some estimates say 20.000 died during the production of the 6.000 V2 rockets, by accidents, desease, death marches and mass executions. that does of course not include the people that were hit by the rockets.
the nasa biography of his somehow misses that page.
some reasons are of course sports and to piss off microsoft.
a more serious reason would be that by the time a stable, non-mod-chip version that takes advantage of the hardwares capabilities, you probably can get an xbox for really cheap (and if all its hardware was supported, it should be worth even the $200 of today).
just like certain nations openly care more about cheap Iraqi oil than getting rid of a threat to the whole Middle East. It's a moral issue.
i'm not a nation, but i am against a war on iraq. and the reason is not cheap oil. i don't even have a car (yes, i know that an increase in oil prices would make virtually everything more expensive.).
there must not be a war on iraq as long as the other problems in the region are not solved and everything has stabelized a for a while. the consequences would be unpredictable, and it would destabelize the whole region for many years, if not decades. it is not a good signal to the arab world, taking their general scepticism about the US.
and what would happen in iraq after the war? the various opposition groups are willing to work together now, united only by the idea to get rid of saddam. they certainly will not be able to find a solution for the future of the country that satisfies all because none of them will be willing to give back power over areas they gained during the war, especially because the opposition groups cover all of the political spectrum and belong to different ethnic groups. the kurds might form a state of their own in the north, which would mean terrible trouble with turkey, even after the cold war still a very important ally of the US.
take a look at afghanistan. the opposition groups joined forces by themselves long before the intervention, and not like the iraqis who were told "no attack if you don't unite". what we have now is an interim government for afghanistan that has some power over kabul. beyond the capital warlords still reign. but don't get me wrong here, it's a good thing the taliban is gone, it's just to show how delicate the situation is.
but a war on iraq in the near future is really bad for the world, and not because the bit of oil iraq is allowed to sell is taken off the market.
which takes me to your war-on-iraq-increases-energy-prices theory. while prices might increase because of the instability of the region if there is war on iraq, the OPEC will try to keep prices from skyrocketing. they have a vital interest in keeping prices on a level that on the one hand ensures them of a (huge) revenue stream, but on the other hand not on such a high level that makes their customers look into the possibilities of alternative energy sources (i'm not taking about drilling for oil in alascan wildlife resorts), increasing effectivity and saving in general. there is still enough oil for two or three decades that they want to sell.
as a sidenote, i believe the whole world would benefit of increased energy costs in the US, taking their responsibility for 25% of the global co2 emmissions...
just rent a safe deposit box in a swiss bank. prepay for the time you want the information to be withheld.
you could deposit only a part of the information and other parts somewhere else, with detailed instructions where to send them when they are to be revealed. of course, you would need backup copies in case one gets lost.
i actually just came back from the movies, maybe fifteen minutes ago. 2001. in panavision (don't know if super).
i am wearing a blue t-shirt with HAL written in IBM like letters on it.
last summer we had a video projector from our university and watched it on the neighbours house from the balkony:)
heise reports here (in german) that DARPA will publish information about their own competition tomorrow, called Grand Challenge.
according to the article, it will be held in 2004, going all the way from LA to Las Vegas. it will be for autonomous robots, no human help allowed. the winner will get 1 mio $, so get working.
they are quoting US media in the article, so there should be some infos in english somewhere.
good point. on the other hand, there are two possible scenarios for a x86 port:
the boring one is apple decides to switch to x86 for themselves and prevent non-apple operating systems from booting. x86 is under heavy development, and that way they would not have to convince developers to optimize for their 4% market share processors.
what i of course would like to see is osX running on my x86 box. i'd buy it right away, and i know a lot of people who would, too. i imagine some companies would look into this as well, considering the new ms licensing sceme.
one of the reasons BeOS failed was because companies (as it turned out, rightfully) feared there would not be any BeOS around when they would be done with their product. taking apples loyal user base in account, they could be fairly sure there would be some customers left (even customers that are very used to paying good money) when their port/development is finished.
don't get me wrong, i doubt this will happen. but i belive apple could very well survive in a a market that has x86 based macs and osX for x86 on the shelves. even if third party (guess which one) operating systems would run on their machines. if they can't gain market share with osX on their proprietary hardware i can't see why they shouldn't try to sell their os to the hords of unhappy windows users and their hardware to the ones unwilling to switch.
after all, apple doesn't sell hardware anymore, but lifstyle.
to me, that sounds like apple is preparing for a time when MS decides -- for valid reasons, of course -- to discontinue their office product line for the mac. btw, any new rumors about OS X for x86 out there?
