i guess i shouldn't have said "air all the episodes"...they have a buffer space...but if a network finds themselves with a currently hired animator, with 2+ seasons of material, chances are that they will terminate the contract, and renew it in a season or two. since they have a contract for the show, they're not going to lose it. they just terminate the animator for a while. crappy i supose, and it may not always work...i don't know all the ins and outs, as i'm not a network executive..this just seems like a fairly common policy.
but this is just policy...if you have a surplus of episodes, you terminate the show, and air all the episodes you have. if ratings are high enough, you hire the animator back to create new shows. it's crappy in human interaction sense, but i guess it's smart business. we can only hope that new episodes will be comissioned..this all depends on ratings, so watch futurama guys!;)
cheap legal copy of flash for windows
on
Flash and Open Source
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· Score: 2, Informative
Edu.com carries a discounted copy of Flash MX for Windows here. The original price is $499.99, but the edu discount brings it down to $96.95, but this is a Windows solution only. Not sure if this is the way you want to go.
Matt Beale writes "Ximian is slated to release Evolution (a mail client for Gnome/Linux) by October 1st. In preperation, they are offering awards for finding bugs in Evolution! A important open project to participate in, AND i can win a palm VII, sweet!" My bug was that it kept crashing;) October release is ambitious but very cool.
-=-=-=-
NO!!!! IT IS NOT VERY COOL! BECAUSE GNOME SUCKS JUST LIKE ROB MALDA SUCKS MY HAIRY BALLS!!!!!
and that lives in or near New Haven, CT can visit the Beinecke library at Yale. It's their rare book and manuscript library. The have a copy of the Guttenberg, as well as the Voynich Manuscript (hailed as the most mysterious document in the world; one of the greatest unsolved cryptographs/possible hoaxes), and tons of other really rare, and really interesting stuff.
http://www.research.att.com/~reeds/voynich.html
this is a good starting point, and has a link to the beinecke as well, so you can browse the collection
...but not many people use the whole thing. Darwin Streaming Server is a top notch streaming media element, and is out for FreeBSD, Red Hat, Solaris, and Win NT/2k, as well as the source code. It also includes a proxy, so that you can configure your server as desired. It's equivalent to the QuickTime streaming server for OS X. As it becomes used, there will probably be patchs for each operating system, and it's development will parallel the QuickTime development for OS X.
Darwin 2.1 is the core of OS X, and it's been released in segments, so developers can concentrate on the aspect of darwin they want to tweak, and maintain compatability with the main release.
All in all, there are many possibilites, but for the average hacker, the resources to get a G3 or a G4 to test the software out are probably lacking. As for the intel release, it's being worked on. The current version of Darwin can be tweaked to run on an intel, and there are details here:
http://www.publicsource.apple.com/projects/mail. html
I worked for an NGO to the UN for about 2 years in Athens, and we had to look at old laws and resolutions all the time. There's no big difference. Instead of looking at an amendment at the end of the document, you just look at the previous resolution, all of which is on file. Do you think that you can see all the drafts of an ammendment? All you really see is the one that is finally decided upon, much like you only see the resolution that is decided upon.
In actuality, a new resolution can only replace and old one after it's been lobbied, and then brought out on the floor, so when doing that whole process, you see all of the old material. And i'd like to note that all of documentation and crap is readily available for those who care, so the fact that it's a resolution doesn't really hinder anything.
These are the first steps in a new direction, so i think we should look at this all with a grain of salt.
First of all, eveyone's going ape-shit about the whole cracking statement. They have to say something, and i guess it's inevitable that people (especially slashdoters) are going to scrutinize what they say, but i think they're getting near what needs to be said.
I think we can say that they don't want to ban cracking as a security measure. That's already pretty much accepted already, so i don't see what the fuss is about. If some company hires you to test their security, then that's fine. That already goes on. If you BREAK IN, then that's a different story. Why is the fact that it's finally being put into writing so weird and controversial. I mean, what do we want, the ability to hack a company's database, do whatever we want with it, and then say we were just testing their security? Although we'd like to say that everyone that would do something like that would do so in the spirit of curiosity, or have an "old-school hack ethic" or whatever, but that kind of assumption is just absurd. We all know that there are "good" people and "bad" people. Some people would take advantage of the security holes in a corporation. So it's natural that governments would want to protect against this. Now, if we're worried that the "good" hackers have their perceived right to poke around infringed upon, then that's a little screwy.
