Consider that I can't get more than one or two 750 or 800Mhz P3s to sell and they are not cheap. I *can* get 800 & 850Mhz Athlons. Intel may have produced a very fast one-off chip to demonstrate, but that is not the same thing as making hundreds of thousands of chips for retail sale.
Hmm... And all this time I thought that 'Hemos' was Jeff Bates, now you claim that 'Hemos.' is Jeff Bates. I, sir have met Jeff Bates, and you are no Jeff Bates.;o)
Tesla's technique for nitrogen extraction was basically a by-product of his wireless communication/power transmission method. Meaning almost free.
It is also nice to see that you speak for everyone 'educated' in physics. Well, not everyone. I know several people that have strong to very strong backgrounds in physics (minors and majors in college thru masters degrees). Some think he is a genius with some very eccentric behaviours thrown in. Some have said that they honestly can't understand some of the principles he clearly understood and demonstrated in public on many occasions. Personnally, I don't pretend to be Tesla junior, but I do think his contributions have been used without being acknowledged by much of the scientific community for last 75 years.
I didn't say just wireless. Spark gap devices preceeded Teslas work too. Tesla invented wireless broadcast of intelligence with resonance being used to segregate channels. If wireless is the only criteria, then lets throw speech into the possibilities.;o)
Spark gap transmissions are broad spectrum emmisions. Transmission of intelligence requires modulation of the carrier to represent voice or data. Spark gap tranmissions require interruption of the entire signal to represent information and are basically limited to morese type communication. That definition is what I remember from my novice and tech class ham exams 12 years ago. It may be slightly off.
Although the fellow was a bit harsh, I think he was trying to make a point. Something of this nature:
Tesla is recognized because he has a SI unit named after him == You recognizing all of your mothers accomplishments by saying she really knew how to butter toast well.
It is an insult to them both. I'm positive they both deserve much, much more.
Three times this morning, I had to kill netscape when it loaded that banner. I finally had to turn java off and no more lockups. Thanks for killing the browser of the Linux faithful with a java banner. This is stock RH6.1 installed communicator.
Tesla made the wealthy people of his day ( JP Morgan, Westinghouse, etc...) even wealthier with his selling of patents. His rounds with Edison even culminated in General Electric ( Edison Electric Co. + Thomson-Houston Co.) bidding on the Niagra *AC* power plant contracts. GE got the low bid on the distribution system and thus got to build the AC power lines. Westinghouse and Tesla got the bid for the power generatoring station.
This was before the Chicago Worlds fair of 1893 and his Colorado Springs experiments. About a third of the people living in the US at that time visited Chicago to see Tesla and his wonders. He was far from obscure at that time. The erasure from history seems to have come later.
A very interesting coincidence: I'm just finishing an excellent biography calles "TESLA Man Out Of Time" by Margaret Cheney. I would certainly recommend this book to those interested in Tesla's lifes work.
He invented and patented this short list and much more: -Single, 2 and 3 phase AC generators, motors and distributions systems. -Fluorescent lights -Electron microscope ( his carbon-button lamp) -Atom smasher (carbon-button lamp also) -Electron accelerator ( melecular bombardment lamp) -wireless communication of intelligence -wireless power distrobution
He also mapped the EMF spectrum into 'octaves', found out how to control rainfall and extract nitrogen out of the air. Where is this knowledge being used today?
He invented radio, remote controll and spread spectrum coded communication all in a single device ( robot boats, which the navy rejected).
I have a book called "Giants of Invention" that I was given as a child. Tesla isn't even listed, but George Westinghousem who bought all of Tesla's AC patents is listed for having invented railroad air brakes. Now your opinion may be very different, but I think Tesla has been left out on the doorstep concerning historical credit for his inventions. I think that Edison and Marconi pale greatly in comparison to Tesla, but you may not agree.
BTW, "TESLA: Man Out Of Time", Margaret Cheney, ISBN 0-88029-419-1
Well, M$ finished their last fiscal year with a 42% profit according to Cnnfn. I don't think there is a more profitable Fortune 1000 company. Most in the Fortune 1000 have ( my quick mental averaging) about a 15% profit. That profitability is the main reason that M$ is running a stock valuation of about 400 times annual sales. Seems high to me. If you don't mind paying their ( constantly increasing) prices, then good for you.
I have been reading about molecular circuitry for about twenty uears now. Even Byte magazine had a good article about ten years ago describing much of the current state of the art. I now assume that we won't see real molecular circuitry until there is a need/use for grain of sand sized devices purchased by the dumptruck load.
