I understand your pain, brother. I used to pull my hair at how backward the physics researchers were when it came to programming. My impression is that all they care about is having maximum CPU performance, but they don't care about actually optimising the code.
In order to do some physics modelisations for a Dark Matter detector, I was stuck with using OLD libraries from CERN... I'm talking pre-1975, here. In FORTRAN, of course. Nevermind that I knew C++, because no one coded in C, even. When a fellow grad student hinted at coding in Java, they looked at him like he was an alien. (It was still a weird idea on his part, but still.)
Physics definitely needs to update to C, at the very least. It's ludicrous to run SPARCs in parallel and yet feed them awkward Fortran routines. Now, I know that Fortran, if optimised, will run fast. But considering that they're keeping it because they can't figure out the libraries given what a mess they are, it shows you how much performance is lost there.
For a very good approach of "coincidental magick" as it relates to the true spirit of magick, I'd recommend the Hellblazer comic series up to issue 40 or thereabouts. John Constantine has to be the best depiction of a Magus in popular fiction, and my feeling is that the authors of M:tA took many of their concepts from this story without really understanding them. To quote from shoddy memory, "Reality always seems to get on its knees and beg him."
Also of great interest is Books of Magic, written by Neil Gaiman.
How did M:tG (Magic: the Gathering) get into this discussion? Or did you intend to refer to Mage: The Ascension? At any rate, I don't think Mage:tA was attempting to be historical or authentic, but I do think they suggest a valid and useful perspective on the manipulation of reality. Whether or not it passes the review of a purist like yourself is another question.
Oops. I did mean M:tA, not M:tG. Wrong acronym.
I realise M:tA was not trying to be authentic, but what irks me is WW gamers nowadays acting as if M:tA was an exact historical retelling of what hermetical traditions are all about. The teachings of Western occultism are much more powerful than this, and in a sense, much closer to the presentation of the Mage as a Hacker.
M:tA states that reality is a concensus against which you have to struggle. In essence, it is a doomed attempt, as you are but one voice in a sea of reality definitions. It states that you can alter reality only by paying great attention to what other individuals have to say, and thus are in constant danger of being 'juged'.
This was never a statement made by Western occultism; it's more or less a game mechanic designed specifically to hinder power gaming. In Western occultism, the only thing that matters is Will, not Reality. It is yourself you have to change, and not a concensual, undefinable entity. You will see the difference may be subtle, but it's drastic.
In this vision, the Mage and the Hacker become archetypes that are much closer in essence. The Hacker can manipulate Reality (systems, code) by only his Will; there are no rules to the Hacker but those he sets for himself (ethics). The Hacker does not care about concensus (established programming conventions, security practices, network architecture), only about the application of his knowledge through Will.
You see why Matrix has nothing to do with M:tA's vision of things.
Seriously, I agree, it's a traditional scenario. Heh. Everybody made a big deal out of how The Matrix went off the beaten path and broke new ground, but it's just another formulaic fantasy plot.
Yeah. But you'll notice that Star Wars was nothing more than a rip-off of Hidden Fortress set in space. Matrix did the same thing... It borrowed from traditional storytelling and archetypes, and placed it in a sci-fi genre. Is this worth praise in and on itself? It's debatable. I say it does... There are but a limited number of stories in the world, and we constantly spew them under new shapes. How many times did Hollywood remake the Hero's Journey of Ulysses? Lord of the Rings is just that, after all. But I think there's merit in the form as well as in the function.
Sorry, but if you're gonna say Neo's mythical awakening in Matrix is a reference to Mage: the Ascension, then you might as well say it's a reference to Mickey Mouse in the Sorceror's Apprentice; especially since the later has at least a faint grasp about the root of magickal(*) concepts.
The form of magick depicted in The Matrix is the application of Will, as described by even the earlier sorcerors and actualised by the likes of Crowley and the others of the Golden Dawn in the early 20th Century. It never depicts reality as a concensus, but rather as a personal entity. M:tG was, for all intents and purposes, mythical mumbo-jumbo written by idiots who had no grasp of what the historical depiction of magick was about.
