1 - 'normal' 2D HW acceleration. it relieves the CPU from things like drawing boxes and basic shapes. this is currently in OS X and supported by pretty much all modern macs.
2 - Quartz "Extreme" (like, XT? WTF?) HW acceleration. relieves the CPU from calculating transparency and anti-aliasing and stuff like that. since the 2D accelerators in current graphics cards do not support these features [it's not in windows..], apple has come up with a hack - using OpenGL acceleration. OpenGL, while originally intended for 3D, supports transparency and anti-aliasing, and since 2D is a subset of 3D... it's doable. i suspect that it takes so much graphics card memory because it's basically a hack. if the cards supported 2D transparency/anti-aliasing/post-script out of the box, it would be a lot cheaper.
so quit whining. OS X has gotten faster with every release so far, and currently it's running pretty damn fast on this non-quartz-extreme-enabled powerbook g4/667. despite doing all this graphics gimmickry in CPU time, it seems faster than my 1GHz win2k notebook... and it's much prettier, too:)
you are missing the point. we are not talking about double buffering but about truly HW accelerated Aqua - and that is not going to happen on any mobile macs except for the brand new april 2002 ti books.
i suspect the iBooks will get a graphics card upgrade pretty soon...
i love spiderman (-?). despite sam reimi directing, i feared for the worst: no way they will pull that off these great comics in a non-cheesy, true-to-form way.
fears: they will include a kid and/or dog. they will focus on cheesy macho action scenes (see "Blade II" for reference). there will be no plot. they will use bad CG that makes spidey move like the dinosaurs from jurassic park ("jurassic-park-syndrome", in almost all CG-animated-monster flicks).
none of these fears came true. instead, it was fast, entertaining, with a good story, with good character development, totally believable (except for the bite of course, but the movie did a good job on that, too - they made it fun), i would say as realistic as you can make spiderman, perfect cast, and a GREAT story. go see the movie. sam reimi is a god.
if you read the latter - basically a big expose on how extremely ridiculous CS really is - you will understand why CS wants to keep that under wraps.
so what google did was to say, ok we remove all these little links and avoid a fight in court, but, at the same time, we will point everybody looking for information on CS to your arch-enemy.
i think google could "afford" a fight in court. but why would they when they have something much better: the power of information. CS is an easy targe there, because if everybody knew the truth about them, only a handful of freaks would participate.
Exactly how does a video card or DirectX accellerate page rendering--minus video and 3D plugins, of course? I've heard of accelleration in the form of OpenGL/Direct3D, DirectDraw/XVideo, and Motion Compensation. This sounds like bs to me.
the CPU spends cycles drawing pretty transparency effects - therefore it has less cycles left over for page rendering.
so nonexistent HW acceleration on osx basically makes everything slower. it seems to have gotten a lot better lately, tough + i have no probs with speed on my tiBook.
the reason there is no hw accel is that aqua does LOTS of things that normal ready-for-windoze graphics cards do not accelerate. they can accelerate the drawing of boxes and basic shapes, but multiple levels of semi-transparent overlapping windows with anti-aliasing - no way.
i applaud apple for pushing the envelope in this direction - as soon as win catches up in this regard, there will be graphics cards that accelerate these things.
another interesting idea is to use OpenGL to do the (2D) accelerated drawing. seems like it's a bit ass-backwards but OpenGL can accelerate transparency effects and if they pull it off it will be quite a feat. and maybe we get a true 3D desktop out of it;)
-Safe assumption - the Nomad works better with Windows, no 3rd party software needed. No Linux drivers for either.
the jukebox C [which i have] needs something called "Creative Playcenter 2". the good news is it comes with the nomad. the bad news is it's the worst (and i mean WORST) piece of software i have ever seen. completely unintuitive. crashes randomly. super-ugly. slow.
the jukebox does not, just show up as a hard disk. i can think of only one reason why Creative would go this route (e.g. bypass the practically built-in support for USB HDs in windows and go through the pain of developing their own software): digital rights management.