As far as LSD and politics, it was the professors involved in those experiments (ie Tim Leary) who engaged in politics. And they were bad at it. And they lost. And the substances ended up scheduled. And their academic careers were ruined.
not exactly. learys academic career was ruined because he and his team did not notice in time that their research had become a political issue. stopping research on possible uses of psychedelic drugs is a prime example of preventing promising research for political reasons. if that doesn't make a scientist poltitical, what will?
Although, like any drug addict, he is in denial; it is clear that it could possibly be the reason why he is mentally ill now; because of abusing drugs that effect the chemicals in the brain in ways that we understand even less than AI.
so, critisizing the lack of research about possible medical uses of lsd and marijuana makes him a drug addict? and don't you think that even after smoking huge amounds of pot one could remember if one had depressions before?
i smoke pot for recreational puposes. that it happens to greatly reduce both the intensity and frequency of headaches i had since i was three is a side effect i was surprised to notice. it makes my life more comfortable, but for others who suffer from more serious illness it makes life bearable, or helps them to handle side effects from chemo therapy or weight loss from aids. denying them access to marijuana is a crime, imho. so is preventing research to possible uses with glucomea, asthma, alzheimer (yes) or ms (multiple sclerosis. it won't cure "microsoft").
doing research for possible medical uses of a plant that was used as a medicine for thousands of years seems logical to me. he noticed that it helps himself, and now he is promoting research. nothing wrong with that.
i don't even know what the clocks are good for. i get the time by the push of a button on my tv (teletext, so no programming required). i set the vcr clock to anything to keep it from nagging, because i'm to lazy to put a tape over it. i generally mistrust hifis with a clock.
the windows desktop colors are set to be the least annoying (contrary to the way the windows appear, btw). but quite frankly, i doubt joe user knows how to change it (if he heared it was possible at all). observe non-techies use interfaces if you get the chance. you will be amazed.
Yeah, right: if your VCR were designed by interface designers, like Microsoft Word, it would have 200 buttons, be bigger than the TV set, crash with regularity, and cost $500.
that's if you hire a bad interface designer. see below.
The reason why VCR clocks are hard to set is because there isn't much room for buttons or much money for fancy software. It's called an "engineering tradeoff". Get used to it.
my cheapo vcr has an on screen menu. there is plenty of room.
If you want a better VCR, pay more: the high end ones are simpler to use or set themselves automatically.
they are simpler to use because they were designed by better interface designers. the vcr clock thing was supposed to be an example. it seemed to be common knowledge people can't set the clock on their vcrs. maybe it's not true. i hope it's not true.
the good thing about using flash for interfaces is that interface designers can implement the interfaces. at least if it's not a dynamic interface, you don't need real programmers. that way you avoid communication problems and the designer knows what's possible, what has certain advantages/disadvatnages and so on. engineers often even write the manuals.
"actionscript" is based on ECMA (like javascript). this works really good for interfaces, oop is there, anything more real programming language would be overkill. plus, you would need programmers to make the interfaces not interface designers.
And embedded system programmers are much more likely to feel comfortable with Java than with Flash.
embedded system programmers shouldn't make the interfaces anyway. interface designers should, and they are much more likely to feel comfortable with flash. the reason why people can't set the clock on their vcr is that technical people make the interfaces, not interface designers.
i don't really get what this story is about. it can communicate via xml. that is good, but not really special. if it can communicate via xml, of course it can communicate with flash.
If a design breaks because of the introduction of a rectangular resource, then it was broken to begin with.
a banner is made to draw your attention. of course it brakes your design. did you ever think that a certain banner looked good on a certain cite?
Or you could do what intelligent people do and stop reinventing the wheel, then use the multitude of instant messaging systems already available. Then they wouldn't be stuck on your site all the time if they wanted to talk to each other - that would definitely be an end user benefit.
hmmm... so do you suggest to use the AIM they have or the MSN stuff that came preinstalled on their machines, or make them download jabber and follow the simple instructions you provided? and how would you convince the customer (the one paying you for your work) that it's a good thing the users wouldn't be stuck on your site? you could use jabber out of an swf, you know...
javascript behaves consistently on the same platform
as i said, developing and testing for different platforms is expensive. and platform here means possible os/browser combinations. just yesterday (coincidently, i'm not making this up) a friend asked me some simple javascript questions. i warned him that his solution would only work in ie and he said he knew but wouldn't mind. that was not a commercial project, however.
don't get me wrong, javascript is nice as long as you stick to one platform. but if you go beyond win/ie it is soon getting painful.
