I don't think so. He said there were other Zions before, and that when the time came, they completely eradicated them (I understand they erased every last trace of them). So, when new "rebels" develop in the Matrix, and finally escape it, they create a new Zion, without knowing it has been done... Nobody said the previous Zions were identical, or even similar to the present one. They probably weren't called Zions, too.
As for Smith, I think he managed to overwrite the human's mind at the beginning of the movie. I liked the scene where we see him cutting his own flesh: I think it's Smith having some hard time believing the real world.
Side question: can other programs in the Matrix overwrite human minds, or is it just one of the peculiarities of damaged-program-Smith (who can also duplicate as will - just like cancer cells, have you noticed? - without the Matrix knowing - or maybe the Matrix knows?).
As for the blast in the real world (which I consider real), I think Neo used the very same energy that the machines are pumping from their human batteries to generate a sort of EMP blast.
By the way #1, I hope you stayed until the end of the credits: there's the trailer for Matrix 3 there.
By the way #2, you have to be fluent in both French and English to completely enjoy this movie.:-) I can tell you that the whole theatre was laughing hard when the French guy was cursing (not that you would use this kind of swearing here: it contains no slang, that's unrealistic).
Actually, the Minitel is just a terminal with an internal (1200 bps) modem. I've used my Minitel to connect to my university mainframe, mostly to read my mail when I was on holiday.
Some people have connected their Minitel to their Linux machine. A (simple) custom cable needs to be soldered, and then all that needs to be done is to edit/etc/inittab, and eventually/etc/gettydefs!
The Minitel is more or less VT100-compatible, with some custom escape sequences to handle eight(?) colors (shades of gray on most models) and semi-graphical characters.
Have a look in/etc/termcap and/usr/share/terminfo, you will find a few "minitel" entries.
It's only free for the first three minutes (or is it 90 seconds now?). It may not sound much, but it's far sufficient to do a lookup in the directory (be it white or yellow pages), which is the main use most people had for it. Anyway, the directory service has never been really expensive. France Telecom's white pages and yellow pages web sites work just as well, now, and are offered for free.
As for pr0n, you are right that it was an important factor in the adoption of Minitel in France. By the way, the ubiquituous posters you mention were, most of the times, stuck on the back of road signs or on walls, which is illegal. Such posters still exist today, but they advertise web sites instead of Minitel services. I guess the "content providers" are the same, but the medium has changed.
Wrong: The terminal has never been free, as far as I know. Like many France Telecom products (phones, Minitels, faxes, etc.), various models could be rented or bought.
Paying around 3 euros per month is typical, but that's for old models. If you're looking for a new Minitel right now, you're in for some trouble: if you're a professionnal, you can go away with as low as 3.5 euros per month, but if you're not, your only choice is the last model left, a high-end one (combined phone/answering machine/Minitel with perhaps a smart card reader) for 7.56 euros per month or a flat 255 euros if you decline to rent it.
So, a Minitel is not that less expensive than a computer, especially now, with all the ultra-cheap computers available, and the ultra-expensive last few Minitels being manufactured.
It seems to me that the quality of their stuff has been dropping horribly.
Or perhaps you have aged terribly?;-)
Re:I will evaluate this from a lover's perspective
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 2
My wife is a pornography addict, (...) I plan on writing a letter to Sergey Brin at Google and encouraging him to stop linking to demeaning, relationship-ruining pornography.
Damn, just forgot to add: I have a laptop, and it had Win98 initially. The fan was always on, and it didn't occur to me that it was because there was no CPU idling in that OS, even though I knew the mechanism. I've upgraded to WinXP and I can tell you that it does idling.
Yes, and that's what Windows NT (and successors) don't do.
From the author of CPU Idle (which is a utility to just do that on 95/98/ME): While other operating systems like Linux always used this mechanism, Windows only learned it with NT. But even with NT and following versions it is only enabled when the BIOS and ACPI implementation is recognized by the OS.
There are programs to force Windows to do the halt trick
You only need to do the "HALT trick" on the DOS/Windows line (Win95, Win98, WinMe). As in Linux, Windows NT (and 2000, and XP) integrates an idler that does just that.
Jeez, have you ever looked at the list of the process that run in your OS? Look for something called "System Idle Process".
Well, there's not only unsupported hardware, there are also applications that only work under Windows. I'm working with Rational XDE, which is quite impressive in several areas (UML, customer support, price, memory consumption, among others), but only works under Windows.
Oh, and I just forgot to mention Microsoft Office, which is required where I work. Yes, it exists for the Mac, too, but I don't have a Mac.
As icing on the cake, I will add some of my digital camera's utilities, especially the photo stitcher and the remote camera capture tool.