i have an iPod, too... it is all the jukebox should have been.
features was not the problem with the old Creative Nomad Jukebox. i had both the jukebox C (collecting dust in the corner, anyone want one?) and the iPod. the iPod works. here is why the jukebox doesn't:
- retarded interface. looking at the pic, i doubt it has improved. the buttons are randomly scattered over the surface. there is no concept behind it... switching songs, searching for songs, all really stupid. - battery life less that 4 hours. it seems the new one fixes this issue. - completely retarded way of copying files on windows. the jukebox would NOT appear as a HD on the desktop. instead, one had to use proprietary software which was - at least for me - impossible to use. - it's huge + heavy.
it will be interesting to see how the interface has improved in the new verision. one can only hope that Creative has borrowed heavily from iPod... i mean, how hard can it be? a 99% perfect interface is already out, all you have to do is copy it.
hmm... US$3B for 10k super rockets, makes $300k per rocket.
now, it would be easy to add some cynical comment to this. but what i really want to know is what's the point of spending so much money on tools of destruction?
do they better the world? no.
do they prevent terrorist attacks? no.
do they solve conflicts (example palestine)? no.
do they save lives (american or other)? no.
so, then... what's the point? if we spent that money [which is a tiny little portion of the USs gigantic mil budget] on a marshall plan for afghanistan and other "evil" states we would do more for american security than with any military gadgets.
i read an audio test in a very respectable tech mag recently (www.heise.de). they got a bunch of musicians/audiophiles in a professional studio with $100k+ equipment and did blind tests of CD vs 128, 192, 256 bits
result: no one could reliably tell 256 bit encoded mp3s from CDs. almost everybody could tell 128 bit mp3 apart, but 192 already proved difficult.
that doesn't mean that there are not crappy encoders that produce bad mp3, crappy D/A converters that make the best mp3 sound bad, or other _bad_ things before the sound reaches your ear.
but it proves to me that the mp3 format - given good encoders and components - is good enough for me.
other interesting tidbits from the test:
- some musical sequences are extremely hard to encode and were obviously distorted at anything below 256 bit - but at 256, they were fine.
- one person could tell CDs from mp3s reliably. it turned out this person had a hearing disability that enabled him to clearly hear a difference. he couldn't tell which one sounded 'better' though. he could only say "this is the one" and "this is the other"...
YMMV, but for most practical purposes, i would recommend mp3s. for storage/collecting, i would go with CDs. to put this in the strongest words: yes, i really think mp3s sound nearly as good as CDs.:-)
A - the CIA has done a lot of shit in the past, including the training of afghans in terrorist techniques.
B - that is in all likelyhood one of the reasons the WTC has been attacked and OBL has declared war on all americans.
C - don't confuse cause and justification - the attacks on the WTC were not justifyable by _anything_.
D - isolating and fighting the terrorists is the only option for now. like tony blair said, not acting is worse than acting at this point. i believe and support that.
E - in order to prevent something like that from happening in the future, the CIA needs to keep it's fingers out of other countries' politics, plain and simple. no more funding of rebel forces or installing puppet regimes. it has been proven time and again that these tactics _never_ further american interests in the long run. so it's not just evil for causing a lot of suffering to innocent people - it's also plain stupid.
drug trade - as opposed to terrorism - really is a home made problem. if one removed the reason for it - that drugs are illegal - then everything else - crime, drug mafia, afghan terrorist money, war on drugs spending, millions of prisoners - would go away.
it's not easy to introduce drugs to the people w/o everybody OD-ing or getting addicted, but it can be done. considering the benefits, it is the only logical solution.
take action for a reasoned US response. let's not make new enemies by accidentally bombing the wrong people.
URGENT ACTION
--Call on Mr. Bush to Show Restraint--
We condemn without limit the cowardly terrorist attacks that claimed thousands of innocent lives on September 11. No cause, however noble or sustained, can possibly justify such actions.