All of this has to come into writing at some point, and that's what's happening. Don't you see: it's happening right now. Those 400 people that wrote emails should be applauded. Why did only 400 know??? Now we can write too. Or at least pay attention, so when the resolution is passed, we can't say that we didn't know about it. You can't be forced to write in your opinion, but people have already started bitching about this proposal as if it's already law. Don't bitch; act. It's like watching someone walk up to you, and take your wallet. I suppose you CAN just stand there and say, well...he took my wallet, why isn't anything being done. And then the police might catch him later. Or you can react, and at least know that you took part in the situation.
There's going to be a lot of legislation about cyberlaw, cyberdemocracy, and whatever other cyber word we can come up with. The fact that we should recognize is that it's new territory. In hindsight, perhaps we'll see how novel these ideas were, and how many revisions they would need, but now all it seems we can do is freeze up, and say how unfair it all is. And it may be unfair, or imbalanced or whatever else it is. But it is a step along the way, and if, instead of focusing on the desired outcome, and losing sight of the steps, we take it a bill at a time, paying careful attention to detail along the way, we'll reach that original goal eventually.
How many UN resolutions and that type of thing do you read regularly? The fact that ONLY 400 people responded IS a small number, and it should be bigger, but the fact that even that many people noticed is amazing. Most of us hear about this crap after the fact; now we have a chance to respond before it's been passed.
It seems a little strange to me that just becasue we have a close presidential race, there has to be a problem somewhere. I don't see how the vote count can be chalked up to not enough technological reform.
There was an election some time in the 1800's that took six months...SIX MONTHS...to decide. How's technology going to help absentee balots? Americans that live and work abroad have the right to vote, and if the vote is close enought that it comes down to those absentee balots, well, then that's how it's going to be.
Now, if people have a problem with the electoral college, then that's a separate thing. I'll admit that the system could use some reform, but it has worked well up to now. I think this is a matter that doesn't have a correlation to technology; we don't have to tie technology to every single issue in our lives. If anything, this illustrates the need for people to vote, not the need for technology. We saw one case in florida, where a confusing ballot machine (technology) may have caused people to vote incorrectly. Now, you can say, hey, that's how the cookie crumbles; we can't be held responsible for every person that votes incorrectly, or is confused by the ballot. But they're old people; cut them some slack. It's somewhat strange to have a platform that harps on social security reforem (something that the elderly are more concerned about than any other age group), and then be unsympathetic when your system confuses them. It's easy for Bush to say, "tough", cause he's ahead.
And then people bitch about people that voted for Nader, saying that their votes probably would have gone to Gore, and blah blah. Well...at least they voted!!! I don't see how we can complain about the voting system when a staggering percentage of our popultation doesn't even vote!
If we think that more technology in the voting sector is going to help, then we're way off the mark.
1) it's true that many people just want a friggin' gaming console, not the next generation do-it-all wonderboy. whatever happened to the good old box with ports for controllers and a slot for the game media?...ok..some of the improvements could be cool..better aux audio out...dvd could be nice as just a simple add-on. I.e. a gaming console with a dvd player, not a dvd player that can play games too.
2)It depends what companies get what deals with different develpoers. It's cool that indrema is open source, as that has many interesting possibilites. But the factor that will decide what console will rule the market is which one the big companies will develop for. Namco, konami, capcom and last but certainly not least, squaresoft. The psx2 is going to have metal gear solid 2, and final fantasy X...those two series alone could carry a gaming platform for the first quarter of its release. Squaresoft is in the first tentative steps of a possible deal with microsoft, so we may see final fantasy on the x-box, which would promote sales tremendously. (see ffonline.com). If we see a series of kick-ass gaems coming out for the ps2, then the x-box and indrema will be hard pressed to keep up. Look what happened to nintendo when they lost squaresoft, capcom and konami. Who'd the go to? Sony..and look at the result with the psx..amazing sales, and a domination of the console market. With nintendo possible teaming up with sega, we have a possible fourth player, but aside from the ps2, all other compitition is vaporware at the moment. So the ps2 is the only console actually out there, and as game developers learn to harness the technology we'll see some kick ass games, which is what ultimately sells the console, not the technology. If you don't belive this, look at what happened to segacd, sega saturn, atari jaguar, neo geo...which brings me to my last point
3) the chart shows how the x-box and the indrema can kick the ps2's ass, at least on paper, but looking at the games out on the ps2, we can easily see that they aren't taking full advantage of the ps2's seemingly meager capabilities. How much of these new gaming boxs are overkill? Again, the results will only be seen when the developers start to learn the systems...if no games take advantage of the technology, why pay all the cash? just to say you have x gaming console? i need a little more incentive than a dvd player and possible online games.
