>The quality of writing in this article leaves a >lot to be desired. For some reason I don't trust >this author....
As it says, it's is a "live coverage" page, that's being rapidly updated as the keynote progresses. Someone's sitting there typing into their box and updating the page as fast as possible.
It's not meant to be a journalistic article, just a rapid update for those of us who don't have streaming QT at work. So there's no fact checking goin on. He hears something wrong, it gets inputted wrong, he doesn't go back to check his facts till after the keynote's over.
I, for one, doubt that Apple'd open source the WHOLE MacOS X, not after spending so much on its development. Prolly, they'll just releast all the low-level stuff, like the Darwin release.
Tho, it's be teriffically cool if the DID OS the whole thing.
Actually, that year Steve Jobs was *supposed* to be the man of the year.
Time diligently sent a reporter to interview Mr. Jobs for the story. The writer caught Jobs at a bad time, the meeting didn't go very well, and the reporter sent back an article that was basically just a smear job.
Time realised that they couldn't print such a biased, mud-slinging article, and the reporter refused to rewrite it.
Up againtst a deadline, Time dropped Steve Jobs, and settled on the personal computer.
The taxed levied on the consumer are peanuts compared to the taxes on businesses. Businesses don't get it in the SALES tax dept, but they take it up the a** in the corperate INCOME tax arena.
Not even to mention the dissappearance of high-paying jobs from the local economy, property tax on the campus (high value by necessity, think of the bandwidth necessary for e-commerce), dissappearance of the high-tech infrastructure (don't kid yourself, high-bandwidth backbones are built first for BUSINESSES, second for colleges, and LAST for home DSL).
Don't have any illusions. If the geeks left for greener and less despotic pastures, NC'd lose far more than they gain by taxing the geeks into oblivion.
I don't know about ACC, but subdermal tracers feature prominently in some of Niven's work.
In his "Known Space" world, he wrote a seires of futuristic detective stories featuring Gil "The ARM" Hamilton.
The ARM, or Algamarated Regional Militia, is the Earth's future police/military, after the United Nations becomes the govergning body of the planet.
Anyway, one of the ARM's tools are subdermal tracer implants put in place by ARM agents without the subject's knowledge. These are used to track criminal suspects, possible kidnap victims, basically anyone the police would like to keep tabs on.
I think the method of application was an airgun from a distance or something, so having one implanted would feel like nothing more than an any little pin prick or inscet bite.
The Gil Hamilton stories take place in the relatively near future, 2050 or so. Many of them deal with the consequences of perfected rejection-free organ transplants, but before new organs can be cloned. Consequently, a trade in "organlegging" is established... people are kidnapped and broken up into spare parts for black-market transplant shops. Other social ramificationss are delt with too, as the death penalty is common for infractions we'd consider ridiculously minor. The reason? Demand for transplant organs, as the perferred execution is the organ banks. Also forget about preserving yourself cryonically... you'll wake up one piece at a time.
They're really fascinating stories that I highly recommend.
An earlier poster mentioned how IBM threatened to pull all operations out of Florida when Tallahassee tried to get cute and tax ALL of IBM's business.
Well, why shouldn't the same principle apply to NC? What if every online retailer that has operations in North Carolina packed up and went to a more enlighteded state? Add in a nice consumer boycott of e-business that *didn't* leave, and you hit them where it REALLY hurts... business income tax!
After all, an online retailer can do business from pretty much anywhere. Why *not* relocate to a more enlightened state; one which is NOT run by viciously greedy tin-plated despots?
Something along the lines of "geeks of the world unite"? Make an example of NC, and the rest'll fall into line.
First of all, like a few others here, I was lucky enough to see Toy Story II in full digital projection at plasure island here in Orlando. I also saw it on film projection at a theater closer to my house.
And I have to say, digital wins hands down. No comparison, digital has ALREADY overtaken celluloid. The only place I could detect ANY digital anomolys was in the closing credits. But that is more than made up for, by the absolute clarity of the picture, perfect sound, no scratches, pits, or other defects on the film, and absolutely NO jitter.
But let's give Ebert the benefit of the doubt, and assume that, AS IT STANDS NOW, digital projection only EQUALS celluloid quality, and that this 48fps thing offers 5x standard quality.