But what happens now is up to the United States. Already there are demands for war against unnamed enemies, for funding of missile defense systems that do not work and for imposition of strict limits on hard-earned civil liberties. Already we see the unveiling of ugly prejudice against anyone of Arab origin or against followers of Islam.
How Mr. Bush reacts is critical, and the first signs are not encouraging. Click here to take action by calling on Mr. Bush to show restraint in the decisions he makes in the coming weeks.
Re:It's been said before...
on
More WTC News
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· Score: 1
Face it folks - no matter WHAT happens, the only thing that could prevent something like this is sky marshals on EVERY flight in civilian clothes. And even then, they may not be able to overpower 5 guys with weapons (since shooting guns in the air is er, not a great idea)
err... like i have said before, one thing that can prevent something like this is placing a wall between the cockpit and the passenger cabin. if it is physically impossible to get from one to the other, it will also be impossible to turn planes into kamikaze bombs. better - and more effective - than cavity searches.
of course, i also have to mention the NRA's solution: arm _all_ the passengers with guns. that way, if there are terrorists, the passengers (who presumably are in the majority) can shoot them. 8-)
i didn't entirely make that last one up: after columbine, some NRA proponents seriously suggested arming all teachers...
The only way to prevent these attacks is to decrease the motivation to perform them. This is done by being a nicer country, and by being implacably and harshly punitive in our response to such attacks.
i agree with this statement wholeheartedly. prevention is more effective than revenge. and trained killers cannot be stopped by tighter security.
however, there is a pretty simple - if costly, but do we want to talk about costs here? - solution to the "using planes as bombs" problem:
physically separate the pilot's cabin from the passengers. by that i mean: there is NO door - or anything, really - leading from the passenger cabin to the pilots. separate entrances on the outside of the plane, separate bathrooms, separate lunch boxes.
planes could still be hijacked (by holding passengers hostage) but they could not be used as cruise missiles.
it's a very simple and effective solution. and it doesn't curb any civil liberties. unless you count a visit to the cockpit a civil liberty.
while the original poster may be exaggerating, he has a point:
ALL AMERICANS should think about why they are so hated by many people in the arab states. why are palestinians celebrating this horrible disaster?
are all palestinians insane? are all arabs insane? hmm... unlikely, i would say.
because the US is a superpower, it needs to be very, very nimble and smart in its dealings with other nations. right now, the US is perceived as schoolyard-bully, even by friends.
i am sad i cannot do anything about this as well. i feel powerless in the face of great evil.
however: the only way to react is in a civilized and rational manner. let's take our good time looking at who did it, then react.
as much as we wish there was, there is no easy solution. for one thing, i don't think any technology could have prevented this attack. facial recognition is easy to fool - it will catch petty thieves and other criminals too stupid to evade it, but it won't even slow down a well trained guerilla force. at the same time, the potential for abuse is enormous.
other than praying, i think the only solution is long term conflict prevention - so that there are not enough angry/insane people left in this world to carry out such an attack. the art of peace. happy people do not carry out such an attack. i am serious.
the moves in the link are indeed very unconventional. i think that's good evidence: weirdo moves, and strong enough skills to beat one international grandmaster 7 - 0, the other one 16 - 4.
also, the maches look like the anonymous player (who might have been BF) wanted to refine and explore his tactics - he is consistently moving all the pawns forward one and the king to the center of the board. if he had just wanted to win by 'throwing off' his opponent, he would have changed the strategy in game 3 at the latest. but nooooo.. he continued on, letting his opponent adjust and take advantage of his strategy. despite giving his opponent a huge advantage, he still pulls off most matches.
another theory would be that this is an international grand master training to defeat computer programs. these moves are in no opening library. if i was a grand master and had refined these new strategies against machines, i would want to try them vs 'real' opponents as well.