That line was from a mid 80's move, "Buckaroo Banzai in the Eigth Dimension". Buckaroo was played by a younger Peter Weller who went on to play RoboCop. It also has one of my favorite Christopher Lloyd characters as an alien that works for YoYoDyn. Watch it if you can.
Transmeta announced the unveiling date back at fall comdex( november). Linus announced it during his keynote.
One thing I have learned after 12+years in this business is that Intel never drops prices just to be friendly. They (intel) only drop prices when shifting products or when someone actually comes up with a competing product. That meant many fewer price reductions in years past. Many more cuts in '99. With AMD finally getting a (kickass) product launched with volume production, they scared the crap out of intel. Then consider the i820 fiasco and you can see intel executives peeing their expensive suits at their predicament. Now they are being seriously threatened by Transmeta on the low end where most of the significant processor growth is expected for the next 5-10 years. I think the SpeedStep introduction was a factor, but I also think the price drop was a bit steep to be just an internal response and making room in their product line.
Same problem here. The forefront beta driver works fairly well on the same card. I have not taken more than a quick look at the code, but hopefully it will not be difficult to fix.
And, to the 'moderator' that marked this as offtopic: Get a friggin' clue. If you have the courage, let us know what exactly is offtopic about this post. Justify your action in a more public manner. Excuse me while I go turn off my 'willing to moderate' flag.
The real friction between Intel and VIA started when they announced the addition of PC-133 and DDR-SDRAM support to the chipset they had just licensed from Intel. This move greatly upset Intel because they were trying to convince the PC market in general to embrace the obscenely overpriced beast that is RDRAM. Via may or may not have had ( according to different sources) had a clause in their license dealing with supported cpu bus speeds. Meaning that Intel didn't want anyone else offering an increase in performance, well, atleast not before Intel offered one.
The problem was that Via already had chipsets that could run 133Mhz+, but they couldn't market those as anything other than 100Mhz chips. Then Intel missed some of the planned announcement dates for their 133Mhz FSB processors because of troubles with the i820 chipset( it was supposed to ship Q2 99) and Via got impatient and announced that their chipset had 133Mhz fsb, DDR-SDRAM, AGP4x support and more. That seemed to anger the lawsuit suits at intel and we are still watching the unfolding drama now.
Now if Intel did actually have a legal agreement that prevented Via from shipping a faster chipset and they broke the agreement, then I am on Intels side.
If Intel is just upset because Via has proven they have a product manufacturers want to buy over the i820, then Intel is just being infantile. That wouldn't excuse the lawsuits though. I do believe that this is the first time that a *major* product effort from Intel has been a *major* dud. This could just be a reaction to the rejection.
Double standard? I don't think so. Your opinion may differ.
You have.. err.. stumbled onto a new and fabulous marketing gimmick. Asheron's Call, the game that is so good, you will crap in your favorite pants just to keep playing! Act now and get a free 5-pack of Depends! Lets just hope that the new virtual newscasters will filter this kind of story.
Well, you are comparing a soon-to-be-available product from MS to the almost year old Linux kernel. I suggest that you examine the ( quite stable) development 2.3 series if you want a look at what will soon be the new stable series.
Mucho improved TCP/IP stack is one of the many revamped features. Thanks go to Mindcraft for exposing some linux flaws so Linus, Alan and many other talented coders could streamline the stack. I do enjoy the irony that MS funded the Mindcraft benchmarking that pointed to specific problems in the Linux networking code, and that has lead to greatly improved networking effeciency at the kernel level ( and a nifty kernel based web server for static pages)!
I also like your mention that the (completely unbiased?) Univ. of Washington has crowned MS as the network speed kings. I can only believe that their conclusion was drawn for a very limited sampling of the networking environments available to the business world. Maybe they limited themselves to benchmarking equipment they could purchase at Wal-mart.
I will believe that MS has improved their networking to the levels demanded by business environments when they are able to replace all of the Unix boxes that power hotmail.com with the same number of similar power servers running their W2K Server based OS. The tactic I imagine they would try would be to use something like the upcoming 8-way coppermine based Xeon processors to replace the same number of 2-way Unix boxes.
I armost though you were serious! I'm grad I figure you out you funny guy. You no want anybody but Americans to learn secret tech support skirls from the genius Illiad! We know you try and trick us! Shame on you, now we go study User Friendly and learn many secrets and get even more tech support contracts! Thanks you MicroSoft for making us many oppurtunities to to support!
