Why do I think this? Pretty simple, actually- on the console, you have one control interface- the control pad. Nothing else. I "grew up" on Doom and Quake, playing on my own terms- I lovved using the keyboard, and never thought to bother with the mouse. Then I played halflife on the school LAN with a bunch of FPS-whores who did pretty much nothing else, and got REAMED. I noticed all of them were using the mouse.... fat lot of good that does me! I use trackballs on my desktops and spend most of my time on a laptop... the mouse is simply not an option, and games don't control for shit with a t-pad or t-ball.
Enter the console- all of the control is unified into one single entity, as opposed to split into two. Key commands are a hell of a lot easier to enter, you don't have to worry about your hardware being "good enough", and your wrists aren't going to explode- I've gone for upwards of 12 hours on console controllers without any kind of RTS, whereas the equivalent on a PC setup will leave me sore well into the next day.
The only thing that blows goats about console FPS is the frigging multiplayer- for some reason game designers think it's a good idea to split the screen into quadrants, rather than push the idea of linking several systems together (a la the Jaguar or the PSX link cables). That's the one advantage FPS has on the PC- you have the screen entirely to yourself.
And in my happy little world, I have the GAME all to myself- it's not worth the frustration of my slow reflexes getting me REAMED by some twitch-monkey who's overclocked his mouse.
Though I agree with you fully, it wouldn't have done FASA any good to have players running characters that had all kinds of body ware AND the ability to cast magick, would it? Borg bits stripping out essence was there as a pretty obvious way to enforce game balance.... which, as we all know, is something Real Life doesn't have.:P
Me, I just want the flying cars. And ninjas. Definitely Ninjas.
...is they actually hook you into the mistaken belief that how well you're doing in Algebra actually somehow matters to you ten years from now.
The enrichment course wasn't graded. You went, you learned, and if you were me, you got bitched out for being too punk rock, even in fourth grade. My problem with public education is that the cirricula is set up in such a fashion that my strengths- creative problem solving, artwork and (through school and the last few years) digital media- never actually applied. Me going to high school (compulsory, thank you) was just about pointless, as the classes played up against my every weakness, with the exception of english and art.
The idea of a grading scale isn't a bad one, it's simply been badly implemented. I brought it up as a point of how things like this are completely and totally misapplied thanks to poorly conceptualized standardization- I'm the sort of guy that wasn't designed for things like math... so as a consequence, through the tension headaches, the cattle prodding, the constant yelling and screaming (my sister didn't have any problems... "You're so smart! Why don't you try harder?!")... I'm stuck with a bit of a negative stigma about things that don't do the least bit of good for the individual being labeled as "educational"... and in the case of the schools, promptly forced down the throats of the undeserving.
I'm one of the few for whom sleeping through English produced A's, moderate effort in Art produced A's and B's.... and hard, raging cramming, studying, nightmares, headaches and endless amounts of rage and frustration produced rarely more than a D+ in math.
I keep drifting off the point... it's late. Basically, the dumb kids will grow up to be dumb adults, the smart kids will grow up to be smart adults, and changing the status quo without implementing eugenics or some sort of Gattica solution doesn't seem likely. Education as it's implemented does nothing more than babysit kids for twelve years while they get a dim idea of what they may want to do for the rest of their life- grades are there to make those that are good at wash-rinse-repeat textbook learning feel good about themselves.
The "dumb kids" have a habit of making life for the smart kids miserable- favoring a Final Solution would be pretty fascist..... I'd like to think that by the time they hit college, the smart kids know that they'll be doing something with their lives, and the ones that tormented them aren't going to amount to much.
FINALLY- someone that completely expresses my own feelings on the state of education. Most people simply don't give a shit- one of the reasons we live in a Windows world, still get Code Red attacks, still have the Gap, still have to deal with boy bands, and all that other bad stuff- people eat what they're fed and generally don't give a shit about what goes on in their own lives, let alone the lives of others.
I learned more in one year in the field than I did in both years of trade school- during which I learned more about computers and software than I had in my entire academic career prior to that. None of it from classes, almost none of it from manuals- all of it from a handful of verbal tips ( Supervisor: "type man, then a space, then the application name. This is the last time I'm telling you.") and just raw plugging away at the applications to see what I could do with them.
The problem is that the education *industry* wants a turnkey solution that they can claim just works- heck, the only thing school did for me professionally was teach me MacOS (six classes out of my entire school cirriculum) and get me in touch with the guy that got me the job I have now. Yes, I picked up a lot of the stuff I use professionally at school- but the kicker is that I did because I was *curious* - I've had formal training on only one application I use now, and that's photoshop.
Education is a resource best approached through ones own ingenium- the things schools really need to teach us as children are reading, basic math (I will never have a head for algebra and resent being grossly penalized in high school for having a mind that prioritizes art over equation).... and rather than drill in bullshit we'll never use by rote, they really need to simply buckle down and teach kids how to use their brains, rather than regurgitate facts. First graders aren't much different than TIVOs, aside from that moving, yelling and bleeding thing.
I got lucky, passed the IQ test in first grade, and landed in the enrichment program- all kinds of fun exercises that taught me how to not only solve a problem, but how to look for the answer- quantitative reasoning, non-linear thinking, forget the box and just THINK kind of stuff. Very cool stuff. Problem is, the school only gave it to the smart kids, when it should be a federal mandate that every child be trained in such a fashion.
Of course, if they did that, only the smart kids would get it. The dumb kids would still sit around, smoke pot and fail their classes. Such a program would actually give fair weight of grading to those who can think for themselves and those who can't- as opposed to someone who sucks at math but womps ass at english and art.
Naturally, the sheep that don't care to learn have an alarming tendency to vote for the sort of people that think things like this are cool.... and there are an awful lot of the little bastards.
I've stated as much in my post. If an artist is quality, the work is worth the price. Flat out. If an artist does not live up to expectations, then the work is NOT worth the price. This does NOT mean that the gig is not worth going to- the artist still gets the dollar, and I get a better experience for it.
Morality is relative- the fact you choose to post anonymously proves as much. Try some namecalling with a fucking username so you can lose some karma.
....damned near all of my collection is one of the following:
1. Out of print. 2. Artist-approved. 3. Ripped from CDs I own. 4. Ripped from CDs I own(ed). 5. The one good song on an album. 6. Never, EVER going to be released in the US (which, with my connections, sucks)
I'm not averse to buying music- I blew a good 300$+ on CDs simply by having heard several track of an album off of FTP, etc. I *am* violently averse to not getting my $$ worth. In short, if I don't like 90% of the album, it is NOT worth the money. Period. I use FTP/P2P as a "try before you buy" foil- and most of the stuff I've found that I like enough to research out turns out to be be one or two good songs on an otherwise crappy album.
I'll pay 15$-20$ for something I *know* is good. I *HAVE* in the past, and will in the future (namely Juno Reactor albums). I am NOT going to pay 15$-20$ for a single and forty minutes of filler.
Considering the amount of $ the artists I like get from CDs versus the amount they get for merch (coupled with album availablity).... I've chosen to support the artist over the label. Which means I end up spending more money- tickets, drinks, t-shirt, etc.- but with the added benefit of usually meeting the band members and having a quality experience. A show is worth the money- and I wouldn't be going to shows without the audio experience of having found the band by accident on someone's server to begin with.
