None of the Christian texts you quote are Church canon. None of them. They are all either the opinions of certain specific clerics, or apocrypha. The fact is that, as most the-Church-in-European-history texts will touch on, abortion was unofficially "tolerated" by the Church up until the practise of scientific dissection of humans was finally widespread enough--despite the Church's objections--to show conclusively that the matter in a pregnant woman's womb during pregnancy eventually looked like a real human baby, long before birth. This is when the Church finally developed real proscriptions against abortion. Prior to this point, there were several "home remedies" for pregnancy which were unofficially tolerated, since the Church had never developed policies with regard to them. So, the Church's stance against abortion is a truly modern phenomenon.
> Read an intro to biology textbook sometime, and you will find a fit with the definition of life.
Not at all. You see, such definitions are all arbitrary. Technically each living cell is life, yet we don't generally think of it that way. The fertilized egg can be considered human life, since if left alone from that point you'll get to see a baby pop out in about 9 months. It may also just as validly aid not to be human life, because it cannot sustain itself, because it has not developed intelligence, beause it has not developed a human form, etc. You may consider that human life begins once the fetus/baby would be cabaple of breathing and carrying on basic biological functions outside the womb. Or, you may just as validly consider that it isn't human life yet since it would not survive outside the womb at this point on its own, without all the machines and special incubation enclosures developed by modern science to support premature babies--who would never survive on their own without these things during the earlier stages. Or you could debate as to at what point the fetus develops a human intelligence and becomes a human baby thereby. Or you could just as easily claim that it isn't a human life at all until it comes out of the womb naturally. Or you could pick a fairly arbitrary month or stage of development and declare that this is when life begins, which is esentially what many states do when they choose a cut-off point for performing abortions. None of these methods has any more validity, scientifically, ethically, or morally, than any other. *It's all arbitrary*, a matter of opinion and speculation and semantics, not of fact.
> I suppose when one lacks a basic respect for human life
I have respect for human life. I have respect enough, as well, for it and its mysteries, to not presume I know the exact instant when a human life comes into being. A person in this world is one thing, a clearly human being who clearly and unarguably deserves human rights and respect. Some glob of goo inside a woman's womb is neither clearly a human life, nor clearly deserving of human rights. It's debatably a human life, and debatably deserving of human rights. As such, it's my choice to weigh in and say that it's not at all just to deny a clearly human woman her clearly human rights about her own human body, to protect the debatable rights of a debatably human being/fetus/baby/bunch of cells/whatever you think it is. One is obviously, clearly, provably human. The other is only debatably so, depending on your semantics, your opinions, your philosophies, your religions.
> Despite the fact that even the UN is starting to worry about population decline
Populations are approaching zero population growth in most developed nations, and are on decline in a few. However, in underdeveloped nations, population growth is a major issue, and leads the poor to seek refuge in moe developed nations--where they can drive down the payscales. Zero population growth or negative population growth is not necessarily a bad thing, either, in nations with economies developed enough to adapt where necessary--what's wrong with lower population densities which increase the chances for land ownership?
>> "Thirdly, I value sex and see it as an essential part of the human experience" > > I'd laugh if this weren't so damn pathetic. It's exactly this type of idiotic lack of self > control that leads directly to the type of STD epidemics we see today. Essential? Go ask an > AIDS patient if they still think their sexual activity was "essential." Or wait until you get > the news that you have the honor of living with herpes the rest of your life, and then > contemplate whether it was "essential."
I'm sorry that you're one of those pathetic souls who cannot see sexuality for what it is--one of God's greatest gifts to man. God gave us these pleasures to enjoy, in moderation, as with the others he gave us. Do you disagree? The sexual instinct is purely natural, and hence God-given if you believe in such a deity. It should be enjoyed in moderation, but it should definitely be enjoyed when the opportunity and the mood presents itself. My analysis of the Bible tells me that I believe the proscription against sex outside of marriage is one of the many "good ideas at the time" based in time-bound secular necessity that were codified into the Bible along with the timeless truths. I won't get that far off-topic with a discussion of why, but as someone else in this thread said, the Bible has a lot of contradictory advice and very time-and-place-bound advice in it. At any rate, God also gave us some simple, natural ways to end pregnancy, too--in fact, until it became extinct due to over-use in the Roman era, there was a plant, described in detail in many ancient medical texts, which induced spontaneous abortions quickly and painlessly. It was almost impossible to cultivate since it only grew in very wild places, so instead of being farmed it was foraged for--and went extinct. A sad loss of God's own natural abortion pill.:-)
As for STDs, recall that AIDS is a relatively new disease in humans, and not part of God's "master plan" to keep us from enjoying sex. God doesn't interfere with diseases, and created them for good, population-controlling reasons (if you believe in such a being). Anyone who takes minor precautions, like using condoms, will almost never get HIV. Nothing else is really serious these days--the only other "fatal" STDs are all treatable, unless you're foolish enough to not go to the doctor as soon as you see symptoms. Things like HPV may theoretically increase your risk of cancer--but no more than using artificial sweeteners, or any number of other things, theoretically increases your risks for cancer. As for herpes--who cares? It's an inconvenience, not a deadly disease, and in fact the latest studies show that as many as 75% of adults in the U.S. may have mild forms of oral herpes. You can literally get the oral form from kissing your mom or sister or whomever near the mouth area. And oral herpes can then be spread elsewhere. Again, a common, minor annoyance. Ever gotten cold sores or unusually sensitive or raw areas around or on your lips? then you probably have herpes. Oooh, how scary...not.
Sorry, but we enjoy sexuality for a reason. It *is* an essential part of being human. God doesn't begrudge us a roll in the hay.
> And I am not alone, nor am I exceptional in that regard.
You are exceptional in that regard; you're just too self-righteous to know it. Just because you chose that course does NOT mean that everyone else should be forced to. You are selfish in wanting to push yopur own personal moral and religious views on a majority who clearly disagree with you. Sorry you lost, but you did--the majority are "pro-choice," the Supreme Court has spoken, and you should teach your religiously-based views in your church or synagogue or mosque and leave them out of the politics and laws which have to apply to people of *all* religions, not just yours.
> The issue revolves around whether or not that woman is harming someone else's body. The location of > that body is immaterial. If that baby is human, she has no damn business killing it.
Again, prove to me it's human. First, define humanity. Then tell me at what point, exactly, that bunch of cells becomes a human life--and prove why that is. You can't, because it's a matter of philosophy and religion and belief, not a matter of hard science. Hard science is often used to bak-up such positions, but hard cvience just as easily backs up the other positions, too--since it's a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact. You have no right to deny a human being control of her own body based on your personal beliefs. Again, we cannot take away the rights of someone who is provably, definitely, obviously human, to give rights to something that might be human depending on how you look at it.
Re:Don't Underestimate nVidia's [Alleged] "Cheatin
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The Age of Nvidia
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· Score: 2
> Btw, quick question... are you an ATI employee ?
Heehee, no. I'm just disappointed that the graphics card industry seems to have stagnated a bit in the wake of "The Age of nVidia." When I look back at all the choices and competing architectures there used to be, and then I look at what exists at the moment, I have to say--hmmm, what might have been?
I mean, remember the days when the Rage 128, Voodoo 3, TNT2, and G400MAX, were all vying for the right compromises between speed and visual quality, and together with a few smaller players like the original Kyro, were providing a broad spectrum of choices? Wow, those were the days.
Today, however, the only real choices are which GeForce or which Radeon to buy. Sure, there are still small fish like Kyro II, but let's be realistic--there are only 2 primary choices right now if you want high-performance 3D graphics, half as many as there once were. I used to read the card reviews excitedly--today, why bother? Just buy the latest GeForce or the latest Rdeon and you're set. How *boring*.
I guess I lament the days when heated debates went on about whether Matrox's visual quality and EMBM were worth a framerate hit, or whether Voodoo's blazing speed was worth running in 16-bit ("24-bit postfiltered"), or whether ATI's great 32-bit quality was worth their buggy drivers, or whether nVidia's "jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none approach really gave the best of everything. People could be passionate about their choices, and deliberate carefully before investing in a new card. Today, well, I don't see that same passion on the hardware sites.
Me, I miss that raucous world of a few years back. I really think the pace of innovation in the business has slowed because of 3dfx's death and Matrox's pullback from performance 3D. I also deeply dislike some of nVidia's tactics following the 3dfx buyout, such as not only immediately dropping all support for 3dfx cards, but not releasing any more of 3dfx's driver code so that the community could support their own cards, and especially for refusing Microsoft's offer to write WindowsXP drivers for 3dfx cards since tyhere was a huge installed base of Voodoo 3, 4, and 5. That shows a real lack of respect for customers, who would have said "Wow, nVidia is so great, when my 3dfx card becomes obsolete I'll buy nVidia all the way!" if nV had taken any of those 3 courses. Instead, nVidia said, "not only are we not supporting legacy 3dfx products [which is understandable], we're also not letting any more of the 3dfx driver code go public, nor will we let Microsoft use it to let 3dfx card owners have XP-certified drivers." Bah. What a shitty corporate attitude. So, there are a lot of unhappy 3dfx card owners out there who feel nVidia was very unsportsmanlike and deliberately shafted them by not even letting 3rd parties who'd write drivers for free have any more 3dfx code.
Now, just so no one gets the wrong idea, I went from a crappy Diamond SiS-based video card to ATI cards, and never owned a new 3dfx card at all, so I was never a 3dfx partisan. Earlier this year I bought a used Quantum3D Obsidian2 X-24 dual Voodoo 2 (on a single card) card, strictly to be able to play older Glide games. That's my first and only 3Dfx card, and I bought it already knowing about nVidia's stupid choices. So, I'm in no way biased toward 3dfx.
I just hope Matrox's Parhelia really turns out to be competitive with offerings out at the time by nVidia and ATI, to bring some of that real competition back to an industry which seems to be lagging. And whether lagging or not, it's definitely boring compared to what it used to be in the good-old-days of 4-way competition.
> Understanding the steps to get from "life begins at conception" and "life should be protected" to > "kill abortionists" requires understanding huge leaps in logic.
Not really--think about it in simple, logical terms, and the natural conclusion of the anti-abortionist argument is that abortion doctors are performing a murder with every abortion they do. If life begins at conception, abortion doctors are taking lives. Is it acceptable to use deadly force to prevent someone from murdering other people? Yes, in most Western legal systems, moralities, philosophies, and religions, it is acceptable to use deadly force if it is the only way to stop one person from murdering another--at least, if that threat is immediate.
So, in this vein, the anti-abortion crusaders who think it's okay to kill abortion doctors are standing on logical ground. If they're right that "human life begins at conception, " then they can even claim to be standing firmly on moral ground.
That isn't to say I agree in any way or condone the murder of abortion doctors. First of all, I don't really care when human life begins--conception, birth, or otherwise. Who can know for sure? Why should I care?
I'm pro-abortion. The oft-used terms are "pro-life" or pro-choice," but I think that's just so much marketing claptrap--the debate is about abortion, not lie or choice. I think everyone is for both life and choice, in their general meaning, so I always use the straightforward and honest terms "pro-abortion" or "anti-abortion."
At any rate, I'm pro-abortion because I think it makes sense. Firstly because, as I said, no one can say with any real meaning when human life begins. Short of God himself telling us in person what he considers to be the point at which human life begins, it's an unanswerable question since it's entirely religious or philosophical and can have no definite scientific answer. Secondly, abortion serves a useful practical purpose of population control, which is important in the modern world. Thirdly, I value sex and see it as an essential part of the human experience which everyone should freely enjoy, but no methods of contraception are 100% effective. Fourthly, it's almost impossible for young people to both care for a baby and go to school, and in this day and age school usually has to last until around 21-22 years old (college) to ensure a decent living--so abortion is a necessity to make sure young people can enjoy sex without having it ruin their lives. Fifthly, almost every developed culture since the ancient Greeks practiced abortion or infanticide right after birth--this includes Christians up until the last couple of centuries; until medical sciences started showing the development of babies inside the womb, the Church held that life began when the baby popped out.
I'm also pro-abortion, finally, because it's not my damn business to tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her own body. If she wants to let someone shove a metal rod into her uterus, that's her business, not mine. Whether there happens to be a bunch of cells in her uterus at the same time makes no difference--inside her body, her rules stand.
Re:Don't Underestimate nVidia's [Alleged] "Cheatin
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The Age of Nvidia
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· Score: 2
> Like someone else said, you can't compare them to Enron.
*Everyone* mentions Enron now when there are allegations of corporate financial impropriety, much the same as any political scandal is a {something}gate (like "Travelgate" or such), even if it's minor in comparison. In fact, the second of the Salon articles linked in the story mentions Enron as well.
I did nothing in making my comments that financial analysts everywhere haven't already done. *Every* time I hear nVidia mentioned on the financial news, I hear phrases like "allegations of Enron-like financial misstatements" or "the SEC probe into possible problems brings up shades of the Enron scandal and recent financial readjustments by Big Blue," etc. No one ever claimed that nVidia's *alleged* wrongdoing was near the same magnitude as that of Enron--however, Enron always gets mentioned because they're the extreme case of what the SEC is trying to determine about nVidia--and several other companies, to be fair.
Rereading my original post, there should probably be a few more "allegedly's" and "if true's" even though there are a few in there, but other than that it reads exactly as it should. If financial analysts are going to use the term Enron regarding the SEC probe of nVidia, then I see no problem with my using it. Go do a quick Google search for "nvidia" "enron" "sec" and you'll find a lot of articles which do the *same* thing.