actionscript (flashs build in scripting language) is ECMA, too, but behaves the same on every platform that has the swf plugin, be it win, mac, linux or your mobile phone. and i'd bet there are more swf runtimes around then there are for javascript(s).
unfortionatly, there is so much prejudice and irrational hate about swfs out there in the open source community that not many tools for creating swfs are being developed. the standart is open. in runs on everything (almost). it has great advantages and it won't just go away.
i use mozilla, too, but i'm glad it has the swf plugin.
you really can't blame the webdesigners for the adverts. can you imagine a designer who sais "can't we have an extra column of ads on the left? they would go exeptionally well with the banner on the top..."? i know designers and believe me they hate banners as much as you do privately and even more profesionally. they percept banners as an intrusion into their territory. they can't influence the colours and fonts used, and the overall "weight", so it brakes their design.
there are only as many banners as the customer wants to have. and a good web developer will tell the customer if a requested feature would lock some potential visitors out. that includes wether swfs should be used or not, what version if so, and so on. the use of swfs should be justified. in the simplest of all cases, that means some functionality that is required can't be done in html properly. youre options with lynx are very limited. if it's "only information" then plain html can do that, and plain html should be used. however, if e.g. real time communicaion between two visitors is wished you would have to call a cgi every few seconds or so that returns, say, a chat window content after every request (that's how most webchats work). i don't consider that very elegant. using a swf, you could keep a socket connection open an push new submissions as they come via a java server using an xml stream. so you could trade in about 4% (non-macromedia-statistic, but i can't remember where, sorry) or so web users for a greatly reduced server load and a wider range of possibilities. if done _properly_ (note the emphasis), you can (and should) seperate functionality, appearance and content of a website. the content could be in a database and used by both a swf version and a html version of the site. easy updates of both content and appearance, plus it saves money, too. you mustn't forget that companies value their corporate identity very high. in html you're stuck with the fonts that are installed on the client (unknown to you). layouting is difficult. you have to test on all kinds of browsers, systems and versions constantly. javascript behaves differently from platform to platform. that makes development slow (read: expensive for the customer). that's why swfs often are used for some tasks that would clearly be html if only the browsers were consistent.
you really shouldn't blame the tool for what people use it for. as i said, i agree information should be acessible by anybody. but when layout becomes an issue, or some interactivity is required, swfs can solve a lot of problems.
a last word about the "arty" sites. if they are done well, they can make another artists day. you are not required to look at them (and i assume you don't).
and to finally answer your question: no, i did not notice that sites using swfs have more adverts than plain html sites.
Slashdot Mirror
the nasa biography of his somehow misses that page.
some reasons are of course sports and to piss off microsoft.
a more serious reason would be that by the time a stable, non-mod-chip version that takes advantage of the hardwares capabilities, you probably can get an xbox for really cheap (and if all its hardware was supported, it should be worth even the $200 of today).
i'm not a nation, but i am against a war on iraq. and the reason is not cheap oil. i don't even have a car (yes, i know that an increase in oil prices would make virtually everything more expensive.).
there must not be a war on iraq as long as the other problems in the region are not solved and everything has stabelized a for a while. the consequences would be unpredictable, and it would destabelize the whole region for many years, if not decades. it is not a good signal to the arab world, taking their general scepticism about the US.
and what would happen in iraq after the war? the various opposition groups are willing to work together now, united only by the idea to get rid of saddam. they certainly will not be able to find a solution for the future of the country that satisfies all because none of them will be willing to give back power over areas they gained during the war, especially because the opposition groups cover all of the political spectrum and belong to different ethnic groups. the kurds might form a state of their own in the north, which would mean terrible trouble with turkey, even after the cold war still a very important ally of the US.
take a look at afghanistan. the opposition groups joined forces by themselves long before the intervention, and not like the iraqis who were told "no attack if you don't unite". what we have now is an interim government for afghanistan that has some power over kabul. beyond the capital warlords still reign. but don't get me wrong here, it's a good thing the taliban is gone, it's just to show how delicate the situation is.
but a war on iraq in the near future is really bad for the world, and not because the bit of oil iraq is allowed to sell is taken off the market.
which takes me to your war-on-iraq-increases-energy-prices theory. while prices might increase because of the instability of the region if there is war on iraq, the OPEC will try to keep prices from skyrocketing. they have a vital interest in keeping prices on a level that on the one hand ensures them of a (huge) revenue stream, but on the other hand not on such a high level that makes their customers look into the possibilities of alternative energy sources (i'm not taking about drilling for oil in alascan wildlife resorts), increasing effectivity and saving in general. there is still enough oil for two or three decades that they want to sell.
