But sponsored research is always suspect. I am so tired of corporate/government sponsored bad science being presented to the world as literal truth, because for every well informed skeptic, there are a million believing sheep.
Too true. People keep talking about competition, but there are three major console makers already, each of which can beat these guys into the ground. Add to that the fact that it's been vaporware for years, and pardon me if I don't have any hopes for its long term, or even short term success.
Slipperly slopes are always wrong unless you can actually prove a strong causal link, but this isn't nessisarrily a slipperly slope.
If Bad thing A happens, then bad thing B happens, then bad thing C happens, that's a linear progression of events. If all of these thigns are restrictions of personal liberty, then you certainly have a downward progression.
But in this case, the causal connection is A(1), which is "Scary Republican Warmongers in the White House", which most people wouldn't regard as a good starting point for this sort of slipperly slope (Though mayeb they should).
Either way it sucks, and there is an obvious solution.
It is meaningful to say that our language informs our thoughts, because, in most cases it's the medium for our thoughts. Whenever someone says, "I understand it, I just can't articulate it," what they really mean is, "I don't understand it." Thought and language, for us, are inextricably linked.
The reverse, however, is also true, in that language evolved for us to be able to express and clarify our thoughts. This logically has to be the case.
This is one of those areas of study where a layman can have no idea of the absurd depth of literature available, or the sorts of ridiculous theories spawned, and yet still be able to say meaningful things because it's all pretty much been wanking. We know very well what the case is, but why?
Planetside was (and is) a pretty solid online MMOFPS. It's more tactical than UT or Quake, but if you're good, you can still wreak havok on your fellow man.
The thing that stopped me playing wasn't the gameplay (which was damn good), but the people who were playing. In a game where teamwork and cooperation were KEY, it was really difficult to deal with lamer 12 year olds making up 50% at least of the players. Though it was completely satisfying to TK their sorry asses.
I've thought of getting back into it, but the expansion is still more than I want to pay, so nah. Maybe later.
I was debating throwing down some money for perpetual streaming internet radio and downloadable songs, and ended up giving it up because every one of those services is locked into a player that I can't freaking stand.
Checked Napster, but that's Windows Media Player. When I saw that Rhapsody was based around Real, I ditched it too. The music isn't all the great either. You'd be surprised how much bad crap can be included in "millions of songs".
I'm not hostile to the idea of a modest monthly fee paid for unlimited access to music---seems like a fair way to go really...Much better than buying a piece of something and storing it on a perishable medium. It certainly makes more sense than "buying" DRM'd MP3s from a provider like iTunes.
At the same time, all the offerings suck. They're offering limited libraries locked into a handful of the worst media players on market. Against that competition, iTunes looks great.
Darpa proved they can't even find their way across a desert, more less fight it out.
And a "simple" AI wouldn't be able to walk at all. Any robot that walks on two legs has a freaking hefty AI subroutine monitoring a million things we don't ever even consider.
AI still is in the suckitude phase; even the best ones aren't much smarter than a cockroach.
Half the win98 problems I've had have come from the registry. When I reinstall, I format that drive.
My solution isn't a no cost solution. You're going to lose some stuff. But I learned the hard way that there really isn't any way to "fix" an old windows 98 distribution that doesn't take days and days.
But not everyone wants to pay for the extra hardware. I usually give the firewall away as an added extra for the fileserver if they aren't inclined to pay for extra hardware. In the long run, it makes less work for me.
I live close to Atlanta, so a lot of overpriced Windows shops pillaged this area four or five years ago, before the bottom dropped out. (This isn't MS bashing actually; these guys charged 40-50,000 for a modest server setup, where their cost was around 11,000. Real rip jobs). Now there are a lot of people with slow servers looking for alternatives.
Unfortunately I'm freelance so I have to spend a lot of time selling the stuff. It's not usually all that hard to sell. I can offer all kinds of guarantees, and they still remember how much it all cost 5 years ago, so 10-15,000 dollars for a 30 user fileserver doesn't seem too much. Monthly maintenance fees are good too--just don't guarantee the hardware.
You can make 43,200 a year working ten hours a week in fast food? Gotta get me some of that! I mean, that plus what I've already got, plus stuff I deploy...I could be making six figures! Sure the local businesses cry and moan, but those bitches wouldn't hire me two years ago, so they brought this shit on themselves.
You know, I used to see things first on/. and second on Fark. When did it switch? It's pretty sorry when you're a supposed news site duping a site where every third article is "Not Safe for Work".
Hmmmm. -1 Flamebait? -1 Troll? Mod me down baby! I crave rejection!
Communism pure and simple, is the idea that people should be allowed to be people.