Now, as I said, to be fair the analysts are predicting that the SEC investigation will end with no major sanctions, and many analysts still have a "buy recommendation" on nVidia. But there are questions, there is an investigation, and there is plenty of room to ask whether part of nVidia's success may have been due to the "Enron-like financial statements" which I hear business news commentators say the allegations involve. I hear them use such terms, so I will too.
> Actually, it was the exact opposite of this. nVidia never produced a video card that was faster than > one of 3dfx's top model while they were still in business.
That's not exactly what I said--I said that nVidia released incrementally faster graphics processors with quicker turnarounds. Incrementally faster than their last releases, not 3dfx's. However, yes, nVidia did release one product line which was faster than the equivalent 3dfx product while 3dfx was still alive--the GeForce series. But before that the TNT2 Ultra was a real contender for the people willing to spend that kind of cash, beating out the Voodoo 3 except of course in Glide games.
> If you are talking about the whole SEC thing, that was a recent occurance that began at the start of last year.
They are investigating earlier occurrences than the insider trading which precipitated the investigation. The probe, as far as I can tell, goes back to 1999.
> There was inside trading going on and that was what the investigation was about.
Information found during that investigation has started an SEC probe into other financial matters. I can find no mention either on the SEC site or anywhere else that that investigation has closed, although the insider trading issue has already been dealt with.
> However, in the beginning nVdida was a privately funded company.
Yes, they were, much as Matrox.
> They went public AFTER 3dfx went bankrupt.
No, they went public long before that, which is where they got the money to buy 3dfx--though they had enough money to buy 3dfx several times over, since 3dfx's finances were so poor by then. You're probably thinking of the big spike in nVidia stock after the Xbox contract was won.
> Quiet the opposite, nvidia has created a site to drive development of 3D software
I was talking about *source code*. 3dfx released huge chunks of their driver source code to the public. nVidia has never done so--their drivers are very closed.
>> Glide support work much better in Glide > > Glide is the farthest thing you can get from programming standards. I cringe everytime someone > spews the statement "Glide is better."
Sorry, but do you have problems with literacy? Where did I say anything about Glide being better than anything else? Nowhere. Quoting that whole statement, instead of that contorted snippet, and here's what I said: "almost all older games with Glide support work much better in Glide, and some older games *only* work in Glide." I am *clearly* talking about legacy support for Glide games, which nVidia will not provide--nor will they release the Glide code they now own so that open-source folks could write Glide support modules for their drivers. At any rate, yes, there are *many* older games that run best in Glide mode, or that *only* run under Glide, or only under either Glide or a really ugly un-accelerated software renderer. This is why I said a Glide support module would be good.
Re:Don't Underestimate nVidia's [Alleged] "Cheatin
on
The Age of Nvidia
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· Score: 2
>FYI, nVidia have come out of the SEC probe with better than clean results
Not as far as I can tell; the probe seems to be ongoing even at this point. A Google search presents no articles about any official SEC findings as of yet--moreover, the SEC itself has a nice website at http://www.sec.gov/ which includes news of its business. On that website I can't find any mention of the SEC having closed its investigation or released any findings.
> the re-statements for the last 3 years leads to $1.3 mln INCREASE in net incomes
What you and another poster point to is based entirely on nVidia's own press releases up to this point. If you were a company under investigation for financial misstatements, and the SEC found some minor accounting errors in your favor, wouldn't you too release that information? I think so. It doesn't mean that there aren't other financial issues being investigated by the SEC--ones with negative implications--particularly since I can find no mention anywhere of the SEC having closed the books on the nVidia investigation.
Furthermore, I watch the financial news and have as recently I believe as last week heard mention of nVidia's SEC probe. I may be mistaken, but I believe I have. However, the analyst did state, to be fair, that he thought nothing important would come of the investigation, and still has a "buy recommendation" on nVidia.
There's no denying that nVidia is a powerful, financially stable company, which is currently *the* 3D powerhouse. The question is, how did that come to pass? Were there any financial impropriteies which played a role in the company's ascension? The SEC investigation should tell us fairly conclusively, when it concludes.
Re:Don't Underestimate nVidia's [Alleged] "Cheatin
on
The Age of Nvidia
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· Score: 2
> After the IPO, any increase in the stock price had no direct benefit to Nvidia the corporate entity
A standard line, but not at all true. Ignoring the issuance of outstanding shares (I don't know offhand if nVidia ever issued significant numbers of outstanding shares in that period), there are several factors to consider. Inflated financials can get a corporate entity much greater lines of credit, much better relations with and leverage with third-party entities (important when you make chips which card companies decide whether to buy), attract many of the best employees, and I could go on for a while. Were it not for benefits, no companies would ever misrepresent their finances.
> The SEC investigation was triggered by material discovered during an investigation into some insider trading
Yes, it was. And as the article linked in this story, and many others, note, the SEC probe isn't limited to insider trading by a few, but questions whether the company intentionally misstated its financial position. Your Yahoo link is a quickie which only details one of the purported problems. You ought to watch "Your World with Neil Cavuto" each day to keep up with the haps in the securities world.:-)
> As for 3dfx' failure, that was as much their own doing as nvidia's.
I never said it wasn't--3dfx missed a whole development cycle, and that was their own fault. They focused too many reasources on their long-term Rampage solution, to adequately keep up with real-world pressures from competitors--which is their own fault entirely, *unless* nVidia really did engage in financial improprieties which affected the outcome of the "3D wars."
> But then you'd know that if you'd read the salon article
I read it, and it didn't tell me anything people interested in the subject haven't known for months in the case of the nVidia allegations, or years in the case of the video card history. Personally, I found the article unremarkable. There are many much better and more in-depth articles on video card history scattered about the enthusiast sites, since the Salon article is meant for a fairly general audience.
Re:Don't Underestimate nVidia's [Alleged] "Cheatin
on
The Age of Nvidia
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· Score: 2
> Ultimately, they're the biggest because they're cards are the best. I wouldn't buy an nVidia card > just because their stock prices inflated.
You seem to miss the point: did their incredible product cycles happen because of incredible funding gotten by cheating on financials? If so, then they created those products by cheating, and did not succeed on their merits at all. Read on below for why this is important.
> However, the punishment is affected by the outcome: in the case of Enron and Global Crossings, > thousands of employees were laid off and investers were screwed over. In the case of nVidia, > investors are almost assured continually rising stock prices and the consumers are very happy.
Yes, nVidia investors are ultimately happy with the outcome even if their money was invested under false pretenses, since nVidia succeeded. *However*, for every winner there are losers in the market. The best example is 3dfx shareholders, who lost the proverbial king's ransom when 3dfx collapsed--and of course Matrox and ATI investors, since Matrox in no way could keep up with nVidia's product cycles, and ATI's cards could never keep up until recently. Now, if nVidia's alleged financial cheating is true, those 3dfx investors, Matrox investors, and ATI investors, *were cheated*, since nVidia's bottom line and their financial capability to pull ahead with phenomenal development times were all based on Enron-like financial impropriety.
We'll have a good idea whether or not this is the case when the SEC probe issues final results. But if nVidia did win through financial cheating, then they essentially "stole" money from the investors of competing companies by deflating the value of rival investments as theirs went up on false pretenses, and killed one competitor off entirely.
That isn't to say that the financial impropriety definitely occurred--we don't know for sure until the SEC finishes its investigations. It does not, however, look like nVidia acted properly, from what I've seen so far. And that isn't to say that companies like 3dfx didn't make severe errors which nVidia rightly exploited--they did. But it is to say that, yes, if nVidia is guilty of its alleged financial improprieties, they played a key role in securing the investments which made it possible for them to carry out Herculean product development cycles--and in doing so cost the investors of rival companies hundreds of millions in losses which are unfair and due to illegal financial cheating. We'll know when the SEC has concluded its dealings. Success and crushing the competition through the fruits of illegal practices is unacceptable.
As for whether consumers are happy--I am not. Not if a venerable, though prodigal, company was destroyed by unethical business practices as much as or more than its own mistakes. Not if, were it not for "creative accounting," nVidia were unable to keep up its incremental product cycles and its rival were finally able to release Rampage, a product in development since the days of the Voodoo 2 which reputedly may have revolutionized the experience for all of us. When companies get ahead by cheating, and kill their rivals through unethical financial manipulations, consumers lose out. nVidia has been feeding us incremental change ever since the original GeForce. 3dfx's Rampage was supposed to provide a paradigm shift, and if not for nVidia's financial manipulations (if they are true--they may not be), it was to be brought to market before now. We know they had working alpha silicon when they closed their doors--the question is, did they close their doors because they couldn't keep up due to nVidia's alleged financial cheating? If so, consumers benefitted in the short run, and lost out in the long run.
There are many questions which remain. Is nVidia innocent of the charges the SEC is investigating? We'll find the likely answer as soon as the SEC is ready to announce findings. Would 3dfx have failed, if not for nVidia's incredible (illegally funded???) product cycles? We'll never know, but my money's on "no". Would Matrox have (temporarily?)abandoned their foray into the world of 3D gaming so readily if not for those well-funded nVidia product cycles? It's debatable--they couldn't keep up with 3dfx and nVidia in speed, but they had the 3D visual quality crown. Would ATI be more profitable in the 3D performance market? Who knows. Could 3dfx have revolutionized 3D gaming with its long-in-development Rampage? Very possibly--it was about a year from final silicon, so if nVidia did raise money for product cycles (and thereby put pressure on 3dfx and other competitors) through illegal means, 3dfx would definitely have been in much better financial shape.
We'll just never know what might have been. All we can know is that the 3D graphics card world changed dramatically across the span of a couple of years. *If* the SEC concludes that nVidia raised investment funds by inflating their financials, then it's a foregone conclusion that that played a *huge* role. It (if true) definitely provided short-twerm benefits to gamers, and likely robbed them of the long-term gains of Rampage technology, and definitely cost every investor in one of its rivals money.
Don't Underestimate nVidia's [Alleged] "Cheating".
on
The Age of Nvidia
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· Score: 5, Interesting
> we could do a long long long analysis of why they're so successful, or we could just state the obvious.
Or even better, the not-so-obvious.
> They are the most successful GPU company because they make the best, highest-quality, fastest GPU's
They're the most successful for two reasons. First, unlike 3Dfx, they focused on quick turnaround of incrementally faster processors rather than spending a long dev cycle working on very advanced technology that was too complicated to fit into a 6-month product cycle. The 3D graphics world was *starved* for more horsepower, and quick to jump on the bandwagon of whoever could deliver more faster, rather than the long-term strategy 3Dfx got mired in when their tech missed a whole dev cycle. This was an excellent strategy on nVidia's part, since 3Dfx's Rampage technology was taking far too long to pan out and forced them to release a "stopgap" line of cards that was short on features and performance, in order to try to struggle on until their mythic Rampage chipset could produce working silicon. 3Dfx poured all their investment into a product which would have been groundbreaking, but was so long to market that nVidia was running rings around them with their incremental strategies.
Second, much like Enron, nVidia (allegedly) inflated their financial statements in a very unethical manner in order to draw in more investment due to steadily rising stock prices during the investment bubble. Honesty is punished by investors if it isn't all wine and roses; inflated financial statements draw more investment. In the case of Enron, the house of cards collapsed. In the case of nVidia, the tail wagged the dog--inflated financials drew more and more investment, which funded more and faster product cycles, which allowed nVidia to really pull ahead of 3Dfx, just as 3Dfx fell further and further behind thanks to their Rampage sinkhole. The high investment due to questionable financial statements is what allowed nVidia to fund its whirlwind snowjob, culminating in the purchase of its beaten and devalued old rival. There's been an SEC probe into these purported financial improprieties, and from everything I've seen, it looks like nVidia's creative accounting was their source of power, funding their product cycles--kind of like winning by cheating. No, *exactly* like winning by cheating...
This demonstrates a few principles we already know from much practical experience. In computers, short-term strategies which produce small gains *now* are much more likely to be successful than long-term strategies which would pay off big, but not in the near future. IA-64 is a prime example of this--Intel's roadmaps when Itanium first shipped showed it being adopted in droves by this point in time, yet it hasn't been; if an when it succeeds, it will be because of Intel's unusually deep pockets, but meanwhile x86-64 Yamhill has been developed "just in case" AMD's Hammer architecture captures the low-end-server and mainstream desktop markets, markets which Intel had *insisted* would eventually have IA-64 trickle down to without any interim architectures. This same principle was seen in the software world, with for example every single version of Windows that was built atop DOS rather than NT.
The second principle of success which nVidia's strategy illustrates is a financial one, illustrated well by Enron. People invest more money with companies which are already financially successful than with ones who really need the money, so that inflating the bottom line is rewarded immensely--and punishes companies which are honest, by giving fu7nding to their competitors. With Enron the bubble burst. With nVidia, the bubble carried them to the top, and funded dev cycles which neither 3Dfx nor Matrox nor for most of that period ATI could compete with. It's a gamble, and the dice rolled in nVidia's favor. That doesn't make their alleged financial improprieties right, but it makes them (if true) a *major* factor in nVidia's success.
> models designed for gamers, for graphics designers, for businesses.