As for the actual depiction of the Magus' Path in Matrix: I don't know why you thought it was such crap, because it was, to me, fairly accurate and traditional. Neo dies and then his 'divine' nature is revealed. Think this is crap? Then sue the Apostles for not dwelling enough into Jesus' psyche before he was crucified and made God... Because that's exactly what Matrix's ending was. Death is the shedding of the material form to reveal the divine. Really, really traditional, and Christianity didn't invent it either.
(*): I know, I do hate the spelling. I'm just trying to avoid rabbit-pulling jokes by making the spelling unambiguous.
Yeah, I agree with your assessment of Titanic's wins. I thought it was absolutely ironic that no Oscars were won for Best Actor/Actress.
However, Titanic also won in categories that didn't make much sense, and were awarded mostly to "boost" the total number of Oscars won. While the movie deserved 'Visual Effects', I'm not sure what was so spectacular about Editing and Sound Editing in Titanic. Like I said, they were used to rack up the number of awards.
It's good that Matrix won those. They did make sense for Matrix, and I'm saying this objectively.
I disagree with you on the merits of Titanic: I think it should have won Best Picture, which is attributed to the Producer; that is the job Cameron did superbly well, by being uncompromising and pushing the budget to its limits despite doomsayers. As a director, he was mostly average in this movie.
So, I think Titanic should have won: Best Visual Effects, Best Costumes, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Effects and Best Picture. At least these 5 would be deserved. Fortunately, this year, all of American Beauty's awards were deserved.
I'm sorry, but what interaction is there in showing backstage clips? None. The Oscars show is still about a television broadcast, your power over which is limited to the mute button or changing the channel.
Neither was The Matrix interactive in any way. It remains a good 2-hours movie, but you hardly have an impact on the story's development.
Nor should either of them be fully interactive. Movies in general, as an artform, don't require interactivity any more than Van Gogh's paintings. The Oscars, by definition, are awarded by a commity of professionals, and if any sort of poll had its say in the matter, this would become a popularity contest. Sure, it already is (vis. Titanic), but at least they're pretending it's not.
Sides, all we'd get is 'Hank, the angry drunken dwarf' nominated for a Lifetime Achievement Award.
According to one of the conspiracy theories that made the rounds immediately following the DDoS attacks, the attacks were secretly coordinated by Clinton's administration in order to cause a flood of panic in businesses that would lead to a toughening of cyberlaws and the imposition of a cyber-New World Order. Ah, drat... I guess this report means it's not true.
Another conspiracy theory shot down in flames... Along with the theory that the Y2K panic was another such opportunity for the US Gov. The Right-Wing needs to review their conspiracy cookbooks!
On a side-note, I first read the title as, 'GoD Says Existing Laws...' Guess watching God, the Devil and Bob left a mark on my impressionable mind.:)
Am I the only one tired by titles of 'It's [whatever], stupid'? This always sounds to me like a somewhat veiled attempt from the author at placing themselves above the reader from the get-go, by claiming they have such a clever bit of information that the reader should feel 'stupid' for not knowing it.
More on topic, I have to say there probably isn't such a thing as an intuitive control. If you think, for instance, that a mouse is an intuitive device, you should see 80 year-olds who never touched a computer before try to figure them out.
Rather than considering so-called 'intuitive' controls, the goal should be to develop methods which are built upon existing and well-known ones. Ultimately, nothing is intuitive in controlling a computer (unless we developped Herbert's genetic memory in the last 50 years), but rather part of a slow learning process.
So don't shoot for intuitive; shoot for ease of learning. Mounting and umounting a drive, for instance, isn't intuitive to a Windows user. But it's easy to learn, and once you catch the principle, it's acquired.
The point is, the whole of the website should weight in at less than 5K. That includes all images. You should be able to download everything, not amount to more than 5K, and be able to work offline with it.
That's why pulling images from somewhere else through scripts, for instance, doesn't cut it. It's 5K, HTML + images.
Well, obviously, rationally, going from, say, 200 MHz to 400 MHz, and from 500 MHz to 1 GHz is pretty much the same leap. (In the sense that in both cases it doubles your speed; people notice that more than a net increase in cycle speed.) But the 1 GHz barrier is still important. Why?
Simply, because it's a benchmark! I don't understand why people don't understand that. It's the same thing with 2000, or with turning 30. It's a round number, and our human nature is to like round numbers.
