Of course, Czech sci-fi author and playwright Karel Capek (1890-1938) -- author of the seminal War With the News -- "invented" the word "robot", in his play (Rossum's Universal Robots) (1921, aka R.U.R.). It is derived from the Czech word "robota" meaning "work" (esp. in the sense of forced labour), sometimes defined as meaning "worker". So now you know.
All fantasy not more than a rewrite of The Hobbit? What a bizarre idea. I'd think The Lord of the Rings was more than that (or was that just a rip-off of TH too?), and certainly stuff like the Narnia books, The Wyrm Ouroboros (which predates TH) and many, many others are completely unrelated. As for Orwell, your statement is just plain ridiculous. It's like saying every story in the world is essentially a rip-off, which is untrue; I guess evolutionary storytelling is not a part of your vocabulary. The derministic implications of your remarks amount to a huge insult to the world of fiction.
As for the technological nitpickings, they are not high on my list of problems with The Matrix -- but the fact that it's so mind-bogglingly stupid is. And stupid begets stupid.
I am willing to live with the shortcomings of the plot though. For example, "the AI has had millenia to perfect its programming" and all it could think up was three silly agents dressed in black? Now, this is a system which is in complete and utter control of its environment; you have to ask why it would not simply unplug threatening beings at whim. A more rational response would be for the agents to report Neo's identity to the mother computer and having the computer shut down the real-world Neo's reality support system, or even kill him. This perfectly refined system allows people to move faster than bullets? What kind of a security hole is that? And the idea that guns are effective against a simulated environment which can change its characteristics at will is not appealing. I can brush it off and ignore it as a flaw in the script... or make excuses such as "Oh, but the system isn't really in control" (which doesn't explain why it can insert agents into this environment -- an ability which is stated explicitly). It doesn't exactly help the suspension of disbelief so common in the world of fiction. I'd love to hear an explanation of how they jack into this reality through the telephony system. And why cell phones can't be used.
A more significant point is that the film believes in solving things with guns. It shows its true nature -- it doesn't believe in the Zen stuff it occasionally tries to preach, it doesn't believe in intelligent resolutions to conflicts. You solve problems with big guns. What kind of an ideology is that? What kind of advanced, intelligent being ("homo sapiens") would believe in such an ideology?
Regarding your point (d), you're right.
What I'm really interested in is how you can one-sidedly defend something as exploitive as The Matrix (a film which ironically preaches a "wake up from conformism" kind of sidetheme) with the kind of fanaticism as you do. Would it hurt to be a little critically-minded?
Agreed. The Matrix made a lot of little boys and girls happy. It was insanely stupid, clichéd, reeked of plagiarism (William Gibson or Philip K. Dick anyone?), and a number of silly plot holes that weren't even intensional.
A feast for the dim-witted who go "Woah! I'm confused! I find myself curiously dazzled beyond my meagre intelligence!" when the film reveals that "The Matrix" is actually an artificial reality. And a painful two hours+ to those who saw this revelation coming already during the trailer, and waited needlessly for the moment where this and other vaguely sketched ideas would be fleshed out. Talking about dumbing down.
Why rip off Gibson or Dick when you can have the real thing anyhow? Oh, yeah, I remember. Because you've gotta have kung fu. Can't have science fiction without kung fu. And guns. Lots of guns. (The really mindblowing part of The Matrix was the fact that you would fight artificial goons with artificial guns in an artificial reality. Why not just push the "Power Off" button or hack the reality software?)
For a real good mindf*ck go read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It has no guns, just one or two spaceships, and the scariest villain ever invented within the realm of fiction. And it doesn't believe in dumb audiences.
Patents: Good grief. You have to wonder how anybody should be able to develop any kind of software these days without bumping into one of Inprise's patents.
Thanks for the info. I guess I missed the part about the patent infringment stuff.
> Did Borland sell out or lose out? I think not!
I didn't say anything about "selling out". We're not talking about some kind of Rebel Force here. Inprise/Borland is a software company. They can partner with anyone they like. Lately they've been MS' beds; all I did was outline a possible direction for them (ie., MS partners with Inprise because it gives them an escape road to Linux development) given this.