3Dfx did the same, so nVidia is in no way unique there. In fact, high-end graphics maven Quantum3D was a 3Dfx spin-off intended by 3Dfx to be a major user of 3Dfx's highly scalable chip architectures (8-way Voodoo 2's and 16-way VSA-100's, for example, which *killed* everything else at the time for the high-end). For mainstream businesses, 3Dfx had their line of STB boards (following their STB buyout, which many see as a huge mistake, since they got into the board business instead of concentrating on just chips). And for gamers, obviously, the famous Voodoo lines. Low-end-professional 3D graphics wworkstations were the only market not really targeted, since Quantum3D boards compete in a higher-end space than Quadros did.
> Not to mention, they support a broad range of OS' very well: Windows, Linux, MacOSX
As did 3dfx, but 3dfx bettered nVidia in this respect by releasing a large chunk of code. nVidia has on the other hand been excruciatingly secretive with almost all code.
> This isn't like MS where they're on top because of dirty business practices.
Then why did there need to be an SEC probe into their financial (mis)statements? Again, if not for the funding attracted by reputedly "too optimistic" financials, nVidia could never have pulled off the quick incremental development cycles which kicked 3Dfx's ass.
> Personally, I think it's rather idiotic of them not to support Glide in their GeForce drivers
This is the one thing I agree with you about. Glide is rightfully dead--its limitations are well-known, and today DX and OGL are the clear choices. However, a "legacy Glide module" would have been *very* nice, as almost all older games with Glide support work much better in Glide, and some older games *only* work in Glide. This is precisely why I bought an old Quantum3D Voodoo2 X-24 dual-Voodoo2-on-a-single-card board as a secondary adapter for my gaming rig--it's the only way to have full compatibility with many older games. If nVidia were unwilling to spend their time writing it, the Open Source community would likely be glad to do it for them since many are avid gamers and fans of old classics--but nVidia refuses to release any code, even the obsolete Glide code.
Now, let me go play a round of Turok in asskicking Glide mode, courtesy of my dual Voodoo2 card, in honor of the dead.:-)
> Hey, they did it in an episode of Star Trek:DS9 in the mirror universe where we got > to see mirror-Kira make a pass at herself.
That was really sexy, in a perverse way.;-) There's actually a good deal of pr0n films featuring twins, though most are (generally)unavailable in the U.S. Something about incest being potentially obscene... There was a famous film from the European company Private, one of the biggest pr0nmakers in the world, which featured fairly attractive twins making out and even fisting each other in a bar, but the scene was "cut" in the U.S. release to have all sexual relations between the two left out. If you think I'm kidding, I'm not.:-) Unfortunately the U.S. pr0n industry self-censors way too much, for fear of obscenity prosecution--yet there's no way to eliminate outdated censorship if no one's willing to take a stand and push the envelope. I don't think it's so wrong for consenting adults to be able to see whatever they want, being done between consenting adults....
Anyway, add to the list of hitting-on-herself scenes in geek-friendly shows the luscious encounter between Willow and evil vampire Willow on *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*. Sexy sexy! Willow-stroking-Willow, and a nice ass-grab. I'll never forget the line where Willow was describing vampire Willow that went something like, "I'm so evil! And I think I'm kinda gay..." That, and when vampire Willow says "No! This is a dumb world. In my world, we have people in chains and we can ride them like ponies." A-hem...
Those who never use trackballs long enough to get the feel of them will forever be missing out. Seriously, there's a reason the trackball was invented before the mouse, and why the trackball is standard-issue on many high-end workstations and graphics rigs: it's just more intuitive and easy to work with. The only advantage to a mouse, and the reason I think they became standard over trackballs, is that trackballs are easier to gunk up since your hand (with all its oils, dirt, food residue, etc.) moves overtop the ball, rather than theball moving on a pad which sadly enough is usually cleaner than human hands.
Seriously, with a mouse you have to make sure it's on a surface with enough space to give you free movement from corner of screen to corner of screen--whereas a trackball is stationary, and you only have to move your fingers an inch or two from side to side. just make sure to adjust the sensitivity to your liking; this aspect is more important than with a standard mouse...
These are reasons why I love my Intellimouse Explorer Trackball and consider it the best gaming mouse *ever*. And, the palm of my hand cups its pseudo-breast-shape perfectly, leaving my thumb to rest on the first button (with the second button and scrolling wheel/third-button-combo thumb-accessible just above), with my forefinger and middle finger resting on the ball, and the fourth and fifth mouse buttons by my little fingers. It's an ideal gaming interface. If your hands are too small to comfortably rest on the Explorer Trackball, try the Logitech Trackman Marble FX which I almost bought instead.
Like I said, the one drawback of the trackball is that it gets gunked up easy, so give it a quick clean before any important gaming sessions--easy since the trackball pops right out, giving easy access to the "ball holder" which should be quickly wiped across the optical sensor area and at the little metal nubs which space the ball out from the cavity. 30 seconds tops, and it's pristine. Being optical, it seems to track at least as well as the regular Intellimouse Explorer--probably better, since there's a uniform tracking pattern on the ball which probably surpasses most optical tracking surfaces.
Let's just say I'm the quickest-aim with a sniper rifle there is, thanks to my optical trackball.;-)
I don't know anything except this: in an interview I just saw, one of the movie's executives said AotC is opening on 25% fewer screens than *Spider-Man* did, so he wouldn't be surprised if AotC doesn't beat the new record.
Let's face it: people were disillusioned after TPM, and the merchandise didn't sell like expected, all because it didn't live up to the standards of the Trilogy. Consequently, theater owners, like the general public, don't expect that much from AotC; and its opening won't match that of *Spider-Man*, not just because it's on fewer screens, but because except for hardcore fans people are going to be in no hurry to see it opening weekend.
Let's face it: Lucas probably didn't write or direct all the aspects which made the Trilogy great. This is evident by his Bowdlerization of those very films later, with his lack of understanding about how a small thing like Greedo firing first could change a whole character arc, and with his over-reliance on digital effects. Lucas has proven with TPM, and reinforced with AotC, that the only thing he's good at is special effects. His characters, his dialogue, his stories--they just plain suck. Great films are plot and character driven, which is why *Spider-Man* succeeded since it has a flawed hero with real love and loss, and deals with essential themes like the responsibility we have to one another, even to strangers. But TPM and AotC are all special effects with no good dialogue and hollow characters. My gut tells me with the first two episodes of Star Wars we're seeing the "real" Lucas, doing too much of the writing and directing himself now that he's old and assured. With the Trilogy, he probably took a lot of good advice and input which helped make those films meaningful. Today, Lucas is no more than the ILM special effects guy. He's just not good for anything else anymore.
I can't understand why people would even bother. Even though I've felt like my connection was "lagging" a bit this week, I've still managed to hit my 6 GB USENET download limit *three times* since last Friday. )My NNTP service sells 6 GB/month USENET access; but one can renew online for additional payments every time the cap is hit).
So, that's at least 18 GB of data I've downloaded in a week, without having to use one of these uncappers and pissing off my cable ISP. Unless you want to uncap the upload speed to run a server, I don't see much benefit. And of course, running a server is a TOSable offense for home cable internet service, so that's a risk that hardly seems worth it.
This reminds me of my own scanner, the last one made by a forgotten scanner company called Storm Technologies. See, they made scanners, and only scanners--the highest-quality consumer-level scanners in the business at the time. They were innovative, anjd on their last model they even included an RCA video input for people to capture still images from their camcorders or VCRs, right alongside the flatbed scanner. 36-bit color when most people were still below that. They even invented an incredible de-interlacing algorithm which made images looki far smoother than even the de-interlace algorithm in Adobe Photoshop does today, for when people captured stills from video. And their scanners were the first consumer-level ones to use good CCD technology.
They went out of business because the Asian companies were dumping cheap no-name scanners into the marketplace, such that overnight the ImageStudio VF scanner from Storm went from being a technological marvel priced affordably at $250 minus $50 rebate, to something that looked less attractive when sitting next to a $49.95 no-name scanner that listed a similar resolution but certainly couldn't live up to the same image quality.
That's what killed HP's reputation. They had to compete with no-names in the consumer space--the average person wouldn't know the difference between a good-quality HP machine for $2000 and a crappy eMachine for $569. Likewise, the $69.95 no-name printer looks the same to most people as the $250 HP printer. Consequently, compromises were made. Unfortunately for HP's reputation, a few too many compromises were made. They were never as bad as Compaq or that bastard brand Packard-Bell, but they weren't up to the sterling reputation HP had earned in earlier years, before having to lower standards to compete in the consumer space.
> You do realize that the print heads are contained in the cartridge, saving you > from having expensive head replacements as often as with the Canon cartridges?
That's exactly why it's a horrible design--such a design made sense five or more years ago, when printers were more expensive than they are today. However, economies of scale and less profit-taking with the thinner margins of today means that printers are so inexpensive that it isn't worth putting the print heads in the cartidges. Let's say that adds $10 to the price of each cartidge pack--$15 if you'd be willing to use generic cartidges. So, for each 10 cartidges you buy, you could have bought a new $150 printer. Since the average printer warranty lasts a year, it comes down to a simple equation. Do you use 10 or more color cartidges a year with your $150-range printer, or 20 or so with your $300-range printer? If so, then you're paying a premium for HP's print-head cartidges which could have bought you a whole second printer.
The only advantage I can see to this print-head-in-the-cartridge design is if you *rarely* use your printer, and want it to last as long as possible without replacement. If you frequently replace cartidges, however, you'd be better off saving the "HP tax" which could easily add up enough to pay for a replacement printer if the heads on the one you have get gunked beyond repair.
Most of my files are categorized fairly well because I've done a fairly good job of keeping up with new files at the end of each day I've downloaded. If I suddenly got 2 million unsorted images--I think I'd start pulling my hair out before I started trying to sort them.;-)
But also, most of my images and video clips come from USENET newsgroups, where the subject matter is already fairly granular--for example, if I download a bunch of files from alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.facials , almost all of those files will belong in the Facials directory, and the ones that don't are either spam to be deleted or belong in the Blowjobs directory. Getting files from USENET groups instead of websites therefore provides a level of "pre-sorting" based on the subjects of the newsgroups I'm downloading from.
This of course provides a great number of duplicates over time, particularly since the same set of images could be suitable for several different directories; the same set of images of a black girl getting gangbanged and swallowing cum could potentially belong in either of these directories in my filesystem: BlackBitches, Cum\Facials, GroupSex\Gangbangs. In general I categorize according to a quick assssment of which aspect of the series is dominant--is the most attractive theme the hot black woman, the cum, or the group sex? If a series is exceptionally worthy, I might put links to those files in other directories related to the subject matter. Of course, much of the time, I just dump the files wherever they seem appropriate at a quick glance of representative files.
To eliminate duplicates and free up disk space, there are several applications that can be run to make quick CRCs of each file and compare them all, then make a list of duplicates to delete. The Win32 image viewer ACDSee comes with such functionality. I hadn't run it for a long time when I ran it last week, and so I freed up over 2 GB of disk space by eliminating duplicates. There are other such apps like TheChecker, DeDuper, etc., and I'm sure they have their Linux counterparts.
In any event, I have an actual life, so I do get way behind. Right now my Unsorted directories contain 104,792 files.:-( When I get the free time and have nothing better to do, I have a marathon porn-sorting session to cut into the backlog.
Database-driven filesystems are on the horizon, so that should provide an even greater opportunity to easily categoize files according to multiple traits.
None of the things you mention can't be done in 2D, by having multiple directory trees or similar structures available. Every attempt at a 3D GUI I've seen in screenshots or firsthand just implements the same concepts used in 2D GUIs, only with an added dimension--which spells unnecessary clutter and *added* navigational complexity, rather than increased ease of navigation. Using a 3D interface is often *harder*, and always more complex. Eliminating needless complexity is a major component of good GUI design, since a GUI, unlike a CLI, is supposed to move operational knowledge into self-evident components of the interface so that they don't need to be in the user's head. It's far easier to get "lost" momentarily in a 3D interface than in a 2D interface, with its more well-defined and self-evident hierarchies.
> Get a Mac and 3dOSX a 3D file browser using OpenGL
Like I said, I can't se any advantage at all to 3d user interfacs for common tasks such as browsing. I've done all my "gedankenexperiments" trying to think of a 3D paradigm that would have a significant advantage over 2D paradigms, and I really can't find any real advantages. Screenshots of what's there now don't show me anything worthwhile.
Aside from which, why would I get one of those overpriced underpowered non-commodity Mac thingies, when my PC thingy is so much faster with so much more hardware at such a smaller price?;-)
As for these "movies" of which you speak...I have many. Hundreds of full-length and thousands of clips. That doesn't mean I'd throw away my still images--they're too yummy. Mmmm, now on to my Patricia Araujo folder...;-)
Anyway, I see 3D file browsers as being all "cool factor" with no tangible advantages. It's possible to make one "as good as" 2D file browsers, but not at all superior to them. At least, as near as I can tell. There's a strong desire among many on/. to explore such newer paradigms--but again, it's driven by cool factor and the desire to explore new things, not by any advantages that are inherent to 3D for such tasks. I can see 3D interfaces being superior for 3D spatial apps, but not for more mundane uses...
Photomesa looks interesting. I could certainly use a better image browser, too--my pr0n directories now have 2,143,629 files, and counting... Sadly, I'm not kidding! Neatly categorized by sexual acts, scanners, or physical features, too.:-)
Currently the best image browser I have is ACDSee, a Windows app. Are there any better ones out there, for either Linux or Win32? Since the Photomesa image browser was mentioned in the parent article, this should qualify as an on-topic question.:-)
As for interacting with computers--I've long said that until AI is sufficient for computers to understand basic human speech at a fairly high level (which clearly is several decades away, at the least), that there are few improvements that can be made on the fundamental visual metaphors we already use. Many people are keen on 3D workspaces and such, but let's face it--they have no fundamental advantages over current 2D workspaces, except for the exceptional case of 3D modeling and similar spatial apps. But for browsing a filesystem, for example, I can't see any advantage that 3 dimensions have over 2, and it adds complexity and unneeded possibility for confusion.