Re:So I will drive with my windows open, NEXT
on
Remote Breathalyzer
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· Score: 1
As for those who would claim invasion or violation of Constitutional rights, uh, driving is a privledge, not a right. They can set arbitrary requirements up until the public throws them out.
hmm... i can't imagine that. isn't freedom of movement a guaranteed right? if freedom of movement of persons (me) and property (car) is a basic right, then driving is a basic right also. one could argue. IANAL.
but... it hurts.
on
MenuetOS Debuts
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· Score: 1, Insightful
kudos to the pure hacker soul that made the 100% asm OS. all praise to him. i am impressed.
what hurts me, on the other hand, is the justification for it: faster code. i see a lot of badly written code in my professional life - and a sizeable portion of it suffers from one of two related syndromes:
1 - the "i am super-smart" syndrome. people think they are super smart and to prove it they write code that is very hard to understand. the gain is sometimes a loop that gets executed n - 1 instead of n times.
2 - the "early optimization" syndrome. the common but false conception that a program is fast if all it's part are really fast. never mind that there may be another solution with fewer parts.
both syndromes lead to error prone code: code that is both hard to get right in the first place and hard to debug later on. my current strategy of dealing with bugs in code like this is to completely throw it out and rewrite it. good code is simple, or, to paraphrase einstein, good code is as simple as possible, but not simpler.
the other experience with slow vs fast code i have is that slow code is always - yep, 100% of the time - the result of bad design. so using asm will not fix the problem.
the presentation was not as technically accurate as Ars, but close enough. i am amazed anyone trying to get this technical with the general public (e.g. a non-geek-audience).
It also avoids trying to setup a system to charge callers for calls to cell phones, which meant some local calls would actually be toll calls. That would have been a billing and customer service nightmare, and reduced the adoption rate for cell phones.
duh. the simlple and widespread solution to this imagined dilemma is to have different area codes for different cell operators. that's how it works everywhere except in the US.
maybe the US is running out of area codes? hard to imagine, but who knows...
in any case, when i am in europe, i know exactly whether a given number is a cell or land line. i also know the operator.
while i think you are right that this is the reason for incoming-call charges, at the same time it really hurts cell phone growth.
let me just state the reasons i had a cell in europe. you will see that most of them don't apply here:
1) it's dirt-cheap. i got a nice phone free and pay $7 (yes, that's seven) a month, the contract runs for a year. if i never make any phone calls, that's already worth it just so people can reach me. entry barriers: zero. if it turns out i don't like it for some reason - i pay next to nothing.
2) voice quality is perfect. it's better than US land lines. i am surprised no one talks about it, but i have yet to see the US cell phone i can whisper into.
3) SMS. why is SMS useful? i could come up with lots of reasons, but i rather let the numbers do the talking: 20 billion are sent each month. end of story. who would want to miss out on such a market?
4) it works almost everywhere, even when leaving the country. world-wide. except for the US, that is.
5) everyone else has one. that multiplies it's usefulness - which is true for any communications device. the more people have it, the more useful it becomes.
my top 3 reasons for not using my US cell very much:
1) voice quality is horrible
2) reception is horrible
3) customer service is hell of hells. which is very surprising, since the US is usually far ahead of everyone else when it comes to customer service.
for some strange reasons, the US sucks BIG BIG time when it comes to mobile phones. the US sucks as much as europe did (and to some extent still does) when it comes to internet connectivity.
good old competition doesn't work in this case.
i liken the cell phone industry in this country to what would happen if all streets and highways in america had to be rebuilt, and private companies would take on the job with no government interference: all would build their own streets, with different widths and traffic rules, and then charge lots of money for everyone trying to use them (they are very expensive to build!). the result would be a complete mess that no one company would have the power to get out of by itself. for some things, deregulation simply fails miserably (as should be clear from the so-called california power crisis).
would the government step in and mandate GSM for all operators - we would have a booming mobile US in _no_ time flat.
nik
ps: regarding "standardizing in over all of europe is a no-brainer": i dare you to sit down an english and a frenchman and have them come up with a standard - they will probably not even agree on what they disagree on:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Notebooks cost more, they use non-standard, fragile, expensive parts, and they last two years if you're lucky. This is standard fair.