> Looks like they are heading in this direction already - see http://www.borland.com/techvoyage/jediinitiative.h tml
Nah. At least not now. They're woefully under-coordinated, and has been since the inception. Besides, the JEDI are about "open source", but rather about helping Inprise translate C header files to ObjectPascal. (Oddly enough Inprise could have integrated their C/C++ front end compiler into Delphi and the problem would have been resolved, and JEDI totally redundant.)
I have the floppy disk right here. It's a promotional copy -- the full OS takes a lot more than just the ony floppy -- but the point remains that you can fit the GUI, web browser, etc. on a single disk. Aside from the GUI part (QNX uses X, last I recall), OSes like Linux and *BSD probably do, too. Now, try that with any brand starting with the word "Windows".;-)
Don't agree. Notice how Inprise and MS entered a significant partnership not long ago -- 8-10 months ago if I'm not too mistaken -- when Inprise agreed to a settlement in their case against MS regarding the employee drain (Anders Hejlsberg and Paul Gross and others being lured into joining MS). Inprise dropped charges, they entered a strategic agreement that resulted in MFC licensing for C++Builder 4, and a whole lotta goodwill. Now this stock exchange thing.
What's this patent infringement suit you're talking about though?
MS' goal is not just to dominate the OS market, but to dominate the mainstream software market, which they are able to dominate more easily by being in control of the OS market. If they had devtools, Office etc. but not Windows, they would be an inferior position, and certainly not in control.
While a closed-source "Delphi for Linux" (or whatever) would be less of a boon than an open-source one, think about all the products being opened up these days: QuickTime, Netscape/Mozilla, AOLServer, MacOS/Darwin, the list goes on and on. Open Source has become a "hit". By the time Inprise is ready to get their Linux stuff out the door, they'll have seen the light, too. Or, if they haven't, they'll open the source out of sheer embarrassment of being the last closed-source software vendor left.;-)
Uh oh. I just got this stuff after trying to get at the survey form for ages:
Internal Server Error 500
-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Exception: EDBEngineError Message: An error occurred while attempting to initialize the Borland Database Engine (error $2A04)
That's what you get you use your own inferior database engine. For what it's worth, the BDE has always been one of Borland's shoddiest and most redundant -- given the existence of ODBC -- products. Nothing like Delphi, for example. Let's hope they won't port the BDE to Linux as well. (*Shudder*)
Interestingly, QNX itself -- which is a start-of-the-art POSIX-compliant realtime OS -- fits on a single HD floppy, including the complete GUI, complete network support (not allota NIC drivers, but still), a complete web browser, and a bunch of samples. Wow.
MS and Inprise/Borland announce joint partnership agreement, cash infusion, 10% of stock changes hands. Theory: MS invests in Inprise to get a foothold in the Linux development world since they're not willing to lose face in these times of heavy focus on Windows 2000.
Prediction: In a year MS buys the rest of Inprise (or just the Borland part) and suddenly has a full lineup of Linux development tools in its hands.
It's MS' secret plan to develop Linux tools without MS actually doing it themselves! As part of this, Borland makes their C++ tools compatible with VC++ (notice the part about MFC mentioned in the press release) with some kind of compatibility layer, and MS secretly ports their business apps -- like Office -- to Linux. NT/Win2K dies. MS offers migration tools and an emulated environment (can you say "VMware"?) for legacy NT/Win2K customers. Everybody's happy.
(I'm not crying "Conspirary!" here. I'm crying "Yeah! Go for it!")
InterBase is a fine product, but has seen little in the way of innovation the last few years. Its SQL support is arguably not top-notch. Last time I checked (5.0), to deal with BLOb data you had to use its proprietary SQL extensions, much as is provided with MSSQL, but at least MSSQL allows binary inserts through ANSI SQL. (Um, if you're familiar with IB and know a better way, please let me know!) In a lot of ways InterBase feels antiquated, but at least it has got a friendly price tag.
It's the kind of guy he is. His articles are more like light (too light, imho) rants, and never anything poundingly insightful.
His articles in InfoWorld and... Byte? have always been fluff. Frankly I'm surprised people are still listening (or hiring) him as columnist and speaker. I'm also surprised people still use the word "pundit" about these guys. It's supposed to mean "learned person; an expert or authority". Which is a word I'd use about Nicholas Negromonte, or Eric Raymond, but certainly not of Metcalfe, or any of his wannabe cronies (including the complete cast of PC Magazine columnists, whose job seems to be to jab about their telephony jacks not fitting their hotel room sockets, and the fancy new projector system that makes their PowerPoint slides dazzle). Really, you are these guys still around?
