The PDA is a recording device, and by reading text on it, I'm operating the PDA. Asshats could get you arrested, and while the charges might not stick, you could be without your PDA indefinitely...
Presumably, any citizen's arrest will require the cooperation of theatre management. Once they see your piss-ant Zire 71, any marginally clueful manager will kick the asshat out, not you. And if they call the police, they run the risk of getting cited themselves for filing a false report.
According to the article (but who reads that?) mere possesion of a video recording device in a theatre is sufficent to create the possiblity of arrest and prosecution.
The article over-simplifies the conditions of the law. It implies that possession of a camera is sufficient. Thankfully, someone posted the actual text of the bill, which specifically states "Every person who operates a recording device..."
So your camera-phone does not expose you to prosecution. However, your fellow patrons still reserve the right to pelt you with peanut M&Ms if it rings in the middle of the film.
If you're in a professional environment, that $1550 may justify itself. If you're successful, it's a drop in the bucket. But for the hobbyist, it's a brutal kick in the teeth. Never mind the money, though. It still doesn't solve the problem that buying Qt for Windows to develop Free/Open Source software is antithetical to both the spirit of the movement, and the letter of the law.
Say, for example, me and my buddy Kyle use Qt to write the Greatest Program In The World, and we suck it up and pay the $1550 each for Qt/Win licenses. We decide to release it under the GPL, with the required exception clause for the Windows version. While the Linux/Unix and Mac OS X geeks tinker away at it, the Windows folk discover that they can't do squat with the source, unless they also fork over $1550 to Trolltech.
This is precicely why the GPL does not allow you to use non-Free libraries from 3rd parties. Those libraries preemptively stifle any progress on the platform(s) that require them. And the sad part is that Trolltech recommended exception clauses with the non-commercial version! They're supposed to be such staunch advocates of Open Source, yet they suggest that Windows developers compromise their principles. Maybe Trolltech thinks that anyone who develops Open Source software for Windows has already compromised their principles. Pretty piss-poor attitude, if you ask me.
Rather than repeat the tired cliche about apples and oranges, let me merely remind you that filet mignon costs a lot more than canned tuna, yet no one complains about the discriminatory and punitive pricing of fine steaks.
I was trying to head off one of the usual shallow counter-arguments: "If you can afford $1000 for Visual Studio.NET..." Or was your statement a dig at the (mercifully) deprecated MFC? Now that's cross-platform apples and Win32 oranges
I do wish that Trolltech would release a QPL/GPL version of Qt for Windows. But they'll still have to charge proprietary prices for proprietary development if they want to stay in business.
They do charge proprietary prices for proprietary development, and more power to 'em. However, by witholding the Free version for Windows, the price for cross-platform Open Source development becomes infinitely high. All because Trolltech wants to politicize the platforms and use tit-for-tat statements to justify it. Note to Trolltech: Scott McNealy is not a role model.
Actually, according to the linked page, "if you write Free software (Open Source software covered by the GPL) you are welcome to download and use the Free Edition of Qt,"...
Actually, if you read what the submitter wrote, he said "free multi-platform" software. OK, I'll grant that X/11 and Mac are "multi-platform", but when those platforms make up ~7% of the market, it's nothing to brag about. Trolltech continues to aggresively deny Qt developers the ability to distribute their works to the vast majority of the computing product. After all, cross-platform Open Source software can'tpossiblysucceed, can it?
...and Trolltech points out that one can buy the current edition of Qt -- seems fair enough.
MSRP of Microsoft Visual C++.NET Standard Edition: US$109. MSRP of Qt/Windows Professional Edition: US$1550. <sarcasm>Oh, yeah. That's fair.</sarcasm> It's really discriminatory and punitive. And it's still not Open Source. What makes them think that taking the low road like that will convince Windows devlopers to consider Qt?
Why? If the code is GPL, anyone can port it to Win32.
Trolltech already has. That's my point. Trolltech could release their version for Windows under the GPL at any time. The only thing stopping them is their belief that they can drive developers to Linux by disrupting their ability to create cross-platform Open Source projects on Windows. They're doing more harm than good.