;)
all that is true. the thing is, though, i have my computer strapped to my back at all times. if it were a desktop, that would be rather inconvenient
buy a tiBook - you will not regret it. the g3 is too slow for OS X [Quartz depends _heavily_ on AltiVec - without it, it's a dog]
there are two different types of HW acceleration:
:)
1 - 'normal' 2D HW acceleration. it relieves the CPU from things like drawing boxes and basic shapes. this is currently in OS X and supported by pretty much all modern macs.
2 - Quartz "Extreme" (like, XT? WTF?) HW acceleration. relieves the CPU from calculating transparency and anti-aliasing and stuff like that. since the 2D accelerators in current graphics cards do not support these features [it's not in windows..], apple has come up with a hack - using OpenGL acceleration. OpenGL, while originally intended for 3D, supports transparency and anti-aliasing, and since 2D is a subset of 3D... it's doable.
i suspect that it takes so much graphics card memory because it's basically a hack. if the cards supported 2D transparency/anti-aliasing/post-script out of the box, it would be a lot cheaper.
so quit whining. OS X has gotten faster with every release so far, and currently it's running pretty damn fast on this non-quartz-extreme-enabled powerbook g4/667. despite doing all this graphics gimmickry in CPU time, it seems faster than my 1GHz win2k notebook... and it's much prettier, too
apparently, the mods missed the sarcasm as well - the misunderstanding is rated 4, insightful, the explanation is rated 1, troll ?! huh?
or are the mods somehow being sarcastic as well? collectively?!
you are missing the point. we are not talking about double buffering but about truly HW accelerated Aqua - and that is not going to happen on any mobile macs except for the brand new april 2002 ti books.
i suspect the iBooks will get a graphics card upgrade pretty soon...
i love spiderman (-?). despite sam reimi directing, i feared for the worst: no way they will pull that off these great comics in a non-cheesy, true-to-form way.
fears: they will include a kid and/or dog. they will focus on cheesy macho action scenes (see "Blade II" for reference). there will be no plot. they will use bad CG that makes spidey move like the dinosaurs from jurassic park ("jurassic-park-syndrome", in almost all CG-animated-monster flicks).
none of these fears came true. instead, it was fast, entertaining, with a good story, with good character development, totally believable (except for the bite of course, but the movie did a good job on that, too - they made it fun), i would say as realistic as you can make spiderman, perfect cast, and a GREAT story.
go see the movie.
sam reimi is a god.
searching for "scientology" on google produces the official website first and Operation Clambake second.
if you read the latter - basically a big expose on how extremely ridiculous CS really is - you will understand why CS wants to keep that under wraps.
so what google did was to say, ok we remove all these little links and avoid a fight in court, but, at the same time, we will point everybody looking for information on CS to your arch-enemy.
i think google could "afford" a fight in court. but why would they when they have something much better: the power of information. CS is an easy targe there, because if everybody knew the truth about them, only a handful of freaks would participate.
Exactly how does a video card or DirectX accellerate page rendering--minus video and 3D plugins, of course? I've heard of accelleration in the form of OpenGL/Direct3D, DirectDraw/XVideo, and Motion Compensation. This sounds like bs to me.
;)
the CPU spends cycles drawing pretty transparency effects - therefore it has less cycles left over for page rendering.
so nonexistent HW acceleration on osx basically makes everything slower. it seems to have gotten a lot better lately, tough + i have no probs with speed on my tiBook.
the reason there is no hw accel is that aqua does LOTS of things that normal ready-for-windoze graphics cards do not accelerate. they can accelerate the drawing of boxes and basic shapes, but multiple levels of semi-transparent overlapping windows with anti-aliasing - no way.
i applaud apple for pushing the envelope in this direction - as soon as win catches up in this regard, there will be graphics cards that accelerate these things.
another interesting idea is to use OpenGL to do the (2D) accelerated drawing. seems like it's a bit ass-backwards but OpenGL can accelerate transparency effects and if they pull it off it will be quite a feat. and maybe we get a true 3D desktop out of it
-Safe assumption - the Nomad works better with Windows, no 3rd party software needed. No Linux drivers for either.