Much is made of the fact that Metcalfe invented the Ethernet; maybe it's time for the guy who invented fiberoptics to take his place.
Slashdot Mirror
So yes, you can code games for it.
Of course, Czech sci-fi author and playwright Karel Capek (1890-1938) -- author of the seminal War With the News -- "invented" the word "robot", in his play (Rossum's Universal Robots) (1921, aka R.U.R.). It is derived from the Czech word "robota" meaning "work" (esp. in the sense of forced labour), sometimes defined as meaning "worker". So now you know.
All fantasy not more than a rewrite of The Hobbit? What a bizarre idea. I'd think The Lord of the Rings was more than that (or was that just a rip-off of TH too?), and certainly stuff like the Narnia books, The Wyrm Ouroboros (which predates TH) and many, many others are completely unrelated. As for Orwell, your statement is just plain ridiculous. It's like saying every story in the world is essentially a rip-off, which is untrue; I guess evolutionary storytelling is not a part of your vocabulary. The derministic implications of your remarks amount to a huge insult to the world of fiction.
As for the technological nitpickings, they are not high on my list of problems with The Matrix -- but the fact that it's so mind-bogglingly stupid is. And stupid begets stupid.
I am willing to live with the shortcomings of the plot though. For example, "the AI has had millenia to perfect its programming" and all it could think up was three silly agents dressed in black? Now, this is a system which is in complete and utter control of its environment; you have to ask why it would not simply unplug threatening beings at whim. A more rational response would be for the agents to report Neo's identity to the mother computer and having the computer shut down the real-world Neo's reality support system, or even kill him. This perfectly refined system allows people to move faster than bullets? What kind of a security hole is that? And the idea that guns are effective against a simulated environment which can change its characteristics at will is not appealing. I can brush it off and ignore it as a flaw in the script... or make excuses such as "Oh, but the system isn't really in control" (which doesn't explain why it can insert agents into this environment -- an ability which is stated explicitly). It doesn't exactly help the suspension of disbelief so common in the world of fiction. I'd love to hear an explanation of how they jack into this reality through the telephony system. And why cell phones can't be used.
A more significant point is that the film believes in solving things with guns. It shows its true nature -- it doesn't believe in the Zen stuff it occasionally tries to preach, it doesn't believe in intelligent resolutions to conflicts. You solve problems with big guns. What kind of an ideology is that? What kind of advanced, intelligent being ("homo sapiens") would believe in such an ideology?
Regarding your point (d), you're right.
What I'm really interested in is how you can one-sidedly defend something as exploitive as The Matrix (a film which ironically preaches a "wake up from conformism" kind of sidetheme) with the kind of fanaticism as you do. Would it hurt to be a little critically-minded?
I did watch the film. No popcorn though.
A feast for the dim-witted who go "Woah! I'm confused! I find myself curiously dazzled beyond my meagre intelligence!" when the film reveals that "The Matrix" is actually an artificial reality. And a painful two hours+ to those who saw this revelation coming already during the trailer, and waited needlessly for the moment where this and other vaguely sketched ideas would be fleshed out. Talking about dumbing down.
Why rip off Gibson or Dick when you can have the real thing anyhow? Oh, yeah, I remember. Because you've gotta have kung fu. Can't have science fiction without kung fu. And guns. Lots of guns. (The really mindblowing part of The Matrix was the fact that you would fight artificial goons with artificial guns in an artificial reality. Why not just push the "Power Off" button or hack the reality software?)
For a real good mindf*ck go read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch . It has no guns, just one or two spaceships, and the scariest villain ever invented within the realm of fiction. And it doesn't believe in dumb audiences.
Thanks for the info. I guess I missed the part about the patent infringment stuff.
> Did Borland sell out or lose out? I think not!
I didn't say anything about "selling out". We're not talking about some kind of Rebel Force here. Inprise/Borland is a software company. They can partner with anyone they like. Lately they've been MS' beds; all I did was outline a possible direction for them (ie., MS partners with Inprise because it gives them an escape road to Linux development) given this.
> Looks like they are heading in this direction already - see http://www.borland.com/techvoyage/jediinitiative.h tml
Nah. At least not now. They're woefully under-coordinated, and has been since the inception. Besides, the JEDI are about "open source", but rather about helping Inprise translate C header files to ObjectPascal. (Oddly enough Inprise could have integrated their C/C++ front end compiler into Delphi and the problem would have been resolved, and JEDI totally redundant.)