The way Marx saw it, Capitalism was as close to facism as it was possible to get. You really didn't have any choices if you weren't rich. You'd never own anything, and you'd always be held back by greedy rich people who kept you from doing things.
The whole "government owning everything" thing comes from the fact that you can't be an autoworker if you don't have access to the means of production (i.e. an auto plant). The idea was to free up peoples options. to let them work in ways that uplifted their spirit, yadda yadda yadda.
Now, the Soviets took the whole idea (Everyone will be free!) and made it into a nightmare (We will control every aspect of your lives!). So, they were not really Communism.
Even so, Communism would probably never work. People aren't that nice in their daily lives, and hard work really isn't well rewarded in that system.
But Open Source and Communism actually do have one thing in common...The belief that workers should have access to the means of production. The whole free thing has nothing to do with Communism, though thats what everyone seems to think. It's like the damn gay marriage issue...Hello! They can still get married in a church! All they want is the right to pay joint taxes!
And the idea that people should be allowed to have tools and be free to create has done amazing things. It's an excellent proof of what a bunch of people motivated by the love of their work can accomplish, vs a bunch of wage slaves pounding out shiny crap. It's an excellent thing to be a part of.
Ever hear of Social Security? Medicare? Welfare? Public education, non-toll highways, government funded research?
Yea sure, some people think these things are bad, but they're scary in the other direction.
Marx would have liked it, because it's a dialectic, eh? On one side, Capitalism--heartless and evil. On the other Communisim--mushy and incentive-free. Combine them? Excellent system.
It goes the same way with open source. We give it away, and we reap the rewards. Sure, its not the same kind of money you'd make if you were out to fuck everyone, but it's steady and solid, and the repeat business is kickin.
I make all my money with free software these days.
I design a database...What do I use? Hmm Oracle? Can't afford it. MS SQL? Can't afford it. Guess it's MySQL or PostgreSQL, with the added benefit that I can charge a couple grand over the liscensing fees for either of those and make nice profit.
Deploy a firewall file server for some business? Win2003? Yea right. Solaris? Too expensive. Linux? I can charge ten grand and beat all my competitors.
Webserver? Apache. Office? Open Office.
MS Zealots can talk TCO all they want, but these people pay me a few hundred dollars a month to keep an eye on their stuff, and it never really breaks. I can admin three dozen boxes by myself, and I'm laughing all the way to the bank.
I think the constant use of the definite article "The" hooked most people into the capital "I". It's The Internet. There are not multiple internets (secure military and financial nets notwithstanding), there is only The Internet. There is no internet but THE Internet and Wired magazine is probably not its prophet, though I'm sure they like to think they are.
Probably has a lot to do with non-tech people not understanding the difference between a WAN and a LAN, and just referring to everything as an "internet".
Think I need to cut back on my coffee consumption.
I used a win98 box as my game machine for a good while. Just through normal use, the damn thing would degrade over the course of a year and become sluggish and erratic. Grant you, I'm using it like a 15 dollar ho, but that's not acceptable. (I've still got the comp, and its running RedHat8, and STILL getting slapped around, and it's got an uptime of 108 days (Power failure). Vive la differance.)
The secret is to keep a data drive and a OS drive, and when it ends up in the shitter (as it will, without a doubt), copy your data and reinstall. Sure, you can screw with the registry and a vast array of tools that claim they'll fix your computer...But trust me, they're a waste of time. A clean 98 install is good for 6 to 8 months of only minor suckitude.
Even better to make a ghost image of a good install, and then restore it whenever you need to.
You're thinking in terms of software patents. You can have a hundred hardware patents that do similar things as long as the mechanical stuff is different.
So toyota can still make a new 4 cylinder engine and patent it, even though there are dozens of patented 4 cylinder engines.
If your children face the prospect of going to terrible schools, and you don't have any recourse (like even sending them to better schools in the district), you're poor.
Or you could just live in Georgia. Well, I guess it is pretty similar.
It's freaking PCI. As soon as I saw that I just started laughing. What the hell is the point of a high end PCI graphics card? I would think a comperably priced AGP would blow it the hell out of the water, no problem at all. If you're going to drop 200 bucks, might as well get an older card with a fatter pipe.
Slashdot Mirror
But sponsored research is always suspect. I am so tired of corporate/government sponsored bad science being presented to the world as literal truth, because for every well informed skeptic, there are a million believing sheep.
Too true. People keep talking about competition, but there are three major console makers already, each of which can beat these guys into the ground. Add to that the fact that it's been vaporware for years, and pardon me if I don't have any hopes for its long term, or even short term success.
Slipperly slopes are always wrong unless you can actually prove a strong causal link, but this isn't nessisarrily a slipperly slope.