Personally, I do think, in all irrationality, that 950 MHz doesn't have the same ring as 1 GHz.
As a side-note, to all the people who say, 'Now, what the hell am I gonna do with 1 GHz??' Gimme a break. I heard people say that when the 100 MHz Pentium came out, and when the 1 GB drives came out. but I bet they didn't count on bloatware and games becoming more and more demanding on a system.
Now, you're gonna tell me most games today only require a killer video card. Sure. And what do you think powers the AI's?
I doubt whether pure combat games would benefit from a finely wrought storyline:)
Actually, yes, I think they would. Take, for instance, Mortal Kombat, which was as pure a combat game as you get. Sure, there is no storyline per se, but there's the whole concept of background storylines and character developments. Perhaps it didn't change much of the game, but it sure brought a nice atmosphere to the game which, I believe, was part of MK's success.
For instance, Goro (was that his name?) came across as a perfect "boss" fighter, with its impressive look and multiple arms. That's characterisation any way you look at it, and that is what I consider to be a 'fighting game storyline'.
I agree with you totally when you say many games would benefit from having a killer storyline. I think, furthermore, that ALL games could benefit from clever and original writing, whatever the genre, and regardless of the quality of the FX.
I did read the post, thank you for your concern. I typed 'darkest fears OF' instead of 'darkest fears AND' by error, but otherwise, I did get the gist of what Katz was saying.
Basically, Katz was implying that the Scream series was a vehicle to spoof [...] our techno-culture obsessed lives, but that the vehicle was becoming stale. In essence, he DID read "Scream 3" as a vehicle for such fears and their spoofig thereof, only a crappy one. To which I reply, 'Hmm, Katz, this is a teenage slasher flick'.
Next, we'll hear 101 Dalmations was an analogy for the trouble the modern man has to manage his disk space.
By god, Jon Katz managed to interpret Scream 3 as a vehicle for "our darkest fears of our techno-culture obsessed lives"! It's just a teenage slasher flick!
Jon, your movie reviews are interesting. They have nothing to do with geeks, but you have to realise movies don't have to be about us in order for us to enjoy them. It doesn't have to always rely on the dark turmoils of a society ravaged by techno-capitalist opportunists drowning the voices of the technological wizzes set to push humanity towards its next level of socio-economical nanotech greatness.
Comparing a console to a PC is useless. PSX doesn't have to worry about new hardware, non-standard hardware, etc. I don't really understand why people rip on Microsoft for service packs -- I mean, does anyone rip on Linux for having so frequent kernel upgrades?
I'm comparing a console to a console. The X-Box will have 4 GB of hard drive in order to provide upgrades. That's what it says in the specs. Now, we all know 'upgrade' in M$-speak means 'bug patch'.
I would loudly complain about kernel upgrades if there was a Linux-based console that required them. Upgrades and patches are for a PC, not a gaming console. When I buy a gaming console, I expect to be able to play with any game by popping in the CD/DVD/cartridge, and not worry about service packs.
Let's face it, M$ is gonna need some serious expertise if they want to pull this off. Their onlook on Operating Systems right now is, as long as it's stable enough, it'll fly. They also have a tendency to rush a production and issue bugs afterwards.
Did you ever hear about the PSX needing upgrades and service packs? No, because the idea is to release the platform spotless from the start. The 4 GB hard drive is worth nothing; it's not a feature, it's a way to circumvent future bugs M$ know they're gonna get. Who wants to connect to the Internet and download service packs for your platform? That's gonna hurt the X-Box's reputation immensely.
Incidentally, did anyone notice how M$ and Nintendo always explain their performance by comparing it to the PS2? 'We'll be faster than the PS2'. Hmm. It's just funny how the PS2 is already a standard, a full month before its Japanese release.
Finally, if they need a 1 GHz processor to work this thing, then they're doing something wrong. The PS2 achieves 25M pps with only a dedicated 266 processor. A 1 GHz processor sounds like infinitely more than what's needed to power a cutting-edge gaming platform at this time.
It probably won't be worth much. The CHROMA Tick was a reprint of the original B&W Tick #1... It's just a reprint with colours added. As a rule of thumb, reprints are never a good comic investment. For the true Tick fan, it was nice to see it all in colour, though!
