Okay, I am going to answer your point here with a theory presented in Michio Kaku's book Hyperspace. I do this in all sincerity and am not about to get engaged in a religious debate. For the purposes of this discussion I am not going to disclose my personal beliefs on this matter but merely present a theory others have presented for what some athiests believe in this area.
Dr. Kaku holds the Henry Semat Professorship in Theoretical Physics at the City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. You can read more about him here : http://www.mkaku.org
His book "Hyperspace" deals with Kaluza-Klein theory, and it's development into superstring theory. Superstring theory, to be very basic, deals with the unification of the laws of physics into one connected equation to describe how everything works - it's the holy grail of physics and somethign Einstein was struggling with up until his death. The Superstring theory - or at least a copule of years ago when I read it - was close to accomplishing this, but with a catch. To explain the way the world works in a unified manner you needed to mathematically use more dimensions than the three spatial and one temporal one we percieve around us in our world. The fabric of our world, and I mean the very fabric, the stuff that makes up the smallest particles we can detect is theoretically considered to be the vibration of these "superstrings" in our dimensions, although the strings themselves are objects of many higher dimensions.
Now, my understanding of a theory Dr. Kaku put forward in his book, in almost a light hearted way when dealign with the subject of an expanding or collapsing universe was to suggest that the big bang was the collapsing of the unstable higher dimensional universe into the universe of four dimensions we experience today.
If the universe does come to some "Big Crunch" event in the future, then we might undergo another change of dimensions. As I said in my preamble, I offer this only as information and present no personal feelings on the matter. It has been a good while since I read Dr. Kaku's book too I must add, but it is the only alternate explanation I have seen - and based in advanced theoretical physics too.
Star Wars was designed with the screen in mind. LOTR is a literary masterwork that they are converting to the screen - ambitious, but they have to do the best they can without munging it so much for the screen that it no longer resembles the book. It's not your typical hollywood packaging to a story for sure, but given the scale of the work I think they're doing a good job.
The thing with LOTR is that it doesn't traditionally fit the neat hollywood model. Each part does not end with a nice resolution; followed by a sequel with a slightly different plot and the same characters (like Star Wars 4-6), it is one epic story from start to end.
If anything, the conclusions of the individual parts are darker and more subtle than even the "dark" ending of Empire Strikes Back - the most negative of the original Star Wars Trilogy. Take The Fellowship of the Ring, the whole point of that part is the discovery of the ring of power and the banding together of the races of middle earth to form a party to destroy it. The book/film ends with the party in disarray and the loss of it's spiritual leader Gandalf (a Ben Kenobi figure to really murder the analogy!). Because of the power of the overall story, the nuances of the individual parts get lost, partially due to them being derived from a book rather than planned for the screen as Star Wars always was. But I personally think Peter Jackson has done an outstanding job on a hugely ambitious project. I look forward to both of the remaining films:-)
Mr. Kirk's Nightmare is a classic. I'm guessing you're from the U.S. ? (correct me if I'm wrong) 'cos Mr. Kirks Nightmare had a bigger impact there after it was reissued on the U.S. Smile label. Meat Beat Manifesto were always a lot bigger in the U.S. than they were here in the U.K.
If you like Tom's (Squarepusher) stuff, keep an eye out for Ceephax (his little brother), good stuff and Aphex rates him too. Along those lines Aphex and Tom have a label out, the first release of which was Aphex mucking about with some classic old school techno tracks - 808 State's Flowcoma is one of them, but owing to the nature of those guys I haven;t heard anything in a while out of that camp.
Shenmue 2? I finished it on my Dreamcast a full year ago
Spiderman? The PS2 has that too
You're left with Buffy, and to be honest, if we're talking must-own games, which we were; I'd rather have GTA: Vice City, Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider.
Yup, fairly sure, I haven't tried Mandrake 7; but both of these installers used 800x600 at 16 bit, which is the recommended mode for my card (it's a 5 year old machine).
Thinking about it, Knoppix boots rapidly and manages to get X right (again 800x600 at 16 bit) without any input from me at all, (...it was Knoppix that prompted me to mess about with installing Linux...). From a newbie point of view, it would definitely be worth one of the big distros using this autodetect routine as default and providing an option for manual configuration if you really wanted to tweak it out.
Cases in point - graphical installers for Mandrake 8 and Redhat 8, both autoconfigured X well enough to run the installer beautifully, at the right screen resolution and bit-depth. Come to configure X in the install, and all kinds of trouble. You owuld think someone would just include a button that says "Use current settings", it is beyond belief that this isn;t fixed yet.. The installer got it right automatically straight away, what is the problem?
Final scratch kicks much ass, yes, but it still requires two decks, the special final scratch vinyl "records" that sync to the mp3's and a box of electronics to plug into the pc.
I think the grandparent was after a self contained mp3 mixing solution.
Yep, good points, I accept that the coverage linux is getting out of this proves, to a certain extent, that competition in the OS market still exists.