It's not really a port to Windows itself. They're targetting Cygwin/X. Since it uses the same toolchain as the Linux version, Rekall might work. I guess it depends on what rekallrevealed.org meant by "windows-specific". If it only means the Qt bits, we may be in luck.
If you want a native Win32 port of Qt, however, you'll have to convince Trolltech that their condescending, passive-aggressive, "we don't like your kind around here" attitude toward Open Source projects on Windows is doing more harm than good to the community.
theKompany will sell you a version for Windows. The code, however, requires Qt Free Edition. To quote rekallrevealed.org:
Rekall can build to run under Windows, however since this (currently) requires a commercial license for QT, we have not included the windows-specific parts of the code tree.
Um, it's not a sony product. Thus, there's no DRM crap.
Even if it was a Sony, it wouldn't have DRM. It's a network adapter. How can you put DRM in a network adapter and still conform to the standard?
This is a 3rd party trying to circumvent Sony's stranglehold on which CLIEs have WiFi.
When Compaq only puts 802.11b in select iPaqs, it's product differentiation. When Sony does it, it's a "stranglehold"? Please. If you like to hate Sony, at least hate them for the right reasons. If people really wanted wireless networking in Clies, a wi-fi Memory Stick would have happened sooner.
Kids today. Don't know the OSI network model, haven't taken Economics 101...
Thirdly in order to port the application to another platform, an activity in-keeping with the Free Software spirit, licence fees must be payed even for an open application.
Wrong. Qt is GPLed. It runs under Windows, OSX and other OSes. Qt for Windows is a different product entirely that has support for DirectX and other Windows specific features. Qt itself, however, runs just dandy on any modern OS, and the community has ported it to experimental and very niche OSes.
To clarify: Qt for Windows is in no way Free or Open Source. There was a "Non-Commercial" version of Qt 2.3 for Windows, which was binary-only, unsupported, and required an exclusion clause to be added to any OSI-licensed software that used it. It's recently disappeared from TT's website, so I guess it's become abandonware.
According to TT's qt-announce mailing list, there's an official Qt book coming that will include a new 3.2 Non-Comm build, but it's only available with the book, and still isn't Free, Open, downloadable, supported, or available with source, making it abandonware even while it's on sale.
The closest you can find to a Free version for Windows is a port of the latest X11 version that's part of the KDE-Cygwin project. (You can look it up on SourceForge.) The Qt "port" itself requires Cygwin, and it's quite rough around the edges. Of course, it's not as good as TT's own version of Qt for Windows, but the Trolls feel they must punish those that put the project above The Platform as heretics.
Check out FuturePower's website, in particular the "essay" Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going. It's a mind-boggling barrage of computer science naivete, unqualified assertions and anecdotes, and flat-out lies. My personal favorite parts are his complaints that Windows is less responsive when virtual memory is entirely consumed, and a laundry list of OS-level apps that attempt to phone home to Microsoft. Or so he claims, based on the fact that they set off ZoneAlarm by daring to make an outgoing TCP connection. Hasn't this guy ever heard of a local area network? At least 2/3 of the "apps" (he doesn't cite.exe names) poll the local workgroup/domain, either for file/print shares, or computers the admin tool in question may be able to administer remotely with the proper credentials.
In fact, I think he composed this question by cut-n-pasting a section of that screed, and tacking on a "whaddya use?" at the end. (Scroll down to the subhead entitled "Backup Problems: Windows XP cannot copy some of its own files." Sound familiar?)
It's a shame such a steaming pile of FUD is available to the internet at large. It single-handedly sets open source evangelism back ten years.
RE: Mobil Ave.: Here's where I wish Keanu Reeves had one gram of talent. Here is Neo, finding hope in the Machine world for the first time, and he's as stone-faced as Jean-Claude Van Damme.
RE: Neo's fate: And we're back to Mobil Ave. again, because that scene holds the key to Neo's future. Remember, he was alive, even though his body was disconnected from the Matrix. Maybe it was because of that place, but I think that it's one of Neo's gifts. And that's how he'll return from the dead: Only in the Matrix! The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, after all. That's why the procession reminded me of an Egyptian funeral barge.