Now, my uncut #2 Tick may be worth something... But considering the comic's value didn't go up following the animated series, I guess it never will. What the Tick's series needed was for Ben Edlund to take a break from the animated series and give us some new Tick issues! Plus, I always found the Tick's humour really shone through in the comicbook. There was a surreal and warped sense of humour in the comicbook that you didn't find elsewhere. (Such as the Red Eye, the whole roadtrip to the Big City, the Monolith, the Ninjas, etc.)
"Small Gods" is the only Pratchett book I read twice. There is something in this novel that clearly stands out from the rest. It's not less funny (in some aspects it's even more hilarious), but there's a deep thematic undertone to it that is really pleasing and thought-provoking. And "Small Gods" is also the one Discworld book with a deeply satisfying ending.
Troll: To utter a posting [...] designed to attract predictable responses or flames.
Given the above definition, and given that you often state that the point of your articles is to trigger a reaction from the Slashdot community, which it often does in a predictable way, my question is: what do you think sets you apart from the common troll, aside from exposure and fame?
I bet we'd be amazed how many so-called 'good posters' on Slashdot have alternate IDs for creative trolling. Myself, I'd fancy burning off the excess karma and always be sure to keep my karma at exactly 0. That would certainly be in synch with the concept of cosmic balance.
What I find the most tragic with the crash of the MPL is the fact this little probe carried a mike to listen to the sound of Mars. I was so hyped about turning down the lights, turning off the tv, lying on my bed and listening to Martian winds in streaming Real Audio... I realise since the atmospheric pressure is lesser on Mars than on Earth, it wouldn't amount to something very exciting, but darn. Listening in to another planet is just so darn exciting.
I hope they'll do this again on a future mission. I'm happy to see this will slow down, but not halt, the Mars program.
Enoch Root is a good writer, but for all that he posts he really has never enlightened me, or gave me insight into anything.
I must say enlightenment is hard to come by, and I never truly attempted to illuminate the masses with my posts. I've never taken my own words to be worth anything more than anybody else's, and I find little gratification in seeing one of my posts moderated up.
I just post on Slashdot to share my opinion; writing decently is just professional habit. You're right in pointing out that a well-written retort doesn't necessarily carry insightful content; it's a sad fact that the container often takes precedence over the content.
You know, you're right in not taking karma as marker of the absolute value of a post. We're still feeling the after-effects of the 'visible karma' age, when people started obsessing about karma like crazy. (*mumble* *mumble*... penis size envy transfer... *mumble*) In six months, no one will care about Signal 11 or me, as we'll just be Slashdot posters, and not some sort of incidental (in my case, at any rate) leaders in a pointless rat race.
Now karma is just an integer in a database, and that's what it should have been in the first place. Moderation of posts is more or less the consensus of the general readership of Slashdot, and obviously, we're all welcome to disagree with concensus.
I would say, under that approach, that Québecois is definitely a dialect and not a creole. Québecois is definitely a direct descendent of French, and French and Québecois can communicate perfectly. Sure, there is a bit of that going on since Québec is part of a majorly English-speaking country, and right next to the US. That comes in the form of anglicisms, where either 1) English words are used in a perfectly French context, or 2) perfectly French words are used with an American twist.
Example 1: To say somebody is weird, Québecois from Montréal will say 'Il est fucké'. Literally, 'He is fucked', but 'fucké' is used to mean 'weird'.
Example 2: Québecois say 'Tomber en amour', literally, 'To fall in love'. The French say, 'Être en amour', but not 'Tomber en amour', which is a direct theft from the English, and the French give us a weird look.
That's not entirely true... It's started for a fact that was twisted into something of an urban legend, I'm afraid.
Rather, it's due to the fact that Québec French and France French evolved in parallel for a few hundred years. As such, they both evolved in different directions, and retained different aspects of Middle French. You'll find some aspects of Middle French in Québec French, such as the use of 'toé' and 'moé' instead of 'toi' and 'moi'. That's typically Medieval. But to say Québec French is identical to Middle French spoken in the 16th Century isn't true.
Slashdot Mirror
In order to do some physics modelisations for a Dark Matter detector, I was stuck with using OLD libraries from CERN... I'm talking pre-1975, here. In FORTRAN, of course. Nevermind that I knew C++, because no one coded in C, even. When a fellow grad student hinted at coding in Java, they looked at him like he was an alien. (It was still a weird idea on his part, but still.)