...some moron patents the gene that synthesize a certain protein...do i pay him x amount for every mL of that protein synthesized? or if someone patents the genes responsible for a certain illness...does all research grind to a halt untill the patent holder allows certain doctors the right to research the disease or condition? in some states, it is illegal for couples to have children if they both possess a geneticaly inherited disease. could this be taken a step further if the government actually owns the patent to those gene sequences? i'm not trying to sound orwelian...just concerned and somewhat amazed at what people and governments are capable of...constantly amazed actually.
it's not "our" internet, and it's not "theirs" either. it's a bunch of computers that are connected with various protocols and wires. it's not the geeks vs the state either. if we blow it out of proportion, we'll just go red in the face and give ourselve hernias. some people have made some very valid points. ICANN isn't the be all and the end all. it's a CORPORATION, and as such, can be severly hurt by bad publicity. it's also subject to government regulation. Site them for breaking their charter. Site them for ammendments made solely to further one's term. Heck, make them obsolete; take them out of the loop. just DO something. take a whole 5 minutes out of your day and write you representative or do something. if you can take five minutes to rant on/. about how *your* internet is being taken away, you can certainly do something about it. the government will do a lot for you, not necessarily out of any altruistic desire, but simply becasue if your representative and congressmen want to stay in, they better do what you ask, if *enough* ask. but yeah...i can say all that till *I* go red in the face:) let's hope that people do something. we've spent a lot of time building and maintaining this geek image, that sometime i think we're not taken seriously because of that image. i mean..if all we do is hiss and moan online, then corporations can walk all over us because we don't actually do anything about it. i'm not saying lets form an internet militia or anything, but something...
"How long before license agreements prevent the dicussion of bugs found in the program?"
there are stirrings and rumours about making places like bugtraq illegal, as they allow for illegal activities. if the government is allowed to say that x site does not help by posting bugs, but is in fact an "evil den of hacker iniquity" then we are very much screwed.
Years ago, people relied on newspapers for their news, or at least, for news outside of their town or district. In any community, there is a percentage of people that actually get involved with local politics, and this percentage is fairly small. Most people go about their day to day lives without much interaction with the local political community. A person could read a paper, and believe that he/she was informed about politics, when in fact, he was just rehashing a summary of events.
Television brought the same thing. By having a direct connection to the news in the form of a person speaking to you with the white house in the background, you felt like you were a part of it. You could then talk about it with other people, and feel assured that you were on top of things. After time, we began to feel that it's our right to know, and it is, but it's really a right to find out. Granted, if you want to live a normal life, and have a job and a family, you don't have time to go crusading around, and digging up everything that you feel is relevant about politics today, so that's where the news comes in.
The net can be even worse, in that the sheer volume of information is staggering. But how many use the net to really exercise their democratic rights. Reading headlines and blurbs doesn't cut it. Our perceived right to information is filled if we log on to our news site every morning, and read about what john doe senator said about x situation. That's great. Ten days later, some other headline dominates our mind, just as it dominates the paper, or news channel or web site.
The net isn't going to revitalize our feelings of democracy, or incite us to become involved. It's natural progression of mediums. In the electronic age, or whatever this time period is going to be called, the net replaced the television. But people can still read good newspapers and be just as informed. I think that the people that read about news, but never actually wrote a letter to their representative, will still read the news online, and still not do anything.
The average american views the net as a tool anyway; a fancy newspaper if you will. By clicking on things, we can believe that we're getting the information that we want, not the information that's being given to us. As such, it doesn't really draw us into politics. I don't think the net is going to instill social conscience; it's just a new way to fill the void of inactivity, and this is from someone that loves computers and the internet.
I use their network hard-drives for data transfer. I'm not sure what you're looking for really, in that i don't know how much you want to transfer. I like the network hard drive cause it's cheap (about $14 a gig), and it's big (40 to 360 gig models). Again, you seem to want a more "plug it in-transfer my data-pull it out" solution, but the setup for the network version is simple, but obviously requires a network at home and at work. I must admit that i'm very happy with the maxtor solution, as hubs are dirt-cheap, and i can expand as i need to. They also have other external storge solutions, but i haven't checked them out. Both are advertised on their main page, so go check it out, and good luck:0)
www.twu.net..they're pretty cool...you get a shell account on a debian box...i have my domain there, and mail is forwarded...i can ssh into the box, and it's secure..the guys that own the setup will even ask people what software they want installed every couple of months, and it's all free...a pretty sweet setup if you ask me:0)
It's just a new way of selling cds. What this system gives you is the album + liner notes in a way you can download it onto your computer. Whoopie. Instead of buying it at a store, and having it in my hands, i buy it online, and then burn/print it, and have it in my hands. A negligable difference from buying it from cdnow or something like that.