Actually, Glide exposes the 3dfx chip rendering functions and register set as an API. Mesa can use Glide to speed up rendering, but Mesa supplies the OpenGL compatible functions under Linux. Whether a card or chipset manufacturer has a windows based OpenGL driver or not means nothing in the Linux world. What matters is how much chipset information is available for the graphics chips. Is it enough to accelerate the 2d functions only or only enough to get the 3d engine rendering polygons but not the accelerated geometry setup or T&L engines under Linux, *BSD, etc...? I don't think so, but several companies still seem to think this way.
It seems that most people I see "quoting" the bible are merely paraphrasing what they have heard. I know the AC that posted this didn't really quote, but they did say "but the signs are still there." AC here is assuming the role of interpreter for those that read his post. Those that are interested may want to consider the following quotes. For those that are uninterested , then please ignore the following, it probably wasn't meant for you.
Mark (KJV) 13:22-33 22 For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. 23 But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things. 24 But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, 25 And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. 26 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. 27 And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven. 28 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near: 29 So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. 30 Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done. 31 Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. 32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. 33 Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.
Now, my interpretation is something like this: Man either believes or he doesn't. If you truly believe, then you will always be ready. The things I've read from the Bible, Torah, Koran and Book of Mormon are quite similar in concept. They all had a much richer meaning than the mis-quotes and incorrect paraphrasings conveyed from people who hadn't read much.
For the curious, read for yourself and make an honest search for truth. I know people that are being seduced by much of the hype into believing that some things of momentous importance are going to happen on some particular day or time. Their faith will be damaged when the appointed time comes and goes without the promised event. What a shame, if they knew the books that their faith is supposed to be based on, they would understand the deceptions.
A "generation that shall not pass" reference can be measured by the exodus from Egypt. The Jews saw fit to make the golden calf to worship and God said they would not be allowed to enter into the promised land before that generation had passed away. I am looking for some length of time shorter than forty years from now to hold some very terrible events for the earth and occupants. But when? I'm pretty sure it isn't going to be 1-1-2000. But, then again, I have no way of knowing for certain.
Why are you asking for confirmation of your questions? Either you know why you think and believe the way you do or you are just parroting something taught by others. Consensus doesn't mean correct.
The theme presented in the article is that some Brazilian officials believe that the games had some influence on the man. That Brazilian officials were most probably ( I can't know for sure ) motivated by their fear of the press. The people in the theater just want to know why some unstable freak was allowed to kill them without provocation.
My belief is that different people have different weaknesses. This fellow may have had a weakness for believing that aliens were attacking Brazil and needed to be stopped. I know people that have had weaknesses for ladies other than their wives, alcohol, drugs and money. Some of them no longer have to worry about their wives ( or their houses, cars, etc..) or their old jobs. Just because one person has a weakness dosen't mean that everyone has the same problem.
Your question: "However, will someone admit that by playing something like Quake, the player's aim in reality may be improved?"
This question probably seems valid if someone hasn't fired a gun. Its more like assuming that someone who has played TombRaider must be able to swim because Lara goes swimming in each game. Or that someone must be able to ride a bicycle because they watched re-runs of The Brady Bunch(tm) or be able to play basketball because they are tall.
Moving a dot around and clicking a mouse button aren't the same thing as firing a real weapon. The games help some people to improve their hand & eye coordination.
And about your "Can we keep saying that computer games, or violent movies, or X are 100% completely innocent? How about 99.99% innocent?" questions.
How can a game be guilty or innocent? If a book describes a bank robbery, is the book guilty of something? A person can be guilty or innocent but not an object. If this were not the case, then my car would be the one guilty of speeding, not me.
People make choices everyday. I usually choose between lunch choices, but I have never chosen to kill someone. Some people have chosen to take the life of another person. The killer made that choice, it didn't just happen without any responsibility.
Response from Netcraft: www.etoys.com is running Etoys Web server 1.2 on Linux
First, what the heck is "Etoys Web server 1.2"? Second, they seem to be stomping all over the spirit of the GPL and its encouragment of sharing and technical fellowship. What a shame that the GPL has no 'asshole' exclusionary clauses.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider that I can't get more than one or two 750 or 800Mhz P3s to sell and they are not cheap. I *can* get 800 & 850Mhz Athlons. Intel may have produced a very fast one-off chip to demonstrate, but that is not the same thing as making hundreds of thousands of chips for retail sale.