Remember Morres law? I know it refers only to transistors on a CPU, but, given an observation of the advances in the last decade, I think we can reasonably extrapolate it into digital storage, DSP, and digital tellecommunication.
Now, Star Wars Ep II is scheduled for releast three years from TPM, yes? That's enough time for Morres law to act twice. So the digital projections we'll be watching for Ep2 will be @ 4x the quality of traditional celluliod. Just short of the 5x that Eberts 48fps system can deliver, and will that system even be in use in three years?
Episode III is due three more years after that. Time for Morres law to act twice more. So the projections we're watching of Ep3 will have 16x the quality of film, triple that of Ebert's 48fps system.
This is, of course, discounting any releases by other digital-enlightened studios like Pixar.
Has ANY other industry in the world EVER kept up with the exponential advance ment of computer technology? I can't think of one. What hubris is it that Ebert imagines that the film industry can not only keep up, but surpass, the efforts of the millions of computer geeks building the world of tomorrow?
(oh, and based on seeing *the same movie* in both digital AND analog recently, I can say, IMO, that digital projection has ALREADY won, making the whole arguement moot, even if Morres law *doesn't* extrapolate nicely into my point)
... to rig an extra switch between the main light control and the actual headlights?
Hint: Simplicity itself.
Seems as though prople here have a little too much emphesis on SOFTWARE hacking. Don't, for a minute, think that some simple electrical skill goes a long way as well.
Get a black caddie, tint the windoze, paint over the chrome bumpers black as well.
Kick this sucker on at night, kill your lights. You're pretty much free to haul balls @ 150 if you want.
Sure, if you blast past a cop his radar'll pick you up. But once you're outa the range of his headlights you're pretty much invisible to him unless the highway is really well-lit (most aren't) or there's a really bright full moon.
Meanwhile, you just tracked the cop with your radar detector. So you know to pull off into the next rest area, wait a few minutes, then head back out @ 70 or so with your lights on like a good little motorist.
Of course, I'd want to do it with night vision goggles so I could see all around the car in whatever direction I looked instead of just what's in that little HUD.
Hmmm, If people started doing this the roads'd get quite a bit more dangerous. Probably it's a good thing that the geezers most likely to own caddies rarely drive at night, and hardly ever above 45 when they DO drive.
But what happens when this thing gets put on a Porche???
john
Just how does a California judge have jurisdiction
on
No EToy for Christmas
·
· Score: 1
The article says these etoy guys operate out of Europe (doesn't say which country i think). So just HOW the HELL does a Californis judge have jurisdiction over them????
Do they reside in CA now? The article led me to belive that they are still in Europe. Is the server hosting the site in the US somewhere?
If the answer to both these is no, why don't they tell that jackass of a judge to get stuffed, make sure the server's in Europe somewhere nicely out of his jurisdiction (preferbaly in a European country where etoys is not incorperated), and go on their merry way?
IANAL. But I don't see how some two bit yokel of a judge plans to enforce a fine on foriegn nationals who don't reside in his jurisdiction.
I work with Andy Henderson, one of the participants in LokiHack.
When he found out that he'd been accepted into the competition, he went down to Best Buy to *TRY* to find a copy of Civ3 for Linux.
Despite the fact that Worst Buy sells the Linux os itself, there's no other software for it there. None. Gobs of civ3 boxes for windows, but out of a hundred of these, not one copy of the Linux version. Same situation if you want the Mac version, although I'm fortunate enough, in that regard, to live near a pretty good CompUSA.
Given the frusteration level involved in finding the game for the proper OSs. I too would probably be driven to buying the winblows version and DLing the proper executables later....
But only if I thought Carmack was wrong about the marketing drone mentality. Which, I suspect, he is not. I don't, however, see why the DLs of the alternate executablys couldn't be tracked instead of box purchases.
(Hell, and what about those of us, like me, who have Linux, Macintosh and windoze boxen?)
I, for one, will wait, and vote for either the Mac or Linux version, rather than contribute to marketing data which will not reflect my tre computing habits.
It's all well and good to say that digital misinformation is a warcrime and that military unit's can't engage in it. But what about all the anonymous civvies that might take it upon themselves to engage in cyberwar on their nation's behalf?