In essense, this is a half-assed effort. Rather than meeting the new "digital age" or whatever, they're trying to come up with a newer, cooler way of selling cds. Instead of selling albums say song by song, with micropayments for each song downloaded, they're trying to make a fool-proof/pirate proof album; they're pouring money into a system that won't work, and will just piss everyone off more. The people that will buy cd's anyway will buy them in this new way, and the people that pirate will still pirate, as this method offers no NEW alternatives. The music is still expensive. Until that changes, we'll just have music in different propriatary formats that will be hacked within days of release. Record labels need to look at themselves, and say, why do people pirate our music. And then tackle it from that angle, instead of saying, we'll just do what we want, and make it pirate-proof; it's inane.
We aren't really facing a new delema here. We like to think that IT involves smart, motivated people, and that the complexity of computers somehow reflects on the individuals that work with them.
That being said, it's also irrelevant.
People would argue that skipping college to get a jop at UPS or some other union level job is a waste. Yet leaving high-school to sit behind a monitor for 60 hours a week is noble/desireable.
I'll admit that college isn't for some people. They just don't want it, and ultimately that's what education should be about; a desire for knowledge. We can't force it on people. There will always be people that go straight to work, and skip college. Or whole generations that are lead to believe that college is necessary, and find out that they didn't enjoy the whole experience, and ended up in jobs they could have gotten without the benefit of a college degree.
Using the tired cliche that education never ends may draw derisive comments, but it's true, especially with computers. We can't hold down a meaningful IT job with just the knowledge we graduated college with. If that were true, we'd all be out of jobs every 4-5 years, when a new batch of kids come out, knowing stuff that wasn't taught when we were in school.
If we accept that fact that the very nature of our field forces us to constantly learn, than the question isn't whether or not we need a college education to get a job, but what kind of person we want to be. Educated or not. Neither holds any sort of "real world" merit, in that it's wrong to look down on the no education choice; that'd be snobby or elitist.
I think the arguement of quick money pales in comparison to a real education. What's the point of having all this expertise in one area if you can't even remember when the civil war was, or who plato was other than the fact that he was greek and did some of that philosophy thing.
You'll be promoted for your computer experience, but you may be hired for your general level of education, and the fully rounded character that education brought about. Heck, if anything, it'll bring about a generation of thinking, caring, knowledgeable individuals...the kind of people that create and uphold freedom, something we love to rant about:)
See, the problem is, to a forum like slashdot, we all know what we're doing, and we have the time, and let's face it, the inclination, to bitch about microsoft. The average consumer buys it because so many other people do, and it's in pc magazines. They feel safe. I recently bought a computer for my family. I went gateway/microsoft. They wanted email, web-browsing..didn't want too much new stuff. Not only didn't I get a windows cd, but, thanks to gateway, there was a program called goback that locked the master boot records. Needless to say, I couldn't partition. Forget about partitioning, and then losing it when you HAVE to reinstall windows at some point...now you can't even partition in the first place. And the sneaky thing even gives you a message that you can't write to the boot sector, maybe you should check your virus software. So: The Gateway's of the computer retail business will do what Mircosoft says; they're in a comfortable position. But on the flip side; they're somewhat aware. You can buy athlon systems from them, and even linux in some cases. They might not do what we want for the same reasons, but they'll do it if they see a profit. Likewise, our congressmen and representatives might not back us because they believe, deep down, that information should be free and accessable, but because they relize that a sizable percent of the population does, so it's only good politics to appear to do the same. So it seems that if anything that we dream of is going to come about, it's going to be under the standards of those who hold us back. We not really winning then, are we? They're just giving the lollypop to the petulent child. Awareness and RECOGNITION of our gripes is something far more ellusive.