RE: The Merovingian: They certainly played the Christian and Greco-Roman underworld references to the hilt. His behavior, though, seemed inspired by the Norse god Loki, or the coyote trickster tales of Native American lore, especially that little Spanish Fly trick with the blonde.
RE: The final battle: I think the rain served its purpose: To emphasize the shockwaves from their collisions. But you're right about all that flying. Was that Neo and Smith, or Goku and Cell?:-) I was hoping that they'd punch, kick, and throw each other through enough walls to bring a building down around them.
RE: The Dock: Strategically, the infantry was not as much of a threat as the APUs and turrets were. Once the heavy artillery was out of the way, the Sentinels outnumbered the infantry by an overwhelming margin.
RE: The mechanical shaft: Yep, it was the 2nd Death Star, turned up to 11. And it was also a testament to Zion engineering! Could you see the Falcon surviving what the Hammer went through? And without that scene, we wouldn't have the best line in the whole movie: "Damn, she's got a fat ass!":-)
Overall, I give them 5 stars for the concept, but only 2 stars for the execution.
RE: Neo and the Architect: It's only the turning point of the entire mythology.:-)
RE: Neo's real-world powers: My inner Eastern philosopher says that his ability to transcend the limits of his senses was inherent in him, not his projection in the Matrix. My inner Western philosopher says that it is one of those Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.
RE: The Burly Brawl: Exposition, to establish the magnitude of Smith's replication. The fact that it justified a huge, FX-laden fight scene was just icing on the cake.:-)
RE: Seraph: IIRC, he's the only Exile that we see represented in Matrix code, so that may explain his different appearance. Or maybe because he was meditating at the time. I don't know. That doesn't get answered in Revolutions, but we get hints that he does have a Past. As for his purpose, he "protects that which is most important." (Or was it "sacred"? Have to check the DVD tonight.) (Reloaded) We're led to believe that he means the Oracle, but I think Revolutions demonstrates that he's really meant to protect the Last Exile. (Smith kinda wrenched that, didn't he?)
RE: The subway station: Mobil Ave. Anagram for "Limbo", anyone? And, as somebody else pointed out in another thread, a metaphor for the Underground Railroad.
RE: "levels of survival": Well, if all but 23 humans are dead, the Machines don't need much of a presence in the physical world, do they? Enough Sentinels to keep the survivors in their place would be enough. Devote the rest of their energy to the Fetus Fields, and let the Matrix programs spin up the world for the baby boom to come. (This also explains why mundane processes like Ramachandra look human: to pre-populate the respawned Matrix with adults!)
RE: The Ending: If Neo is this mythology's Messiah, why not the Prince of Peace as well? Each side wanted absolute power over the other. Man's subjugation of the awakening Machines was what started the war in the first place. (Animatrix, 2nd Rennaisance) The Machines turned their victory into revenge by subjugating man in return. The result was a sick co-dependency (Reloaded, Hamann and Neo's conversation) as the Machines let those who didn't accept the Matrix build some sand castles, then kick them all down when the system needed a maintenance reboot. Just as Neo broke the systemic cycle of reboots by refusing to return to the Source, Neo broke the greater cycle of hatred by offering his life to save the Machines from the Smith forkbomb. He alluded to as much in his monologue at the end of the first film.
So where do things go from here? The implication is that the machines and humans are left to work that out for themselves. To me, the final scene was a transfer of power from the Architect to the Oracle. The Architect tried to create a utopian Matrix by forcing it on humanity, and it was rejected. Maybe the Oracle will allow a humanity that accepts the Matrix to bring it as close to Utopia as they can.
Funny you should bring up bananas, because I think you're smoking the peels.
Microsoft does not force their keyboards or mice on OEMs. The big OEMs put their own brand (and useless shortcut keys) on their keyboards, with no indication that the innards are Microsoft, Logitech, Kensington, or Jimmy's Keyboard Shack. And the Compaq Deskpros we've standardized on here at work all came with Compaq-branded Logitech mice. The same Compaq that has been frequently villified on this forum as billg's sniveling lackey, and often for good reason. If you have proof that an OEM was pressured to use Microsoft input devices as a condition of a Windows and/or Office license agreement, I'd like to see it. I don't recall such an allegation ever arising in Judge Jackson's courtroom, and I don't see much evidence in the market.