Physics definitely needs to update to C, at the very least. It's ludicrous to run SPARCs in parallel and yet feed them awkward Fortran routines. Now, I know that Fortran, if optimised, will run fast. But considering that they're keeping it because they can't figure out the libraries given what a mess they are, it shows you how much performance is lost there.
Also of great interest is Books of Magic, written by Neil Gaiman.
Oops. I did mean M:tA, not M:tG. Wrong acronym.
I realise M:tA was not trying to be authentic, but what irks me is WW gamers nowadays acting as if M:tA was an exact historical retelling of what hermetical traditions are all about. The teachings of Western occultism are much more powerful than this, and in a sense, much closer to the presentation of the Mage as a Hacker.
M:tA states that reality is a concensus against which you have to struggle. In essence, it is a doomed attempt, as you are but one voice in a sea of reality definitions. It states that you can alter reality only by paying great attention to what other individuals have to say, and thus are in constant danger of being 'juged'.
This was never a statement made by Western occultism; it's more or less a game mechanic designed specifically to hinder power gaming. In Western occultism, the only thing that matters is Will, not Reality. It is yourself you have to change, and not a concensual, undefinable entity. You will see the difference may be subtle, but it's drastic.
In this vision, the Mage and the Hacker become archetypes that are much closer in essence. The Hacker can manipulate Reality (systems, code) by only his Will; there are no rules to the Hacker but those he sets for himself (ethics). The Hacker does not care about concensus (established programming conventions, security practices, network architecture), only about the application of his knowledge through Will.
You see why Matrix has nothing to do with M:tA's vision of things.
Yeah. But you'll notice that Star Wars was nothing more than a rip-off of Hidden Fortress set in space. Matrix did the same thing... It borrowed from traditional storytelling and archetypes, and placed it in a sci-fi genre. Is this worth praise in and on itself? It's debatable. I say it does... There are but a limited number of stories in the world, and we constantly spew them under new shapes. How many times did Hollywood remake the Hero's Journey of Ulysses? Lord of the Rings is just that, after all. But I think there's merit in the form as well as in the function.
The form of magick depicted in The Matrix is the application of Will, as described by even the earlier sorcerors and actualised by the likes of Crowley and the others of the Golden Dawn in the early 20th Century. It never depicts reality as a concensus, but rather as a personal entity. M:tG was, for all intents and purposes, mythical mumbo-jumbo written by idiots who had no grasp of what the historical depiction of magick was about.
As for the actual depiction of the Magus' Path in Matrix: I don't know why you thought it was such crap, because it was, to me, fairly accurate and traditional. Neo dies and then his 'divine' nature is revealed. Think this is crap? Then sue the Apostles for not dwelling enough into Jesus' psyche before he was crucified and made God... Because that's exactly what Matrix's ending was. Death is the shedding of the material form to reveal the divine. Really, really traditional, and Christianity didn't invent it either.
(*): I know, I do hate the spelling. I'm just trying to avoid rabbit-pulling jokes by making the spelling unambiguous.
However, Titanic also won in categories that didn't make much sense, and were awarded mostly to "boost" the total number of Oscars won. While the movie deserved 'Visual Effects', I'm not sure what was so spectacular about Editing and Sound Editing in Titanic. Like I said, they were used to rack up the number of awards.
It's good that Matrix won those. They did make sense for Matrix, and I'm saying this objectively.
I disagree with you on the merits of Titanic: I think it should have won Best Picture, which is attributed to the Producer; that is the job Cameron did superbly well, by being uncompromising and pushing the budget to its limits despite doomsayers. As a director, he was mostly average in this movie.
So, I think Titanic should have won: Best Visual Effects, Best Costumes, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Effects and Best Picture. At least these 5 would be deserved. Fortunately, this year, all of American Beauty's awards were deserved.
Neither was The Matrix interactive in any way. It remains a good 2-hours movie, but you hardly have an impact on the story's development.
Nor should either of them be fully interactive. Movies in general, as an artform, don't require interactivity any more than Van Gogh's paintings. The Oscars, by definition, are awarded by a commity of professionals, and if any sort of poll had its say in the matter, this would become a popularity contest. Sure, it already is (vis. Titanic), but at least they're pretending it's not.