Claiming Tivo filters channels when you're still paying for them- something another poster mentioned- is sticking your head in the sand. With the web tools available these days, I can simply choose how militant I am about control of the ads I recieve. By default, I disallow pop-ups entirely. Flash is a waste of bandwidth, so those wind up being dropped as well. I honestly don't mind banner ads- some of them are interesting. At least on the sites I go to. I could argue one angle of "these cats need the revenue", but the fact is, some of the sites I visit plug things that I wouldn't have found out about if it wasn't for their banner ads. This is nice, and the potential enjoyment factor is worth the possible hassle.
On the other hand, I have yet to be exposed to a blasting, annoying as hell TV or radio ad that caters to something I'm interested in. I have zero use for cadillacs, depends, preperation H or beer. I could give a shit about the X-fest. It bugs me that I know about these things when I have no need or use for them. But then, I'm the sort of person that actually figures out what I need and then looks for a solution, rather than eagerly being led around by the nose.
The internet advertising environment can be configured by an educated end user on a more or less global level. The television and radio environments cannot- sure, you can flip around, but if you haven't noticed, most networks seem time things so when you flip, you hit another commercial break. You can take or tivo and fast forward or drop commercials, but you're still expending effort to do so. Not an effective solution.
On top of all of that, tv and radio are passive. The net is much more interactive, and I'll take that over the tube any day.
Fact is, even if you have your Tivo set up to drop a bunch of channels you don't like, you're still paying for them. My argument is that I refuse to pay for something I will never use, which is one of the reasons why I do not have cable. I'm not an economics major, so I don't know where the money goes- but I'd rather have my dollar go to HBO or the BBC than QVC or MSNBC. I don't have that choice, so I abstain from spending money that will, inevitably, go to support things that I do not care for.
If Tivo cost, oh... say, ten bucks flat, then your argument would be valid.
Consider: 1. Cost of TV (which I don't own) 2. Cost of cable service. 3. Cost of cable package to get the five channels that I might watch, for which I would have to buy at least four packages which include 70+ channels I will *never* watch. 4. Cost of TIVO. 5. Cost of my time spent in all cases. 6. Cost of time spent watching ads.
My time is money. I *will* - I have in the past, and do presently- pay a very high premium for content I *KNOW* I am going to enjoy. Imported EBM and industrial CDs- 25$-35$ a pop. Back issues of comics and old, out of print albums- five bucks and up. Internet service- DSL, 50$ a month. Hardware upgrades and maintenance (300$+ a year). I buy T-shirts and merch at every industrial or goth show I go to- I fully support the artists I enjoy. Part of the enjoyment is that I get to expience them in their native environment, without advertisements being rammed up my nose. Word of mouth goes further than clearchannel or the cable company- or Tivo- ramming their idea of what's cool up my nose.
There's a marginal amount of content on the idiot box that's enjoyable. Proportionately, it's not worth the time. Tivo- with the cost of the unit, the monthly fees for cable or satellite, etceteras included, would have possibly made the ratio of crap to quality something approaching tolerable. But not now.
Why should I spend my money and time being told how great some item I'm never going to be interested in is?
I stopped watching TV because the ads enraged me. Ditto radio. I've been keeping an eye on the Tivo on the off chance television ever becomes economical (eg- I can get sci fi without having to get 37 other channels I never watch). And now they're essentially spamming their userbase- what next? A hard drive full of Golden Girls and The O'Reily factor?
Fuck that- if I want unrequested, unwanted bullshit in my space, I'll go check my hotmail account. The fact that Tivo is doing this violates the basic concept behind why the boxes are selling at all.
If TV were actually configurable, it would be a simple matter of dropping the offending network from your selection of channels. But it's not- users have the illusion of choice. Much like cokeheads- you can have it cut with ephedrine or vitamin b. Or asprin. But you can't have it pure.
(this will, of course, get buried as OT....) What seperates/. from real journalism is the blatant bias on a LOT of subjects... which, upon coursory glance over the front page, is obviously flatly conflicted and flat out hypocritical. Examples:
1. Blizzard is evil. (Bnetd)- refer to continual mithering about bnetd case every time any form of Blizzard news makes the FP. 2. Warcraft III is gonna be cool! 3. MPAA / DRM / Entertainment Industry is Evil! 4. Matrix Trailer! Star Wars! 5. Windows is EVIL!- refer to any time any member of microsoft does anything that's not approved by the Moral Majority, which is immediatly posted to the FP. 6. Neverwinter Nights Toolset!!! Oooo! (NO mention that it's WINDOWS ONLY *ANYWHERE* in the article blurb. Had to read comments.)
Plain and simple,/. is a rabble-rouser. Reporting on the latest and greatest rocks if you can maintain that "objectivity" thing, which is something the staff doesn't bother with. Probably because it fuels lots of posts like the ones in this sub-thread, which add to the total story replies, which imply page-views, which is advertising $$. So.
Mmm. Yeah. I think I have a copy of Starcraft somewhere, with about six inches of dust on it. Might've gotten lost in a move. Could care less, really.
I run seven systems on my home LAN. Games are installed on none of them. Might be the fact I'm a Mac user. Might also be the fact that I have better things to spend my money on that hardware upgrades for systems that run photoshop just fine but blow chunks and repeatedly slam themselves against the wall trying to run Unreal Tournament above 5 fps.
I see the toolbox isn't available for MacOS/X. Somehow, this doesn't bother me. Oh yeah, it's because I haven't had enough free time for games in three years.:P
Adobe's web-oriented offerings suck more balls than you can possibly imagine compared to Marcomedia's. Straight up, I use Adobe software to MAKE my content, and Macromedia software to DELIVER it. I would never DREAM of using Imageready for writing slicing or code and I sure as shit am not about to use pagemill.
Adobe did some things VERY well- then Photoshop 6 came out, targeted for "web intergration"... and things have been going downhill from there.
About two years ago, maybe three... all of a sudden, all of the new Macromedia apps started to look like Adobe apps. Fireworks is the best example- it handles like Photoshop the way Flash handles like Director (in other words, it looks exactly like it should handle the very same way and doesn't even try to).
Adobe has had the "tabbed" features for as long as I've used their product. (about 4+ years). They didn't show up in Macromedia apps until recently... coincidentally, they're in Director, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks (apparently they're in Flash as well, but I hate flash and don't use it.). That's a good chunk of the Macromedia catalogue.
If you really want to push it, the options screens for Word have ALWAYS been tabbed. And I'm sure Word's implementation predates Adobe's.
Tabbed UI elements are about as fundamentally usefull as pulldown menus, rubber-soled shoes, batteries and bread. Patenting them is dumb, as it only impedes the useability of products that could greatly benefit from consistant and well thought out design.
So it's bad. But if Adobe wins.... Flash could slowly wither and die. Which is fine by me- maybe then people will stop asking me if I know how to use it... and maybe, after that... they'll stop sending me links to flash sites.