If Bad thing A happens, then bad thing B happens, then bad thing C happens, that's a linear progression of events. If all of these thigns are restrictions of personal liberty, then you certainly have a downward progression.
But in this case, the causal connection is A(1), which is "Scary Republican Warmongers in the White House", which most people wouldn't regard as a good starting point for this sort of slipperly slope (Though mayeb they should).
Either way it sucks, and there is an obvious solution.
It is meaningful to say that our language informs our thoughts, because, in most cases it's the medium for our thoughts. Whenever someone says, "I understand it, I just can't articulate it," what they really mean is, "I don't understand it." Thought and language, for us, are inextricably linked.
The reverse, however, is also true, in that language evolved for us to be able to express and clarify our thoughts. This logically has to be the case.
This is one of those areas of study where a layman can have no idea of the absurd depth of literature available, or the sorts of ridiculous theories spawned, and yet still be able to say meaningful things because it's all pretty much been wanking. We know very well what the case is, but why?
Planetside was (and is) a pretty solid online MMOFPS. It's more tactical than UT or Quake, but if you're good, you can still wreak havok on your fellow man.
The thing that stopped me playing wasn't the gameplay (which was damn good), but the people who were playing. In a game where teamwork and cooperation were KEY, it was really difficult to deal with lamer 12 year olds making up 50% at least of the players. Though it was completely satisfying to TK their sorry asses.
I've thought of getting back into it, but the expansion is still more than I want to pay, so nah. Maybe later.
I was debating throwing down some money for perpetual streaming internet radio and downloadable songs, and ended up giving it up because every one of those services is locked into a player that I can't freaking stand.
Checked Napster, but that's Windows Media Player. When I saw that Rhapsody was based around Real, I ditched it too. The music isn't all the great either. You'd be surprised how much bad crap can be included in "millions of songs".
I'm not hostile to the idea of a modest monthly fee paid for unlimited access to music---seems like a fair way to go really...Much better than buying a piece of something and storing it on a perishable medium. It certainly makes more sense than "buying" DRM'd MP3s from a provider like iTunes.
At the same time, all the offerings suck. They're offering limited libraries locked into a handful of the worst media players on market. Against that competition, iTunes looks great.
Darpa proved they can't even find their way across a desert, more less fight it out.
And a "simple" AI wouldn't be able to walk at all. Any robot that walks on two legs has a freaking hefty AI subroutine monitoring a million things we don't ever even consider.
AI still is in the suckitude phase; even the best ones aren't much smarter than a cockroach.
In other words you're glad they're getting slapped like the bitches they are?
Word. Sue IBM? Bad idea. But if you do it, you best make sure you've got your shit together.
But I thought the idea of solar sails had been scrapped due to the relaitve scarcity of interstellar hydrogen?
Even in a relatively rich environment like a solar system, you're going to lose thrust the farther away from the sun you travel.
Half the win98 problems I've had have come from the registry. When I reinstall, I format that drive.
My solution isn't a no cost solution. You're going to lose some stuff. But I learned the hard way that there really isn't any way to "fix" an old windows 98 distribution that doesn't take days and days.
But not everyone wants to pay for the extra hardware. I usually give the firewall away as an added extra for the fileserver if they aren't inclined to pay for extra hardware. In the long run, it makes less work for me.
I live close to Atlanta, so a lot of overpriced Windows shops pillaged this area four or five years ago, before the bottom dropped out. (This isn't MS bashing actually; these guys charged 40-50,000 for a modest server setup, where their cost was around 11,000. Real rip jobs). Now there are a lot of people with slow servers looking for alternatives.
Unfortunately I'm freelance so I have to spend a lot of time selling the stuff. It's not usually all that hard to sell. I can offer all kinds of guarantees, and they still remember how much it all cost 5 years ago, so 10-15,000 dollars for a 30 user fileserver doesn't seem too much. Monthly maintenance fees are good too--just don't guarantee the hardware.
Well, three dozen boxes at 100 dollars a month:
100 x 36 = 3600
3600 x 12 = 43,200
You can make 43,200 a year working ten hours a week in fast food? Gotta get me some of that! I mean, that plus what I've already got, plus stuff I deploy...I could be making six figures! Sure the local businesses cry and moan, but those bitches wouldn't hire me two years ago, so they brought this shit on themselves.
Sorry about that. I was trying to get on the same page with the GP poster. Actually, I agree with you.
You know, I used to see things first on /. and second on Fark. When did it switch? It's pretty sorry when you're a supposed news site duping a site where every third article is "Not Safe for Work".
Hmmmm. -1 Flamebait? -1 Troll? Mod me down baby! I crave rejection!