Besides, working in Windows is not that bad once you've installed your usual survival kit: Vim, Unix Utilities, TortoiseCVS (check that one!), PuTTY, multiple desktops, etc.
Well, doh, it's a sampler disc. You would fully expect it to sound just great! I'm sure they've had a Team of Super Sound Engineers to fill the high-end.
Don't get so hyped on a single record. I'm willing to believe SACD sounds better than a CD, but I'm also certain that having a good sound engineer makes much more difference.
Looking at my CD collection, the symphonic version of the Princess Mononoke soundtrack sounds like shit and forces me to boost the volume to dangerous levels to enjoy it somewhat, while the symphonic version of the Castle in the Sky is simply the best-sounding CD I have ever heard. Same author, same technology, abysmal difference in quality.
... that the US doesn't have the best health system in the world, that the US doesn't have the best pension system in the world, and, globally, that the US are not the best place to live in the world.
Of course, there are place far worse than the US. It just isn't the best, it seems.
Do you have a link to the stories in which it was reported? I had sent a story, which was rejected too, because I hadn't found anything about that on Slashdot (searched for folding, folding@home, and Google -- the latter matching every single story on Slashdot, it seems).
Did you actually read it, or did you just skim through? It seems as if you read the beginning and the ending, missing everything in between.
What you say he wrote is false. He doesn't think a cool operating system is an end in itself, nor does he say that absolute control of a program is the dominent goal. You imply that he failed to see that most people just want to get the work done, whereas it is his whole point all along. You portray him as someone who has made one definitive choice, which is wrong - at the time of writing, it seems he was using Linux, Windows NT and BeOS, having abandoned Macs a few years before.
Folks have different goals, and contrary to what you say, he sees that very well. I now wonder what your goal is? Are you genuinely mislead by a quick skim, or are you a most subtle troller? The only valid point you make, and which I repeat here is was worth reading. Very true.
Plenty of stones die and are removed from the board, plenty of stones are sacrificed during a game... Won't this screw your mythical Eval(p)?
By the way, the article you refer to is six-years old; perhaps things have slightly changed in the computer Go world since then? E.g., Gnu Go has become much better this past year, and so have others, probably.
Play some Go seriously, you'll understand better why computers still have a long way to Go...
100 years ago, in Paris, a subway train caught fire, killing more than 100 people. The cause: high-intensity traction power sent through flexible cables throughout the train. Such lessons from the past are not easily forgotten...
Actually, things happened a bit differently. While it is true that the train caught fire due to an electrical wiring defect, the blaze didn't kill many people; most if not all the passengers of the train escaped and survived.
What happened is that the train being mostly made of wood, it generated a lot of smoke while burning. Additionnally, the venting in the subway tunnels was simply bad at that time. So, the hundred or so people who died there were in fact in the next train, which stayed stopped in the tunnel, where most of its passengers were asphyxied or killed in the panic that ensued.
It was still the very beginning of the subway at that time; lots of lessons were learned the hard way.
Spider and Web definitely doesn't contain this kind of thing.
Worlds Apart is a big game, but as far as I remember, it doesn't contain sex either -- at one point you control a young player-character, though.
Babel doesn't involve any minor, but contains violence -- nothing gratuitous, mind you, and most of it happened in the past.
Glowgrass is short, rather easy game, well suited for beginners. It involves a teenage girl (again!) as a non-player character but no sex anywere.
Savoir Faire is promising, given the review in the Baf's Guide to IF, and sex with minors just doesn't seem to fit in there, especially given that the author is a woman. Good old puzzles and locks, this might be the next game I play, when I have the time.
Anchorhead... Damn true! It is actually a crucial plot element, and I understand it can disgust you. But then, the character involved in these infamous acts is supposed to be one of the worst evils to exist on Earth.
I don't think I know the two other ones; perhaps the last one is I0 by Adam Cadre? I've only played it for a few minutes, and it is indeed rather explicit, if you want it to be.
All-in-all, yes, two games I know and which involve sex and minors. However, not in the way you suggested: I thought, as most of the people who read your comment probably, that you were talking about games in which the player-character is actively engaged in sex with minors, which is by far not the case in these games.
Even though "sex with minors" can be a very dirty and cheap trick to attract an audience, I don't think these two games are wrong to use it the way they do. We are reaching the domain of personal, ethical, religious beliefs, so I won't delve further into this.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think so. He said there were other Zions before, and that when the time came, they completely eradicated them (I understand they erased every last trace of them). So, when new "rebels" develop in the Matrix, and finally escape it, they create a new Zion, without knowing it has been done... Nobody said the previous Zions were identical, or even similar to the present one. They probably weren't called Zions, too.
:-) I can tell you that the whole theatre was laughing hard when the French guy was cursing (not that you would use this kind of swearing here: it contains no slang, that's unrealistic).