Slashdot Mirror
i guess i shouldn't have said "air all the episodes"...they have a buffer space...but if a network finds themselves with a currently hired animator, with 2+ seasons of material, chances are that they will terminate the contract, and renew it in a season or two. since they have a contract for the show, they're not going to lose it. they just terminate the animator for a while. crappy i supose, and it may not always work...i don't know all the ins and outs, as i'm not a network executive..this just seems like a fairly common policy.
but this is just policy...if you have a surplus of episodes, you terminate the show, and air all the episodes you have. if ratings are high enough, you hire the animator back to create new shows. it's crappy in human interaction sense, but i guess it's smart business. we can only hope that new episodes will be comissioned..this all depends on ratings, so watch futurama guys! ;)
Edu.com carries a discounted copy of Flash MX for Windows here. The original price is $499.99, but the edu discount brings it down to $96.95, but this is a Windows solution only. Not sure if this is the way you want to go.
the correct url is:
a ch i_develops_versatile_dvd_drive_1.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20011105/tc/hit
$20?!?!?!?!?!
go to http://www.pricewatch.com
you can find dvd media for as low as $7
Matt Beale writes "Ximian is slated to release Evolution (a mail client for Gnome/Linux) by October 1st. In preperation, they are offering awards for finding bugs in Evolution! A important open project to participate in, AND i can win a palm VII, sweet!" My bug was that it kept crashing ;) October release is ambitious but very cool.
-=-=-=-
NO!!!! IT IS NOT VERY COOL! BECAUSE GNOME SUCKS JUST LIKE ROB MALDA SUCKS MY HAIRY BALLS!!!!!
and that lives in or near New Haven, CT can visit the Beinecke library at Yale. It's their rare book and manuscript library. The have a copy of the Guttenberg, as well as the Voynich Manuscript (hailed as the most mysterious document in the world; one of the greatest unsolved cryptographs/possible hoaxes), and tons of other really rare, and really interesting stuff.
http://www.research.att.com/~reeds/voynich.html
this is a good starting point, and has a link to the beinecke as well, so you can browse the collection
Darwin 2.1 is the core of OS X...for an exact list of all the modules and whatnot, check out
w in/
http://www.publicsource.apple.com//projects/dar
they list everything, and you can download each part.
...but not many people use the whole thing. Darwin Streaming Server is a top notch streaming media element, and is out for FreeBSD, Red Hat, Solaris, and Win NT/2k, as well as the source code. It also includes a proxy, so that you can configure your server as desired. It's equivalent to the QuickTime streaming server for OS X. As it becomes used, there will probably be patchs for each operating system, and it's development will parallel the QuickTime development for OS X.
e aming/
w in/
. html
http://www.publicsource.apple.com//projects/str
Darwin 2.1 is the core of OS X, and it's been released in segments, so developers can concentrate on the aspect of darwin they want to tweak, and maintain compatability with the main release.
http://www.publicsource.apple.com//projects/dar
All in all, there are many possibilites, but for the average hacker, the resources to get a G3 or a G4 to test the software out are probably lacking. As for the intel release, it's being worked on. The current version of Darwin can be tweaked to run on an intel, and there are details here:
http://www.publicsource.apple.com/projects/mail
this is also addressed in the FAQ.
I worked for an NGO to the UN for about 2 years in Athens, and we had to look at old laws and resolutions all the time. There's no big difference. Instead of looking at an amendment at the end of the document, you just look at the previous resolution, all of which is on file. Do you think that you can see all the drafts of an ammendment? All you really see is the one that is finally decided upon, much like you only see the resolution that is decided upon.
In actuality, a new resolution can only replace and old one after it's been lobbied, and then brought out on the floor, so when doing that whole process, you see all of the old material. And i'd like to note that all of documentation and crap is readily available for those who care, so the fact that it's a resolution doesn't really hinder anything.
These are the first steps in a new direction, so i think we should look at this all with a grain of salt.
First of all, eveyone's going ape-shit about the whole cracking statement. They have to say something, and i guess it's inevitable that people (especially slashdoters) are going to scrutinize what they say, but i think they're getting near what needs to be said.
I think we can say that they don't want to ban cracking as a security measure. That's already pretty much accepted already, so i don't see what the fuss is about. If some company hires you to test their security, then that's fine. That already goes on. If you BREAK IN, then that's a different story. Why is the fact that it's finally being put into writing so weird and controversial. I mean, what do we want, the ability to hack a company's database, do whatever we want with it, and then say we were just testing their security? Although we'd like to say that everyone that would do something like that would do so in the spirit of curiosity, or have an "old-school hack ethic" or whatever, but that kind of assumption is just absurd. We all know that there are "good" people and "bad" people. Some people would take advantage of the security holes in a corporation. So it's natural that governments would want to protect against this. Now, if we're worried that the "good" hackers have their perceived right to poke around infringed upon, then that's a little screwy.