There's a reason we've pretty much been using the 2D WIMP desktop fr over 20 years with few fundamental changes--it's a natural idea, more like a "discovery" than an invention. While there are many ways to implement the WIMP system, all have fundamental similarities and I doubt they can be bettered by another paradigm, such as 3D interfaces. Sit back and visualize different possibilities--I have, a lot, and I really can't see a paradigm that works better, except of course for the CLI for those who are willing to internalize computer functions in their memories rather than let the computer externalize them into visual interface.
That's just my opinion, of course. Oh well--back to organizing my pr0n.;-)
I never said iMac emulation should be "easy." I realize that it must be harder to emulate than anything yet emulated, with the exception of some of the more "exotic" hardware that's been worked on hard by the MAME dev team.
I just said that the poster above is correct that your reputation isn't good in the emulation community at this point, due to the fact that your releases are consistently late. People understand lateness; what they don't understand, and get angry about, is announcing that something will be late only a day or two before it's supposed to debut. The Macworld Tokyo debacle is the prime example--people in the emulation community are peeved at you because you didn't mention that the long-awaited demo of your latest product wouldn't be occurring, until just before it was supposed to.
That's why there's a negative attitude among some when your name is mentioned. I did however point out that, late or not, you *do* eventually produce quality products. Fusion was the first Mac emulator I used, and it was the best of its day. To this day it still supports features which SoftMac doesn't, and in fact SoftMac is a POS compared to Fusion. Basilisk II JIT is by far the best 68k emulator now, but as you point out, it took a long while to catch up and meanwhile no real work has been done to Fusion except for Mihocka's little "tweaks."
I do understand the complexities you've been dealing with, and to some extent I agree that your reputation in some circles is unfair. You do, however, contribute to it by allowing the impression that things will happen at a certain time, and then only "cancelling" them with very short notice.
That said, I do look forward to seeing your hardware-assisted product, if it does ever debut. I'd be willing to pay in the $500 range if it supports OS X, and the $350 range if it doesn't. In any event, good luck with the project, and I hope it makes it into a real product.
You're absolutely right that Jim Drew's reputation in the emulation community is crap. He always delivers what he promises years late and with big features which were advertised early on in the project lacking.
In the case of his PPC emulation, it's over a year late already, and he announced around December that it would show at MacWorld Tokyo. Given his typical timetable for falling behind, even if it's not finished yet, it should be finished for sure and on the market (if the hardware company lets it be) before the year is out.
That said, there's no telling whether the iMac emulation will be complete. I'm betting that it will initially only support OS 9 due to incomplete implementation--but that eventually, it should be able to run OS X with some finegling, especially since the Darwin layer is open-source and people have already hacked it to make OS X run on unsupported machines with processor upgrades.
No, Jim Drew isn't timely and he's liable to hype. And in fact, most of the emulation scene hates him right now for letting everyone believe up until the last minute that his PPC emulator would be demoed at Macworld Tokyo. But he does *eventually* deliver products that offer good Mac emulation. Fusion was, for example, the best 68k Mac emulator by far when it first came out, and then for some time afterwards, although Basilisk II slowly but surely beat the crap out of both Fusion and its competitor SoftMac.
At any rate, I think hadware-assisted is the way to rally go for PPC Mac "emulation" on the PC. There are so many high-quality PPC add-in cards out there now, that people really interested in running PPC code on their machines should pick one that's available in decent quantities and start coding the emulation support for it. After that, once the core "glue" emulation is done that can emulate the other Mac hardware and hand off instructions to the PPC add-in card, other PPC add-in boards could be supported, and Darwin could be hacked where necessary to allow OS X to work with any shortcusts that might need to be taken, much as it is hacked now to get OS X working on unsupported Macs with upgrade cards.
It's very doable when approached that way; unfortunately, no one but Drew seems to have been interested in that path. It's a pity, because even though it's more of an accomplishment to emulate a PPC CPU, it's much more practical and could be done much faster if one just emulates the other hardware on a given PPC Mac and "glues" it into using the PPC card for processing. Plus, it would allow the PPC Mac OS to run simultaneously with a Linux or Windows that's actually usable, whereas a "pure" emulation would eat up *all* the x86 CPU's cycles and make it so that one could only practically use the Mac emulator and nothing else.
Wouldn't it be great to have a fully working PPC processor card running Mac OS X, while simultaneously being able to use x86 Linux or Windows on your x86 CPU, all on the same machine? *That* is the idea we should really be going for, not a totally-emulated PPC core. PCI G3 and G4 Mac upgrade cards are *so* plentiful--why aren't more people trying to put them to use for Mac emulation on the PC?
First of all, the "emulators" you speak of for PPC machines aren't really emulators at all, they use the PPC processor natively, just allowing a MacOS that could run on that machine anyway, to run simultaneously under BeOS or Linux. There's no PPC emulation going on, really, with apps like SheepShaver; the PPC chip itself is used, not a full emulation ofn the chip.
There are many reasons why PPC emulation on x86 is difficult, and why the resulting emulators have probably always been too embarrassingly slow for their creators to make and release a finished emulator. You *can't* just map PPC registers to x86 registers like you can when emulating many lesser CPUs--*way* too many on the PPC, embarrassingly too few on x86. To even have a chance at being useful, you'd have to go the route of using a JIT compiler to dynamically translate PPC ops to x86 ops, and even then you're obviously paying a big speed penalty. In any event, while a usable G3 emulation is very possible, a usable G4 emulation will be impossible for many years thanks to the nice 128-bit Altivec unit.
This is a hard way to work, from what programmers trying to produce PPC emulations tell me. This is why I think the best way to get PPC support on regular commodity PCs is by not emulating the CPU at all. Instead, one could use a real PPC processor on an add-in card, maybe even with its own system RAM to increase speed. Then, emulate the rest of the hardware on a given PPC Mac using some "glue" software. These cards have been available for a long time in PCI form factors, though not yet used for PPC/Mac "emulation"; most are sold as "processor upgrades" for older Macs, and some are sold on the high-end for PCI backplane machines, and some are add-in cards for extra processing power that come with plug-ins allowing Photoshop to use the extra processors and SDKs to develop support for other apps to use the extra horsepower. There are even a couple of whole-computer-on-a-PCI-card hardware firewalls available; I don't know offhand if any are PPC, but that may be. This, of course, makes the use of G4 and when available G5 processors, possible, if one uses an add-in card.
Jim Drew of Microcode Solutions (whose website only says "new website coming soon" right now) was contacted by one of the manufacturers of PPC add-in upgrade cards for Macs, and contracted to write an emulator which would emulate the hardware of an (old) iMac while using one of their PPC processors on a card to run the actual PPC software, such as Mac OS 9. He was supposed to show this creation at Macworld Tokyo, but claims that the company which contracted with him was not ready to show it. This could be a lie to cover for the fact that he's still not done yet, or it could be the truth--any company releasing such a product, which could presumably let a PC run anything that would run on an old-model iMac, would surely incur the wrath of Apple Legal. So, it's entirely possible that such products are finished by one or more of the add-in PPC card companies, but they're too frightened of releasing them at the moment.
Time will tell. Darek Mihocka claims to have already created working PPC Mac emulation, but that he isn't releasing it until PCs are "fast enough" to run it well enough. Jim Drew also claims that he's been working on a software-only PPC Mac emulation, but that it won't be released until the hardware assisted version is released due to contractual agreements with the hardware maker. Or something like that.:-) Several other enthusiasts have also been working on PPC emulation, though nothing usable is yet evident.
In any event, I still happily play my old 68k Mac games under OS 8 or System 7.5.5 on occasion. I've come to love the open-source 68k Mac emulator Basilisk II for that. And, I have no doubt that sooner or later someone, somewhere, regardless of Apple Legal's threats, will release an emulator--whether all-software or hardware-assisted--which will let me smoothly run OS 9 and let me run OS X as well as or a bit better than an older iMac could. I kinda hope for the hardware sol,ution myself, since it would unlock a much faster Mac emulation, with the ability to upgrade the PPC CPU--and it would just be plain cool to have a real PPC machine running inside and accessible from my PC. Imagine the possibilities that an 800MHz G4 PPC processor card (or even a slower one) for PCs, maybe with a RAM slot or 2 on-card, with software to emulate the rest of the Mac, could bring to the PC. x86 Linux, OS X, and Windows all on the same box, at native speeds.:-) That's an enthusiast's wetdream. Apple would sh*t a brick, and may well sue, but hey--there'd be a lot of happy customers to finance the defense.:-)
All in due time, my friends...
SPOILER--*Spider-Man*: Just a Damn Good Movie.
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Review: Spiderman
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· Score: 2
I've been familiar with Spider-Man only through the cartoons, which I haven't watched in, oh, fifteen years or so. But, going into the movie did remind me that Spider-Man used to be my favorite cartoon...
As for the film itself, I'm damn impressed. There are movies which are nice entertaining little romps, which pass the time and are enjoyable. And then there are films which are all of that, plus a lot more--having a certain artistic and literary quality which gets the viewer more emotionally involved and maybe even has something to say about the world. *Spider-Man* falls in the latter category--great entertainment, but it also *says* something.
Take for instance the plot point about Peter Parker's uncle/father figure being murdered by a robber whom he could have stopped earlier if he'd cared. That gives him/Spider-Man a tremendous feeling of guilt and need to atone for his sin, by helping strangers the way he chose not to on the day Uncle Ben was murdered. This is a very meaningful, deep motivation, and lends Spidey a brooding quality unlike other superheroes. It also gives the film more emotional depth than it would have if there were some standard meaningless plot without deep psychological motives beneath it.
I couldn't help, afterward, comparing it to movies like *X-Men*. *X-Men* was entertaining, but had no real depth--it was pure entertainment with no real meaning. Sure, it has the brooding Wolverine character--but what exactly is he brooding over? The fact that he doesn't know his origins? That the X-Men treat him nicely, when others haven't? Oh, boo-hoo, what a shallow motivation. Poor him. Self-pity, how wonderful. But Spidey did something for which he's truly responsible, which will always motivate everything he does--he indirectly killed his beloved uncle, his father-figure, through inaction and lack of forethought. He will always be repaying that debt, with every person he saves and every evil he defeats. He cares deeply and feels constant remorse for a past he's trying to atone for. That's a very universal theme, not just a plot point.
That, I think, is what made this film so great. I was watching *Return of the Jedi* the other night, and asking myself why it's so moving, why it means something long after other great films of the time are somewhat diminished. It's those universal themes again, which give it the scope of an epic saga rather than a mere movie. Dark Sides, redemption, good and evil, long-lost family, love, oppression, longing, the struggle for freedom. The SW Trilogy gains a universal appeal because of these themes.
*Spider-Man* wasn't as epic, but was very much along those lines--themes of sin and redemption, a debt which can never be repaid, the loss of loved ones before their time and for which one feels responsible, love and longing, moving from adolescensce into adulthood, love that can't be consummated for its object's own good, heroically standing up for others. This is a movie which could be the beginning of an epic saga, although sadly its sequels will likely be more vacuous and less meaningful.
At any rate, I thought Spidey to be a wonderful tragic hero in the guise of a standard comic-book character, and the movie to be a great mix of the literary disguised as the trivial.
I just wait for a nice high-quality VCD transfer to be posted to USENET--which always happens within a week of a big film opening--and watch it in the comfort of my own home cinema. Sitting close to 55-inch HDTV is better than sitting in the middle of a theater watching a big scren, as far as my tastes are concerned. And it's completely quiet, unlike the time *Blair Witch Project* was ruined for me when an obnoxious couple kept snickering...
The only problem is avoiding low-quality VCDs with poor image or sound quality or glitches; but there are certain websites where different VCDs get "graded," and the best VCD groups put their wares across all of 2 CDs, for the best possible quality. But since I wouldn't want to change discs in the middle, I just use TMPGenc to combine them into one whole movie beforehand, and play from the HD of the "home theater PC," output to the TV thanks to ATI's beautiful All-in-Wonder. I still remember the looks on the kids' facs when I let them watch Hary Potter all day long, three days after its theatrical release.;-)
Martini? You can have whatever you want without getting gouged by rapacious movie-theater-and-MPAA-monopoly prices, when you watch a top-quality VCD at home.:-)
Hmm, when Episode II comes out and I wrangle a HQ copy, maybe I should do something special that you can't generally do in theaters, even the nice kind. I'm thinking "geek menage-a-trois" with Episode II in place of the PC...;-) Now, which call-girl do I pick?:-o I don't think your theater can compare with *that* kind of service! heehee...
He did get one thing right, though--if you want as little to-do over content as possible, take a look at where some of the more "extreme" adult sites get their bandwidth. I'm sure a little research could pull up several potential service providers who probably won't object to your content since they host rape fetish porn and such.
Of course, this is assuming you want to be free of censorship but aren't going to be violating copyrights. The DMCA is unfortunately a powerful enough club that even hosts in Taiwan can be forced to concede to it.
Aside from breaking copyrights, child porn is the only other deal-killer I can think of if you choose a provider who already sells bandwidth to extreme fetish porn sites. Although, from what I hear there are a number of "borderline" child porn websites that get hosted in Russia for a long time without getting pulled, but I won't get into that issue.