Communism pure and simple, is the idea that people should be allowed to be people.
The way Marx saw it, Capitalism was as close to facism as it was possible to get. You really didn't have any choices if you weren't rich. You'd never own anything, and you'd always be held back by greedy rich people who kept you from doing things.
The whole "government owning everything" thing comes from the fact that you can't be an autoworker if you don't have access to the means of production (i.e. an auto plant). The idea was to free up peoples options. to let them work in ways that uplifted their spirit, yadda yadda yadda.
Now, the Soviets took the whole idea (Everyone will be free!) and made it into a nightmare (We will control every aspect of your lives!). So, they were not really Communism.
Even so, Communism would probably never work. People aren't that nice in their daily lives, and hard work really isn't well rewarded in that system.
But Open Source and Communism actually do have one thing in common...The belief that workers should have access to the means of production. The whole free thing has nothing to do with Communism, though thats what everyone seems to think. It's like the damn gay marriage issue...Hello! They can still get married in a church! All they want is the right to pay joint taxes!
And the idea that people should be allowed to have tools and be free to create has done amazing things. It's an excellent proof of what a bunch of people motivated by the love of their work can accomplish, vs a bunch of wage slaves pounding out shiny crap. It's an excellent thing to be a part of.
Ever hear of Social Security? Medicare? Welfare? Public education, non-toll highways, government funded research?
Yea sure, some people think these things are bad, but they're scary in the other direction.
Marx would have liked it, because it's a dialectic, eh? On one side, Capitalism--heartless and evil. On the other Communisim--mushy and incentive-free. Combine them? Excellent system.
It goes the same way with open source. We give it away, and we reap the rewards. Sure, its not the same kind of money you'd make if you were out to fuck everyone, but it's steady and solid, and the repeat business is kickin.
I make all my money with free software these days.
I design a database...What do I use? Hmm Oracle? Can't afford it. MS SQL? Can't afford it. Guess it's MySQL or PostgreSQL, with the added benefit that I can charge a couple grand over the liscensing fees for either of those and make nice profit.
Deploy a firewall file server for some business? Win2003? Yea right. Solaris? Too expensive. Linux? I can charge ten grand and beat all my competitors.
Webserver? Apache. Office? Open Office.
MS Zealots can talk TCO all they want, but these people pay me a few hundred dollars a month to keep an eye on their stuff, and it never really breaks. I can admin three dozen boxes by myself, and I'm laughing all the way to the bank.
I think the constant use of the definite article "The" hooked most people into the capital "I". It's The Internet. There are not multiple internets (secure military and financial nets notwithstanding), there is only The Internet. There is no internet but THE Internet and Wired magazine is probably not its prophet, though I'm sure they like to think they are.
Probably has a lot to do with non-tech people not understanding the difference between a WAN and a LAN, and just referring to everything as an "internet".
Think I need to cut back on my coffee consumption.
I used a win98 box as my game machine for a good while. Just through normal use, the damn thing would degrade over the course of a year and become sluggish and erratic. Grant you, I'm using it like a 15 dollar ho, but that's not acceptable. (I've still got the comp, and its running RedHat8, and STILL getting slapped around, and it's got an uptime of 108 days (Power failure). Vive la differance.)
The secret is to keep a data drive and a OS drive, and when it ends up in the shitter (as it will, without a doubt), copy your data and reinstall. Sure, you can screw with the registry and a vast array of tools that claim they'll fix your computer...But trust me, they're a waste of time. A clean 98 install is good for 6 to 8 months of only minor suckitude.
Even better to make a ghost image of a good install, and then restore it whenever you need to.
You're thinking in terms of software patents. You can have a hundred hardware patents that do similar things as long as the mechanical stuff is different.
So toyota can still make a new 4 cylinder engine and patent it, even though there are dozens of patented 4 cylinder engines.
Too bad they aren't as liberal with software.
Agreed. Redundant and overrated are pretty much used that way though.
The way the economy is right now, you don't think people who used to be able to afford kids are having it rought now?
If your children face the prospect of going to terrible schools, and you don't have any recourse (like even sending them to better schools in the district), you're poor.
Or you could just live in Georgia. Well, I guess it is pretty similar.
Judging by how the darpa challenge went earlier this year, I think even the rock is a bit unlikely.
It's sad how hard it is to run an AI capable of even reaonably simple descision making...Then compare that to working in an alien environment...
If I were them, I'd make sure to keep some manual controls, just in case.
It's freaking PCI. As soon as I saw that I just started laughing. What the hell is the point of a high end PCI graphics card? I would think a comperably priced AGP would blow it the hell out of the water, no problem at all. If you're going to drop 200 bucks, might as well get an older card with a fatter pipe.