All of this has to come into writing at some point, and that's what's happening. Don't you see: it's happening right now. Those 400 people that wrote emails should be applauded. Why did only 400 know??? Now we can write too. Or at least pay attention, so when the resolution is passed, we can't say that we didn't know about it. You can't be forced to write in your opinion, but people have already started bitching about this proposal as if it's already law. Don't bitch; act. It's like watching someone walk up to you, and take your wallet. I suppose you CAN just stand there and say, well...he took my wallet, why isn't anything being done. And then the police might catch him later. Or you can react, and at least know that you took part in the situation.
There's going to be a lot of legislation about cyberlaw, cyberdemocracy, and whatever other cyber word we can come up with. The fact that we should recognize is that it's new territory. In hindsight, perhaps we'll see how novel these ideas were, and how many revisions they would need, but now all it seems we can do is freeze up, and say how unfair it all is. And it may be unfair, or imbalanced or whatever else it is. But it is a step along the way, and if, instead of focusing on the desired outcome, and losing sight of the steps, we take it a bill at a time, paying careful attention to detail along the way, we'll reach that original goal eventually.
How many UN resolutions and that type of thing do you read regularly? The fact that ONLY 400 people responded IS a small number, and it should be bigger, but the fact that even that many people noticed is amazing. Most of us hear about this crap after the fact; now we have a chance to respond before it's been passed.
It seems a little strange to me that just becasue we have a close presidential race, there has to be a problem somewhere. I don't see how the vote count can be chalked up to not enough technological reform.
There was an election some time in the 1800's that took six months...SIX MONTHS...to decide. How's technology going to help absentee balots? Americans that live and work abroad have the right to vote, and if the vote is close enought that it comes down to those absentee balots, well, then that's how it's going to be.
Now, if people have a problem with the electoral college, then that's a separate thing. I'll admit that the system could use some reform, but it has worked well up to now. I think this is a matter that doesn't have a correlation to technology; we don't have to tie technology to every single issue in our lives. If anything, this illustrates the need for people to vote, not the need for technology. We saw one case in florida, where a confusing ballot machine (technology) may have caused people to vote incorrectly. Now, you can say, hey, that's how the cookie crumbles; we can't be held responsible for every person that votes incorrectly, or is confused by the ballot. But they're old people; cut them some slack. It's somewhat strange to have a platform that harps on social security reforem (something that the elderly are more concerned about than any other age group), and then be unsympathetic when your system confuses them. It's easy for Bush to say, "tough", cause he's ahead.
And then people bitch about people that voted for Nader, saying that their votes probably would have gone to Gore, and blah blah. Well...at least they voted!!! I don't see how we can complain about the voting system when a staggering percentage of our popultation doesn't even vote!
If we think that more technology in the voting sector is going to help, then we're way off the mark.
should be thought about:
1) it's true that many people just want a friggin' gaming console, not the next generation do-it-all wonderboy. whatever happened to the good old box with ports for controllers and a slot for the game media?...ok..some of the improvements could be cool..better aux audio out...dvd could be nice as just a simple add-on. I.e. a gaming console with a dvd player, not a dvd player that can play games too.
2)It depends what companies get what deals with different develpoers. It's cool that indrema is open source, as that has many interesting possibilites. But the factor that will decide what console will rule the market is which one the big companies will develop for. Namco, konami, capcom and last but certainly not least, squaresoft. The psx2 is going to have metal gear solid 2, and final fantasy X...those two series alone could carry a gaming platform for the first quarter of its release. Squaresoft is in the first tentative steps of a possible deal with microsoft, so we may see final fantasy on the x-box, which would promote sales tremendously. (see ffonline.com). If we see a series of kick-ass gaems coming out for the ps2, then the x-box and indrema will be hard pressed to keep up. Look what happened to nintendo when they lost squaresoft, capcom and konami. Who'd the go to? Sony..and look at the result with the psx..amazing sales, and a domination of the console market. With nintendo possible teaming up with sega, we have a possible fourth player, but aside from the ps2, all other compitition is vaporware at the moment. So the ps2 is the only console actually out there, and as game developers learn to harness the technology we'll see some kick ass games, which is what ultimately sells the console, not the technology. If you don't belive this, look at what happened to segacd, sega saturn, atari jaguar, neo geo...which brings me to my last point
3) the chart shows how the x-box and the indrema can kick the ps2's ass, at least on paper, but looking at the games out on the ps2, we can easily see that they aren't taking full advantage of the ps2's seemingly meager capabilities. How much of these new gaming boxs are overkill? Again, the results will only be seen when the developers start to learn the systems...if no games take advantage of the technology, why pay all the cash? just to say you have x gaming console? i need a little more incentive than a dvd player and possible online games.