Adobe's just pissed that people are buying Macromedia's productivity apps instead of theirs. They haven't considered that in the areas they compete, Macromedia is way, WAY superior. [with the possible exception of Illustrator/Freehand].
....and not his. Given your example, and the fact I said nothing about the browser redirect, it's obvious I use IE (classic MacOS version)- for lack of anything better on my platform (NS6/Moz just don't compare for responsiveness).
It's hard enough to build a media-rich site that runs moderately non-ass in a single strain of web browser across multiple resolutions (go to www.starwars.com and jack your font sizing around to see the page break in new and exciting ways).
As a web designer, I want whatever I'm building to look decent and run well. I'm going to develope for the common platform, and test for the common platform. If some little niche browser or fringe elitist browser borks my page to fuck and gone, I'm going to see why... but I'm only going to compromise my design SO FAR before I say "fuck you" and smack a redirect on.
This isn't a problem with users or web designers. It's a problem with fucking browser rendering engines not implementing the spec properly. Minor annoyance. Live with it.
Sheesh. You'd be hard pressed to find more sensationalistic headlines in the Weekly World News.
Anyway, here's what's likely the case: Apple developed Quicktime. Sorenson developed Codec. Apple asked Sorenson if they could include their codec in the next QT release (which would have been 4.0, I believe). And had them sign a little piece of paper. Likewise, Sorenson had their own little pieces of paper for Apple to sign.
The default Sorenson codec in Quicktime Pro compresses like ass- you get small files, but the color shits out. If you want it to NOT shit out, you have to pay Sorenson a chunk of cash for a media key to plug into its little panel in the QT setup controls. Pain in the ass, but it doesn't prevent you from viewing "properly" encoded "pro" files- like the Star Wars trailers.
Since you don't have to pay to play Sorenson files, and you do have to pay to encode them properly... and 99% of the productivity apps that produce video run on MacOS and Windows (re: NOT Linux)... what incentive does Sorenson have to port the codec? The likelihood of securing any form of revenue stream on a Linux port of Quicktime is pretty shitty, at best.
So Sorenson has their own legal BS with Apple, and Apple likely has a different legal BS going on with Sorenson. Probably something along the lines of "exclusive". Which explains why Apple is pissed at them. I can't blame them at all- Macromedia has been even more sluggish about porting to OS X than Adobe has, and the fact that FlashMX includes the ability to run video may be something of an issue of "percieved competition".
I wish this was a joke site. It kind of is, but it's a hell of a lot more truth than humor-
www.penndotsucks.com
Tells the truth nicely. Pennsylvania has some damned shitty roads. Our public education isn't great, and our liquor laws are beyond stupid. Oh, and it's illegal to pratice magic. Perks of being a commonwealth instead of a state.:P
Y?[ ? internet is amazingly useful as a research tool, source for patches, drivers, updates... endless amounts of data.
The fact that a site with content fueled by synopsises of and links to the sites that actually contains this points it out is amusing. The fact that the "report" is from the Christian Science Monitor (Christian Science being an oxymoron on a parallel with Military Intelligence)... is fucking hilarious.
Yes, the internet is useful. So are pants. Way to live in the now, scooter.
Say I have a table that's 100% high, and inside of that, an image that's 80 pixels high and another table that's 100% high. Now, in theory- and under IE and other browsers, in PRACTICE, this second table would consume the remainder of the height inside of the first table, less the 80 pixels of the image. This is really simple math. This doesn't break ANY standards. This is, in fact, something that's reasonably important to certain design implementations,
And mozilla pukes on it.
How's that being standards compliant, if you implement "the standard" for the first table and ignore it for the second? You're using your happy little argument as an excuse to code poorly.
...don't get me wrong, Gekko actually functions surprisingly well for 95% of HTML rendering. But there are some things it simply does NOT HANDLE AT ALL that IE does in its SLEEP. Multiple sub-layered dynamic tables, for one- the engine will get the first one right and puke on all subsequent. It doesn't handle dynamic use of the iframe tag at ALL. Things like that.
Until Gekko can play as fast and loose with HTML as the IE rendering engine, the vast majority of users are going to consider it to be shite, because comparing page loads, IE is more forgiving and Gekko just doesn't bother to do things that it SHOULD (much like the Navigator / Communicator 4.x engine!).
I've had to make WAY too many design comprimises in order to get my web work to run properly in netscape and mozilla.... often times scrapping entire designs that worked fine in IE. If the idea of the web is to be platform independant, then why do I have to retard my code because something touted as "better than IE"... isn't?
AOL shifting to Mozilla? Maybe when the rendering engine is as idiot friendly to HTML as AOL is to the home user. Until then, I really, honestly can't see it as anything more than a longterm hedge against Microsoft.
Personally, about 95% of the pages I load are shit. They load, but they either look like ass or have a very, very pissass poor information layout.
You should prioritize the following:
1. The code needs to be simple, as does the design- your page needs to load on everything. I've stopped bothering with Netscape 4.7 (layers! Gah!) but make an effort to make sure my pages load on Mozilla and Netscape 6, which requires effort for the fact that they both really hate multiple nested dynamic tables.
2. I'll get a "redundant" for that one, but I haven't seen this mentioned yet- The actual Information Design needs to be clearly thought out. What are users coming to your sight for? What do they want? Design your site to make whatever that is easy to find and quick to get to. You should be more concerned with the actual FLOW of your DATA than of your design- the form, naturally, follows function. If I have to run a search to find something that should be on the front page or part of the static navigation, or if running your URL through Google gets me somewhere I couldn't find, you've failed and need to take the class again.
3. Stay away from plugins. All Shockwave and Flash do is eat your bandwidth- not everyone has the latest version of the player, not everyone has the bandwidth to pull a 500k splash page, and most importantly, not everyone actually likes flash. All depends on your audience.
Beyond that, it becomes personal preference. I run at 1024x768, but my browser is a window that's about 700x400 - I hate browsing fullscreen and am not fond of pages that either force my rez or require horizontal scrolling. I also am strongly against audio elements in pages, and useage of flash if I notice it.
So build small- both in graphic file size and minimum physical area of the page. Build simple, so it runs on anything. Design minimally, so the user isn't overwhelmed with a wall of links and options and gets lost. And bottom line, keep in mind that no matter how clever you think your design is, 90% of the people using the web are idiots.
...and there was much rejoicing.
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Photoshop for OS X
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I use computers for one thing only: content creation. This includes Photoshop, After Effects, Dreamweaver, Fireworks... essentially, media creation and manipulation. I've tried every toy I can get my hands on, and have come to the conclusion that what works best for me is the Adobe and Macromedia suites on a Macintosh.
UNIX/Linux/BSD is neato, but I failed math, suck at logic, and can't grep to save my life. I'd like to play around with it and learn it, but I have no real reason to- and my experience with Free Software has been pretty nasty- I bitch about nonexistant intallers, suck-ass window managers, poor hardware support, and I'm told "FIX IT YOURSELF!"... and as a non programmer, I'd rather stick with something that already works for me to begin with.