BTW, I'm impressed by your little rant about Chiquita. Equating business-to-business contracts that violate anti-trust laws with assassinations of labor leaders. Somehow, you've managed to preempt your own invocation of Godwin's Law. Well done. Best troll I've seen all week.
Bloody Hell, Sims. This is a new low, even for you. If the asinine, juvenile, belligerent things you have said in this forum over the years are any indicator, I have a hard time believing that you are capable of functioning in society. I hope, for your sake, that this is just Keyboard Courage, and not how you act in public.
The closest Trolltech ever came to a Free version of Qt for Windows was Qt 2.3 Non-Commercial Edition for Windows. It was binary-only (for obvious reasons), there was no official TT support, and the license was not compatible with most (if not all) OSI licenses. Trolltech suggested that developers include an exception clause if their License Of Choice allowed it.
Of course, some cheap rat-bastards decided to piss in the pool and use the Non-Comm version for closed-source commercial software, and TT caught them violating the license. Once burned, twice shy, so there's no 3.x version, now or probably ever. And without source or support, the 2.3 version is pretty much abandonware.
Amen, brother. I'm willing to bet that Tiger Woods couldn't drive the green of a par-3 when he was 4 years old. Damn MTV attention spans. Patience!
I would have loved a lushious SonyEricsson phone with bluetooth and a headset, but it's $300.
If you're in AT&T Wireless' service area, you can get a SonyEricsson T616 for $50! (New activation, blah, blah, blah.) I used that justify escaping Sprint POS before number portability. Bluetooth headsets are still expensive, though.
BTW, anyone out there who's frustrated the crappy transceiver that comes with Microsoft's BT keyboard and/or mouse, check out sonystyle.com. (That's the OK electronics division, not the evil MPAA/RIAA member division.) They have one of the few transceivers I've seen that supports the HID profile MS uses, in addition to the profiles any decent BT device should. And compared to Microsoft's "travel" adapter, the Sony is downright miniscule. (Keep away from children under 3!)
Microsoft makes the same empty promises, and the usual suspects respond with the same empty sound bites. 'Round and 'round the roundabout, and back where we began.
But if the submitter hadn't made that "unbiased coverage" remark, it wouldn't be trollworthy enough for Mikey to accept it. Wouldn't want him to break the pattern by simply reporting, now, would we?
Probably not. Edge tiles are made of a different material to withstand the additional heat. I don't think they've found a suitable patch compound for those tiles yet, let alone a means to apply it.
They're talking out their asses on the libraries. CLS-compliant is CLS-compliant. But they're dead-on right about VB.NET. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft "upgraded" VB by starting with C#, changing the syntax to match Basic, then dumbing it down with over-verbose keywords for new language features and a lack of "intrinsic" keywords for unsigned integer types. All this for a language so different from previous versions of VB, it needs a non-trivial conversion anyway.
Hmm, instead of making the language easier to use, they just made it different. Syntactic aspartame?
But when Bruce Willis starts saying "poop" instead of "shit", I get really fucking pissed off.
"Yippie-kay-ay, Mister Falcon."
Oh, how I wish I was making that up, but that is how Fox cleansed the catch phrase "Yippie-kay-ay, motherfucker." from Die Hard. Who is Mister Falcon, and what the hell does he have to do with Roy Rogers, barefoot NYC cops, or unsubtle German thieves pretending to be terrorists? Please! Speed Racer was dubbed better than that. Put a big, dumb, obvious [bleep] in there and move on.
And don't get me started on how hacked up the FCC-friendly version of The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) was. John McTiernan must cringe every time he sees one of his films on network TV.
7 - The end of the movie probably will end with smith's destruction and human and machines coexisting happily forever. As the world changes machines will have solar power again, and start gradually releasing the humans inside the pods.