...some moron patents the gene that synthesize a certain protein...do i pay him x amount for every mL of that protein synthesized? or if someone patents the genes responsible for a certain illness...does all research grind to a halt untill the patent holder allows certain doctors the right to research the disease or condition? in some states, it is illegal for couples to have children if they both possess a geneticaly inherited disease. could this be taken a step further if the government actually owns the patent to those gene sequences? i'm not trying to sound orwelian...just concerned and somewhat amazed at what people and governments are capable of...constantly amazed actually.
it's not "our" internet, and it's not "theirs" either. it's a bunch of computers that are connected with various protocols and wires. it's not the geeks vs the state either. if we blow it out of proportion, we'll just go red in the face and give ourselve hernias. some people have made some very valid points. ICANN isn't the be all and the end all. it's a CORPORATION, and as such, can be severly hurt by bad publicity. it's also subject to government regulation. Site them for breaking their charter. Site them for ammendments made solely to further one's term. Heck, make them obsolete; take them out of the loop. just DO something. take a whole 5 minutes out of your day and write you representative or do something. if you can take five minutes to rant on /. about how *your* internet is being taken away, you can certainly do something about it. the government will do a lot for you, not necessarily out of any altruistic desire, but simply becasue if your representative and congressmen want to stay in, they better do what you ask, if *enough* ask. but yeah...i can say all that till *I* go red in the face :) let's hope that people do something. we've spent a lot of time building and maintaining this geek image, that sometime i think we're not taken seriously because of that image. i mean..if all we do is hiss and moan online, then corporations can walk all over us because we don't actually do anything about it. i'm not saying lets form an internet militia or anything, but something...
...but it would make a kick-ass outhouse :0)
"How long before license agreements prevent the dicussion of bugs found in the program?"
there are stirrings and rumours about making places like bugtraq illegal, as they allow for illegal activities. if the government is allowed to say that x site does not help by posting bugs, but is in fact an "evil den of hacker iniquity" then we are very much screwed.
Years ago, people relied on newspapers for their news, or at least, for news outside of their town or district. In any community, there is a percentage of people that actually get involved with local politics, and this percentage is fairly small. Most people go about their day to day lives without much interaction with the local political community. A person could read a paper, and believe that he/she was informed about politics, when in fact, he was just rehashing a summary of events.
Television brought the same thing. By having a direct connection to the news in the form of a person speaking to you with the white house in the background, you felt like you were a part of it. You could then talk about it with other people, and feel assured that you were on top of things. After time, we began to feel that it's our right to know, and it is, but it's really a right to find out. Granted, if you want to live a normal life, and have a job and a family, you don't have time to go crusading around, and digging up everything that you feel is relevant about politics today, so that's where the news comes in.
The net can be even worse, in that the sheer volume of information is staggering. But how many use the net to really exercise their democratic rights. Reading headlines and blurbs doesn't cut it. Our perceived right to information is filled if we log on to our news site every morning, and read about what john doe senator said about x situation. That's great. Ten days later, some other headline dominates our mind, just as it dominates the paper, or news channel or web site.
The net isn't going to revitalize our feelings of democracy, or incite us to become involved. It's natural progression of mediums. In the electronic age, or whatever this time period is going to be called, the net replaced the television. But people can still read good newspapers and be just as informed. I think that the people that read about news, but never actually wrote a letter to their representative, will still read the news online, and still not do anything.
The average american views the net as a tool anyway; a fancy newspaper if you will. By clicking on things, we can believe that we're getting the information that we want, not the information that's being given to us. As such, it doesn't really draw us into politics. I don't think the net is going to instill social conscience; it's just a new way to fill the void of inactivity, and this is from someone that loves computers and the internet.