I am more interested in the SMP capable Athlons that are supposed to be here the second half of 2000.
What is being developed with the Crusoe chips? I haven't been able to find announcments for things like laptops or pdas that use them.
Hmm... And all this time I thought that 'Hemos' was Jeff Bates, now you claim that 'Hemos.' is Jeff Bates. I, sir have met Jeff Bates, and you are no Jeff Bates. ;o)
Tesla's technique for nitrogen extraction was basically a by-product of his wireless communication/power transmission method. Meaning almost free.
It is also nice to see that you speak for everyone 'educated' in physics. Well, not everyone. I know several people that have strong to very strong backgrounds in physics (minors and majors in college thru masters degrees). Some think he is a genius with some very eccentric behaviours thrown in. Some have said that they honestly can't understand some of the principles he clearly understood and demonstrated in public on many occasions. Personnally, I don't pretend to be Tesla junior, but I do think his contributions have been used without being acknowledged by much of the scientific community for last 75 years.
I didn't say just wireless. Spark gap devices preceeded Teslas work too. Tesla invented wireless broadcast of intelligence with resonance being used to segregate channels. If wireless is the only criteria, then lets throw speech into the possibilities. ;o)
Spark gap transmissions are broad spectrum emmisions. Transmission of intelligence requires modulation of the carrier to represent voice or data. Spark gap tranmissions require interruption of the entire signal to represent information and are basically limited to morese type communication. That definition is what I remember from my novice and tech class ham exams 12 years ago. It may be slightly off.
Although the fellow was a bit harsh, I think he was trying to make a point. Something of this nature:
Tesla is recognized because he has a SI unit named after him == You recognizing all of your mothers accomplishments by saying she really knew how to butter toast well.
It is an insult to them both. I'm positive they both deserve much, much more.
Three times this morning, I had to kill netscape when it loaded that banner. I finally had to turn java off and no more lockups. Thanks for killing the browser of the Linux faithful with a java banner. This is stock RH6.1 installed communicator.
Tesla made the wealthy people of his day ( JP Morgan, Westinghouse, etc...) even wealthier with his selling of patents. His rounds with Edison even culminated in General Electric ( Edison Electric Co. + Thomson-Houston Co.) bidding on the Niagra *AC* power plant contracts. GE got the low bid on the distribution system and thus got to build the AC power lines. Westinghouse and Tesla got the bid for the power generatoring station.
This was before the Chicago Worlds fair of 1893 and his Colorado Springs experiments. About a third of the people living in the US at that time visited Chicago to see Tesla and his wonders. He was far from obscure at that time. The erasure from history seems to have come later.
A very interesting coincidence: I'm just finishing an excellent biography calles "TESLA Man Out Of Time" by Margaret Cheney. I would certainly recommend this book to those interested in Tesla's lifes work.
He invented and patented this short list and much more:
-Single, 2 and 3 phase AC generators, motors and distributions systems.
-Fluorescent lights
-Electron microscope ( his carbon-button lamp)
-Atom smasher (carbon-button lamp also)
-Electron accelerator ( melecular bombardment lamp)
-wireless communication of intelligence
-wireless power distrobution
He also mapped the EMF spectrum into 'octaves', found out how to control rainfall and extract nitrogen out of the air. Where is this knowledge being used today?
He invented radio, remote controll and spread spectrum coded communication all in a single device ( robot boats, which the navy rejected).
I have a book called "Giants of Invention" that I was given as a child. Tesla isn't even listed, but George Westinghousem who bought all of Tesla's AC patents is listed for having invented railroad air brakes. Now your opinion may be very different, but I think Tesla has been left out on the doorstep concerning historical credit for his inventions. I think that Edison and Marconi pale greatly in comparison to Tesla, but you may not agree.
BTW, "TESLA: Man Out Of Time", Margaret Cheney, ISBN 0-88029-419-1
Well, M$ finished their last fiscal year with a 42% profit according to Cnnfn. I don't think there is a more profitable Fortune 1000 company. Most in the Fortune 1000 have ( my quick mental averaging) about a 15% profit. That profitability is the main reason that M$ is running a stock valuation of about 400 times annual sales. Seems high to me. If you don't mind paying their ( constantly increasing) prices, then good for you.
Makes me wish for cheap PPC boxes. Have any of the cheap IBM reference designs been manufactured yet?
I have been reading about molecular circuitry for about twenty uears now. Even Byte magazine had a good article about ten years ago describing much of the current state of the art. I now assume that we won't see real molecular circuitry until there is a need/use for grain of sand sized devices purchased by the dumptruck load.
