm also trying to get the later ones too. But anyway, I read Interesting Times and Small Gods. Now most "old timers" would have hated Interesting Times, but so far, out of the ones that I have read, IT is my favorite. This is mostly because it was really funny (I had to read it lying on the floor), and I enjoyed the character of Rincewind, even though he is an anti-hero, you can relate to him and root for him. In Small Gods, there wasn't anyone to root for, at first it felt like Brutha, but then he fell into focus and I stopped rooting for him. I liked Small Gods, but without a hero to root for, it was like trying to walk in three directions at once.
I use NSIRegistry.Com which is the old plain vanilla Whois that used to be at InterNIC.Net. Here is a sample: Whois Slashdot.Org. Maybe I should post this as a story!
I am also a "Head Geek" at my high school. I nominate Slashdot as the HeadQuarters of the Geek Revolution and August 1st as the day of reckoning where all geeks everywhere in the world spend the day off the internet, away from jobs and we don't fix or deal with anyone. We sit in our back yards and catch up on some reading!
Yes, but you get rumors and half truths in your newspapers and tv news as well. Slashdot is actually better at telling you the complete source, whether it is a Wired or a ZDNet or a BBC article. You have to understand the sources of content.
Why would we need to build converters when M$ already realizes that the future lies in XML and that future Office Suites will use XML as native formats. M$ already uses and XML/HTML hybrid in Office 2000, and I am sure that we will see the power and editability of this in future versions of IE and Office.
I also agree, sure AOL has a problem with over commercialization and only tends to think about 1 key on the keyboard, the "$" key, and sure many of us hate the ISP service they provide (and some of the loser newbies on it as well), but so far AOL hasn't trashed ICQ and Netscape (even though I also agree that Netscape is dead) and they probably won't touch WinAMP and let Nullsoft do its thing. An example of leaving well enough alone is Tricon (headed here in Loo-ah-vul) which doesn't sell Taco Bell Mexican Pizza's with real KFC Chicken, or at least, they don't yet, and it doesn't make since for them to start. The same thing goes for AOL, it wouldn't make since to have WinAMP fans start using, say, MusicMatch, just because they through in an extra "$" so they won't. Even they are smart enough to understand this.
Slashdot Mirror
True. True. But, the big thing is: ENCRYPTION IS *NOT* FOR NEWBIES. The current methods of encryption are too hard to deal with for newbies (just like most of the other Open Source stuff, which some of you can't seem to understand-- that's why Linux is not any time soon going to take on Windows! NT, maybe. But not Consumer Windows or even Consumer MacOS. If Microsoft dies completely, Apple takes over.). We're getting there, but it is going to take some work.
WorldMaker
You can feel it... something big is going to happen... and maybe this feeling is just because you've got your freon pumping air conditioner on a little high, but maybe, just maybe, the old sci-fi writers were correct in realizing that the 20?? years would be important dates in History. Right now, humanity is still Xenophobic, Stuck on a Single Blue Orb, and Largely Ignorant of the power of the Internet and Science... How long do you think this will last?
WorldMaker
When do we get to the Hexium?
WorldMaker
I think Sci-Fi Weekly said it, but the movie, from what I have heard, simply reeks of sequelism. I've heard that there are a lot of questions without answers, and there is a lot of opportunity for well written prequels and sequels... and from the quantity of Titan A.E. literature, and the names of the authors gracing their covers, I am sure that we can expect much more in the future from this new, and unique, franchise.
WorldMaker
Sheesh! Many of us adventure gamers have known about this since April 1st or so... when Cyan posted a fishy joke Press Release (go to their site and read it... it's quite... weird). Then some mysterious 'employee' leaked some photos and a quick abrubt ending movie file. Then at E3 the game was officially announced as "Myst Dimensions", and will be out in the fall! Then, come Spring "Myst 3: Exile" from Presto comes out! Myst 3 looks incredible and has a new villian. Of course, it will be pre-rendered, but check it out at Myst3.com anyway.
WorldMaker
The game will use the original "plot" of the Myst... as well as those 5 ages we remember so well... but there will be an additional age built specifically for the new engine. Also, many new puzzles to make use of the engine I'm sure.