Remember when NATO had to put the smackdown on slobo milo? Hackers (yeah I know cracker is more PC but F-it) came out of the woodwork, on both sides, attacking various internet sites of the opposition.
Think, for a moment, about barriers to entry.
It's auful hard for a civilian to aquire, say a $50 million fighter and plant a bomb into an orphanage to commit a war crime. Even if you ignore the expense, there's all kinds of restrictions on the necessary hardware.
But digital morphing and rendering has become simplistically inexpensive over the years. Jurassic Park probably was rendered on several million $ worth of 1990-era SGI workstations, and remember how convinging the dinos were?
Nowdays, any yahoo with $5K worth of Macintosh and the associated FMV software can do the same job. Or for the more financially endowed $20K worth of SGI hardware and software (still within the budget of many americans) can render a more convincing job on FMV. For most still shots, a $1K Linux box running GIMP can do almost as well as Photoshop for altering photos.
And the internet, if you have any brains, allows for easy anonymous distribution.
So just what does the war crimes tribunal do when countless civies decide to "help out" in the IT arena of our next war?
>Well, based on the comments on this page, I would > say opinion is pretty much splt, of course, it >wouldn't occour to ESR, who seems to think that >Marxism is as evil as Nazism..
Quick history quiz. More people were murdered under which system; fascism or communism???
Answer:
COMMUNISM!!!
Suprise!!!
Four million jews in germany doesn't compare to at least 20 million (people of various (any) religions) murdered during Stalin's "purges" in communist russia.
Communism, of course, doesn't choose who to murder based on religion alone. Communism demands the silencing(murder) of ANY person who deviates from doctrine to the slightest. Gee, an equal opportunity genocidal police state.... whodda thunk it??
Another quick quiz... Place the quote... communist or fascist:
"One death is a tragedy, A milion deaths is a statistic"
Answer: COMMUNIST! Good ol' Uncle Joe Stalin, whom FDR was so buddy buddy with.
I, for one, agree completely with ESR. I have no desire, whatsoever, to ever be associated with the chineese. Remember, this is the same merry bunch who engaged in such niceties as the Tianinamen Square massacre and the occupation of Tibet. Not to mention their continuing harassment of Tiawan, giving Iran all the silkworm missiles they want. Oh, and don't forget they stole a good deal of our nuclear missile and warhead technology only recently, so they could have better weapons of mass destruction to point at us.
Why would ANYONE in the free software movement want to be associated with a governmental system that is the total antithesis of the word "free"???
And do you want to even think of the bad press Linux would get if it were to become the official communist operating system??? I can imagine the ads spread by Linux's competitors now:
"Linux, the choice of genocidal totalitarian police states all throughout the world. Invade your neighbors with the power of open source software on your side. Kill a few million dissedents, recompile your kernal, and do it all again!!!"
One thing about this affair *REALLY* well and truely bothers me. In fact, it has me downright pissed off:
[["The university said it discovered the copyright violations last month, when it conducted surprise inspections of student computer files AT THE ORDER of the Recording Industry Association of America. Read"]] [[[[EMPHESIS mine]]]]
"At the order". When the HELL did a fu*king trade group get the authority to ORDER around a major computer science university?!?!?!?!!!!
IANAL, but last *I* heard, I had thought it took a judge and a search warrant to ORDER a university to allow someone to search their servers. Okay, so CMU did the search themselves. But when the HELL was the F-ing RIAA given the authority to ORDER such a search????
Or did they mearly *coerce* CMU into thought-policing actions???
This *REALLY* pisses me off!!!!
Arrogance such as this is downright microsoftian!
Somewhere, somebody, has given WAAAAYYYY too much power to these thugs. That person, or persons needs to be dragged out and (metaphorically) shot, or at least voted out of office.
So how the hell do you stop the RIAA from rampaging around like this, bullying the very universitys which are supposed to be the bulwarks of free sppech, freedom of expression, and freedom of information???
Doesn't RICO cover corrupy, power-mad, bullying organizations such as this. IANAL again, and I know RICO was meant to combat the mafia, but IIRC, other corrupt organizations have been prosecuted for racketeering under RICO before. Anyone know how such a suit is initiated? Writing congressmen I suppose. Although it would have to be an en masse campaign.