Sides, all we'd get is 'Hank, the angry drunken dwarf' nominated for a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Another conspiracy theory shot down in flames... Along with the theory that the Y2K panic was another such opportunity for the US Gov. The Right-Wing needs to review their conspiracy cookbooks!
On a side-note, I first read the title as, 'GoD Says Existing Laws...' Guess watching God, the Devil and Bob left a mark on my impressionable mind. :)
Am I the only one tired by titles of 'It's [whatever], stupid'? This always sounds to me like a somewhat veiled attempt from the author at placing themselves above the reader from the get-go, by claiming they have such a clever bit of information that the reader should feel 'stupid' for not knowing it.
More on topic, I have to say there probably isn't such a thing as an intuitive control. If you think, for instance, that a mouse is an intuitive device, you should see 80 year-olds who never touched a computer before try to figure them out.
Rather than considering so-called 'intuitive' controls, the goal should be to develop methods which are built upon existing and well-known ones. Ultimately, nothing is intuitive in controlling a computer (unless we developped Herbert's genetic memory in the last 50 years), but rather part of a slow learning process.
So don't shoot for intuitive; shoot for ease of learning. Mounting and umounting a drive, for instance, isn't intuitive to a Windows user. But it's easy to learn, and once you catch the principle, it's acquired.
Is that more on topic?
That's why pulling images from somewhere else through scripts, for instance, doesn't cut it. It's 5K, HTML + images.
Doh. Yeah, I meant milestone. My brain throught 'milestone' and my fingers typed 'benchmark'.
Simply, because it's a benchmark! I don't understand why people don't understand that. It's the same thing with 2000, or with turning 30. It's a round number, and our human nature is to like round numbers.
Personally, I do think, in all irrationality, that 950 MHz doesn't have the same ring as 1 GHz.
As a side-note, to all the people who say, 'Now, what the hell am I gonna do with 1 GHz??' Gimme a break. I heard people say that when the 100 MHz Pentium came out, and when the 1 GB drives came out. but I bet they didn't count on bloatware and games becoming more and more demanding on a system.
Now, you're gonna tell me most games today only require a killer video card. Sure. And what do you think powers the AI's?
Actually, yes, I think they would. Take, for instance, Mortal Kombat, which was as pure a combat game as you get. Sure, there is no storyline per se, but there's the whole concept of background storylines and character developments. Perhaps it didn't change much of the game, but it sure brought a nice atmosphere to the game which, I believe, was part of MK's success.
For instance, Goro (was that his name?) came across as a perfect "boss" fighter, with its impressive look and multiple arms. That's characterisation any way you look at it, and that is what I consider to be a 'fighting game storyline'.
I agree with you totally when you say many games would benefit from having a killer storyline. I think, furthermore, that ALL games could benefit from clever and original writing, whatever the genre, and regardless of the quality of the FX.
Basically, Katz was implying that the Scream series was a vehicle to spoof [...] our techno-culture obsessed lives, but that the vehicle was becoming stale. In essence, he DID read "Scream 3" as a vehicle for such fears and their spoofig thereof, only a crappy one. To which I reply, 'Hmm, Katz, this is a teenage slasher flick'.
Next, we'll hear 101 Dalmations was an analogy for the trouble the modern man has to manage his disk space.
Jon, your movie reviews are interesting. They have nothing to do with geeks, but you have to realise movies don't have to be about us in order for us to enjoy them. It doesn't have to always rely on the dark turmoils of a society ravaged by techno-capitalist opportunists drowning the voices of the technological wizzes set to push humanity towards its next level of socio-economical nanotech greatness.
Hmm. It does sound weird, until you remember it's Microsoft we're talking about... :)
I'm comparing a console to a console. The X-Box will have 4 GB of hard drive in order to provide upgrades. That's what it says in the specs. Now, we all know 'upgrade' in M$-speak means 'bug patch'.
I would loudly complain about kernel upgrades if there was a Linux-based console that required them. Upgrades and patches are for a PC, not a gaming console. When I buy a gaming console, I expect to be able to play with any game by popping in the CD/DVD/cartridge, and not worry about service packs.