WorldMaker
Everybody thinks that Sony was the first to say, Hey, we might license out tech! Actually, this first came up from Nintendo as they were building the prototype specs for "Dolphin" way back when. They have out sourced most of the hardware (like MS's X-Box, maybe?)... IBM is doing the 0.18 micron main CPU... ArtX is returning to do the Graphics and Sound Processors... and Matsushita or Mitsubishi, or someone, is licensing the DVD hardware. This hardware company, though, was also interested in licensing from Nintendo the proprietary format of the disks in the hopes of putting the capabilities of playing Nintendo games on their DVD players. Nintendo thought it was an interesting idea, but I am not sure if they decided either way...
On a side note, I do think it would be great to have one console capable of playing Nintendo, X-Box, Dreamcast, and PS2 games, and it seems that all of the companies are interested/able to license their tech!... but I don't think it will happen due to incompatibilities in the architecture, esp. when it comes to 3D processing. It may happen, and I hope it does... but then you have to have at least to on chip OSes... Windows 2000 GCE (Game Console Edition for lack of a better name) for Dreamcast/X-Box and then an Emulating system for Dolphin/PS2.
It's still highly possible, it's just improbable, though, that a company would want to take on all the effort and licensing fees to try, and still make it for a decent price.
Basically, I think the console systems are becoming more and more like Cheap PCs with great hardware, and I think that soon Consoles and PCs will start merging into hybrid systems... and perhaps, the easiest way to get all the consoles into one box, would be to do it as a PC (with some extra hardware)...
WorldMaker
I like the idea (I'm pretty sure it was slashdotted some time ago...) of LCD display embedded into prescription glasses... the company was already selling it for $40K or so... and you could use auto-stereoscopy and transparency to do some really cool things... like, how about floating labels that tell you the names of guests at a party, and you can turn it off with a command?
WorldMaker
Here in Kentucky, we like to have governments as small as possible. We have the third highest number of counties in a state, the only states above us are Alaska and Texas. I live in Jeffersontown, a "rich" city that makes up part of the Louisville area. Jtown has spent a lot of money improving the town... they've built a nice baseball park for the little leagues, and just completed two gyms for basketball and whatnot, they've even within the past couple of years rebuilt the Jtown Public Library and purchased our small subdivision's 'club' which almost went bankrupt or something to that affect. The town has even paid to help get some of the roads better building new sections and such without using federal money. I was thinking along the lines you were... only, I was thinking on a smaller scale. Louisville itself has been working on a project called e-Mainstreet to renovate Main Street and try to bring in more tech-centric companies... I think that the state and city governments could offer to pay for more of a high-speed backbone to run through the state from more "backboney" cities like Chicago and St. Louis. I think that they could also offer tax incentives/rebates to local ISPs if they offer lower prices to local businesses and people. I think that Jtown could form it's own Coop/ISP and offer very low cost/free access to T-1/T-3 lines for local business and people, wiring the town just like with any other utility. I've heard that a few other cities have taken this approach. I think it would work, and it would certainly change the face of the Internet... heck, why pay lots of money for space in the Silicon Valley when you can get cheaper space in the Ohio Valley?
WorldMaker
Why not use DVD for digital moving of films... They've paid what can only be millions of dollars to have a high amount of control in DVD, but now they are saying, hey, instead of using this nice cheap technology we've developed, we're just going to go ahead and waste some Internet time and bandwith. If I were a studio technologist right now, I would be laughing my donkey off.
WorldMaker
Most major groups have political lobbying groups in Washington... why don't we Geeks? Let's turn it into a POLITICAL MOVEMENT... Let's get Techno-Saavy people in high positions. We can make it larger than the CDA Blue Ribbon movement... We can make the '60s look like a small domestic problem compared to it. Do you know how many people INTERNATIONALLY would be willing to fight... they realize how much American political desicions affect the Internet... they realize it sometimes more than we ourselves do. I think that maybe we should even have a Third House of Congress; a Geek Senate... an Internet Senate that only needs to vote on Internet/Computing related issues. Why not? JOIN THE FIGHT: GET MORE GEEKS IN WASHINGTON D.C.!!
WorldMaker
My only guess on a way to make pbForth easier for non-Geeks would be to create an IDE similar to Lego's that comes with MindStorms, but make it teach pbForth as it went, as well as give you a choice to switch between "Code" views and "Graphic" views... Anyone interested in outdoing Lego's IDE for pbForth?