the jukebox C [which i have] needs something called "Creative Playcenter 2". the good news is it comes with the nomad. the bad news is it's the worst (and i mean WORST) piece of software i have ever seen. completely unintuitive. crashes randomly. super-ugly. slow.
the jukebox does not, just show up as a hard disk. i can think of only one reason why Creative would go this route (e.g. bypass the practically built-in support for USB HDs in windows and go through the pain of developing their own software): digital rights management.
i have an iPod, too... it is all the jukebox should have been.
features was not the problem with the old Creative Nomad Jukebox. i had both the jukebox C (collecting dust in the corner, anyone want one?) and the iPod. the iPod works. here is why the jukebox doesn't:
- retarded interface. looking at the pic, i doubt it has improved. the buttons are randomly scattered over the surface. there is no concept behind it... switching songs, searching for songs, all really stupid.
- battery life less that 4 hours. it seems the new one fixes this issue.
- completely retarded way of copying files on windows. the jukebox would NOT appear as a HD on the desktop. instead, one had to use proprietary software which was - at least for me - impossible to use.
- it's huge + heavy.
it will be interesting to see how the interface has improved in the new verision. one can only hope that Creative has borrowed heavily from iPod... i mean, how hard can it be? a 99% perfect interface is already out, all you have to do is copy it.
hmm... US$3B for 10k super rockets, makes $300k per rocket.
now, it would be easy to add some cynical comment to this. but what i really want to know is what's the point of spending so much money on tools of destruction?
do they better the world? no.
do they prevent terrorist attacks? no.
do they solve conflicts (example palestine)? no.
do they save lives (american or other)? no.
so, then... what's the point? if we spent that money [which is a tiny little portion of the USs gigantic mil budget] on a marshall plan for afghanistan and other "evil" states we would do more for american security than with any military gadgets.
nik
yup. right here! iPod was a deciding factor for me to buy my tiBook.
the nice thing about the iPod - it's the only mp3 player that just _works_. all others are nerd-tools in comparison.
i read an audio test in a very respectable tech mag recently (www.heise.de). they got a bunch of musicians/audiophiles in a professional studio with $100k+ equipment and did blind tests of CD vs 128, 192, 256 bits
:-)
result: no one could reliably tell 256 bit encoded mp3s from CDs. almost everybody could tell 128 bit mp3 apart, but 192 already proved difficult.
that doesn't mean that there are not crappy encoders that produce bad mp3, crappy D/A converters that make the best mp3 sound bad, or other _bad_ things before the sound reaches your ear.
but it proves to me that the mp3 format - given good encoders and components - is good enough for me.
other interesting tidbits from the test:
- some musical sequences are extremely hard to encode and were obviously distorted at anything below 256 bit - but at 256, they were fine.
- one person could tell CDs from mp3s reliably. it turned out this person had a hearing disability that enabled him to clearly hear a difference. he couldn't tell which one sounded 'better' though. he could only say "this is the one" and "this is the other"...
YMMV, but for most practical purposes, i would recommend mp3s. for storage/collecting, i would go with CDs. to put this in the strongest words: yes, i really think mp3s sound nearly as good as CDs.
here's my 2c on this:
A - the CIA has done a lot of shit in the past, including the training of afghans in terrorist techniques.
B - that is in all likelyhood one of the reasons the WTC has been attacked and OBL has declared war on all americans.
C - don't confuse cause and justification - the attacks on the WTC were not justifyable by _anything_.
D - isolating and fighting the terrorists is the only option for now. like tony blair said, not acting is worse than acting at this point. i believe and support that.
E - in order to prevent something like that from happening in the future, the CIA needs to keep it's fingers out of other countries' politics, plain and simple. no more funding of rebel forces or installing puppet regimes. it has been proven time and again that these tactics _never_ further american interests in the long run. so it's not just evil for causing a lot of suffering to innocent people - it's also plain stupid.
drug trade - as opposed to terrorism - really is a home made problem. if one removed the reason for it - that drugs are illegal - then everything else - crime, drug mafia, afghan terrorist money, war on drugs spending, millions of prisoners - would go away.
it's not easy to introduce drugs to the people w/o everybody OD-ing or getting addicted, but it can be done. considering the benefits, it is the only logical solution.
take action for a reasoned US response. let's not make new enemies by accidentally bombing the wrong people.