I was considering it damage in the sense that when I read the BBC article I was surprised at the tone of it, in that it's not the usual Microsoft PR puff peice I had gotten used to seeing. I had wondered if the same pointing to linux as competition is actually having an impact and making people go out and try it, with the knock on effect that we see articles of this tone on the BBC of all places!
I guess I am thinking aloud, and wondering if this case is helping a whole new bunch of people get a better clue, well here's hoping anyway:)
They say no publicity is bad publicity, but in this case could the amount of times that "Linux" has been mentioned in articles where this case is discussed be actually doing significant damage to Microsoft's mindshare?
Take a look at this article at the BBC as an example of the pro-linux swing being evidenced in the non-geek media.
Will this ultimately do more damage to Microsoft than anything the US DOJ could do?
This is being discussed all over (here, Ars, Macworld) but the Wired article takes a much more "done-deal" tone than any of the other commentary I have seen yet. It suggests the possibility of Macs with 4TB of ram too:-)
You know, I invested in a Mac for OS X last year, and it's now my primary platform, and encouraged me to mess about with operating systems so much, that I am looking in to going totally windows free on all my machines.
Ultimately I want to go Linux, but I am having a heck of a time deciding on a simple distro for my 'lil 4-year old laptop AMD K6-266 w/ 3-gig HD. All I want is a really thin net client really. I have tried Debian; but I am too much of a newbie to be able to get it working - whilst learning that however; I've thrown BeOS on it just this very evening; got the pcmcia network card talking to the OS, and am posting from it now - I'ts a little gem of an OS and seems very bloat free. Love the GUI too.
All I got to do now is learn how to configure me a linux install reasonably like this!
N.B. No, I'm not a 13 year old new to computing, just new to OS exploration.
Just had a thought - Isn't that very fact goign to put Microsoft in a bit of a quandry?
I mean - Rare produces Perfect Dark from the Goldeneye lineage, previously the best console FPS on one hand, whist on the other they have Bungie (whom MS also bought to make "exclusive to Xbox" games) working flat out to produce Halo 2 - new console FPS king.
Internal MS Xbox developer meetings should be kinda fun in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
All I can say is that if I had points I'd be redressing the balance right now.
Clever post indeed.
Dr. Kaku holds the Henry Semat Professorship in Theoretical Physics at the City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. You can read more about him here : http://www.mkaku.org
His book "Hyperspace" deals with Kaluza-Klein theory, and it's development into superstring theory. Superstring theory, to be very basic, deals with the unification of the laws of physics into one connected equation to describe how everything works - it's the holy grail of physics and somethign Einstein was struggling with up until his death. The Superstring theory - or at least a copule of years ago when I read it - was close to accomplishing this, but with a catch. To explain the way the world works in a unified manner you needed to mathematically use more dimensions than the three spatial and one temporal one we percieve around us in our world. The fabric of our world, and I mean the very fabric, the stuff that makes up the smallest particles we can detect is theoretically considered to be the vibration of these "superstrings" in our dimensions, although the strings themselves are objects of many higher dimensions.
Now, my understanding of a theory Dr. Kaku put forward in his book, in almost a light hearted way when dealign with the subject of an expanding or collapsing universe was to suggest that the big bang was the collapsing of the unstable higher dimensional universe into the universe of four dimensions we experience today.
If the universe does come to some "Big Crunch" event in the future, then we might undergo another change of dimensions. As I said in my preamble, I offer this only as information and present no personal feelings on the matter. It has been a good while since I read Dr. Kaku's book too I must add, but it is the only alternate explanation I have seen - and based in advanced theoretical physics too.
Star Wars was designed with the screen in mind. LOTR is a literary masterwork that they are converting to the screen - ambitious, but they have to do the best they can without munging it so much for the screen that it no longer resembles the book. It's not your typical hollywood packaging to a story for sure, but given the scale of the work I think they're doing a good job.
If anything, the conclusions of the individual parts are darker and more subtle than even the "dark" ending of Empire Strikes Back - the most negative of the original Star Wars Trilogy. Take The Fellowship of the Ring, the whole point of that part is the discovery of the ring of power and the banding together of the races of middle earth to form a party to destroy it. The book/film ends with the party in disarray and the loss of it's spiritual leader Gandalf (a Ben Kenobi figure to really murder the analogy!). Because of the power of the overall story, the nuances of the individual parts get lost, partially due to them being derived from a book rather than planned for the screen as Star Wars always was. But I personally think Peter Jackson has done an outstanding job on a hugely ambitious project. I look forward to both of the remaining films :-)
A quick google for "2 Remixes by AFX" will give lots of results; a good summary is here :
http://www.geocities.com/chestersblanketfort/afx.h tml
It appeard right about the time drukqs did, and I havent heard anything since, but I'm slightly out of touch where I live at the moment :(
Happy Hunting :)
Mr. Kirk's Nightmare is a classic. I'm guessing you're from the U.S. ? (correct me if I'm wrong) 'cos Mr. Kirks Nightmare had a bigger impact there after it was reissued on the U.S. Smile label. Meat Beat Manifesto were always a lot bigger in the U.S. than they were here in the U.K.