as a sidenote, i believe the whole world would benefit of increased energy costs in the US, taking their responsibility for 25% of the global co2 emmissions...
you could deposit only a part of the information and other parts somewhere else, with detailed instructions where to send them when they are to be revealed. of course, you would need backup copies in case one gets lost.
i am wearing a blue t-shirt with HAL written in IBM like letters on it.
last summer we had a video projector from our university and watched it on the neighbours house from the balkony :)
er, no. mine parks when not in use for a while, just like my monitor does.
still, we used 4.800 kwh last year in a shared appartment with four.
paul: you know bill, they won't let us patent anything we want in europe.
bill: those bastards! no more XP for them!
paul: you're right. let's see how far this linux thing will get them.
bill: hehe, another step closer to world domination...
according to the article, it will be held in 2004, going all the way from LA to Las Vegas. it will be for autonomous robots, no human help allowed.
the winner will get 1 mio $, so get working.
they are quoting US media in the article, so there should be some infos in english somewhere.
interesting. i've never heared of cocoa. :)
but i believe the when is somewhat connected to the g5. i just don't know how
on the other hand, there are two possible scenarios for a x86 port:
the boring one is apple decides to switch to x86 for themselves and prevent non-apple operating systems from booting. x86 is under heavy development, and that way they would not have to convince developers to optimize for their 4% market share processors.
what i of course would like to see is osX running on my x86 box. i'd buy it right away, and i know a lot of people who would, too. i imagine some companies would look into this as well, considering the new ms licensing sceme.
one of the reasons BeOS failed was because companies (as it turned out, rightfully) feared there would not be any BeOS around when they would be done with their product. taking apples loyal user base in account, they could be fairly sure there would be some customers left (even customers that are very used to paying good money) when their port/development is finished.
don't get me wrong, i doubt this will happen. but i belive apple could very well survive in a a market that has x86 based macs and osX for x86 on the shelves. even if third party (guess which one) operating systems would run on their machines.
if they can't gain market share with osX on their proprietary hardware i can't see why they shouldn't try to sell their os to the hords of unhappy windows users and their hardware to the ones unwilling to switch.
after all, apple doesn't sell hardware anymore, but lifstyle.
btw, thank you for bringing up this topic. it draws bullshit comments like a magnet, but needs to be publicly adressed anyway.
to me, that sounds like apple is preparing for a time when MS decides -- for valid reasons, of course -- to discontinue their office product line for the mac.
btw, any new rumors about OS X for x86 out there?
yes. like the one tim learys harvard crew did in the early 1960's.
not exactly. learys academic career was ruined because he and his team did not notice in time that their research had become a political issue. stopping research on possible uses of psychedelic drugs is a prime example of preventing promising research for political reasons.
if that doesn't make a scientist poltitical, what will?
so, critisizing the lack of research about possible medical uses of lsd and marijuana makes him a drug addict?
and don't you think that even after smoking huge amounds of pot one could remember if one had depressions before?
i smoke pot for recreational puposes. that it happens to greatly reduce both the intensity and frequency of headaches i had since i was three is a side effect i was surprised to notice. it makes my life more comfortable, but for others who suffer from more serious illness it makes life bearable, or helps them to handle side effects from chemo therapy or weight loss from aids.
denying them access to marijuana is a crime, imho. so is preventing research to possible uses with glucomea, asthma, alzheimer (yes) or ms (multiple sclerosis. it won't cure "microsoft").
doing research for possible medical uses of a plant that was used as a medicine for thousands of years seems logical to me.
he noticed that it helps himself, and now he is promoting research. nothing wrong with that.
i don't even know what the clocks are good for. i get the time by the push of a button on my tv (teletext, so no programming required). i set the vcr clock to anything to keep it from nagging, because i'm to lazy to put a tape over it. i generally mistrust hifis with a clock.
the windows desktop colors are set to be the least annoying (contrary to the way the windows appear, btw). but quite frankly, i doubt joe user knows how to change it (if he heared it was possible at all).
observe non-techies use interfaces if you get the chance. you will be amazed.
that's if you hire a bad interface designer. see below.
The reason why VCR clocks are hard to set is because there isn't much room for buttons or much money for fancy software. It's called an "engineering tradeoff". Get used to it.
my cheapo vcr has an on screen menu. there is plenty of room.
If you want a better VCR, pay more: the high end ones are simpler to use or set themselves automatically.
they are simpler to use because they were designed by better interface designers.
the vcr clock thing was supposed to be an example. it seemed to be common knowledge people can't set the clock on their vcrs. maybe it's not true. i hope it's not true.
the good thing about using flash for interfaces is that interface designers can implement the interfaces. at least if it's not a dynamic interface, you don't need real programmers. that way you avoid communication problems and the designer knows what's possible, what has certain advantages/disadvatnages and so on.
engineers often even write the manuals.