Apple has brought UNIX to the desktop. Now I can run all of my happy fun day to day tasks and learn the bash (well, ZSH), discover the joys of suing to root and doing a kill 0 to see what happens, and generally have the best of both worlds. I see this as being rather relevant, really- if the company known for making "idiot friendly" machines can make UNIX useable for an idiot (or those of us that know a few lines of HTML, Lingo and BASIC)...and the companies that support that company port their apps.... then what the hell is keeping the rest of the world from following suit? Hmm?
Hell. With OS X, I can run Apache, X-11 apps, Gimp, Photoshop, Maya, Combustion, Quake.... dear gods, it can do absolutely EVERYTHING I NEED. I only need to run ONE OS for all of my art geek and computer geek needs. Hot damn. THAT is relevant.
Code that will run on a 486 will almost definitely run on a P4. Same architecture, just cracked the hell out. The only difference is the OS and the additional hardware (RAM, HDD, etc). Consider the difference between a Power Macintosh 7100 and a Power Macintosh G4. There are two BIG differences- the 7100 has SCSI and a good amount of motherboard ROM. The G4 has IDE and the "MacOS ROM" is dumped to the HDD with the OS install as opposed to being actual chips on the motherboard. In damned near every other respect, the G4 is, to my "I edit video and do web design, and study this as a hobby" perspective, fundamentally identical to the 601 on a base level. Yeah, there's Altivec, and some pipeline alterations and so forth... and it's faster (whoo! is it ever faster...)... but it's the same thing in many ways... much like a housecat is in many ways fundamentally identical to a cheetah.
So in a roundabout way, things have been ADDED to a processor, not changed or taken away. The things you may want to REMOVE support for would be things like SyQuest drives, SCSI (if you're using IDE only), and things of that nature. If you're running on older hardware, drop USB, Firewire, and all that jazz. Heck, if it's a SERVER, drop the GUI and all of the related toys- your software can be very easliy customized to run with or without peripherals, ports, adapters and expansion cards, but it's ALWAYS going to need a processor... and like the header says... x86 is x86.
From the poor ($) hobbyist viewpoint...
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Linux on Older Hardware
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· Score: 4, Interesting
...Linux kinda NEEDS to run on old kit, and run reasonably well. By "well", I mean at least as snappy as whatever OS is actually designed to run on the thing, to an extent. I wouldn't expext X to be as snappy on a Quadra 650 as MacOS 7.6.1 (hell, it's not all that snappy on a G3).... but I'd like the draw rate to be measured in FPS instead of blinks of the eye.
I bring the Quadra up for good reason- I'm a Mac user. (stop laughing, and read.) I don't have a system that runs MacOS X well enough for my needs (this include my G4/733 at work, to be blunt... it's a slug compared to "classic" MOS). My home systems and my work systems are all task dedicated.... but I have that Quadra to mess around on.
Old hardware can be had for VERY cheap. And it's a BITCH to find an old OS for old hardware (want to run A/UX as your firewall? Good luck.....). Linux and BSD offer an excellent opportunity to run a production-grade OS on outdated consumer-grade hardware. A lot of both respective systems will run acceptably on just about everything... until you hit the GUI- at which point it seems to be an ordeal similar to that of amatuer web designers... you know, the cats that don't even have Netscape installed and don't even bother to test in the browser revision below whatever they're using now. It seems to me that a lot of OSS programmers whose work is getting into Gnome, KDE, and other graphics-intensive areas of a Linux-based OS are designing ON modern hardware FOR modern hardware. They don't seem to realize that not everyone - particularly those who could benefit the MOST from their work- has access to or owns modern hardware. And of those that DO... not all of them are willing to SPARE that modern hardware for the weeks/months of the learning experience.
Old hardware is cheap... I'd LOVE to see OSS programmers approach their hobby/love/job the way GOOD Web designers do- test early, test often, test on hardware, connections, and media that's at least a revision older than what you're using to code. It's effort- something not a lot of people are into- but you want to see your widget run as smoothly on mom's Pentium 100 as it does on your G4, right?
...in another post to another response to this thread.
Essentially:
Bad people do bad things and learn interesting things from it. Good people put the smack down on bad people and not only get to do the victory dance, they get all of the data gained by the bad people while keeping their hands blood free.
Skin grafts. Nerve gas. Explosive decompression. Pressure experimentation. Vaccinations and germ warfare. The weapons technology race to beat a nation that had the upper hand in every way save overall manpower against the rest of the world.
Was the expermination done a good thing? Possibly not... but the fact of the matter is that the data gained WAS a good thing, and has been put to VERY good use [the space program is the best example- rocket technology and space suits were prototyped by the germans during the second world war.]
Consider that people are always going to have funky motives in the eyes of others- and that in the end run, a hell of a lot of good has come from a hell of a lot of bad. Would I trade world war two never happening for the moon landing? Hell no. Both events have done far more for the advancement of mankind as a global civilization than possibly any other event in history. It just so happens that the tech to get to the moon was borne from german war science.
Read some Moorecock. There is no good, there is no bad- which is which gets decided by the winners. Hitler was just as morally justified in bombing England as Truman was nuking Hiroshima- it's all a matter of perspective and the fact that Truman wins the opinion poll hands down every time [self included, mind you.].
Stick to your "good people, bad people" argument, and the next thing I know you'll be arguing that Colonel Tibbets should have been executed for war crimes.
There's no being careful with "good" when it comes to technology or technological innovations. Tech and knowledge are neither good nor bad- they're a tool, a means to an end. It just so happened that WWII Germany happened to use methods that are despised by the rest of the world in the acquisition of that information- and garnering it through other methods would have likely taken years- if not decades- longer. Refer to my Moorecock statement- their methods are despised for the fact that they lost. Had they won, we'd never even know about them.
I will, after this pinch-hitting as devil's advocate, concede that the Nazi scientific practices are emotionally offensive to anyone with half of a brain. Our society has a manifest distaste for those sorts of methods, which is totally understandable. On the other hand, where there those willing to *volunteer* for such experiments.... hey, there's nothing wrong with that. I cannot condone experimenting on unwilling subjects, but I cannot deny the value of the information that these experiments have added to the knowledge base of the human race.
Seems like you can- crank your life view settings from two bit to greyscale and look at the big picture. Be objective and actually *THINK* about it.... rather than *FEEL* about it- that's where I'm coming from: in the case of my statements I've chosen to play science and cold fact over emotion.... nevermind the fact that my *feelings* on the matter are similar to yours.
Hell, if anything, deal with the fact that not everyone has or shares your opinion- you'll have a lot less stress in your life!
Army, Navy, Marines... they all get to test things like nerve gas and vaccinations so the masses don't have to. It's part of the job description- hundreds die to prove a hypothesis or run a test trial of something at MIGHT work. And you never hear about it.
It's a proven fact that war triggers massive technological innovation. Given the social and genetic diversity of the human race, there will ALWAYS be those that are in the eyes of others "morally questionable", who are willing to do these types of experiments in the advance of human knowledge.
And we scream bloody murder in moral outrage, beat their asses, take their data and build on it with our hands clean. Our society would be a mere shadow of what it is now had that little "opinion poll" of yours gone through... and the fact of the matter is that despite everything that happened during that period in time, the human race is BETTER for it all as a result.