If you like Tom's (Squarepusher) stuff, keep an eye out for Ceephax (his little brother), good stuff and Aphex rates him too. Along those lines Aphex and Tom have a label out, the first release of which was Aphex mucking about with some classic old school techno tracks - 808 State's Flowcoma is one of them, but owing to the nature of those guys I haven;t heard anything in a while out of that camp.
Take it easy :-)
Seen Squarepusher live several times, but I wouldn't call him Drum & Bass - more experimental breakbeats.
Cutting edge D&B right now? I would say the recent Dom & Roland stuff is fantastic, Kemal, the DSCI-4 crew, Bad Company, Ed Rush & Optical, etc. etc.
Well, Craig David is the most prolific and popular artist to use the phrase "selekta" in recent times, and he ain't jungle.
Next time you jump in, get a clue what you're talking about first, 'cos you never know who you might be replying to ;)
Craid David wouldn't know what "jungle" was if he lived in the congo.
I just get "Page cannot be found" notices
Reverse-shrinkwrap the buggers :-)
Blinx? I'd rather play me some Mario
The Thing? It's on PS2 too
Rallisport ? I have WRC
Burnout? I was playing Burnout 2 all last weekend
DOA3 - I have Tekken 4
Shenmue 2? I finished it on my Dreamcast a full year ago
Spiderman? The PS2 has that too
You're left with Buffy, and to be honest, if we're talking must-own games, which we were; I'd rather have GTA: Vice City, Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider.
Thinking about it, Knoppix boots rapidly and manages to get X right (again 800x600 at 16 bit) without any input from me at all, (...it was Knoppix that prompted me to mess about with installing Linux...). From a newbie point of view, it would definitely be worth one of the big distros using this autodetect routine as default and providing an option for manual configuration if you really wanted to tweak it out.
Cases in point - graphical installers for Mandrake 8 and Redhat 8, both autoconfigured X well enough to run the installer beautifully, at the right screen resolution and bit-depth. Come to configure X in the install, and all kinds of trouble. You owuld think someone would just include a button that says "Use current settings", it is beyond belief that this isn;t fixed yet.. The installer got it right automatically straight away, what is the problem?
It worked! ....well, at least for Digidesign. ProTools 6 (on OSX) before the end of the year allegedly.
I think the grandparent was after a self contained mp3 mixing solution.
I was considering it damage in the sense that when I read the BBC article I was surprised at the tone of it, in that it's not the usual Microsoft PR puff peice I had gotten used to seeing. I had wondered if the same pointing to linux as competition is actually having an impact and making people go out and try it, with the knock on effect that we see articles of this tone on the BBC of all places!
I guess I am thinking aloud, and wondering if this case is helping a whole new bunch of people get a better clue, well here's hoping anyway :)
Take a look at this article at the BBC as an example of the pro-linux swing being evidenced in the non-geek media.
Will this ultimately do more damage to Microsoft than anything the US DOJ could do?
...... not for long, here comes /. :-)
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,55722,00.html
This is being discussed all over (here, Ars, Macworld) but the Wired article takes a much more "done-deal" tone than any of the other commentary I have seen yet. It suggests the possibility of Macs with 4TB of ram too :-)
Yes, a NASCAR would totally dust a Mack Truck round Nazareth.
Ultimately I want to go Linux, but I am having a heck of a time deciding on a simple distro for my 'lil 4-year old laptop AMD K6-266 w/ 3-gig HD. All I want is a really thin net client really. I have tried Debian; but I am too much of a newbie to be able to get it working - whilst learning that however; I've thrown BeOS on it just this very evening; got the pcmcia network card talking to the OS, and am posting from it now - I'ts a little gem of an OS and seems very bloat free. Love the GUI too.
All I got to do now is learn how to configure me a linux install reasonably like this!
N.B. No, I'm not a 13 year old new to computing, just new to OS exploration.
This Slashback from yesterday didn't paint the picture that brightly :-(
Offtopic I know, but that whole case just seems to send a horrible message about the legal system in the U.S.
Apart from the fact that Sony is the second largest Squaresoft shreholder, with an 18.6 % stake of the company.
That has been the hold up IIRC; you can;t fit a tray loader into a TiBook.
Just had a thought - Isn't that very fact goign to put Microsoft in a bit of a quandry? I mean - Rare produces Perfect Dark from the Goldeneye lineage, previously the best console FPS on one hand, whist on the other they have Bungie (whom MS also bought to make "exclusive to Xbox" games) working flat out to produce Halo 2 - new console FPS king. Internal MS Xbox developer meetings should be kinda fun in the future.