no...what i'm talking about is a fairly new product..the smaller ones (40-80 gig) are the size of one of those dsl routers...pretty reliable so far
I use their network hard-drives for data transfer. I'm not sure what you're looking for really, in that i don't know how much you want to transfer. I like the network hard drive cause it's cheap (about $14 a gig), and it's big (40 to 360 gig models). Again, you seem to want a more "plug it in-transfer my data-pull it out" solution, but the setup for the network version is simple, but obviously requires a network at home and at work. I must admit that i'm very happy with the maxtor solution, as hubs are dirt-cheap, and i can expand as i need to. They also have other external storge solutions, but i haven't checked them out. Both are advertised on their main page, so go check it out, and good luck :0)
www.twu.net..they're pretty cool...you get a shell account on a debian box...i have my domain there, and mail is forwarded...i can ssh into the box, and it's secure..the guys that own the setup will even ask people what software they want installed every couple of months, and it's all free...a pretty sweet setup if you ask me :0)
It's just a new way of selling cds. What this system gives you is the album + liner notes in a way you can download it onto your computer. Whoopie. Instead of buying it at a store, and having it in my hands, i buy it online, and then burn/print it, and have it in my hands. A negligable difference from buying it from cdnow or something like that.
In essense, this is a half-assed effort. Rather than meeting the new "digital age" or whatever, they're trying to come up with a newer, cooler way of selling cds. Instead of selling albums say song by song, with micropayments for each song downloaded, they're trying to make a fool-proof/pirate proof album; they're pouring money into a system that won't work, and will just piss everyone off more. The people that will buy cd's anyway will buy them in this new way, and the people that pirate will still pirate, as this method offers no NEW alternatives. The music is still expensive. Until that changes, we'll just have music in different propriatary formats that will be hacked within days of release. Record labels need to look at themselves, and say, why do people pirate our music. And then tackle it from that angle, instead of saying, we'll just do what we want, and make it pirate-proof; it's inane.
We aren't really facing a new delema here. We like to think that IT involves smart, motivated people, and that the complexity of computers somehow reflects on the individuals that work with them.
:)
That being said, it's also irrelevant.
People would argue that skipping college to get a jop at UPS or some other union level job is a waste. Yet leaving high-school to sit behind a monitor for 60 hours a week is noble/desireable.
I'll admit that college isn't for some people. They just don't want it, and ultimately that's what education should be about; a desire for knowledge. We can't force it on people. There will always be people that go straight to work, and skip college. Or whole generations that are lead to believe that college is necessary, and find out that they didn't enjoy the whole experience, and ended up in jobs they could have gotten without the benefit of a college degree.
Using the tired cliche that education never ends may draw derisive comments, but it's true, especially with computers. We can't hold down a meaningful IT job with just the knowledge we graduated college with. If that were true, we'd all be out of jobs every 4-5 years, when a new batch of kids come out, knowing stuff that wasn't taught when we were in school.
If we accept that fact that the very nature of our field forces us to constantly learn, than the question isn't whether or not we need a college education to get a job, but what kind of person we want to be. Educated or not. Neither holds any sort of "real world" merit, in that it's wrong to look down on the no education choice; that'd be snobby or elitist.
I think the arguement of quick money pales in comparison to a real education. What's the point of having all this expertise in one area if you can't even remember when the civil war was, or who plato was other than the fact that he was greek and did some of that philosophy thing.
You'll be promoted for your computer experience, but you may be hired for your general level of education, and the fully rounded character that education brought about. Heck, if anything, it'll bring about a generation of thinking, caring, knowledgeable individuals...the kind of people that create and uphold freedom, something we love to rant about
See, the problem is, to a forum like slashdot, we all know what we're doing, and we have the time, and let's face it, the inclination, to bitch about microsoft. The average consumer buys it because so many other people do, and it's in pc magazines. They feel safe.
I recently bought a computer for my family. I went gateway/microsoft. They wanted email, web-browsing..didn't want too much new stuff. Not only didn't I get a windows cd, but, thanks to gateway, there was a program called goback that locked the master boot records. Needless to say, I couldn't partition. Forget about partitioning, and then losing it when you HAVE to reinstall windows at some point...now you can't even partition in the first place. And the sneaky thing even gives you a message that you can't write to the boot sector, maybe you should check your virus software.
So: The Gateway's of the computer retail business will do what Mircosoft says; they're in a comfortable position. But on the flip side; they're somewhat aware. You can buy athlon systems from them, and even linux in some cases. They might not do what we want for the same reasons, but they'll do it if they see a profit. Likewise, our congressmen and representatives might not back us because they believe, deep down, that information should be free and accessable, but because they relize that a sizable percent of the population does, so it's only good politics to appear to do the same.
So it seems that if anything that we dream of is going to come about, it's going to be under the standards of those who hold us back. We not really winning then, are we? They're just giving the lollypop to the petulent child. Awareness and RECOGNITION of our gripes is something far more ellusive.