Slashdot Mirror
... IMO, naturally.
Why do I think this? Pretty simple, actually- on the console, you have one control interface- the control pad. Nothing else. I "grew up" on Doom and Quake, playing on my own terms- I lovved using the keyboard, and never thought to bother with the mouse. Then I played halflife on the school LAN with a bunch of FPS-whores who did pretty much nothing else, and got REAMED. I noticed all of them were using the mouse.... fat lot of good that does me! I use trackballs on my desktops and spend most of my time on a laptop... the mouse is simply not an option, and games don't control for shit with a t-pad or t-ball.
Enter the console- all of the control is unified into one single entity, as opposed to split into two. Key commands are a hell of a lot easier to enter, you don't have to worry about your hardware being "good enough", and your wrists aren't going to explode- I've gone for upwards of 12 hours on console controllers without any kind of RTS, whereas the equivalent on a PC setup will leave me sore well into the next day.
The only thing that blows goats about console FPS is the frigging multiplayer- for some reason game designers think it's a good idea to split the screen into quadrants, rather than push the idea of linking several systems together (a la the Jaguar or the PSX link cables). That's the one advantage FPS has on the PC- you have the screen entirely to yourself.
And in my happy little world, I have the GAME all to myself- it's not worth the frustration of my slow reflexes getting me REAMED by some twitch-monkey who's overclocked his mouse.
Though I agree with you fully, it wouldn't have done FASA any good to have players running characters that had all kinds of body ware AND the ability to cast magick, would it? Borg bits stripping out essence was there as a pretty obvious way to enforce game balance.... which, as we all know, is something Real Life doesn't have. :P
Me, I just want the flying cars. And ninjas. Definitely Ninjas.
...is they actually hook you into the mistaken belief that how well you're doing in Algebra actually somehow matters to you ten years from now.
The enrichment course wasn't graded. You went, you learned, and if you were me, you got bitched out for being too punk rock, even in fourth grade. My problem with public education is that the cirricula is set up in such a fashion that my strengths- creative problem solving, artwork and (through school and the last few years) digital media- never actually applied. Me going to high school (compulsory, thank you) was just about pointless, as the classes played up against my every weakness, with the exception of english and art.
The idea of a grading scale isn't a bad one, it's simply been badly implemented. I brought it up as a point of how things like this are completely and totally misapplied thanks to poorly conceptualized standardization- I'm the sort of guy that wasn't designed for things like math... so as a consequence, through the tension headaches, the cattle prodding, the constant yelling and screaming (my sister didn't have any problems... "You're so smart! Why don't you try harder?!")... I'm stuck with a bit of a negative stigma about things that don't do the least bit of good for the individual being labeled as "educational"... and in the case of the schools, promptly forced down the throats of the undeserving.
I'm one of the few for whom sleeping through English produced A's, moderate effort in Art produced A's and B's.... and hard, raging cramming, studying, nightmares, headaches and endless amounts of rage and frustration produced rarely more than a D+ in math.
I keep drifting off the point... it's late. Basically, the dumb kids will grow up to be dumb adults, the smart kids will grow up to be smart adults, and changing the status quo without implementing eugenics or some sort of Gattica solution doesn't seem likely. Education as it's implemented does nothing more than babysit kids for twelve years while they get a dim idea of what they may want to do for the rest of their life- grades are there to make those that are good at wash-rinse-repeat textbook learning feel good about themselves.
The "dumb kids" have a habit of making life for the smart kids miserable- favoring a Final Solution would be pretty fascist..... I'd like to think that by the time they hit college, the smart kids know that they'll be doing something with their lives, and the ones that tormented them aren't going to amount to much.
Living well is the best revenge, in all honesty.
FINALLY- someone that completely expresses my own feelings on the state of education. Most people simply don't give a shit- one of the reasons we live in a Windows world, still get Code Red attacks, still have the Gap, still have to deal with boy bands, and all that other bad stuff- people eat what they're fed and generally don't give a shit about what goes on in their own lives, let alone the lives of others.
I learned more in one year in the field than I did in both years of trade school- during which I learned more about computers and software than I had in my entire academic career prior to that. None of it from classes, almost none of it from manuals- all of it from a handful of verbal tips ( Supervisor: "type man, then a space, then the application name. This is the last time I'm telling you.") and just raw plugging away at the applications to see what I could do with them.
The problem is that the education *industry* wants a turnkey solution that they can claim just works- heck, the only thing school did for me professionally was teach me MacOS (six classes out of my entire school cirriculum) and get me in touch with the guy that got me the job I have now. Yes, I picked up a lot of the stuff I use professionally at school- but the kicker is that I did because I was *curious* - I've had formal training on only one application I use now, and that's photoshop.
Education is a resource best approached through ones own ingenium- the things schools really need to teach us as children are reading, basic math (I will never have a head for algebra and resent being grossly penalized in high school for having a mind that prioritizes art over equation).... and rather than drill in bullshit we'll never use by rote, they really need to simply buckle down and teach kids how to use their brains, rather than regurgitate facts. First graders aren't much different than TIVOs, aside from that moving, yelling and bleeding thing.
I got lucky, passed the IQ test in first grade, and landed in the enrichment program- all kinds of fun exercises that taught me how to not only solve a problem, but how to look for the answer- quantitative reasoning, non-linear thinking, forget the box and just THINK kind of stuff. Very cool stuff. Problem is, the school only gave it to the smart kids, when it should be a federal mandate that every child be trained in such a fashion.
Of course, if they did that, only the smart kids would get it. The dumb kids would still sit around, smoke pot and fail their classes. Such a program would actually give fair weight of grading to those who can think for themselves and those who can't- as opposed to someone who sucks at math but womps ass at english and art.
Naturally, the sheep that don't care to learn have an alarming tendency to vote for the sort of people that think things like this are cool.... and there are an awful lot of the little bastards.
I've stated as much in my post.
If an artist is quality, the work is worth the price. Flat out. If an artist does not live up to expectations, then the work is NOT worth the price. This does NOT mean that the gig is not worth going to- the artist still gets the dollar, and I get a better experience for it.
Morality is relative- the fact you choose to post anonymously proves as much. Try some namecalling with a fucking username so you can lose some karma.
....damned near all of my collection is one of the following:
1. Out of print.
2. Artist-approved.
3. Ripped from CDs I own.
4. Ripped from CDs I own(ed).
5. The one good song on an album.
6. Never, EVER going to be released in the US (which, with my connections, sucks)
I'm not averse to buying music- I blew a good 300$+ on CDs simply by having heard several track of an album off of FTP, etc. I *am* violently averse to not getting my $$ worth. In short, if I don't like 90% of the album, it is NOT worth the money. Period. I use FTP/P2P as a "try before you buy" foil- and most of the stuff I've found that I like enough to research out turns out to be be one or two good songs on an otherwise crappy album.
I'll pay 15$-20$ for something I *know* is good. I *HAVE* in the past, and will in the future (namely Juno Reactor albums). I am NOT going to pay 15$-20$ for a single and forty minutes of filler.