"actionscript" is based on ECMA (like javascript). this works really good for interfaces, oop is there, anything more real programming language would be overkill. plus, you would need programmers to make the interfaces not interface designers.
embedded system programmers shouldn't make the interfaces anyway. interface designers should, and they are much more likely to feel comfortable with flash.
the reason why people can't set the clock on their vcr is that technical people make the interfaces, not interface designers.
actually, it's 10:36 in the morning. it was 10:24 when you posted this -- welcome to global communications.
it can communicate via xml. that is good, but not really special. if it can communicate via xml, of course it can communicate with flash.
so... what's it about?
i bet you can't imagine a reason why people would want to have a computer at home. maybe they will sell, say, five in the world.
don't you think that somebody who finds people to do suicide attacks could find someone who could operate one of the existing stego tools?
a banner is made to draw your attention. of course it brakes your design. did you ever think that a certain banner looked good on a certain cite?
Or you could do what intelligent people do and stop reinventing the wheel, then use the multitude of instant messaging systems already available. Then they wouldn't be stuck on your site all the time if they wanted to talk to each other - that would definitely be an end user benefit.
hmmm... so do you suggest to use the AIM they have or the MSN stuff that came preinstalled on their machines, or make them download jabber and follow the simple instructions you provided? and how would you convince the customer (the one paying you for your work) that it's a good thing the users wouldn't be stuck on your site?
you could use jabber out of an swf, you know...
javascript behaves consistently on the same platform
as i said, developing and testing for different platforms is expensive. and platform here means possible os/browser combinations.
just yesterday (coincidently, i'm not making this up) a friend asked me some simple javascript questions. i warned him that his solution would only work in ie and he said he knew but wouldn't mind. that was not a commercial project, however.
don't get me wrong, javascript is nice as long as you stick to one platform. but if you go beyond win/ie it is soon getting painful.
actionscript (flashs build in scripting language) is ECMA, too, but behaves the same on every platform that has the swf plugin, be it win, mac, linux or your mobile phone. and i'd bet there are more swf runtimes around then there are for javascript(s).
unfortionatly, there is so much prejudice and irrational hate about swfs out there in the open source community that not many tools for creating swfs are being developed. the standart is open. in runs on everything (almost). it has great advantages and it won't just go away.
you really can't blame the webdesigners for the adverts. can you imagine a designer who sais "can't we have an extra column of ads on the left? they would go exeptionally well with the banner on the top..."?
i know designers and believe me they hate banners as much as you do privately and even more profesionally. they percept banners as an intrusion into their territory. they can't influence the colours and fonts used, and the overall "weight", so it brakes their design.
there are only as many banners as the customer wants to have. and a good web developer will tell the customer if a requested feature would lock some potential visitors out. that includes wether swfs should be used or not, what version if so, and so on.
the use of swfs should be justified. in the simplest of all cases, that means some functionality that is required can't be done in html properly. youre options with lynx are very limited. if it's "only information" then plain html can do that, and plain html should be used.
however, if e.g. real time communicaion between two visitors is wished you would have to call a cgi every few seconds or so that returns, say, a chat window content after every request (that's how most webchats work). i don't consider that very elegant.
using a swf, you could keep a socket connection open an push new submissions as they come via a java server using an xml stream. so you could trade in about 4% (non-macromedia-statistic, but i can't remember where, sorry) or so web users for a greatly reduced server load and a wider range of possibilities.
if done _properly_ (note the emphasis), you can (and should) seperate functionality, appearance and content of a website. the content could be in a database and used by both a swf version and a html version of the site. easy updates of both content and appearance, plus it saves money, too.
you mustn't forget that companies value their corporate identity very high. in html you're stuck with the fonts that are installed on the client (unknown to you). layouting is difficult. you have to test on all kinds of browsers, systems and versions constantly. javascript behaves differently from platform to platform. that makes development slow (read: expensive for the customer).
that's why swfs often are used for some tasks that would clearly be html if only the browsers were consistent.
you really shouldn't blame the tool for what people use it for. as i said, i agree information should be acessible by anybody. but when layout becomes an issue, or some interactivity is required, swfs can solve a lot of problems.
a last word about the "arty" sites. if they are done well, they can make another artists day. you are not required to look at them (and i assume you don't).
and to finally answer your question: no, i did not notice that sites using swfs have more adverts than plain html sites.