TSMC makes *all* the graphics chips for 3dfx and Nvidia. This company controls key component manufacturing for the whole PC industry.
"Wherever you go, there you are." --Unknown
That line was from a mid 80's move, "Buckaroo Banzai in the Eigth Dimension". Buckaroo was played by a younger Peter Weller who went on to play RoboCop. It also has one of my favorite Christopher Lloyd characters as an alien that works for YoYoDyn. Watch it if you can.
Transmeta announced the unveiling date back at fall comdex( november). Linus announced it during his keynote.
One thing I have learned after 12+years in this business is that Intel never drops prices just to be friendly. They (intel) only drop prices when shifting products or when someone actually comes up with a competing product. That meant many fewer price reductions in years past. Many more cuts in '99. With AMD finally getting a (kickass) product launched with volume production, they scared the crap out of intel. Then consider the i820 fiasco and you can see intel executives peeing their expensive suits at their predicament. Now they are being seriously threatened by Transmeta on the low end where most of the significant processor growth is expected for the next 5-10 years. I think the SpeedStep introduction was a factor, but I also think the price drop was a bit steep to be just an internal response and making room in their product line.
Same problem here. The forefront beta driver works fairly well on the same card. I have not taken more than a quick look at the code, but hopefully it will not be difficult to fix.
And, to the 'moderator' that marked this as offtopic: Get a friggin' clue. If you have the courage, let us know what exactly is offtopic about this post. Justify your action in a more public manner. Excuse me while I go turn off my 'willing to moderate' flag.
The real friction between Intel and VIA started when they announced the addition of PC-133 and DDR-SDRAM support to the chipset they had just licensed from Intel. This move greatly upset Intel because they were trying to convince the PC market in general to embrace the obscenely overpriced beast that is RDRAM. Via may or may not have had ( according to different sources) had a clause in their license dealing with supported cpu bus speeds. Meaning that Intel didn't want anyone else offering an increase in performance, well, atleast not before Intel offered one.
The problem was that Via already had chipsets that could run 133Mhz+, but they couldn't market those as anything other than 100Mhz chips. Then Intel missed some of the planned announcement dates for their 133Mhz FSB processors because of troubles with the i820 chipset( it was supposed to ship Q2 99) and Via got impatient and announced that their chipset had 133Mhz fsb, DDR-SDRAM, AGP4x support and more. That seemed to anger the lawsuit suits at intel and we are still watching the unfolding drama now.
Now if Intel did actually have a legal agreement that prevented Via from shipping a faster chipset and they broke the agreement, then I am on Intels side.
If Intel is just upset because Via has proven they have a product manufacturers want to buy over the i820, then Intel is just being infantile. That wouldn't excuse the lawsuits though. I do believe that this is the first time that a *major* product effort from Intel has been a *major* dud. This could just be a reaction to the rejection.
Double standard? I don't think so. Your opinion may differ.
You have.. err.. stumbled onto a new and fabulous marketing gimmick. Asheron's Call, the game that is so good, you will crap in your favorite pants just to keep playing! Act now and get a free 5-pack of Depends! Lets just hope that the new virtual newscasters will filter this kind of story.
Well, you are comparing a soon-to-be-available product from MS to the almost year old Linux kernel. I suggest that you examine the ( quite stable) development 2.3 series if you want a look at what will soon be the new stable series.
Mucho improved TCP/IP stack is one of the many revamped features. Thanks go to Mindcraft for exposing some linux flaws so Linus, Alan and many other talented coders could streamline the stack. I do enjoy the irony that MS funded the Mindcraft benchmarking that pointed to specific problems in the Linux networking code, and that has lead to greatly improved networking effeciency at the kernel level ( and a nifty kernel based web server for static pages)!
I also like your mention that the (completely unbiased?) Univ. of Washington has crowned MS as the network speed kings. I can only believe that their conclusion was drawn for a very limited sampling of the networking environments available to the business world. Maybe they limited themselves to benchmarking equipment they could purchase at Wal-mart.
I will believe that MS has improved their networking to the levels demanded by business environments when they are able to replace all of the Unix boxes that power hotmail.com with the same number of similar power servers running their W2K Server based OS. The tactic I imagine they would try would be to use something like the upcoming 8-way coppermine based Xeon processors to replace the same number of 2-way Unix boxes.
Cheers Dude!