Considering the amount of $ the artists I like get from CDs versus the amount they get for merch (coupled with album availablity).... I've chosen to support the artist over the label. Which means I end up spending more money- tickets, drinks, t-shirt, etc.- but with the added benefit of usually meeting the band members and having a quality experience. A show is worth the money- and I wouldn't be going to shows without the audio experience of having found the band by accident on someone's server to begin with.
Support the artists directly.
Claiming Tivo filters channels when you're still paying for them- something another poster mentioned- is sticking your head in the sand. With the web tools available these days, I can simply choose how militant I am about control of the ads I recieve. By default, I disallow pop-ups entirely. Flash is a waste of bandwidth, so those wind up being dropped as well. I honestly don't mind banner ads- some of them are interesting. At least on the sites I go to. I could argue one angle of "these cats need the revenue", but the fact is, some of the sites I visit plug things that I wouldn't have found out about if it wasn't for their banner ads. This is nice, and the potential enjoyment factor is worth the possible hassle.
On the other hand, I have yet to be exposed to a blasting, annoying as hell TV or radio ad that caters to something I'm interested in. I have zero use for cadillacs, depends, preperation H or beer. I could give a shit about the X-fest. It bugs me that I know about these things when I have no need or use for them. But then, I'm the sort of person that actually figures out what I need and then looks for a solution, rather than eagerly being led around by the nose.
The internet advertising environment can be configured by an educated end user on a more or less global level. The television and radio environments cannot- sure, you can flip around, but if you haven't noticed, most networks seem time things so when you flip, you hit another commercial break. You can take or tivo and fast forward or drop commercials, but you're still expending effort to do so. Not an effective solution.
On top of all of that, tv and radio are passive. The net is much more interactive, and I'll take that over the tube any day.
Fact is, even if you have your Tivo set up to drop a bunch of channels you don't like, you're still paying for them. My argument is that I refuse to pay for something I will never use, which is one of the reasons why I do not have cable. I'm not an economics major, so I don't know where the money goes- but I'd rather have my dollar go to HBO or the BBC than QVC or MSNBC. I don't have that choice, so I abstain from spending money that will, inevitably, go to support things that I do not care for.
If Tivo cost, oh... say, ten bucks flat, then your argument would be valid.
Consider:
1. Cost of TV (which I don't own)
2. Cost of cable service.
3. Cost of cable package to get the five channels that I might watch, for which I would have to buy at least four packages which include 70+ channels I will *never* watch.
4. Cost of TIVO.
5. Cost of my time spent in all cases.
6. Cost of time spent watching ads.
My time is money. I *will* - I have in the past, and do presently- pay a very high premium for content I *KNOW* I am going to enjoy. Imported EBM and industrial CDs- 25$-35$ a pop. Back issues of comics and old, out of print albums- five bucks and up. Internet service- DSL, 50$ a month. Hardware upgrades and maintenance (300$+ a year). I buy T-shirts and merch at every industrial or goth show I go to- I fully support the artists I enjoy. Part of the enjoyment is that I get to expience them in their native environment, without advertisements being rammed up my nose. Word of mouth goes further than clearchannel or the cable company- or Tivo- ramming their idea of what's cool up my nose.
There's a marginal amount of content on the idiot box that's enjoyable. Proportionately, it's not worth the time. Tivo- with the cost of the unit, the monthly fees for cable or satellite, etceteras included, would have possibly made the ratio of crap to quality something approaching tolerable. But not now.
Why should I spend my money and time being told how great some item I'm never going to be interested in is?
I stopped watching TV because the ads enraged me. Ditto radio. I've been keeping an eye on the Tivo on the off chance television ever becomes economical (eg- I can get sci fi without having to get 37 other channels I never watch). And now they're essentially spamming their userbase- what next? A hard drive full of Golden Girls and The O'Reily factor?
:P
Fuck that- if I want unrequested, unwanted bullshit in my space, I'll go check my hotmail account. The fact that Tivo is doing this violates the basic concept behind why the boxes are selling at all.
If TV were actually configurable, it would be a simple matter of dropping the offending network from your selection of channels. But it's not- users have the illusion of choice. Much like cokeheads- you can have it cut with ephedrine or vitamin b. Or asprin. But you can't have it pure.
Screw these guys, I'm going home.
(this will, of course, get buried as OT....) /. from real journalism is the blatant bias on a LOT of subjects... which, upon coursory glance over the front page, is obviously flatly conflicted and flat out hypocritical. Examples:
/. is a rabble-rouser. Reporting on the latest and greatest rocks if you can maintain that "objectivity" thing, which is something the staff doesn't bother with. Probably because it fuels lots of posts like the ones in this sub-thread, which add to the total story replies, which imply page-views, which is advertising $$. So.
What seperates
1. Blizzard is evil. (Bnetd)- refer to continual mithering about bnetd case every time any form of Blizzard news makes the FP.
2. Warcraft III is gonna be cool!
3. MPAA / DRM / Entertainment Industry is Evil!
4. Matrix Trailer! Star Wars!
5. Windows is EVIL!- refer to any time any member of microsoft does anything that's not approved by the Moral Majority, which is immediatly posted to the FP.
6. Neverwinter Nights Toolset!!! Oooo! (NO mention that it's WINDOWS ONLY *ANYWHERE* in the article blurb. Had to read comments.)
Plain and simple,
"Geeks love gaming".
:P
Mmm. Yeah. I think I have a copy of Starcraft somewhere, with about six inches of dust on it. Might've gotten lost in a move. Could care less, really.
I run seven systems on my home LAN. Games are installed on none of them. Might be the fact I'm a Mac user. Might also be the fact that I have better things to spend my money on that hardware upgrades for systems that run photoshop just fine but blow chunks and repeatedly slam themselves against the wall trying to run Unreal Tournament above 5 fps.
I see the toolbox isn't available for MacOS/X. Somehow, this doesn't bother me. Oh yeah, it's because I haven't had enough free time for games in three years.
Adobe's web-oriented offerings suck more balls than you can possibly imagine compared to Marcomedia's. Straight up, I use Adobe software to MAKE my content, and Macromedia software to DELIVER it. I would never DREAM of using Imageready for writing slicing or code and I sure as shit am not about to use pagemill.
Adobe did some things VERY well- then Photoshop 6 came out, targeted for "web intergration"... and things have been going downhill from there.
About two years ago, maybe three... all of a sudden, all of the new Macromedia apps started to look like Adobe apps. Fireworks is the best example- it handles like Photoshop the way Flash handles like Director (in other words, it looks exactly like it should handle the very same way and doesn't even try to).
Adobe has had the "tabbed" features for as long as I've used their product. (about 4+ years). They didn't show up in Macromedia apps until recently... coincidentally, they're in Director, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks (apparently they're in Flash as well, but I hate flash and don't use it.). That's a good chunk of the Macromedia catalogue.
If you really want to push it, the options screens for Word have ALWAYS been tabbed. And I'm sure Word's implementation predates Adobe's.
Tabbed UI elements are about as fundamentally usefull as pulldown menus, rubber-soled shoes, batteries and bread. Patenting them is dumb, as it only impedes the useability of products that could greatly benefit from consistant and well thought out design.