As for Smith, I think he managed to overwrite the human's mind at the beginning of the movie. I liked the scene where we see him cutting his own flesh: I think it's Smith having some hard time believing the real world.
Side question: can other programs in the Matrix overwrite human minds, or is it just one of the peculiarities of damaged-program-Smith (who can also duplicate as will - just like cancer cells, have you noticed? - without the Matrix knowing - or maybe the Matrix knows?).
As for the blast in the real world (which I consider real), I think Neo used the very same energy that the machines are pumping from their human batteries to generate a sort of EMP blast.
By the way #1, I hope you stayed until the end of the credits: there's the trailer for Matrix 3 there.
By the way #2, you have to be fluent in both French and English to completely enjoy this movie.
Movie seen in Paris, in English with subtitles.
I sure hope not, and I don't think so!
Actually, the Minitel is just a terminal with an internal (1200 bps) modem. I've used my Minitel to connect to my university mainframe, mostly to read my mail when I was on holiday.
/etc/inittab, and eventually /etc/gettydefs!
/etc/termcap and /usr/share/terminfo, you will find a few "minitel" entries.
Some people have connected their Minitel to their Linux machine. A (simple) custom cable needs to be soldered, and then all that needs to be done is to edit
The Minitel is more or less VT100-compatible, with some custom escape sequences to handle eight(?) colors (shades of gray on most models) and semi-graphical characters.
Have a look in
It's only free for the first three minutes (or is it 90 seconds now?). It may not sound much, but it's far sufficient to do a lookup in the directory (be it white or yellow pages), which is the main use most people had for it. Anyway, the directory service has never been really expensive. France Telecom's white pages and yellow pages web sites work just as well, now, and are offered for free.
As for pr0n, you are right that it was an important factor in the adoption of Minitel in France. By the way, the ubiquituous posters you mention were, most of the times, stuck on the back of road signs or on walls, which is illegal. Such posters still exist today, but they advertise web sites instead of Minitel services. I guess the "content providers" are the same, but the medium has changed.
Wrong: The terminal has never been free, as far as I know. Like many France Telecom products (phones, Minitels, faxes, etc.), various models could be rented or bought.
Paying around 3 euros per month is typical, but that's for old models. If you're looking for a new Minitel right now, you're in for some trouble: if you're a professionnal, you can go away with as low as 3.5 euros per month, but if you're not, your only choice is the last model left, a high-end one (combined phone/answering machine/Minitel with perhaps a smart card reader) for 7.56 euros per month or a flat 255 euros if you decline to rent it.
So, a Minitel is not that less expensive than a computer, especially now, with all the ultra-cheap computers available, and the ultra-expensive last few Minitels being manufactured.
It seems to me that the quality of their stuff has been dropping horribly.
;-)
Or perhaps you have aged terribly?
My wife is a pornography addict, (...) I plan on writing a letter to Sergey Brin at Google and encouraging him to stop linking to demeaning, relationship-ruining pornography.
Are you real?
If I remember correctly, the first and last man on the Moon were the only ones to be civilian. All the others were from the military.
:)
I find this interesting, but perhaps I'm wrong, so please correct me.
Damn, just forgot to add: I have a laptop, and it had Win98 initially. The fan was always on, and it didn't occur to me that it was because there was no CPU idling in that OS, even though I knew the mechanism. I've upgraded to WinXP and I can tell you that it does idling.
That's what 95/98/ME do for sure.
Yes, and that's what Windows NT (and successors) don't do.
From the author of CPU Idle (which is a utility to just do that on 95/98/ME): While other operating systems like Linux always used this mechanism, Windows only learned it with NT. But even with NT and following versions it is only enabled when the BIOS and ACPI implementation is recognized by the OS.
Why didn't MS just use text file system instead of a crappy registry that needs a tool to keep it in check.
Performance and obscurity were two features they wanted to have.
There are programs to force Windows to do the halt trick
You only need to do the "HALT trick" on the DOS/Windows line (Win95, Win98, WinMe). As in Linux, Windows NT (and 2000, and XP) integrates an idler that does just that.
Jeez, have you ever looked at the list of the process that run in your OS? Look for something called "System Idle Process".
Well, there's not only unsupported hardware, there are also applications that only work under Windows. I'm working with Rational XDE, which is quite impressive in several areas (UML, customer support, price, memory consumption, among others), but only works under Windows.
Oh, and I just forgot to mention Microsoft Office, which is required where I work. Yes, it exists for the Mac, too, but I don't have a Mac.
As icing on the cake, I will add some of my digital camera's utilities, especially the photo stitcher and the remote camera capture tool.