I armost though you were serious! I'm grad I figure you out you funny guy. You no want anybody but Americans to learn secret tech support skirls from the genius Illiad! We know you try and trick us! Shame on you, now we go study User Friendly and learn many secrets and get even more tech support contracts! Thanks you MicroSoft for making us many oppurtunities to to support!
Actually, Glide exposes the 3dfx chip rendering functions and register set as an API. Mesa can use Glide to speed up rendering, but Mesa supplies the OpenGL compatible functions under Linux. Whether a card or chipset manufacturer has a windows based OpenGL driver or not means nothing in the Linux world. What matters is how much chipset information is available for the graphics chips. Is it enough to accelerate the 2d functions only or only enough to get the 3d engine rendering polygons but not the accelerated geometry setup or T&L engines under Linux, *BSD, etc...? I don't think so, but several companies still seem to think this way.
Find it here in beta.
Even though it is still in beta, it is already being used as a foundation for things like GVoice.
It seems that most people I see "quoting" the bible are merely paraphrasing what they have heard. I know the AC that posted this didn't really quote, but they did say "but the signs are still there." AC here is assuming the role of interpreter for those that read his post. Those that are interested may want to consider the following quotes. For those that are uninterested , then please ignore the following, it probably wasn't meant for you.
Mark (KJV) 13:22-33
22 For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.
23 But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things.
24 But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,
25 And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.
26 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.
27 And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.
28 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near:
29 So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors.
30 Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.
31 Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.
32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
33 Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.
Now, my interpretation is something like this:
Man either believes or he doesn't. If you truly believe, then you will always be ready. The things I've read from the Bible, Torah, Koran and Book of Mormon are quite similar in concept. They all had a much richer meaning than the mis-quotes and incorrect paraphrasings conveyed from people who hadn't read much.
For the curious, read for yourself and make an honest search for truth. I know people that are being seduced by much of the hype into believing that some things of momentous importance are going to happen on some particular day or time. Their faith will be damaged when the appointed time comes and goes without the promised event. What a shame, if they knew the books that their faith is supposed to be based on, they would understand the deceptions.
A "generation that shall not pass" reference can be measured by the exodus from Egypt. The Jews saw fit to make the golden calf to worship and God said they would not be allowed to enter into the promised land before that generation had passed away. I am looking for some length of time shorter than forty years from now to hold some very terrible events for the earth and occupants. But when? I'm pretty sure it isn't going to be 1-1-2000. But, then again, I have no way of knowing for certain.
Why are you asking for confirmation of your questions? Either you know why you think and believe the way you do or you are just parroting something taught by others. Consensus doesn't mean correct.
The theme presented in the article is that some Brazilian officials believe that the games had some influence on the man. That Brazilian officials were most probably ( I can't know for sure ) motivated by their fear of the press. The people in the theater just want to know why some unstable freak was allowed to kill them without provocation.
My belief is that different people have different weaknesses. This fellow may have had a weakness for believing that aliens were attacking Brazil and needed to be stopped. I know people that have had weaknesses for ladies other than their wives, alcohol, drugs and money. Some of them no longer have to worry about their wives ( or their houses, cars, etc..) or their old jobs. Just because one person has a weakness dosen't mean that everyone has the same problem.
Your question: "However, will someone admit that by playing something like Quake, the player's aim in reality may be improved?"
This question probably seems valid if someone hasn't fired a gun. Its more like assuming that someone who has played TombRaider must be able to swim because Lara goes swimming in each game. Or that someone must be able to ride a bicycle because they watched re-runs of The Brady Bunch(tm) or be able to play basketball because they are tall.
Moving a dot around and clicking a mouse button aren't the same thing as firing a real weapon. The games help some people to improve their hand & eye coordination.
And about your "Can we keep saying that computer games, or violent movies, or X are 100% completely innocent? How about 99.99% innocent?" questions.
How can a game be guilty or innocent? If a book describes a bank robbery, is the book guilty of something? A person can be guilty or innocent but not an object. If this were not the case, then my car would be the one guilty of speeding, not me.
People make choices everyday. I usually choose between lunch choices, but I have never chosen to kill someone. Some people have chosen to take the life of another person. The killer made that choice, it didn't just happen without any responsibility.
Response from Netcraft:
www.etoys.com is running Etoys Web server 1.2 on Linux
First, what the heck is "Etoys Web server 1.2"?
Second, they seem to be stomping all over the spirit of the GPL and its encouragment of sharing and technical fellowship. What a shame that the GPL has no 'asshole' exclusionary clauses.