0 BB 4gt0BC40QMW0Am
URGENT ACTION
--Call on Mr. Bush to Show Restraint--
We condemn without limit the cowardly terrorist attacks that claimed thousands of innocent lives on September 11. No cause, however noble or sustained, can possibly justify such actions.
But what happens now is up to the United States. Already there are demands for war against unnamed enemies, for funding of missile defense systems that do not work and for imposition of strict limits on hard-earned civil liberties. Already we see the unveiling of ugly prejudice against anyone of Arab origin or against followers of Islam.
How Mr. Bush reacts is critical, and the first signs are not encouraging. Click here to take action by calling on Mr. Bush to show restraint in the decisions he makes in the coming weeks.
http://act.actforchange.com/cgi-bin7/flo?y=eCgb
Face it folks - no matter WHAT happens, the only thing that could prevent something like this is sky marshals on EVERY flight in civilian clothes. And even then, they may not be able to overpower 5 guys with weapons (since shooting guns in the air is er, not a great idea)
err... like i have said before, one thing that can prevent something like this is placing a wall between the cockpit and the passenger cabin. if it is physically impossible to get from one to the other, it will also be impossible to turn planes into kamikaze bombs. better - and more effective - than cavity searches.
of course, i also have to mention the NRA's solution: arm _all_ the passengers with guns. that way, if there are terrorists, the passengers (who presumably are in the majority) can shoot them. 8-)
i didn't entirely make that last one up: after columbine, some NRA proponents seriously suggested arming all teachers...
however, there is a pretty simple - if costly, but do we want to talk about costs here? - solution to the "using planes as bombs" problem:
physically separate the pilot's cabin from the passengers. by that i mean: there is NO door - or anything, really - leading from the passenger cabin to the pilots. separate entrances on the outside of the plane, separate bathrooms, separate lunch boxes.
planes could still be hijacked (by holding passengers hostage) but they could not be used as cruise missiles.
it's a very simple and effective solution. and it doesn't curb any civil liberties. unless you count a visit to the cockpit a civil liberty.
while the original poster may be exaggerating, he has a point:
ALL AMERICANS should think about why they are so hated by many people in the arab states. why are palestinians celebrating this horrible disaster?
are all palestinians insane? are all arabs insane? hmm... unlikely, i would say.
because the US is a superpower, it needs to be very, very nimble and smart in its dealings with other nations. right now, the US is perceived as schoolyard-bully, even by friends.
i am sad i cannot do anything about this as well. i feel powerless in the face of great evil.
however: the only way to react is in a civilized and rational manner. let's take our good time looking at who did it, then react.
as much as we wish there was, there is no easy solution. for one thing, i don't think any technology could have prevented this attack. facial recognition is easy to fool - it will catch petty thieves and other criminals too stupid to evade it, but it won't even slow down a well trained guerilla force. at the same time, the potential for abuse is enormous.
other than praying, i think the only solution is long term conflict prevention - so that there are not enough angry/insane people left in this world to carry out such an attack. the art of peace. happy people do not carry out such an attack. i am serious.
the moves in the link are indeed very unconventional. i think that's good evidence: weirdo moves, and strong enough skills to beat one international grandmaster 7 - 0, the other one 16 - 4.
also, the maches look like the anonymous player (who might have been BF) wanted to refine and explore his tactics - he is consistently moving all the pawns forward one and the king to the center of the board. if he had just wanted to win by 'throwing off' his opponent, he would have changed the strategy in game 3 at the latest. but nooooo.. he continued on, letting his opponent adjust and take advantage of his strategy. despite giving his opponent a huge advantage, he still pulls off most matches.
another theory would be that this is an international grand master training to defeat computer programs. these moves are in no opening library. if i was a grand master and had refined these new strategies against machines, i would want to try them vs 'real' opponents as well.