Also, if I were looking for a non-censorious service firm willing to host controversial content, I'd look up whoever hosts Xenu, the anti-scientology website--those guys get harassed *a lot*.
So, unless you're looking to violate copyrights or to post child pornography, there should be plenty of potential choices you could look into based on the type of content already hosted or already being given bandwidth.
Slashdot Mirror
None of the Christian texts you quote are Church canon. None of them. They are all either the opinions of certain specific clerics, or apocrypha. The fact is that, as most the-Church-in-European-history texts will touch on, abortion was unofficially "tolerated" by the Church up until the practise of scientific dissection of humans was finally widespread enough--despite the Church's objections--to show conclusively that the matter in a pregnant woman's womb during pregnancy eventually looked like a real human baby, long before birth. This is when the Church finally developed real proscriptions against abortion. Prior to this point, there were several "home remedies" for pregnancy which were unofficially tolerated, since the Church had never developed policies with regard to them. So, the Church's stance against abortion is a truly modern phenomenon.
:-)
> Read an intro to biology textbook sometime, and you will find a fit with the definition of life.
Not at all. You see, such definitions are all arbitrary. Technically each living cell is life, yet we don't generally think of it that way. The fertilized egg can be considered human life, since if left alone from that point you'll get to see a baby pop out in about 9 months. It may also just as validly aid not to be human life, because it cannot sustain itself, because it has not developed intelligence, beause it has not developed a human form, etc. You may consider that human life begins once the fetus/baby would be cabaple of breathing and carrying on basic biological functions outside the womb. Or, you may just as validly consider that it isn't human life yet since it would not survive outside the womb at this point on its own, without all the machines and special incubation enclosures developed by modern science to support premature babies--who would never survive on their own without these things during the earlier stages. Or you could debate as to at what point the fetus develops a human intelligence and becomes a human baby thereby. Or you could just as easily claim that it isn't a human life at all until it comes out of the womb naturally. Or you could pick a fairly arbitrary month or stage of development and declare that this is when life begins, which is esentially what many states do when they choose a cut-off point for performing abortions. None of these methods has any more validity, scientifically, ethically, or morally, than any other. *It's all arbitrary*, a matter of opinion and speculation and semantics, not of fact.
> I suppose when one lacks a basic respect for human life
I have respect for human life. I have respect enough, as well, for it and its mysteries, to not presume I know the exact instant when a human life comes into being. A person in this world is one thing, a clearly human being who clearly and unarguably deserves human rights and respect. Some glob of goo inside a woman's womb is neither clearly a human life, nor clearly deserving of human rights. It's debatably a human life, and debatably deserving of human rights. As such, it's my choice to weigh in and say that it's not at all just to deny a clearly human woman her clearly human rights about her own human body, to protect the debatable rights of a debatably human being/fetus/baby/bunch of cells/whatever you think it is. One is obviously, clearly, provably human. The other is only debatably so, depending on your semantics, your opinions, your philosophies, your religions.
> Despite the fact that even the UN is starting to worry about population decline
Populations are approaching zero population growth in most developed nations, and are on decline in a few. However, in underdeveloped nations, population growth is a major issue, and leads the poor to seek refuge in moe developed nations--where they can drive down the payscales. Zero population growth or negative population growth is not necessarily a bad thing, either, in nations with economies developed enough to adapt where necessary--what's wrong with lower population densities which increase the chances for land ownership?
>> "Thirdly, I value sex and see it as an essential part of the human experience"
>
> I'd laugh if this weren't so damn pathetic. It's exactly this type of idiotic lack of self
> control that leads directly to the type of STD epidemics we see today. Essential? Go ask an
> AIDS patient if they still think their sexual activity was "essential." Or wait until you get
> the news that you have the honor of living with herpes the rest of your life, and then
> contemplate whether it was "essential."
I'm sorry that you're one of those pathetic souls who cannot see sexuality for what it is--one of God's greatest gifts to man. God gave us these pleasures to enjoy, in moderation, as with the others he gave us. Do you disagree? The sexual instinct is purely natural, and hence God-given if you believe in such a deity. It should be enjoyed in moderation, but it should definitely be enjoyed when the opportunity and the mood presents itself. My analysis of the Bible tells me that I believe the proscription against sex outside of marriage is one of the many "good ideas at the time" based in time-bound secular necessity that were codified into the Bible along with the timeless truths. I won't get that far off-topic with a discussion of why, but as someone else in this thread said, the Bible has a lot of contradictory advice and very time-and-place-bound advice in it. At any rate, God also gave us some simple, natural ways to end pregnancy, too--in fact, until it became extinct due to over-use in the Roman era, there was a plant, described in detail in many ancient medical texts, which induced spontaneous abortions quickly and painlessly. It was almost impossible to cultivate since it only grew in very wild places, so instead of being farmed it was foraged for--and went extinct. A sad loss of God's own natural abortion pill.
As for STDs, recall that AIDS is a relatively new disease in humans, and not part of God's "master plan" to keep us from enjoying sex. God doesn't interfere with diseases, and created them for good, population-controlling reasons (if you believe in such a being). Anyone who takes minor precautions, like using condoms, will almost never get HIV. Nothing else is really serious these days--the only other "fatal" STDs are all treatable, unless you're foolish enough to not go to the doctor as soon as you see symptoms. Things like HPV may theoretically increase your risk of cancer--but no more than using artificial sweeteners, or any number of other things, theoretically increases your risks for cancer. As for herpes--who cares? It's an inconvenience, not a deadly disease, and in fact the latest studies show that as many as 75% of adults in the U.S. may have mild forms of oral herpes. You can literally get the oral form from kissing your mom or sister or whomever near the mouth area. And oral herpes can then be spread elsewhere. Again, a common, minor annoyance. Ever gotten cold sores or unusually sensitive or raw areas around or on your lips? then you probably have herpes. Oooh, how scary...not.
Sorry, but we enjoy sexuality for a reason. It *is* an essential part of being human. God doesn't begrudge us a roll in the hay.
> And I am not alone, nor am I exceptional in that regard.
You are exceptional in that regard; you're just too self-righteous to know it. Just because you chose that course does NOT mean that everyone else should be forced to. You are selfish in wanting to push yopur own personal moral and religious views on a majority who clearly disagree with you. Sorry you lost, but you did--the majority are "pro-choice," the Supreme Court has spoken, and you should teach your religiously-based views in your church or synagogue or mosque and leave them out of the politics and laws which have to apply to people of *all* religions, not just yours.
> The issue revolves around whether or not that woman is harming someone else's body. The location of
> that body is immaterial. If that baby is human, she has no damn business killing it.
Again, prove to me it's human. First, define humanity. Then tell me at what point, exactly, that bunch of cells becomes a human life--and prove why that is. You can't, because it's a matter of philosophy and religion and belief, not a matter of hard science. Hard science is often used to bak-up such positions, but hard cvience just as easily backs up the other positions, too--since it's a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact. You have no right to deny a human being control of her own body based on your personal beliefs. Again, we cannot take away the rights of someone who is provably, definitely, obviously human, to give rights to something that might be human depending on how you look at it.
> Btw, quick question ... are you an ATI employee ?
Heehee, no. I'm just disappointed that the graphics card industry seems to have stagnated a bit in the wake of "The Age of nVidia." When I look back at all the choices and competing architectures there used to be, and then I look at what exists at the moment, I have to say--hmmm, what might have been?
I mean, remember the days when the Rage 128, Voodoo 3, TNT2, and G400MAX, were all vying for the right compromises between speed and visual quality, and together with a few smaller players like the original Kyro, were providing a broad spectrum of choices? Wow, those were the days.
Today, however, the only real choices are which GeForce or which Radeon to buy. Sure, there are still small fish like Kyro II, but let's be realistic--there are only 2 primary choices right now if you want high-performance 3D graphics, half as many as there once were. I used to read the card reviews excitedly--today, why bother? Just buy the latest GeForce or the latest Rdeon and you're set. How *boring*.
I guess I lament the days when heated debates went on about whether Matrox's visual quality and EMBM were worth a framerate hit, or whether Voodoo's blazing speed was worth running in 16-bit ("24-bit postfiltered"), or whether ATI's great 32-bit quality was worth their buggy drivers, or whether nVidia's "jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none approach really gave the best of everything. People could be passionate about their choices, and deliberate carefully before investing in a new card. Today, well, I don't see that same passion on the hardware sites.
Me, I miss that raucous world of a few years back. I really think the pace of innovation in the business has slowed because of 3dfx's death and Matrox's pullback from performance 3D. I also deeply dislike some of nVidia's tactics following the 3dfx buyout, such as not only immediately dropping all support for 3dfx cards, but not releasing any more of 3dfx's driver code so that the community could support their own cards, and especially for refusing Microsoft's offer to write WindowsXP drivers for 3dfx cards since tyhere was a huge installed base of Voodoo 3, 4, and 5. That shows a real lack of respect for customers, who would have said "Wow, nVidia is so great, when my 3dfx card becomes obsolete I'll buy nVidia all the way!" if nV had taken any of those 3 courses. Instead, nVidia said, "not only are we not supporting legacy 3dfx products [which is understandable], we're also not letting any more of the 3dfx driver code go public, nor will we let Microsoft use it to let 3dfx card owners have XP-certified drivers." Bah. What a shitty corporate attitude. So, there are a lot of unhappy 3dfx card owners out there who feel nVidia was very unsportsmanlike and deliberately shafted them by not even letting 3rd parties who'd write drivers for free have any more 3dfx code.
Now, just so no one gets the wrong idea, I went from a crappy Diamond SiS-based video card to ATI cards, and never owned a new 3dfx card at all, so I was never a 3dfx partisan. Earlier this year I bought a used Quantum3D Obsidian2 X-24 dual Voodoo 2 (on a single card) card, strictly to be able to play older Glide games. That's my first and only 3Dfx card, and I bought it already knowing about nVidia's stupid choices. So, I'm in no way biased toward 3dfx.
I just hope Matrox's Parhelia really turns out to be competitive with offerings out at the time by nVidia and ATI, to bring some of that real competition back to an industry which seems to be lagging. And whether lagging or not, it's definitely boring compared to what it used to be in the good-old-days of 4-way competition.
> Understanding the steps to get from "life begins at conception" and "life should be protected" to
> "kill abortionists" requires understanding huge leaps in logic.
Not really--think about it in simple, logical terms, and the natural conclusion of the anti-abortionist argument is that abortion doctors are performing a murder with every abortion they do. If life begins at conception, abortion doctors are taking lives. Is it acceptable to use deadly force to prevent someone from murdering other people? Yes, in most Western legal systems, moralities, philosophies, and religions, it is acceptable to use deadly force if it is the only way to stop one person from murdering another--at least, if that threat is immediate.
So, in this vein, the anti-abortion crusaders who think it's okay to kill abortion doctors are standing on logical ground. If they're right that "human life begins at conception, " then they can even claim to be standing firmly on moral ground.
That isn't to say I agree in any way or condone the murder of abortion doctors. First of all, I don't really care when human life begins--conception, birth, or otherwise. Who can know for sure? Why should I care?
I'm pro-abortion. The oft-used terms are "pro-life" or pro-choice," but I think that's just so much marketing claptrap--the debate is about abortion, not lie or choice. I think everyone is for both life and choice, in their general meaning, so I always use the straightforward and honest terms "pro-abortion" or "anti-abortion."
At any rate, I'm pro-abortion because I think it makes sense. Firstly because, as I said, no one can say with any real meaning when human life begins. Short of God himself telling us in person what he considers to be the point at which human life begins, it's an unanswerable question since it's entirely religious or philosophical and can have no definite scientific answer. Secondly, abortion serves a useful practical purpose of population control, which is important in the modern world. Thirdly, I value sex and see it as an essential part of the human experience which everyone should freely enjoy, but no methods of contraception are 100% effective. Fourthly, it's almost impossible for young people to both care for a baby and go to school, and in this day and age school usually has to last until around 21-22 years old (college) to ensure a decent living--so abortion is a necessity to make sure young people can enjoy sex without having it ruin their lives. Fifthly, almost every developed culture since the ancient Greeks practiced abortion or infanticide right after birth--this includes Christians up until the last couple of centuries; until medical sciences started showing the development of babies inside the womb, the Church held that life began when the baby popped out.
I'm also pro-abortion, finally, because it's not my damn business to tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her own body. If she wants to let someone shove a metal rod into her uterus, that's her business, not mine. Whether there happens to be a bunch of cells in her uterus at the same time makes no difference--inside her body, her rules stand.
> Like someone else said, you can't compare them to Enron.
*Everyone* mentions Enron now when there are allegations of corporate financial impropriety, much the same as any political scandal is a {something}gate (like "Travelgate" or such), even if it's minor in comparison. In fact, the second of the Salon articles linked in the story mentions Enron as well.
I did nothing in making my comments that financial analysts everywhere haven't already done. *Every* time I hear nVidia mentioned on the financial news, I hear phrases like "allegations of Enron-like financial misstatements" or "the SEC probe into possible problems brings up shades of the Enron scandal and recent financial readjustments by Big Blue," etc. No one ever claimed that nVidia's *alleged* wrongdoing was near the same magnitude as that of Enron--however, Enron always gets mentioned because they're the extreme case of what the SEC is trying to determine about nVidia--and several other companies, to be fair.