Since the RIAA is so intent on destroying the MP3 format, how about a class-action suit against them... by all the creators and users of MP3 software???
Or, perhaps, as was suggested earlier, MP3 should just be made into everyone's default sound format for EVERYTHING. Make it so ubiquiotous, that there'll be NO WAY to stop it.
In any event, there's got to be *some* way to bring these SOBs down...
By home machines are named after cartoon dogs and their sidekicks.
My primary desktop(minitower) is Dogbert. The file and web server is Odie, and my old 486 box that I revitalised with Slakware (FULL SIZE Tower) is Marmaduke.
When I finally get around to getting a notebook, It'll be Snoopy.
My PalmIII is Woodstock, and my Newton (TGF Ebay) is Ratbert.
At work, IT demands and administers NT for most of the company. But here in the graphics department, we have out own subnet of Macs, SGIs and Linux boxen.
The Macs are named after various cartoom characters, starting with Pixar (Steve's other Job), then moving into Disnet at large (woody, buzzLightyear, hopper, flik, etc...).
The SGIs are various characters from CGI intensive movies and tv shows (terminator, t1000, tRex, starfury, dancingBaby, etc.)
The linux boxen are various british warships (Intrepid, Indefatigable, Invincible, Relentless, Trafalgar, arkRoyale, and Triumph).
The lone Sun workstation was recently renamed methesula(sp) as it holds the company's record for longest uptime.
The single NT box that IT insists we keep around, we have christined titanic. The MCSE twit thinks we're following the convention we had for the SGIs.... but we all know better.
When will it end. Yet another head-shrink, who's probably NEVER written a line of code in his life, thinks he can use a software company to crawl inside the heads of people who operate on a level so far above his own he can't even imagine.
How he got any geeks to go along with this and write the software I don't know. Perhaps they're COBOL programmers...
Has it occured to the people who came up with this half-witted idea that psychological tests like this are ridiculously transparent?
For example, that briggs-meyers personality test; you know the one that tells you if you are:
Introvert or Extrovert iNtuitave or Sensing Thinking or Feeling Perceiving or Judging
Now, if *I* answer HONESTLY, I come out INTP. But I can easily make my restlts come out ESFJ, or ISTJ, or ENFP, or any damn thing I want.
So, suppose the ACLU *doesn't* throw a fit and keep this tied up in court till we're all dead of old age. And suppose that the PHAs DO use it to sift through the high school population looking for geeks.
They're not going to find any. Geeks are, by definition, too smart to fall for this crap.... unless they want to.
This test will find:
A) Violent people who are also idiots. These are more likely to blow themselves up building their pipe bombs, or forget which end of the gun you point at their target.
B) Smart asses like me, who are not actually violent, but who greatly enjoy messing with the heads of anal retentive reactionary administrator types.
Meanwhile, the rest of the geeks, are safely hidden away, due to the ridiculous transparancy of standardised tests. As are the INTELLIGENT violent people, who might actually pose a threat to *others* someday (as opposed to just themselves).
Sigh....
Time to dig out those old Marilyn Manson T-Shirts and KMFDM CDs....
I am just more and more sickened my the holier than thou hipocracy of the right-wing freaks.
Anyone see the pattern?
First, rock and roll was "the music of the devil". Well, the old skeezers couldn't kill off rock and roll, it was too entrenched with the youth, who were actually open minded about new trends (both culturally and technological).
So what do the right wingers do? They go with the old "if you can't beat them, join them" routine. And now we have "christian rock".
Next came chrisitan metal, christian rap, christian punk, christian ska.... Sorry revrends Fallwell, Robertson, and Buchannon, but if I want to listen to your right wing fascist propaganda, I'll actually GO to church again someday (or mabye I'll just watch the televangelists).
Now we have christian Doom.
This is even more hipocritical. All throughout the media, Doom was being bashed by the christian right as one of the causes of that Columbine nonsence. "We need more family values, Doom is a "murder simulater"" etc...
Now they have their own Doom, which they plan to use to indoctrinate 3d gamers. This after denouncing Doom, and its brethern as a cause of the decline of morality in America or some such non-sence.