So it's bad. But if Adobe wins.... Flash could slowly wither and die. Which is fine by me- maybe then people will stop asking me if I know how to use it... and maybe, after that... they'll stop sending me links to flash sites.
Adobe's just pissed that people are buying Macromedia's productivity apps instead of theirs. They haven't considered that in the areas they compete, Macromedia is way, WAY superior. [with the possible exception of Illustrator/Freehand].
....and not his.
Given your example, and the fact I said nothing about the browser redirect, it's obvious I use IE (classic MacOS version)- for lack of anything better on my platform (NS6/Moz just don't compare for responsiveness).
It's hard enough to build a media-rich site that runs moderately non-ass in a single strain of web browser across multiple resolutions (go to www.starwars.com and jack your font sizing around to see the page break in new and exciting ways).
As a web designer, I want whatever I'm building to look decent and run well. I'm going to develope for the common platform, and test for the common platform. If some little niche browser or fringe elitist browser borks my page to fuck and gone, I'm going to see why... but I'm only going to compromise my design SO FAR before I say "fuck you" and smack a redirect on.
This isn't a problem with users or web designers. It's a problem with fucking browser rendering engines not implementing the spec properly. Minor annoyance. Live with it.
Sheesh. You'd be hard pressed to find more sensationalistic headlines in the Weekly World News.
Anyway, here's what's likely the case: Apple developed Quicktime. Sorenson developed Codec. Apple asked Sorenson if they could include their codec in the next QT release (which would have been 4.0, I believe). And had them sign a little piece of paper. Likewise, Sorenson had their own little pieces of paper for Apple to sign.
The default Sorenson codec in Quicktime Pro compresses like ass- you get small files, but the color shits out. If you want it to NOT shit out, you have to pay Sorenson a chunk of cash for a media key to plug into its little panel in the QT setup controls. Pain in the ass, but it doesn't prevent you from viewing "properly" encoded "pro" files- like the Star Wars trailers.
Since you don't have to pay to play Sorenson files, and you do have to pay to encode them properly... and 99% of the productivity apps that produce video run on MacOS and Windows (re: NOT Linux)... what incentive does Sorenson have to port the codec? The likelihood of securing any form of revenue stream on a Linux port of Quicktime is pretty shitty, at best.
So Sorenson has their own legal BS with Apple, and Apple likely has a different legal BS going on with Sorenson. Probably something along the lines of "exclusive". Which explains why Apple is pissed at them. I can't blame them at all- Macromedia has been even more sluggish about porting to OS X than Adobe has, and the fact that FlashMX includes the ability to run video may be something of an issue of "percieved competition".
I wish this was a joke site. It kind of is, but it's a hell of a lot more truth than humor-
:P
www.penndotsucks.com
Tells the truth nicely. Pennsylvania has some damned shitty roads. Our public education isn't great, and our liquor laws are beyond stupid. Oh, and it's illegal to pratice magic. Perks of being a commonwealth instead of a state.
Y?[
? internet is amazingly useful as a research tool, source for patches, drivers, updates... endless amounts of data.
The fact that a site with content fueled by synopsises of and links to the sites that actually contains this points it out is amusing. The fact that the "report" is from the Christian Science Monitor (Christian Science being an oxymoron on a parallel with Military Intelligence)... is fucking hilarious.
Yes, the internet is useful. So are pants. Way to live in the now, scooter.
Say I have a table that's 100% high, and inside of that, an image that's 80 pixels high and another table that's 100% high.
Now, in theory- and under IE and other browsers, in PRACTICE, this second table would consume the remainder of the height inside of the first table, less the 80 pixels of the image. This is really simple math. This doesn't break ANY standards. This is, in fact, something that's reasonably important to certain design implementations,
And mozilla pukes on it.
How's that being standards compliant, if you implement "the standard" for the first table and ignore it for the second? You're using your happy little argument as an excuse to code poorly.
...don't get me wrong, Gekko actually functions surprisingly well for 95% of HTML rendering. But there are some things it simply does NOT HANDLE AT ALL that IE does in its SLEEP. Multiple sub-layered dynamic tables, for one- the engine will get the first one right and puke on all subsequent. It doesn't handle dynamic use of the iframe tag at ALL. Things like that.
Until Gekko can play as fast and loose with HTML as the IE rendering engine, the vast majority of users are going to consider it to be shite, because comparing page loads, IE is more forgiving and Gekko just doesn't bother to do things that it SHOULD (much like the Navigator / Communicator 4.x engine!).
I've had to make WAY too many design comprimises in order to get my web work to run properly in netscape and mozilla.... often times scrapping entire designs that worked fine in IE. If the idea of the web is to be platform independant, then why do I have to retard my code because something touted as "better than IE"... isn't?
AOL shifting to Mozilla? Maybe when the rendering engine is as idiot friendly to HTML as AOL is to the home user. Until then, I really, honestly can't see it as anything more than a longterm hedge against Microsoft.
Personally, about 95% of the pages I load are shit. They load, but they either look like ass or have a very, very pissass poor information layout.
You should prioritize the following:
1. The code needs to be simple, as does the design- your page needs to load on everything. I've stopped bothering with Netscape 4.7 (layers! Gah!) but make an effort to make sure my pages load on Mozilla and Netscape 6, which requires effort for the fact that they both really hate multiple nested dynamic tables.
2. I'll get a "redundant" for that one, but I haven't seen this mentioned yet- The actual Information Design needs to be clearly thought out. What are users coming to your sight for? What do they want? Design your site to make whatever that is easy to find and quick to get to. You should be more concerned with the actual FLOW of your DATA than of your design- the form, naturally, follows function. If I have to run a search to find something that should be on the front page or part of the static navigation, or if running your URL through Google gets me somewhere I couldn't find, you've failed and need to take the class again.
3. Stay away from plugins. All Shockwave and Flash do is eat your bandwidth- not everyone has the latest version of the player, not everyone has the bandwidth to pull a 500k splash page, and most importantly, not everyone actually likes flash. All depends on your audience.
Beyond that, it becomes personal preference. I run at 1024x768, but my browser is a window that's about 700x400 - I hate browsing fullscreen and am not fond of pages that either force my rez or require horizontal scrolling. I also am strongly against audio elements in pages, and useage of flash if I notice it.
So build small- both in graphic file size and minimum physical area of the page. Build simple, so it runs on anything. Design minimally, so the user isn't overwhelmed with a wall of links and options and gets lost. And bottom line, keep in mind that no matter how clever you think your design is, 90% of the people using the web are idiots.
I use computers for one thing only: content creation. This includes Photoshop, After Effects, Dreamweaver, Fireworks... essentially, media creation and manipulation. I've tried every toy I can get my hands on, and have come to the conclusion that what works best for me is the Adobe and Macromedia suites on a Macintosh.
UNIX/Linux/BSD is neato, but I failed math, suck at logic, and can't grep to save my life. I'd like to play around with it and learn it, but I have no real reason to- and my experience with Free Software has been pretty nasty- I bitch about nonexistant intallers, suck-ass window managers, poor hardware support, and I'm told "FIX IT YOURSELF!"... and as a non programmer, I'd rather stick with something that already works for me to begin with.