I have the floppy disk right here. It's a promotional copy -- the full OS takes a lot more than just the ony floppy -- but the point remains that you can fit the GUI, web browser, etc. on a single disk. Aside from the GUI part (QNX uses X, last I recall), OSes like Linux and *BSD probably do, too. Now, try that with any brand starting with the word "Windows". ;-)
Don't agree. Notice how Inprise and MS entered a significant partnership not long ago -- 8-10 months ago if I'm not too mistaken -- when Inprise agreed to a settlement in their case against MS regarding the employee drain (Anders Hejlsberg and Paul Gross and others being lured into joining MS). Inprise dropped charges, they entered a strategic agreement that resulted in MFC licensing for C++Builder 4, and a whole lotta goodwill. Now this stock exchange thing.
;-)
What's this patent infringement suit you're talking about though?
MS' goal is not just to dominate the OS market, but to dominate the mainstream software market, which they are able to dominate more easily by being in control of the OS market. If they had devtools, Office etc. but not Windows, they would be an inferior position, and certainly not in control.
While a closed-source "Delphi for Linux" (or whatever) would be less of a boon than an open-source one, think about all the products being opened up these days: QuickTime, Netscape/Mozilla, AOLServer, MacOS/Darwin, the list goes on and on. Open Source has become a "hit". By the time Inprise is ready to get their Linux stuff out the door, they'll have seen the light, too. Or, if they haven't, they'll open the source out of sheer embarrassment of being the last closed-source software vendor left.
Internal Server Error 500
- ------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
Exception: EDBEngineError
Message: An error occurred while attempting to initialize the Borland Database Engine (error $2A04)
That's what you get you use your own inferior database engine. For what it's worth, the BDE has always been one of Borland's shoddiest and most redundant -- given the existence of ODBC -- products. Nothing like Delphi, for example. Let's hope they won't port the BDE to Linux as well. (*Shudder*)
--
Alexander Staubo
MS and Inprise/Borland announce joint partnership agreement, cash infusion, 10% of stock changes hands. Theory: MS invests in Inprise to get a foothold in the Linux development world since they're not willing to lose face in these times of heavy focus on Windows 2000.
Prediction: In a year MS buys the rest of Inprise (or just the Borland part) and suddenly has a full lineup of Linux development tools in its hands.
It's MS' secret plan to develop Linux tools without MS actually doing it themselves! As part of this, Borland makes their C++ tools compatible with VC++ (notice the part about MFC mentioned in the press release) with some kind of compatibility layer, and MS secretly ports their business apps -- like Office -- to Linux. NT/Win2K dies. MS offers migration tools and an emulated environment (can you say "VMware"?) for legacy NT/Win2K customers. Everybody's happy.
(I'm not crying "Conspirary!" here. I'm crying "Yeah! Go for it!")
Alexander Staubo
earlybird@mop.no
InterBase is a fine product, but has seen little in the way of innovation the last few years. Its SQL support is arguably not top-notch. Last time I checked (5.0), to deal with BLOb data you had to use its proprietary SQL extensions, much as is provided with MSSQL, but at least MSSQL allows binary inserts through ANSI SQL. (Um, if you're familiar with IB and know a better way, please let me know!) In a lot of ways InterBase feels antiquated, but at least it has got a friendly price tag.
Alexander Staubo
earlybird@mop.no
It's the kind of guy he is. His articles are more like light (too light, imho) rants, and never anything poundingly insightful.
His articles in InfoWorld and... Byte? have always been fluff. Frankly I'm surprised people are still listening (or hiring) him as columnist and speaker. I'm also surprised people still use the word "pundit" about these guys. It's supposed to mean "learned person; an expert or authority". Which is a word I'd use about Nicholas Negromonte, or Eric Raymond, but certainly not of Metcalfe, or any of his wannabe cronies (including the complete cast of PC Magazine columnists, whose job seems to be to jab about their telephony jacks not fitting their hotel room sockets, and the fancy new projector system that makes their PowerPoint slides dazzle). Really, you are these guys still around?
Much is made of the fact that Metcalfe invented the Ethernet; maybe it's time for the guy who invented fiberoptics to take his place.