Too Hollywood, not mythic enough. Neo (the human who bends the Matrix to his will) and Smith (the machine virus that infected a human) have become the focal points of the conflict. I picture them locked in an eternal struggle on that rainy street, somewhere in limbo. As long as Neo The Immortal and Smith The Infinite keep fighting, the Matrix and the real world will remain in balance.
Only one problem: The headend relies on cue tones embedded in the national feed to mark the point where a local spot can be inserted. No network feed, no cue tones, no locals.
Trip: Hey, Cap'n. If we had a cue tone generator, we could jump start the warp engines!
Archer: Can't we get the same effect from a verteron particle projector?
T'Pol: Improvisational Physics is still a theoretical field, Captain. You would not be able to build such a device using the low-quality components of this ship.
Archer: OK, so we try plan B. Hoshi, how well can you whistle?
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Presumably, any citizen's arrest will require the cooperation of theatre management. Once they see your piss-ant Zire 71, any marginally clueful manager will kick the asshat out, not you. And if they call the police, they run the risk of getting cited themselves for filing a false report.
The article over-simplifies the conditions of the law. It implies that possession of a camera is sufficient. Thankfully, someone posted the actual text of the bill, which specifically states "Every person who operates a recording device..."
So your camera-phone does not expose you to prosecution. However, your fellow patrons still reserve the right to pelt you with peanut M&Ms if it rings in the middle of the film.
If you're in a professional environment, that $1550 may justify itself. If you're successful, it's a drop in the bucket. But for the hobbyist, it's a brutal kick in the teeth. Never mind the money, though. It still doesn't solve the problem that buying Qt for Windows to develop Free/Open Source software is antithetical to both the spirit of the movement, and the letter of the law.
Say, for example, me and my buddy Kyle use Qt to write the Greatest Program In The World, and we suck it up and pay the $1550 each for Qt/Win licenses. We decide to release it under the GPL, with the required exception clause for the Windows version. While the Linux/Unix and Mac OS X geeks tinker away at it, the Windows folk discover that they can't do squat with the source, unless they also fork over $1550 to Trolltech.
This is precicely why the GPL does not allow you to use non-Free libraries from 3rd parties. Those libraries preemptively stifle any progress on the platform(s) that require them. And the sad part is that Trolltech recommended exception clauses with the non-commercial version! They're supposed to be such staunch advocates of Open Source, yet they suggest that Windows developers compromise their principles. Maybe Trolltech thinks that anyone who develops Open Source software for Windows has already compromised their principles. Pretty piss-poor attitude, if you ask me.
I was trying to head off one of the usual shallow counter-arguments: "If you can afford $1000 for Visual Studio .NET..." Or was your statement a dig at the (mercifully) deprecated MFC? Now that's cross-platform apples and Win32 oranges
They do charge proprietary prices for proprietary development, and more power to 'em. However, by witholding the Free version for Windows, the price for cross-platform Open Source development becomes infinitely high. All because Trolltech wants to politicize the platforms and use tit-for-tat statements to justify it. Note to Trolltech: Scott McNealy is not a role model.
Actually, if you read what the submitter wrote, he said "free multi-platform" software. OK, I'll grant that X/11 and Mac are "multi-platform", but when those platforms make up ~7% of the market, it's nothing to brag about. Trolltech continues to aggresively deny Qt developers the ability to distribute their works to the vast majority of the computing product. After all, cross-platform Open Source software can't possibly succeed, can it?
MSRP of Microsoft Visual C++ .NET Standard Edition: US$109. MSRP of Qt/Windows Professional Edition: US$1550. <sarcasm>Oh, yeah. That's fair.</sarcasm> It's really discriminatory and punitive. And it's still not Open Source. What makes them think that taking the low road like that will convince Windows devlopers to consider Qt?
Trolltech already has. That's my point. Trolltech could release their version for Windows under the GPL at any time. The only thing stopping them is their belief that they can drive developers to Linux by disrupting their ability to create cross-platform Open Source projects on Windows. They're doing more harm than good.