Apple has brought UNIX to the desktop. Now I can run all of my happy fun day to day tasks and learn the bash (well, ZSH), discover the joys of suing to root and doing a kill 0 to see what happens, and generally have the best of both worlds. I see this as being rather relevant, really- if the company known for making "idiot friendly" machines can make UNIX useable for an idiot (or those of us that know a few lines of HTML, Lingo and BASIC)...and the companies that support that company port their apps.... then what the hell is keeping the rest of the world from following suit? Hmm?
Hell. With OS X, I can run Apache, X-11 apps, Gimp, Photoshop, Maya, Combustion, Quake.... dear gods, it can do absolutely EVERYTHING I NEED. I only need to run ONE OS for all of my art geek and computer geek needs. Hot damn. THAT is relevant.
Code that will run on a 486 will almost definitely run on a P4. Same architecture, just cracked the hell out. The only difference is the OS and the additional hardware (RAM, HDD, etc). Consider the difference between a Power Macintosh 7100 and a Power Macintosh G4. There are two BIG differences- the 7100 has SCSI and a good amount of motherboard ROM. The G4 has IDE and the "MacOS ROM" is dumped to the HDD with the OS install as opposed to being actual chips on the motherboard. In damned near every other respect, the G4 is, to my "I edit video and do web design, and study this as a hobby" perspective, fundamentally identical to the 601 on a base level. Yeah, there's Altivec, and some pipeline alterations and so forth... and it's faster (whoo! is it ever faster...)... but it's the same thing in many ways... much like a housecat is in many ways fundamentally identical to a cheetah.
So in a roundabout way, things have been ADDED to a processor, not changed or taken away. The things you may want to REMOVE support for would be things like SyQuest drives, SCSI (if you're using IDE only), and things of that nature. If you're running on older hardware, drop USB, Firewire, and all that jazz. Heck, if it's a SERVER, drop the GUI and all of the related toys- your software can be very easliy customized to run with or without peripherals, ports, adapters and expansion cards, but it's ALWAYS going to need a processor... and like the header says... x86 is x86.
...Linux kinda NEEDS to run on old kit, and run reasonably well. By "well", I mean at least as snappy as whatever OS is actually designed to run on the thing, to an extent. I wouldn't expext X to be as snappy on a Quadra 650 as MacOS 7.6.1 (hell, it's not all that snappy on a G3).... but I'd like the draw rate to be measured in FPS instead of blinks of the eye.
I bring the Quadra up for good reason- I'm a Mac user. (stop laughing, and read.) I don't have a system that runs MacOS X well enough for my needs (this include my G4/733 at work, to be blunt... it's a slug compared to "classic" MOS). My home systems and my work systems are all task dedicated.... but I have that Quadra to mess around on.
Old hardware can be had for VERY cheap. And it's a BITCH to find an old OS for old hardware (want to run A/UX as your firewall? Good luck.....). Linux and BSD offer an excellent opportunity to run a production-grade OS on outdated consumer-grade hardware. A lot of both respective systems will run acceptably on just about everything... until you hit the GUI- at which point it seems to be an ordeal similar to that of amatuer web designers... you know, the cats that don't even have Netscape installed and don't even bother to test in the browser revision below whatever they're using now. It seems to me that a lot of OSS programmers whose work is getting into Gnome, KDE, and other graphics-intensive areas of a Linux-based OS are designing ON modern hardware FOR modern hardware. They don't seem to realize that not everyone - particularly those who could benefit the MOST from their work- has access to or owns modern hardware. And of those that DO... not all of them are willing to SPARE that modern hardware for the weeks/months of the learning experience.
Old hardware is cheap... I'd LOVE to see OSS programmers approach their hobby/love/job the way GOOD Web designers do- test early, test often, test on hardware, connections, and media that's at least a revision older than what you're using to code. It's effort- something not a lot of people are into- but you want to see your widget run as smoothly on mom's Pentium 100 as it does on your G4, right?
...in another post to another response to this thread.
Essentially:
Bad people do bad things and learn interesting things from it. Good people put the smack down on bad people and not only get to do the victory dance, they get all of the data gained by the bad people while keeping their hands blood free.
Skin grafts. Nerve gas. Explosive decompression. Pressure experimentation. Vaccinations and germ warfare. The weapons technology race to beat a nation that had the upper hand in every way save overall manpower against the rest of the world.
Was the expermination done a good thing? Possibly not... but the fact of the matter is that the data gained WAS a good thing, and has been put to VERY good use [the space program is the best example- rocket technology and space suits were prototyped by the germans during the second world war.]
Consider that people are always going to have funky motives in the eyes of others- and that in the end run, a hell of a lot of good has come from a hell of a lot of bad. Would I trade world war two never happening for the moon landing? Hell no. Both events have done far more for the advancement of mankind as a global civilization than possibly any other event in history. It just so happens that the tech to get to the moon was borne from german war science.
Read some Moorecock. There is no good, there is no bad- which is which gets decided by the winners. Hitler was just as morally justified in bombing England as Truman was nuking Hiroshima- it's all a matter of perspective and the fact that Truman wins the opinion poll hands down every time [self included, mind you.].
Stick to your "good people, bad people" argument, and the next thing I know you'll be arguing that Colonel Tibbets should have been executed for war crimes.
There's no being careful with "good" when it comes to technology or technological innovations. Tech and knowledge are neither good nor bad- they're a tool, a means to an end. It just so happened that WWII Germany happened to use methods that are despised by the rest of the world in the acquisition of that information- and garnering it through other methods would have likely taken years- if not decades- longer. Refer to my Moorecock statement- their methods are despised for the fact that they lost. Had they won, we'd never even know about them.
I will, after this pinch-hitting as devil's advocate, concede that the Nazi scientific practices are emotionally offensive to anyone with half of a brain. Our society has a manifest distaste for those sorts of methods, which is totally understandable. On the other hand, where there those willing to *volunteer* for such experiments.... hey, there's nothing wrong with that. I cannot condone experimenting on unwilling subjects, but I cannot deny the value of the information that these experiments have added to the knowledge base of the human race.
Seems like you can- crank your life view settings from two bit to greyscale and look at the big picture. Be objective and actually *THINK* about it.... rather than *FEEL* about it- that's where I'm coming from: in the case of my statements I've chosen to play science and cold fact over emotion.... nevermind the fact that my *feelings* on the matter are similar to yours.
Hell, if anything, deal with the fact that not everyone has or shares your opinion- you'll have a lot less stress in your life!
Army, Navy, Marines... they all get to test things like nerve gas and vaccinations so the masses don't have to. It's part of the job description- hundreds die to prove a hypothesis or run a test trial of something at MIGHT work. And you never hear about it.
It's a proven fact that war triggers massive technological innovation. Given the social and genetic diversity of the human race, there will ALWAYS be those that are in the eyes of others "morally questionable", who are willing to do these types of experiments in the advance of human knowledge.
And we scream bloody murder in moral outrage, beat their asses, take their data and build on it with our hands clean. Our society would be a mere shadow of what it is now had that little "opinion poll" of yours gone through... and the fact of the matter is that despite everything that happened during that period in time, the human race is BETTER for it all as a result.