Besides, working in Windows is not that bad once you've installed your usual survival kit: Vim, Unix Utilities, TortoiseCVS (check that one!), PuTTY, multiple desktops, etc.
As in, we did a user survey, and they all are in favor of WMA? I'll be surprised if they sell Oggs.
Well, doh, it's a sampler disc. You would fully expect it to sound just great! I'm sure they've had a Team of Super Sound Engineers to fill the high-end.
Don't get so hyped on a single record. I'm willing to believe SACD sounds better than a CD, but I'm also certain that having a good sound engineer makes much more difference.
Looking at my CD collection, the symphonic version of the Princess Mononoke soundtrack sounds like shit and forces me to boost the volume to dangerous levels to enjoy it somewhat, while the symphonic version of the Castle in the Sky is simply the best-sounding CD I have ever heard. Same author, same technology, abysmal difference in quality.
rec.games.roguelike.nethack has an acronym for this: YASD, Yet Another Stupid Death.
Slashdotted instantly. Damn.
... that the US doesn't have the best health system in the world, that the US doesn't have the best pension system in the world, and, globally, that the US are not the best place to live in the world.
Of course, there are place far worse than the US. It just isn't the best, it seems.
Do you have a link to the stories in which it was reported? I had sent a story, which was rejected too, because I hadn't found anything about that on Slashdot (searched for folding, folding@home, and Google -- the latter matching every single story on Slashdot, it seems).
Interesting read, (blah blah blah)
Did you actually read it, or did you just skim through? It seems as if you read the beginning and the ending, missing everything in between.
What you say he wrote is false. He doesn't think a cool operating system is an end in itself, nor does he say that absolute control of a program is the dominent goal. You imply that he failed to see that most people just want to get the work done, whereas it is his whole point all along. You portray him as someone who has made one definitive choice, which is wrong - at the time of writing, it seems he was using Linux, Windows NT and BeOS, having abandoned Macs a few years before.
Folks have different goals, and contrary to what you say, he sees that very well. I now wonder what your goal is? Are you genuinely mislead by a quick skim, or are you a most subtle troller? The only valid point you make, and which I repeat here is was worth reading. Very true.
Plenty of stones die and are removed from the board, plenty of stones are sacrificed during a game... Won't this screw your mythical Eval(p)?
By the way, the article you refer to is six-years old; perhaps things have slightly changed in the computer Go world since then? E.g., Gnu Go has become much better this past year, and so have others, probably.
Play some Go seriously, you'll understand better why computers still have a long way to Go...
100 years ago, in Paris, a subway train caught fire, killing more than 100 people. The cause: high-intensity traction power sent through flexible cables throughout the train. Such lessons from the past are not easily forgotten...
Actually, things happened a bit differently. While it is true that the train caught fire due to an electrical wiring defect, the blaze didn't kill many people; most if not all the passengers of the train escaped and survived.
What happened is that the train being mostly made of wood, it generated a lot of smoke while burning. Additionnally, the venting in the subway tunnels was simply bad at that time. So, the hundred or so people who died there were in fact in the next train, which stayed stopped in the tunnel, where most of its passengers were asphyxied or killed in the panic that ensued.
It was still the very beginning of the subway at that time; lots of lessons were learned the hard way.
Spider and Web definitely doesn't contain this kind of thing.
Worlds Apart is a big game, but as far as I remember, it doesn't contain sex either -- at one point you control a young player-character, though.
Babel doesn't involve any minor, but contains violence -- nothing gratuitous, mind you, and most of it happened in the past.
Glowgrass is short, rather easy game, well suited for beginners. It involves a teenage girl (again!) as a non-player character but no sex anywere.
Savoir Faire is promising, given the review in the Baf's Guide to IF, and sex with minors just doesn't seem to fit in there, especially given that the author is a woman. Good old puzzles and locks, this might be the next game I play, when I have the time.
Anchorhead... Damn true! It is actually a crucial plot element, and I understand it can disgust you. But then, the character involved in these infamous acts is supposed to be one of the worst evils to exist on Earth.
I don't think I know the two other ones; perhaps the last one is I0 by Adam Cadre? I've only played it for a few minutes, and it is indeed rather explicit, if you want it to be.
All-in-all, yes, two games I know and which involve sex and minors. However, not in the way you suggested: I thought, as most of the people who read your comment probably, that you were talking about games in which the player-character is actively engaged in sex with minors, which is by far not the case in these games.
Even though "sex with minors" can be a very dirty and cheap trick to attract an audience, I don't think these two games are wrong to use it the way they do. We are reaching the domain of personal, ethical, religious beliefs, so I won't delve further into this.
KDE 3.2 will also feature the ability to use Vim as the mail composer
But will EMACS 21.3 feature the ability to use KDE as the window manager?