It's not really a port to Windows itself. They're targetting Cygwin/X. Since it uses the same toolchain as the Linux version, Rekall might work. I guess it depends on what rekallrevealed.org meant by "windows-specific". If it only means the Qt bits, we may be in luck.
If you want a native Win32 port of Qt, however, you'll have to convince Trolltech that their condescending, passive-aggressive, "we don't like your kind around here" attitude toward Open Source projects on Windows is doing more harm than good to the community.
theKompany will sell you a version for Windows. The code, however, requires Qt Free Edition. To quote rekallrevealed.org:
You can thank Trolltech for that.
Even if it was a Sony, it wouldn't have DRM. It's a network adapter. How can you put DRM in a network adapter and still conform to the standard?
When Compaq only puts 802.11b in select iPaqs, it's product differentiation. When Sony does it, it's a "stranglehold"? Please. If you like to hate Sony, at least hate them for the right reasons. If people really wanted wireless networking in Clies, a wi-fi Memory Stick would have happened sooner.
Kids today. Don't know the OSI network model, haven't taken Economics 101...
To clarify: Qt for Windows is in no way Free or Open Source. There was a "Non-Commercial" version of Qt 2.3 for Windows, which was binary-only, unsupported, and required an exclusion clause to be added to any OSI-licensed software that used it. It's recently disappeared from TT's website, so I guess it's become abandonware.
According to TT's qt-announce mailing list, there's an official Qt book coming that will include a new 3.2 Non-Comm build, but it's only available with the book, and still isn't Free, Open, downloadable, supported, or available with source, making it abandonware even while it's on sale.
The closest you can find to a Free version for Windows is a port of the latest X11 version that's part of the KDE-Cygwin project. (You can look it up on SourceForge.) The Qt "port" itself requires Cygwin, and it's quite rough around the edges. Of course, it's not as good as TT's own version of Qt for Windows, but the Trolls feel they must punish those that put the project above The Platform as heretics.
Check out FuturePower's website, in particular the "essay" Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going. It's a mind-boggling barrage of computer science naivete, unqualified assertions and anecdotes, and flat-out lies. My personal favorite parts are his complaints that Windows is less responsive when virtual memory is entirely consumed, and a laundry list of OS-level apps that attempt to phone home to Microsoft. Or so he claims, based on the fact that they set off ZoneAlarm by daring to make an outgoing TCP connection. Hasn't this guy ever heard of a local area network? At least 2/3 of the "apps" (he doesn't cite .exe names) poll the local workgroup/domain, either for file/print shares, or computers the admin tool in question may be able to administer remotely with the proper credentials.
In fact, I think he composed this question by cut-n-pasting a section of that screed, and tacking on a "whaddya use?" at the end. (Scroll down to the subhead entitled "Backup Problems: Windows XP cannot copy some of its own files." Sound familiar?)
It's a shame such a steaming pile of FUD is available to the internet at large. It single-handedly sets open source evangelism back ten years.
RE: Mobil Ave.: Here's where I wish Keanu Reeves had one gram of talent. Here is Neo, finding hope in the Machine world for the first time, and he's as stone-faced as Jean-Claude Van Damme.
RE: Neo's fate: And we're back to Mobil Ave. again, because that scene holds the key to Neo's future. Remember, he was alive, even though his body was disconnected from the Matrix. Maybe it was because of that place, but I think that it's one of Neo's gifts. And that's how he'll return from the dead: Only in the Matrix! The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, after all. That's why the procession reminded me of an Egyptian funeral barge.
RE: The Merovingian: They certainly played the Christian and Greco-Roman underworld references to the hilt. His behavior, though, seemed inspired by the Norse god Loki, or the coyote trickster tales of Native American lore, especially that little Spanish Fly trick with the blonde.
RE: The final battle: I think the rain served its purpose: To emphasize the shockwaves from their collisions. But you're right about all that flying. Was that Neo and Smith, or Goku and Cell? :-) I was hoping that they'd punch, kick, and throw each other through enough walls to bring a building down around them.
RE: The Dock: Strategically, the infantry was not as much of a threat as the APUs and turrets were. Once the heavy artillery was out of the way, the Sentinels outnumbered the infantry by an overwhelming margin.