Did you ever hear about the PSX needing upgrades and service packs? No, because the idea is to release the platform spotless from the start. The 4 GB hard drive is worth nothing; it's not a feature, it's a way to circumvent future bugs M$ know they're gonna get. Who wants to connect to the Internet and download service packs for your platform? That's gonna hurt the X-Box's reputation immensely.
Incidentally, did anyone notice how M$ and Nintendo always explain their performance by comparing it to the PS2? 'We'll be faster than the PS2'. Hmm. It's just funny how the PS2 is already a standard, a full month before its Japanese release.
Finally, if they need a 1 GHz processor to work this thing, then they're doing something wrong. The PS2 achieves 25M pps with only a dedicated 266 processor. A 1 GHz processor sounds like infinitely more than what's needed to power a cutting-edge gaming platform at this time.
This is gonna bomb. M$ is not ready for this.
Now, my uncut #2 Tick may be worth something... But considering the comic's value didn't go up following the animated series, I guess it never will. What the Tick's series needed was for Ben Edlund to take a break from the animated series and give us some new Tick issues! Plus, I always found the Tick's humour really shone through in the comicbook. There was a surreal and warped sense of humour in the comicbook that you didn't find elsewhere. (Such as the Red Eye, the whole roadtrip to the Big City, the Monolith, the Ninjas, etc.)
"Small Gods" is the only Pratchett book I read twice. There is something in this novel that clearly stands out from the rest. It's not less funny (in some aspects it's even more hilarious), but there's a deep thematic undertone to it that is really pleasing and thought-provoking. And "Small Gods" is also the one Discworld book with a deeply satisfying ending.
Given the above definition, and given that you often state that the point of your articles is to trigger a reaction from the Slashdot community, which it often does in a predictable way, my question is: what do you think sets you apart from the common troll, aside from exposure and fame?
I bet we'd be amazed how many so-called 'good posters' on Slashdot have alternate IDs for creative trolling. Myself, I'd fancy burning off the excess karma and always be sure to keep my karma at exactly 0. That would certainly be in synch with the concept of cosmic balance.
I hope they'll do this again on a future mission. I'm happy to see this will slow down, but not halt, the Mars program.
I must say enlightenment is hard to come by, and I never truly attempted to illuminate the masses with my posts. I've never taken my own words to be worth anything more than anybody else's, and I find little gratification in seeing one of my posts moderated up.
I just post on Slashdot to share my opinion; writing decently is just professional habit. You're right in pointing out that a well-written retort doesn't necessarily carry insightful content; it's a sad fact that the container often takes precedence over the content.
You know, you're right in not taking karma as marker of the absolute value of a post. We're still feeling the after-effects of the 'visible karma' age, when people started obsessing about karma like crazy. (*mumble* *mumble* ... penis size envy transfer ... *mumble*) In six months, no one will care about Signal 11 or me, as we'll just be Slashdot posters, and not some sort of incidental (in my case, at any rate) leaders in a pointless rat race.
Now karma is just an integer in a database, and that's what it should have been in the first place. Moderation of posts is more or less the consensus of the general readership of Slashdot, and obviously, we're all welcome to disagree with concensus.
I would say, under that approach, that Québecois is definitely a dialect and not a creole. Québecois is definitely a direct descendent of French, and French and Québecois can communicate perfectly. Sure, there is a bit of that going on since Québec is part of a majorly English-speaking country, and right next to the US. That comes in the form of anglicisms, where either 1) English words are used in a perfectly French context, or 2) perfectly French words are used with an American twist.
Example 1: To say somebody is weird, Québecois from Montréal will say 'Il est fucké'. Literally, 'He is fucked', but 'fucké' is used to mean 'weird'.
Example 2: Québecois say 'Tomber en amour', literally, 'To fall in love'. The French say, 'Être en amour', but not 'Tomber en amour', which is a direct theft from the English, and the French give us a weird look.
Still, I'd say Québecois is definitely a dialect.
Rather, it's due to the fact that Québec French and France French evolved in parallel for a few hundred years. As such, they both evolved in different directions, and retained different aspects of Middle French. You'll find some aspects of Middle French in Québec French, such as the use of 'toé' and 'moé' instead of 'toi' and 'moi'. That's typically Medieval. But to say Québec French is identical to Middle French spoken in the 16th Century isn't true.