WorldMaker
Who's going to sponsor this project (like Microsoft and TerraServer)? It seems to me like a major server should be set up, but that it would need to be big, close to the backbone, and quick because it would get a lot of translation work (if it did well). As a fan of Artificial Linguistics, I have to ask... Should the "main" server support adding new languages? What about artificial languages like Esperanto, Lojban, Klingon, or even languages that are less well known? Should a Language Suggestion function be present? Or even a language addition utility?
WorldMaker
Science-Fiction has discussed this for decades... Time is most probably an illusion of perception caused by that dimension being "larger" than what our minds are willing to perceive. The proof just shows how much smarter SF guys are. ; )
You do know whos selling the system don't you? Amiga is owned by one of the best PC Clone manufacturers, Gateway. I'm not sure about the Amiga name, being too young, but lets hope that Gateways standards are there!
Yeah, and most Sci-Fi writers in the 60s and 70s wanted the UN to become the global government and take over the world (so that it would be a better place)... Niven's UN (with Secretary Generals being hereditary like kings) is one of the most interesting in this department. Perhaps the UN and Interpol should get their acts together and set up a Government-Free center of the Internet. Or perhaps not. What I suggest is we, the people of the Internet, declare that the Internet is a seperate, virtual soveriegn with no ties to any other countries government, and with its own Government of sorts, with a Court System (IRC you in court mister! courts.internet.gov #Trademark! :), and with rights and laws.
Even more off-topic, the oldest coaster at the local park (Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom), the Vampire (which has been having problems lately) was built by the same company (I think... at least they are both Norwegian or something?) and has the same exact layout, only the Vampire is a normal sit-down coaster and Face-Off is an inverted Face-to-Face coaster.
I am a book lover, and for those who love books, there are still alternatives to Amazon's bookstore... BarnesAndNoble.Com, and my personal favorite, Borders.Com which is a nice site with a great passion for books, that cares about its fellow book lovers. On the Frontpage it advertises books only, because books are what people want when they come to the site. Sure you can go to the Video and Music sections, but these come second, and Borders knows it and cares!
I've only been able to find the later ones in my local bookstore. I started with Maskerade and Jingo. I found them both funny (Maskerade you did have to know a little at least about American Broadway which was a surprise coming from a British author!), and I have been reading them backwards from there. I'm also trying to get the later ones too. But anyway, I read Interesting Times and Small Gods. Now most "old timers" would have hated Interesting Times, but so far, out of the ones that I have read, IT is my favorite. This is mostly because it was really funny (I had to read it lying on the floor), and I enjoyed the character of Rincewind, even though he is an anti-hero, you can relate to him and root for him. In Small Gods, there wasn't anyone to root for, at first it felt like Brutha, but then he fell into focus and I stopped rooting for him. I liked Small Gods, but without a hero to root for, it was like trying to walk in three directions at once.
I use NSIRegistry.Com which is the old plain vanilla Whois that used to be at InterNIC.Net. Here is a sample: Whois Slashdot.Org. Maybe I should post this as a story!
I am also a "Head Geek" at my high school. I nominate Slashdot as the HeadQuarters of the Geek Revolution and August 1st as the day of reckoning where all geeks everywhere in the world spend the day off the internet, away from jobs and we don't fix or deal with anyone. We sit in our back yards and catch up on some reading!
Yes, but you get rumors and half truths in your newspapers and tv news as well. Slashdot is actually better at telling you the complete source, whether it is a Wired or a ZDNet or a BBC article. You have to understand the sources of content.
Why would we need to build converters when M$ already realizes that the future lies in XML and that future Office Suites will use XML as native formats. M$ already uses and XML/HTML hybrid in Office 2000, and I am sure that we will see the power and editability of this in future versions of IE and Office.
What about the other side of the phrase "Hacking and Slashing through code"?
I also agree, sure AOL has a problem with over commercialization and only tends to think about 1 key on the keyboard, the "$" key, and sure many of us hate the ISP service they provide (and some of the loser newbies on it as well), but so far AOL hasn't trashed ICQ and Netscape (even though I also agree that Netscape is dead) and they probably won't touch WinAMP and let Nullsoft do its thing. An example of leaving well enough alone is Tricon (headed here in Loo-ah-vul) which doesn't sell Taco Bell Mexican Pizza's with real KFC Chicken, or at least, they don't yet, and it doesn't make since for them to start. The same thing goes for AOL, it wouldn't make since to have WinAMP fans start using, say, MusicMatch, just because they through in an extra "$" so they won't. Even they are smart enough to understand this.