Rereading my original post, there should probably be a few more "allegedly's" and "if true's" even though there are a few in there, but other than that it reads exactly as it should. If financial analysts are going to use the term Enron regarding the SEC probe of nVidia, then I see no problem with my using it. Go do a quick Google search for "nvidia" "enron" "sec" and you'll find a lot of articles which do the *same* thing.
Now, as I said, to be fair the analysts are predicting that the SEC investigation will end with no major sanctions, and many analysts still have a "buy recommendation" on nVidia. But there are questions, there is an investigation, and there is plenty of room to ask whether part of nVidia's success may have been due to the "Enron-like financial statements" which I hear business news commentators say the allegations involve. I hear them use such terms, so I will too.
> Actually, it was the exact opposite of this. nVidia never produced a video card that was faster than
> one of 3dfx's top model while they were still in business.
That's not exactly what I said--I said that nVidia released incrementally faster graphics processors with quicker turnarounds. Incrementally faster than their last releases, not 3dfx's. However, yes, nVidia did release one product line which was faster than the equivalent 3dfx product while 3dfx was still alive--the GeForce series. But before that the TNT2 Ultra was a real contender for the people willing to spend that kind of cash, beating out the Voodoo 3 except of course in Glide games.
> If you are talking about the whole SEC thing, that was a recent occurance that began at the start of last year.
They are investigating earlier occurrences than the insider trading which precipitated the investigation. The probe, as far as I can tell, goes back to 1999.
> There was inside trading going on and that was what the investigation was about.
Information found during that investigation has started an SEC probe into other financial matters. I can find no mention either on the SEC site or anywhere else that that investigation has closed, although the insider trading issue has already been dealt with.
> However, in the beginning nVdida was a privately funded company.
Yes, they were, much as Matrox.
> They went public AFTER 3dfx went bankrupt.
No, they went public long before that, which is where they got the money to buy 3dfx--though they had enough money to buy 3dfx several times over, since 3dfx's finances were so poor by then. You're probably thinking of the big spike in nVidia stock after the Xbox contract was won.
> Quiet the opposite, nvidia has created a site to drive development of 3D software
I was talking about *source code*. 3dfx released huge chunks of their driver source code to the public. nVidia has never done so--their drivers are very closed.
>> Glide support work much better in Glide
>
> Glide is the farthest thing you can get from programming standards. I cringe everytime someone
> spews the statement "Glide is better."
Sorry, but do you have problems with literacy? Where did I say anything about Glide being better than anything else? Nowhere. Quoting that whole statement, instead of that contorted snippet, and here's what I said: "almost all older games with Glide support work much better in Glide, and some older games *only* work in Glide." I am *clearly* talking about legacy support for Glide games, which nVidia will not provide--nor will they release the Glide code they now own so that open-source folks could write Glide support modules for their drivers. At any rate, yes, there are *many* older games that run best in Glide mode, or that *only* run under Glide, or only under either Glide or a really ugly un-accelerated software renderer. This is why I said a Glide support module would be good.
>FYI, nVidia have come out of the SEC probe with better than clean results
Not as far as I can tell; the probe seems to be ongoing even at this point. A Google search presents no articles about any official SEC findings as of yet--moreover, the SEC itself has a nice website at http://www.sec.gov/ which includes news of its business. On that website I can't find any mention of the SEC having closed its investigation or released any findings.
> the re-statements for the last 3 years leads to $1.3 mln INCREASE in net incomes
What you and another poster point to is based entirely on nVidia's own press releases up to this point. If you were a company under investigation for financial misstatements, and the SEC found some minor accounting errors in your favor, wouldn't you too release that information? I think so. It doesn't mean that there aren't other financial issues being investigated by the SEC--ones with negative implications--particularly since I can find no mention anywhere of the SEC having closed the books on the nVidia investigation.
Furthermore, I watch the financial news and have as recently I believe as last week heard mention of nVidia's SEC probe. I may be mistaken, but I believe I have. However, the analyst did state, to be fair, that he thought nothing important would come of the investigation, and still has a "buy recommendation" on nVidia.
There's no denying that nVidia is a powerful, financially stable company, which is currently *the* 3D powerhouse. The question is, how did that come to pass? Were there any financial impropriteies which played a role in the company's ascension? The SEC investigation should tell us fairly conclusively, when it concludes.
> After the IPO, any increase in the stock price had no direct benefit to Nvidia the corporate entity
:-)
A standard line, but not at all true. Ignoring the issuance of outstanding shares (I don't know offhand if nVidia ever issued significant numbers of outstanding shares in that period), there are several factors to consider. Inflated financials can get a corporate entity much greater lines of credit, much better relations with and leverage with third-party entities (important when you make chips which card companies decide whether to buy), attract many of the best employees, and I could go on for a while. Were it not for benefits, no companies would ever misrepresent their finances.
> The SEC investigation was triggered by material discovered during an investigation into some insider trading
Yes, it was. And as the article linked in this story, and many others, note, the SEC probe isn't limited to insider trading by a few, but questions whether the company intentionally misstated its financial position. Your Yahoo link is a quickie which only details one of the purported problems. You ought to watch "Your World with Neil Cavuto" each day to keep up with the haps in the securities world.
> As for 3dfx' failure, that was as much their own doing as nvidia's.
I never said it wasn't--3dfx missed a whole development cycle, and that was their own fault. They focused too many reasources on their long-term Rampage solution, to adequately keep up with real-world pressures from competitors--which is their own fault entirely, *unless* nVidia really did engage in financial improprieties which affected the outcome of the "3D wars."
> But then you'd know that if you'd read the salon article
I read it, and it didn't tell me anything people interested in the subject haven't known for months in the case of the nVidia allegations, or years in the case of the video card history. Personally, I found the article unremarkable. There are many much better and more in-depth articles on video card history scattered about the enthusiast sites, since the Salon article is meant for a fairly general audience.
> Ultimately, they're the biggest because they're cards are the best. I wouldn't buy an nVidia card
> just because their stock prices inflated.
You seem to miss the point: did their incredible product cycles happen because of incredible funding gotten by cheating on financials? If so, then they created those products by cheating, and did not succeed on their merits at all. Read on below for why this is important.
> However, the punishment is affected by the outcome: in the case of Enron and Global Crossings,
> thousands of employees were laid off and investers were screwed over. In the case of nVidia,
> investors are almost assured continually rising stock prices and the consumers are very happy.
Yes, nVidia investors are ultimately happy with the outcome even if their money was invested under false pretenses, since nVidia succeeded. *However*, for every winner there are losers in the market. The best example is 3dfx shareholders, who lost the proverbial king's ransom when 3dfx collapsed--and of course Matrox and ATI investors, since Matrox in no way could keep up with nVidia's product cycles, and ATI's cards could never keep up until recently. Now, if nVidia's alleged financial cheating is true, those 3dfx investors, Matrox investors, and ATI investors, *were cheated*, since nVidia's bottom line and their financial capability to pull ahead with phenomenal development times were all based on Enron-like financial impropriety.
We'll have a good idea whether or not this is the case when the SEC probe issues final results. But if nVidia did win through financial cheating, then they essentially "stole" money from the investors of competing companies by deflating the value of rival investments as theirs went up on false pretenses, and killed one competitor off entirely.
That isn't to say that the financial impropriety definitely occurred--we don't know for sure until the SEC finishes its investigations. It does not, however, look like nVidia acted properly, from what I've seen so far. And that isn't to say that companies like 3dfx didn't make severe errors which nVidia rightly exploited--they did. But it is to say that, yes, if nVidia is guilty of its alleged financial improprieties, they played a key role in securing the investments which made it possible for them to carry out Herculean product development cycles--and in doing so cost the investors of rival companies hundreds of millions in losses which are unfair and due to illegal financial cheating. We'll know when the SEC has concluded its dealings. Success and crushing the competition through the fruits of illegal practices is unacceptable.
As for whether consumers are happy--I am not. Not if a venerable, though prodigal, company was destroyed by unethical business practices as much as or more than its own mistakes. Not if, were it not for "creative accounting," nVidia were unable to keep up its incremental product cycles and its rival were finally able to release Rampage, a product in development since the days of the Voodoo 2 which reputedly may have revolutionized the experience for all of us. When companies get ahead by cheating, and kill their rivals through unethical financial manipulations, consumers lose out. nVidia has been feeding us incremental change ever since the original GeForce. 3dfx's Rampage was supposed to provide a paradigm shift, and if not for nVidia's financial manipulations (if they are true--they may not be), it was to be brought to market before now. We know they had working alpha silicon when they closed their doors--the question is, did they close their doors because they couldn't keep up due to nVidia's alleged financial cheating? If so, consumers benefitted in the short run, and lost out in the long run.
There are many questions which remain. Is nVidia innocent of the charges the SEC is investigating? We'll find the likely answer as soon as the SEC is ready to announce findings. Would 3dfx have failed, if not for nVidia's incredible (illegally funded???) product cycles? We'll never know, but my money's on "no". Would Matrox have (temporarily?)abandoned their foray into the world of 3D gaming so readily if not for those well-funded nVidia product cycles? It's debatable--they couldn't keep up with 3dfx and nVidia in speed, but they had the 3D visual quality crown. Would ATI be more profitable in the 3D performance market? Who knows. Could 3dfx have revolutionized 3D gaming with its long-in-development Rampage? Very possibly--it was about a year from final silicon, so if nVidia did raise money for product cycles (and thereby put pressure on 3dfx and other competitors) through illegal means, 3dfx would definitely have been in much better financial shape.
We'll just never know what might have been. All we can know is that the 3D graphics card world changed dramatically across the span of a couple of years. *If* the SEC concludes that nVidia raised investment funds by inflating their financials, then it's a foregone conclusion that that played a *huge* role. It (if true) definitely provided short-twerm benefits to gamers, and likely robbed them of the long-term gains of Rampage technology, and definitely cost every investor in one of its rivals money.
> we could do a long long long analysis of why they're so successful, or we could just state the obvious.
:-)
Or even better, the not-so-obvious.
> They are the most successful GPU company because they make the best, highest-quality, fastest GPU's
They're the most successful for two reasons. First, unlike 3Dfx, they focused on quick turnaround of incrementally faster processors rather than spending a long dev cycle working on very advanced technology that was too complicated to fit into a 6-month product cycle. The 3D graphics world was *starved* for more horsepower, and quick to jump on the bandwagon of whoever could deliver more faster, rather than the long-term strategy 3Dfx got mired in when their tech missed a whole dev cycle. This was an excellent strategy on nVidia's part, since 3Dfx's Rampage technology was taking far too long to pan out and forced them to release a "stopgap" line of cards that was short on features and performance, in order to try to struggle on until their mythic Rampage chipset could produce working silicon. 3Dfx poured all their investment into a product which would have been groundbreaking, but was so long to market that nVidia was running rings around them with their incremental strategies.
Second, much like Enron, nVidia (allegedly) inflated their financial statements in a very unethical manner in order to draw in more investment due to steadily rising stock prices during the investment bubble. Honesty is punished by investors if it isn't all wine and roses; inflated financial statements draw more investment. In the case of Enron, the house of cards collapsed. In the case of nVidia, the tail wagged the dog--inflated financials drew more and more investment, which funded more and faster product cycles, which allowed nVidia to really pull ahead of 3Dfx, just as 3Dfx fell further and further behind thanks to their Rampage sinkhole. The high investment due to questionable financial statements is what allowed nVidia to fund its whirlwind snowjob, culminating in the purchase of its beaten and devalued old rival. There's been an SEC probe into these purported financial improprieties, and from everything I've seen, it looks like nVidia's creative accounting was their source of power, funding their product cycles--kind of like winning by cheating. No, *exactly* like winning by cheating...
This demonstrates a few principles we already know from much practical experience. In computers, short-term strategies which produce small gains *now* are much more likely to be successful than long-term strategies which would pay off big, but not in the near future. IA-64 is a prime example of this--Intel's roadmaps when Itanium first shipped showed it being adopted in droves by this point in time, yet it hasn't been; if an when it succeeds, it will be because of Intel's unusually deep pockets, but meanwhile x86-64 Yamhill has been developed "just in case" AMD's Hammer architecture captures the low-end-server and mainstream desktop markets, markets which Intel had *insisted* would eventually have IA-64 trickle down to without any interim architectures. This same principle was seen in the software world, with for example every single version of Windows that was built atop DOS rather than NT.
The second principle of success which nVidia's strategy illustrates is a financial one, illustrated well by Enron. People invest more money with companies which are already financially successful than with ones who really need the money, so that inflating the bottom line is rewarded immensely--and punishes companies which are honest, by giving fu7nding to their competitors. With Enron the bubble burst. With nVidia, the bubble carried them to the top, and funded dev cycles which neither 3Dfx nor Matrox nor for most of that period ATI could compete with. It's a gamble, and the dice rolled in nVidia's favor. That doesn't make their alleged financial improprieties right, but it makes them (if true) a *major* factor in nVidia's success.
> models designed for gamers, for graphics designers, for businesses.
3Dfx did the same, so nVidia is in no way unique there. In fact, high-end graphics maven Quantum3D was a 3Dfx spin-off intended by 3Dfx to be a major user of 3Dfx's highly scalable chip architectures (8-way Voodoo 2's and 16-way VSA-100's, for example, which *killed* everything else at the time for the high-end). For mainstream businesses, 3Dfx had their line of STB boards (following their STB buyout, which many see as a huge mistake, since they got into the board business instead of concentrating on just chips). And for gamers, obviously, the famous Voodoo lines. Low-end-professional 3D graphics wworkstations were the only market not really targeted, since Quantum3D boards compete in a higher-end space than Quadros did.