As for those who would claim invasion or violation of Constitutional rights, uh, driving is a privledge, not a right. They can set arbitrary requirements up until the public throws them out.
hmm... i can't imagine that. isn't freedom of movement a guaranteed right? if freedom of movement of persons (me) and property (car) is a basic right, then driving is a basic right also. one could argue. IANAL.
kudos to the pure hacker soul that made the 100% asm OS. all praise to him. i am impressed.
what hurts me, on the other hand, is the justification for it: faster code. i see a lot of badly written code in my professional life - and a sizeable portion of it suffers from one of two related syndromes:
1 - the "i am super-smart" syndrome. people think they are super smart and to prove it they write code that is very hard to understand. the gain is sometimes a loop that gets executed n - 1 instead of n times.
2 - the "early optimization" syndrome. the common but false conception that a program is fast if all it's part are really fast. never mind that there may be another solution with fewer parts.
both syndromes lead to error prone code: code that is both hard to get right in the first place and hard to debug later on. my current strategy of dealing with bugs in code like this is to completely throw it out and rewrite it. good code is simple, or, to paraphrase einstein, good code is as simple as possible, but not simpler.
the other experience with slow vs fast code i have is that slow code is always - yep, 100% of the time - the result of bad design. so using asm will not fix the problem.
it's interesting that the comparison of the pipeline depths of the two processors looked like it was taken straight out of the ars technica article "The Pentium 4 and the G4e", more specifically the perils of deep pipelining
the presentation was not as technically accurate as Ars, but close enough. i am amazed anyone trying to get this technical with the general public (e.g. a non-geek-audience).
maybe the US is running out of area codes? hard to imagine, but who knows...
in any case, when i am in europe, i know exactly whether a given number is a cell or land line. i also know the operator.
while i think you are right that this is the reason for incoming-call charges, at the same time it really hurts cell phone growth.
let me just state the reasons i had a cell in europe. you will see that most of them don't apply here:
1) it's dirt-cheap. i got a nice phone free and pay $7 (yes, that's seven) a month, the contract runs for a year. if i never make any phone calls, that's already worth it just so people can reach me. entry barriers: zero. if it turns out i don't like it for some reason - i pay next to nothing.
2) voice quality is perfect. it's better than US land lines. i am surprised no one talks about it, but i have yet to see the US cell phone i can whisper into.
3) SMS. why is SMS useful? i could come up with lots of reasons, but i rather let the numbers do the talking: 20 billion are sent each month. end of story. who would want to miss out on such a market?
4) it works almost everywhere, even when leaving the country. world-wide. except for the US, that is.
5) everyone else has one. that multiplies it's usefulness - which is true for any communications device. the more people have it, the more useful it becomes.
my top 3 reasons for not using my US cell very much:
1) voice quality is horrible
2) reception is horrible
3) customer service is hell of hells. which is very surprising, since the US is usually far ahead of everyone else when it comes to customer service.
for some strange reasons, the US sucks BIG BIG time when it comes to mobile phones. the US sucks as much as europe did (and to some extent still does) when it comes to internet connectivity.
good old competition doesn't work in this case.
i liken the cell phone industry in this country to what would happen if all streets and highways in america had to be rebuilt, and private companies would take on the job with no government interference: all would build their own streets, with different widths and traffic rules, and then charge lots of money for everyone trying to use them (they are very expensive to build!). the result would be a complete mess that no one company would have the power to get out of by itself. for some things, deregulation simply fails miserably (as should be clear from the so-called california power crisis).
would the government step in and mandate GSM for all operators - we would have a booming mobile US in _no_ time flat.
nik
ps: regarding "standardizing in over all of europe is a no-brainer": i dare you to sit down an english and a frenchman and have them come up with a standard - they will probably not even agree on what they disagree on
4. What about solar flares?
that's why they are testing it in seattle: the likelyhood of solar flares penetrating the clouds is minimal.