RE: The mechanical shaft: Yep, it was the 2nd Death Star, turned up to 11. And it was also a testament to Zion engineering! Could you see the Falcon surviving what the Hammer went through? And without that scene, we wouldn't have the best line in the whole movie: "Damn, she's got a fat ass!" :-)
Overall, I give them 5 stars for the concept, but only 2 stars for the execution.
RE: Neo and the Architect: It's only the turning point of the entire mythology. :-)
RE: Neo's real-world powers: My inner Eastern philosopher says that his ability to transcend the limits of his senses was inherent in him, not his projection in the Matrix. My inner Western philosopher says that it is one of those Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.
RE: The Burly Brawl: Exposition, to establish the magnitude of Smith's replication. The fact that it justified a huge, FX-laden fight scene was just icing on the cake. :-)
RE: Seraph: IIRC, he's the only Exile that we see represented in Matrix code, so that may explain his different appearance. Or maybe because he was meditating at the time. I don't know. That doesn't get answered in Revolutions, but we get hints that he does have a Past. As for his purpose, he "protects that which is most important." (Or was it "sacred"? Have to check the DVD tonight.) (Reloaded) We're led to believe that he means the Oracle, but I think Revolutions demonstrates that he's really meant to protect the Last Exile. (Smith kinda wrenched that, didn't he?)
RE: The subway station: Mobil Ave. Anagram for "Limbo", anyone? And, as somebody else pointed out in another thread, a metaphor for the Underground Railroad.
RE: "levels of survival": Well, if all but 23 humans are dead, the Machines don't need much of a presence in the physical world, do they? Enough Sentinels to keep the survivors in their place would be enough. Devote the rest of their energy to the Fetus Fields, and let the Matrix programs spin up the world for the baby boom to come. (This also explains why mundane processes like Ramachandra look human: to pre-populate the respawned Matrix with adults!)
RE: The Ending: If Neo is this mythology's Messiah, why not the Prince of Peace as well? Each side wanted absolute power over the other. Man's subjugation of the awakening Machines was what started the war in the first place. (Animatrix, 2nd Rennaisance) The Machines turned their victory into revenge by subjugating man in return. The result was a sick co-dependency (Reloaded, Hamann and Neo's conversation) as the Machines let those who didn't accept the Matrix build some sand castles, then kick them all down when the system needed a maintenance reboot. Just as Neo broke the systemic cycle of reboots by refusing to return to the Source, Neo broke the greater cycle of hatred by offering his life to save the Machines from the Smith forkbomb. He alluded to as much in his monologue at the end of the first film.
So where do things go from here? The implication is that the machines and humans are left to work that out for themselves. To me, the final scene was a transfer of power from the Architect to the Oracle. The Architect tried to create a utopian Matrix by forcing it on humanity, and it was rejected. Maybe the Oracle will allow a humanity that accepts the Matrix to bring it as close to Utopia as they can.
Funny you should bring up bananas, because I think you're smoking the peels.
Microsoft does not force their keyboards or mice on OEMs. The big OEMs put their own brand (and useless shortcut keys) on their keyboards, with no indication that the innards are Microsoft, Logitech, Kensington, or Jimmy's Keyboard Shack. And the Compaq Deskpros we've standardized on here at work all came with Compaq-branded Logitech mice. The same Compaq that has been frequently villified on this forum as billg's sniveling lackey, and often for good reason. If you have proof that an OEM was pressured to use Microsoft input devices as a condition of a Windows and/or Office license agreement, I'd like to see it. I don't recall such an allegation ever arising in Judge Jackson's courtroom, and I don't see much evidence in the market.
BTW, I'm impressed by your little rant about Chiquita. Equating business-to-business contracts that violate anti-trust laws with assassinations of labor leaders. Somehow, you've managed to preempt your own invocation of Godwin's Law. Well done. Best troll I've seen all week.
The Soviets are old news. We're welcoming new overlords now. Please try to keep up.