> Not to mention, they support a broad range of OS' very well: Windows, Linux, MacOSX
As did 3dfx, but 3dfx bettered nVidia in this respect by releasing a large chunk of code. nVidia has on the other hand been excruciatingly secretive with almost all code.
> This isn't like MS where they're on top because of dirty business practices.
Then why did there need to be an SEC probe into their financial (mis)statements? Again, if not for the funding attracted by reputedly "too optimistic" financials, nVidia could never have pulled off the quick incremental development cycles which kicked 3Dfx's ass.
> Personally, I think it's rather idiotic of them not to support Glide in their GeForce drivers
This is the one thing I agree with you about. Glide is rightfully dead--its limitations are well-known, and today DX and OGL are the clear choices. However, a "legacy Glide module" would have been *very* nice, as almost all older games with Glide support work much better in Glide, and some older games *only* work in Glide. This is precisely why I bought an old Quantum3D Voodoo2 X-24 dual-Voodoo2-on-a-single-card board as a secondary adapter for my gaming rig--it's the only way to have full compatibility with many older games. If nVidia were unwilling to spend their time writing it, the Open Source community would likely be glad to do it for them since many are avid gamers and fans of old classics--but nVidia refuses to release any code, even the obsolete Glide code.
Now, let me go play a round of Turok in asskicking Glide mode, courtesy of my dual Voodoo2 card, in honor of the dead.
> Hey, they did it in an episode of Star Trek:DS9 in the mirror universe where we got
;-) There's actually a good deal of pr0n films featuring twins, though most are (generally)unavailable in the U.S. Something about incest being potentially obscene... There was a famous film from the European company Private, one of the biggest pr0nmakers in the world, which featured fairly attractive twins making out and even fisting each other in a bar, but the scene was "cut" in the U.S. release to have all sexual relations between the two left out. If you think I'm kidding, I'm not. :-) Unfortunately the U.S. pr0n industry self-censors way too much, for fear of obscenity prosecution--yet there's no way to eliminate outdated censorship if no one's willing to take a stand and push the envelope. I don't think it's so wrong for consenting adults to be able to see whatever they want, being done between consenting adults....
> to see mirror-Kira make a pass at herself.
That was really sexy, in a perverse way.
Anyway, add to the list of hitting-on-herself scenes in geek-friendly shows the luscious encounter between Willow and evil vampire Willow on *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*. Sexy sexy! Willow-stroking-Willow, and a nice ass-grab. I'll never forget the line where Willow was describing vampire Willow that went something like, "I'm so evil! And I think I'm kinda gay..." That, and when vampire Willow says "No! This is a dumb world. In my world, we have people in chains and we can ride them like ponies." A-hem...
Those who never use trackballs long enough to get the feel of them will forever be missing out. Seriously, there's a reason the trackball was invented before the mouse, and why the trackball is standard-issue on many high-end workstations and graphics rigs: it's just more intuitive and easy to work with. The only advantage to a mouse, and the reason I think they became standard over trackballs, is that trackballs are easier to gunk up since your hand (with all its oils, dirt, food residue, etc.) moves overtop the ball, rather than theball moving on a pad which sadly enough is usually cleaner than human hands.
;-)
Seriously, with a mouse you have to make sure it's on a surface with enough space to give you free movement from corner of screen to corner of screen--whereas a trackball is stationary, and you only have to move your fingers an inch or two from side to side. just make sure to adjust the sensitivity to your liking; this aspect is more important than with a standard mouse...
These are reasons why I love my Intellimouse Explorer Trackball and consider it the best gaming mouse *ever*. And, the palm of my hand cups its pseudo-breast-shape perfectly, leaving my thumb to rest on the first button (with the second button and scrolling wheel/third-button-combo thumb-accessible just above), with my forefinger and middle finger resting on the ball, and the fourth and fifth mouse buttons by my little fingers. It's an ideal gaming interface. If your hands are too small to comfortably rest on the Explorer Trackball, try the Logitech Trackman Marble FX which I almost bought instead.
Like I said, the one drawback of the trackball is that it gets gunked up easy, so give it a quick clean before any important gaming sessions--easy since the trackball pops right out, giving easy access to the "ball holder" which should be quickly wiped across the optical sensor area and at the little metal nubs which space the ball out from the cavity. 30 seconds tops, and it's pristine. Being optical, it seems to track at least as well as the regular Intellimouse Explorer--probably better, since there's a uniform tracking pattern on the ball which probably surpasses most optical tracking surfaces.
Let's just say I'm the quickest-aim with a sniper rifle there is, thanks to my optical trackball.
I don't know anything except this: in an interview I just saw, one of the movie's executives said AotC is opening on 25% fewer screens than *Spider-Man* did, so he wouldn't be surprised if AotC doesn't beat the new record.
Let's face it: people were disillusioned after TPM, and the merchandise didn't sell like expected, all because it didn't live up to the standards of the Trilogy. Consequently, theater owners, like the general public, don't expect that much from AotC; and its opening won't match that of *Spider-Man*, not just because it's on fewer screens, but because except for hardcore fans people are going to be in no hurry to see it opening weekend.
Let's face it: Lucas probably didn't write or direct all the aspects which made the Trilogy great. This is evident by his Bowdlerization of those very films later, with his lack of understanding about how a small thing like Greedo firing first could change a whole character arc, and with his over-reliance on digital effects. Lucas has proven with TPM, and reinforced with AotC, that the only thing he's good at is special effects. His characters, his dialogue, his stories--they just plain suck. Great films are plot and character driven, which is why *Spider-Man* succeeded since it has a flawed hero with real love and loss, and deals with essential themes like the responsibility we have to one another, even to strangers. But TPM and AotC are all special effects with no good dialogue and hollow characters. My gut tells me with the first two episodes of Star Wars we're seeing the "real" Lucas, doing too much of the writing and directing himself now that he's old and assured. With the Trilogy, he probably took a lot of good advice and input which helped make those films meaningful. Today, Lucas is no more than the ILM special effects guy. He's just not good for anything else anymore.
I can't understand why people would even bother. Even though I've felt like my connection was "lagging" a bit this week, I've still managed to hit my 6 GB USENET download limit *three times* since last Friday. )My NNTP service sells 6 GB/month USENET access; but one can renew online for additional payments every time the cap is hit).
So, that's at least 18 GB of data I've downloaded in a week, without having to use one of these uncappers and pissing off my cable ISP. Unless you want to uncap the upload speed to run a server, I don't see much benefit. And of course, running a server is a TOSable offense for home cable internet service, so that's a risk that hardly seems worth it.
This reminds me of my own scanner, the last one made by a forgotten scanner company called Storm Technologies. See, they made scanners, and only scanners--the highest-quality consumer-level scanners in the business at the time. They were innovative, anjd on their last model they even included an RCA video input for people to capture still images from their camcorders or VCRs, right alongside the flatbed scanner. 36-bit color when most people were still below that. They even invented an incredible de-interlacing algorithm which made images looki far smoother than even the de-interlace algorithm in Adobe Photoshop does today, for when people captured stills from video. And their scanners were the first consumer-level ones to use good CCD technology.
They went out of business because the Asian companies were dumping cheap no-name scanners into the marketplace, such that overnight the ImageStudio VF scanner from Storm went from being a technological marvel priced affordably at $250 minus $50 rebate, to something that looked less attractive when sitting next to a $49.95 no-name scanner that listed a similar resolution but certainly couldn't live up to the same image quality.
That's what killed HP's reputation. They had to compete with no-names in the consumer space--the average person wouldn't know the difference between a good-quality HP machine for $2000 and a crappy eMachine for $569. Likewise, the $69.95 no-name printer looks the same to most people as the $250 HP printer. Consequently, compromises were made. Unfortunately for HP's reputation, a few too many compromises were made. They were never as bad as Compaq or that bastard brand Packard-Bell, but they weren't up to the sterling reputation HP had earned in earlier years, before having to lower standards to compete in the consumer space.
> You do realize that the print heads are contained in the cartridge, saving you
> from having expensive head replacements as often as with the Canon cartridges?
That's exactly why it's a horrible design--such a design made sense five or more years ago, when printers were more expensive than they are today. However, economies of scale and less profit-taking with the thinner margins of today means that printers are so inexpensive that it isn't worth putting the print heads in the cartidges. Let's say that adds $10 to the price of each cartidge pack--$15 if you'd be willing to use generic cartidges. So, for each 10 cartidges you buy, you could have bought a new $150 printer. Since the average printer warranty lasts a year, it comes down to a simple equation. Do you use 10 or more color cartidges a year with your $150-range printer, or 20 or so with your $300-range printer? If so, then you're paying a premium for HP's print-head cartidges which could have bought you a whole second printer.
The only advantage I can see to this print-head-in-the-cartridge design is if you *rarely* use your printer, and want it to last as long as possible without replacement. If you frequently replace cartidges, however, you'd be better off saving the "HP tax" which could easily add up enough to pay for a replacement printer if the heads on the one you have get gunked beyond repair.
Most of my files are categorized fairly well because I've done a fairly good job of keeping up with new files at the end of each day I've downloaded. If I suddenly got 2 million unsorted images--I think I'd start pulling my hair out before I started trying to sort them. ;-)
:-( When I get the free time and have nothing better to do, I have a marathon porn-sorting session to cut into the backlog.
But also, most of my images and video clips come from USENET newsgroups, where the subject matter is already fairly granular--for example, if I download a bunch of files from alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.facials , almost all of those files will belong in the Facials directory, and the ones that don't are either spam to be deleted or belong in the Blowjobs directory. Getting files from USENET groups instead of websites therefore provides a level of "pre-sorting" based on the subjects of the newsgroups I'm downloading from.
This of course provides a great number of duplicates over time, particularly since the same set of images could be suitable for several different directories; the same set of images of a black girl getting gangbanged and swallowing cum could potentially belong in either of these directories in my filesystem: BlackBitches, Cum\Facials, GroupSex\Gangbangs. In general I categorize according to a quick assssment of which aspect of the series is dominant--is the most attractive theme the hot black woman, the cum, or the group sex? If a series is exceptionally worthy, I might put links to those files in other directories related to the subject matter. Of course, much of the time, I just dump the files wherever they seem appropriate at a quick glance of representative files.
To eliminate duplicates and free up disk space, there are several applications that can be run to make quick CRCs of each file and compare them all, then make a list of duplicates to delete. The Win32 image viewer ACDSee comes with such functionality. I hadn't run it for a long time when I ran it last week, and so I freed up over 2 GB of disk space by eliminating duplicates. There are other such apps like TheChecker, DeDuper, etc., and I'm sure they have their Linux counterparts.
In any event, I have an actual life, so I do get way behind. Right now my Unsorted directories contain 104,792 files.
Database-driven filesystems are on the horizon, so that should provide an even greater opportunity to easily categoize files according to multiple traits.
None of the things you mention can't be done in 2D, by having multiple directory trees or similar structures available. Every attempt at a 3D GUI I've seen in screenshots or firsthand just implements the same concepts used in 2D GUIs, only with an added dimension--which spells unnecessary clutter and *added* navigational complexity, rather than increased ease of navigation. Using a 3D interface is often *harder*, and always more complex. Eliminating needless complexity is a major component of good GUI design, since a GUI, unlike a CLI, is supposed to move operational knowledge into self-evident components of the interface so that they don't need to be in the user's head. It's far easier to get "lost" momentarily in a 3D interface than in a 2D interface, with its more well-defined and self-evident hierarchies.
> Get a Mac and 3dOSX a 3D file browser using OpenGL
;-)
;-)
/. to explore such newer paradigms--but again, it's driven by cool factor and the desire to explore new things, not by any advantages that are inherent to 3D for such tasks. I can see 3D interfaces being superior for 3D spatial apps, but not for more mundane uses...
Like I said, I can't se any advantage at all to 3d user interfacs for common tasks such as browsing. I've done all my "gedankenexperiments" trying to think of a 3D paradigm that would have a significant advantage over 2D paradigms, and I really can't find any real advantages. Screenshots of what's there now don't show me anything worthwhile.
Aside from which, why would I get one of those overpriced underpowered non-commodity Mac thingies, when my PC thingy is so much faster with so much more hardware at such a smaller price?
As for these "movies" of which you speak...I have many. Hundreds of full-length and thousands of clips. That doesn't mean I'd throw away my still images--they're too yummy. Mmmm, now on to my Patricia Araujo folder...
Anyway, I see 3D file browsers as being all "cool factor" with no tangible advantages. It's possible to make one "as good as" 2D file browsers, but not at all superior to them. At least, as near as I can tell. There's a strong desire among many on
Photomesa looks interesting. I could certainly use a better image browser, too--my pr0n directories now have 2,143,629 files, and counting... Sadly, I'm not kidding! Neatly categorized by sexual acts, scanners, or physical features, too. :-)
:-)
;-)
Currently the best image browser I have is ACDSee, a Windows app. Are there any better ones out there, for either Linux or Win32? Since the Photomesa image browser was mentioned in the parent article, this should qualify as an on-topic question.
As for interacting with computers--I've long said that until AI is sufficient for computers to understand basic human speech at a fairly high level (which clearly is several decades away, at the least), that there are few improvements that can be made on the fundamental visual metaphors we already use. Many people are keen on 3D workspaces and such, but let's face it--they have no fundamental advantages over current 2D workspaces, except for the exceptional case of 3D modeling and similar spatial apps. But for browsing a filesystem, for example, I can't see any advantage that 3 dimensions have over 2, and it adds complexity and unneeded possibility for confusion.
There's a reason we've pretty much been using the 2D WIMP desktop fr over 20 years with few fundamental changes--it's a natural idea, more like a "discovery" than an invention. While there are many ways to implement the WIMP system, all have fundamental similarities and I doubt they can be bettered by another paradigm, such as 3D interfaces. Sit back and visualize different possibilities--I have, a lot, and I really can't see a paradigm that works better, except of course for the CLI for those who are willing to internalize computer functions in their memories rather than let the computer externalize them into visual interface.
That's just my opinion, of course. Oh well--back to organizing my pr0n.
I never said iMac emulation should be "easy." I realize that it must be harder to emulate than anything yet emulated, with the exception of some of the more "exotic" hardware that's been worked on hard by the MAME dev team.
I just said that the poster above is correct that your reputation isn't good in the emulation community at this point, due to the fact that your releases are consistently late. People understand lateness; what they don't understand, and get angry about, is announcing that something will be late only a day or two before it's supposed to debut. The Macworld Tokyo debacle is the prime example--people in the emulation community are peeved at you because you didn't mention that the long-awaited demo of your latest product wouldn't be occurring, until just before it was supposed to.
That's why there's a negative attitude among some when your name is mentioned. I did however point out that, late or not, you *do* eventually produce quality products. Fusion was the first Mac emulator I used, and it was the best of its day. To this day it still supports features which SoftMac doesn't, and in fact SoftMac is a POS compared to Fusion. Basilisk II JIT is by far the best 68k emulator now, but as you point out, it took a long while to catch up and meanwhile no real work has been done to Fusion except for Mihocka's little "tweaks."
I do understand the complexities you've been dealing with, and to some extent I agree that your reputation in some circles is unfair. You do, however, contribute to it by allowing the impression that things will happen at a certain time, and then only "cancelling" them with very short notice.
That said, I do look forward to seeing your hardware-assisted product, if it does ever debut. I'd be willing to pay in the $500 range if it supports OS X, and the $350 range if it doesn't. In any event, good luck with the project, and I hope it makes it into a real product.
You're absolutely right that Jim Drew's reputation in the emulation community is crap. He always delivers what he promises years late and with big features which were advertised early on in the project lacking.
In the case of his PPC emulation, it's over a year late already, and he announced around December that it would show at MacWorld Tokyo. Given his typical timetable for falling behind, even if it's not finished yet, it should be finished for sure and on the market (if the hardware company lets it be) before the year is out.
That said, there's no telling whether the iMac emulation will be complete. I'm betting that it will initially only support OS 9 due to incomplete implementation--but that eventually, it should be able to run OS X with some finegling, especially since the Darwin layer is open-source and people have already hacked it to make OS X run on unsupported machines with processor upgrades.
No, Jim Drew isn't timely and he's liable to hype. And in fact, most of the emulation scene hates him right now for letting everyone believe up until the last minute that his PPC emulator would be demoed at Macworld Tokyo. But he does *eventually* deliver products that offer good Mac emulation. Fusion was, for example, the best 68k Mac emulator by far when it first came out, and then for some time afterwards, although Basilisk II slowly but surely beat the crap out of both Fusion and its competitor SoftMac.
At any rate, I think hadware-assisted is the way to rally go for PPC Mac "emulation" on the PC. There are so many high-quality PPC add-in cards out there now, that people really interested in running PPC code on their machines should pick one that's available in decent quantities and start coding the emulation support for it. After that, once the core "glue" emulation is done that can emulate the other Mac hardware and hand off instructions to the PPC add-in card, other PPC add-in boards could be supported, and Darwin could be hacked where necessary to allow OS X to work with any shortcusts that might need to be taken, much as it is hacked now to get OS X working on unsupported Macs with upgrade cards.
It's very doable when approached that way; unfortunately, no one but Drew seems to have been interested in that path. It's a pity, because even though it's more of an accomplishment to emulate a PPC CPU, it's much more practical and could be done much faster if one just emulates the other hardware on a given PPC Mac and "glues" it into using the PPC card for processing. Plus, it would allow the PPC Mac OS to run simultaneously with a Linux or Windows that's actually usable, whereas a "pure" emulation would eat up *all* the x86 CPU's cycles and make it so that one could only practically use the Mac emulator and nothing else.
Wouldn't it be great to have a fully working PPC processor card running Mac OS X, while simultaneously being able to use x86 Linux or Windows on your x86 CPU, all on the same machine? *That* is the idea we should really be going for, not a totally-emulated PPC core. PCI G3 and G4 Mac upgrade cards are *so* plentiful--why aren't more people trying to put them to use for Mac emulation on the PC?
First of all, the "emulators" you speak of for PPC machines aren't really emulators at all, they use the PPC processor natively, just allowing a MacOS that could run on that machine anyway, to run simultaneously under BeOS or Linux. There's no PPC emulation going on, really, with apps like SheepShaver; the PPC chip itself is used, not a full emulation ofn the chip.
:-) Several other enthusiasts have also been working on PPC emulation, though nothing usable is yet evident.
:-) That's an enthusiast's wetdream. Apple would sh*t a brick, and may well sue, but hey--there'd be a lot of happy customers to finance the defense. :-)
There are many reasons why PPC emulation on x86 is difficult, and why the resulting emulators have probably always been too embarrassingly slow for their creators to make and release a finished emulator. You *can't* just map PPC registers to x86 registers like you can when emulating many lesser CPUs--*way* too many on the PPC, embarrassingly too few on x86. To even have a chance at being useful, you'd have to go the route of using a JIT compiler to dynamically translate PPC ops to x86 ops, and even then you're obviously paying a big speed penalty. In any event, while a usable G3 emulation is very possible, a usable G4 emulation will be impossible for many years thanks to the nice 128-bit Altivec unit.
This is a hard way to work, from what programmers trying to produce PPC emulations tell me. This is why I think the best way to get PPC support on regular commodity PCs is by not emulating the CPU at all. Instead, one could use a real PPC processor on an add-in card, maybe even with its own system RAM to increase speed. Then, emulate the rest of the hardware on a given PPC Mac using some "glue" software. These cards have been available for a long time in PCI form factors, though not yet used for PPC/Mac "emulation"; most are sold as "processor upgrades" for older Macs, and some are sold on the high-end for PCI backplane machines, and some are add-in cards for extra processing power that come with plug-ins allowing Photoshop to use the extra processors and SDKs to develop support for other apps to use the extra horsepower. There are even a couple of whole-computer-on-a-PCI-card hardware firewalls available; I don't know offhand if any are PPC, but that may be. This, of course, makes the use of G4 and when available G5 processors, possible, if one uses an add-in card.
Jim Drew of Microcode Solutions (whose website only says "new website coming soon" right now) was contacted by one of the manufacturers of PPC add-in upgrade cards for Macs, and contracted to write an emulator which would emulate the hardware of an (old) iMac while using one of their PPC processors on a card to run the actual PPC software, such as Mac OS 9. He was supposed to show this creation at Macworld Tokyo, but claims that the company which contracted with him was not ready to show it. This could be a lie to cover for the fact that he's still not done yet, or it could be the truth--any company releasing such a product, which could presumably let a PC run anything that would run on an old-model iMac, would surely incur the wrath of Apple Legal. So, it's entirely possible that such products are finished by one or more of the add-in PPC card companies, but they're too frightened of releasing them at the moment.
Time will tell. Darek Mihocka claims to have already created working PPC Mac emulation, but that he isn't releasing it until PCs are "fast enough" to run it well enough. Jim Drew also claims that he's been working on a software-only PPC Mac emulation, but that it won't be released until the hardware assisted version is released due to contractual agreements with the hardware maker. Or something like that.
In any event, I still happily play my old 68k Mac games under OS 8 or System 7.5.5 on occasion. I've come to love the open-source 68k Mac emulator Basilisk II for that. And, I have no doubt that sooner or later someone, somewhere, regardless of Apple Legal's threats, will release an emulator--whether all-software or hardware-assisted--which will let me smoothly run OS 9 and let me run OS X as well as or a bit better than an older iMac could. I kinda hope for the hardware sol,ution myself, since it would unlock a much faster Mac emulation, with the ability to upgrade the PPC CPU--and it would just be plain cool to have a real PPC machine running inside and accessible from my PC. Imagine the possibilities that an 800MHz G4 PPC processor card (or even a slower one) for PCs, maybe with a RAM slot or 2 on-card, with software to emulate the rest of the Mac, could bring to the PC. x86 Linux, OS X, and Windows all on the same box, at native speeds.
All in due time, my friends...
I've been familiar with Spider-Man only through the cartoons, which I haven't watched in, oh, fifteen years or so. But, going into the movie did remind me that Spider-Man used to be my favorite cartoon...
As for the film itself, I'm damn impressed. There are movies which are nice entertaining little romps, which pass the time and are enjoyable. And then there are films which are all of that, plus a lot more--having a certain artistic and literary quality which gets the viewer more emotionally involved and maybe even has something to say about the world. *Spider-Man* falls in the latter category--great entertainment, but it also *says* something.
Take for instance the plot point about Peter Parker's uncle/father figure being murdered by a robber whom he could have stopped earlier if he'd cared. That gives him/Spider-Man a tremendous feeling of guilt and need to atone for his sin, by helping strangers the way he chose not to on the day Uncle Ben was murdered. This is a very meaningful, deep motivation, and lends Spidey a brooding quality unlike other superheroes. It also gives the film more emotional depth than it would have if there were some standard meaningless plot without deep psychological motives beneath it.
I couldn't help, afterward, comparing it to movies like *X-Men*. *X-Men* was entertaining, but had no real depth--it was pure entertainment with no real meaning. Sure, it has the brooding Wolverine character--but what exactly is he brooding over? The fact that he doesn't know his origins? That the X-Men treat him nicely, when others haven't? Oh, boo-hoo, what a shallow motivation. Poor him. Self-pity, how wonderful. But Spidey did something for which he's truly responsible, which will always motivate everything he does--he indirectly killed his beloved uncle, his father-figure, through inaction and lack of forethought. He will always be repaying that debt, with every person he saves and every evil he defeats. He cares deeply and feels constant remorse for a past he's trying to atone for. That's a very universal theme, not just a plot point.
That, I think, is what made this film so great. I was watching *Return of the Jedi* the other night, and asking myself why it's so moving, why it means something long after other great films of the time are somewhat diminished. It's those universal themes again, which give it the scope of an epic saga rather than a mere movie. Dark Sides, redemption, good and evil, long-lost family, love, oppression, longing, the struggle for freedom. The SW Trilogy gains a universal appeal because of these themes.
*Spider-Man* wasn't as epic, but was very much along those lines--themes of sin and redemption, a debt which can never be repaid, the loss of loved ones before their time and for which one feels responsible, love and longing, moving from adolescensce into adulthood, love that can't be consummated for its object's own good, heroically standing up for others. This is a movie which could be the beginning of an epic saga, although sadly its sequels will likely be more vacuous and less meaningful.
At any rate, I thought Spidey to be a wonderful tragic hero in the guise of a standard comic-book character, and the movie to be a great mix of the literary disguised as the trivial.
I just wait for a nice high-quality VCD transfer to be posted to USENET--which always happens within a week of a big film opening--and watch it in the comfort of my own home cinema. Sitting close to 55-inch HDTV is better than sitting in the middle of a theater watching a big scren, as far as my tastes are concerned. And it's completely quiet, unlike the time *Blair Witch Project* was ruined for me when an obnoxious couple kept snickering...
;-)
:-)
;-) Now, which call-girl do I pick? :-o I don't think your theater can compare with *that* kind of service! heehee...
The only problem is avoiding low-quality VCDs with poor image or sound quality or glitches; but there are certain websites where different VCDs get "graded," and the best VCD groups put their wares across all of 2 CDs, for the best possible quality. But since I wouldn't want to change discs in the middle, I just use TMPGenc to combine them into one whole movie beforehand, and play from the HD of the "home theater PC," output to the TV thanks to ATI's beautiful All-in-Wonder. I still remember the looks on the kids' facs when I let them watch Hary Potter all day long, three days after its theatrical release.
Martini? You can have whatever you want without getting gouged by rapacious movie-theater-and-MPAA-monopoly prices, when you watch a top-quality VCD at home.
Hmm, when Episode II comes out and I wrangle a HQ copy, maybe I should do something special that you can't generally do in theaters, even the nice kind. I'm thinking "geek menage-a-trois" with Episode II in place of the PC...
He did get one thing right, though--if you want as little to-do over content as possible, take a look at where some of the more "extreme" adult sites get their bandwidth. I'm sure a little research could pull up several potential service providers who probably won't object to your content since they host rape fetish porn and such.
Of course, this is assuming you want to be free of censorship but aren't going to be violating copyrights. The DMCA is unfortunately a powerful enough club that even hosts in Taiwan can be forced to concede to it.
Aside from breaking copyrights, child porn is the only other deal-killer I can think of if you choose a provider who already sells bandwidth to extreme fetish porn sites. Although, from what I hear there are a number of "borderline" child porn websites that get hosted in Russia for a long time without getting pulled, but I won't get into that issue.
Also, if I were looking for a non-censorious service firm willing to host controversial content, I'd look up whoever hosts Xenu, the anti-scientology website--those guys get harassed *a lot*.
So, unless you're looking to violate copyrights or to post child pornography, there should be plenty of potential choices you could look into based on the type of content already hosted or already being given bandwidth.