Bloody Hell, Sims. This is a new low, even for you. If the asinine, juvenile, belligerent things you have said in this forum over the years are any indicator, I have a hard time believing that you are capable of functioning in society. I hope, for your sake, that this is just Keyboard Courage, and not how you act in public.
The closest Trolltech ever came to a Free version of Qt for Windows was Qt 2.3 Non-Commercial Edition for Windows. It was binary-only (for obvious reasons), there was no official TT support, and the license was not compatible with most (if not all) OSI licenses. Trolltech suggested that developers include an exception clause if their License Of Choice allowed it.
Of course, some cheap rat-bastards decided to piss in the pool and use the Non-Comm version for closed-source commercial software, and TT caught them violating the license. Once burned, twice shy, so there's no 3.x version, now or probably ever. And without source or support, the 2.3 version is pretty much abandonware.
Amen, brother. I'm willing to bet that Tiger Woods couldn't drive the green of a par-3 when he was 4 years old. Damn MTV attention spans. Patience!
If you're in AT&T Wireless' service area, you can get a SonyEricsson T616 for $50! (New activation, blah, blah, blah.) I used that justify escaping Sprint POS before number portability. Bluetooth headsets are still expensive, though.
BTW, anyone out there who's frustrated the crappy transceiver that comes with Microsoft's BT keyboard and/or mouse, check out sonystyle.com. (That's the OK electronics division, not the evil MPAA/RIAA member division.) They have one of the few transceivers I've seen that supports the HID profile MS uses, in addition to the profiles any decent BT device should. And compared to Microsoft's "travel" adapter, the Sony is downright miniscule. (Keep away from children under 3!)
Microsoft makes the same empty promises, and the usual suspects respond with the same empty sound bites. 'Round and 'round the roundabout, and back where we began.
But if the submitter hadn't made that "unbiased coverage" remark, it wouldn't be trollworthy enough for Mikey to accept it. Wouldn't want him to break the pattern by simply reporting, now, would we?
Probably not. Edge tiles are made of a different material to withstand the additional heat. I don't think they've found a suitable patch compound for those tiles yet, let alone a means to apply it.
They're talking out their asses on the libraries. CLS-compliant is CLS-compliant. But they're dead-on right about VB.NET. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft "upgraded" VB by starting with C#, changing the syntax to match Basic, then dumbing it down with over-verbose keywords for new language features and a lack of "intrinsic" keywords for unsigned integer types. All this for a language so different from previous versions of VB, it needs a non-trivial conversion anyway.
Hmm, instead of making the language easier to use, they just made it different. Syntactic aspartame?
"Yippie-kay-ay, Mister Falcon."
Oh, how I wish I was making that up, but that is how Fox cleansed the catch phrase "Yippie-kay-ay, motherfucker." from Die Hard. Who is Mister Falcon, and what the hell does he have to do with Roy Rogers, barefoot NYC cops, or unsubtle German thieves pretending to be terrorists? Please! Speed Racer was dubbed better than that. Put a big, dumb, obvious [bleep] in there and move on.
And don't get me started on how hacked up the FCC-friendly version of The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) was. John McTiernan must cringe every time he sees one of his films on network TV.
Too Hollywood, not mythic enough. Neo (the human who bends the Matrix to his will) and Smith (the machine virus that infected a human) have become the focal points of the conflict. I picture them locked in an eternal struggle on that rainy street, somewhere in limbo. As long as Neo The Immortal and Smith The Infinite keep fighting, the Matrix and the real world will remain in balance.
Only one problem: The headend relies on cue tones embedded in the national feed to mark the point where a local spot can be inserted. No network feed, no cue tones, no locals.
Trip: Hey, Cap'n. If we had a cue tone generator, we could jump start the warp engines!
Archer: Can't we get the same effect from a verteron particle projector?
T'Pol: Improvisational Physics is still a theoretical field, Captain. You would not be able to build such a device using the low-quality components of this ship.
Archer: OK, so we try plan B. Hoshi, how well can you whistle?
... Mod parent up! (Why don't I ever have mod points when I need them?)
This is the second day in a row in which a Slashdot "editor" chose to willfully misrepresent the formats/compatibility of Office 2003.