Any you know what's REALLY funny? You know where the hipocracy surfaces big time?
Anybody remember the plot of Doom, the very game they were so intent on bashing?????
It had a *LITTLE* something to do with fighting the minions of hell! The VERY SAME MESSAGE these guts are trying to send with this holy avengers game!!!!!
Granted, in Doom, you weren't an angel fighting daemons with a holy sword or somesuch; you were a part of the US Marine Corps, fighting the legions of hell with a 12 gauge, and a healthy supply of buckshot!
In fact, you could argue, that because this "Holy Avengers" game lets you play on the side of "evil", wheras Doom only allows you to play as "good", that Doom actually sends a MORE MORALLY "RIGHT" massage than Holy Avengers!
I don't know what's worse, the continual efforts of these bastards to infiltrate every aspect of my life; or the blantant hipocracy when they do...
Slashdot Mirror
>The quality of writing in this article leaves a
>lot to be desired. For some reason I don't trust
>this author....
As it says, it's is a "live coverage" page, that's being rapidly updated as the keynote progresses. Someone's sitting there typing into their box and updating the page as fast as possible.
It's not meant to be a journalistic article, just a rapid update for those of us who don't have streaming QT at work. So there's no fact checking goin on. He hears something wrong, it gets inputted wrong, he doesn't go back to check his facts till after the keynote's over.
I, for one, doubt that Apple'd open source the WHOLE MacOS X, not after spending so much on its development. Prolly, they'll just releast all the low-level stuff, like the Darwin release.
Tho, it's be teriffically cool if the DID OS the whole thing.
john
>>let it all just be rumours that Leonardo
>>DiCaprio is going to play Anakin in Episode II.
One very good thing actually. We'd get to see Ewan McGreggor kick leo's ass and throw him into a pit of lava in Episode III !!!!
john
Actually, that year Steve Jobs was *supposed* to be the man of the year.
Time diligently sent a reporter to interview Mr. Jobs for the story. The writer caught Jobs at a bad time, the meeting didn't go very well, and the reporter sent back an article that was basically just a smear job.
Time realised that they couldn't print such a biased, mud-slinging article, and the reporter refused to rewrite it.
Up againtst a deadline, Time dropped Steve Jobs, and settled on the personal computer.
Or that's the way the stort goes anyway.
john
The taxed levied on the consumer are peanuts compared to the taxes on businesses. Businesses don't get it in the SALES tax dept, but they take it up the a** in the corperate INCOME tax arena.
Not even to mention the dissappearance of high-paying jobs from the local economy, property tax on the campus (high value by necessity, think of the bandwidth necessary for e-commerce), dissappearance of the high-tech infrastructure (don't kid yourself, high-bandwidth backbones are built first for BUSINESSES, second for colleges, and LAST for home DSL).
Don't have any illusions. If the geeks left for greener and less despotic pastures, NC'd lose far more than they gain by taxing the geeks into oblivion.
john
The bible tells us that the mark of the beast will be on the forehead or the right hand.
So, we just require everyone to have these things implanted in their LEFT hand!!!
Or their armpit, or bellybutton, or buttocks, or somewhere.
Then we'll be *perfectly* safe from the antichrist!
john
>"It is for your own good!" Is a statment used by
>people to get them to trust you. I don't like
>needles - give me the 'blue pill'!
Take the *red* pill!!! You could be the one! All I'm offering is the truth, nothing more.
Sorry. I couldn't resist.
john
I don't know about ACC, but subdermal tracers feature prominently in some of Niven's work.
In his "Known Space" world, he wrote a seires of futuristic detective stories featuring Gil "The ARM" Hamilton.
The ARM, or Algamarated Regional Militia, is the Earth's future police/military, after the United Nations becomes the govergning body of the planet.
Anyway, one of the ARM's tools are subdermal tracer implants put in place by ARM agents without the subject's knowledge. These are used to track criminal suspects, possible kidnap victims, basically anyone the police would like to keep tabs on.
I think the method of application was an airgun from a distance or something, so having one implanted would feel like nothing more than an any little pin prick or inscet bite.
The Gil Hamilton stories take place in the relatively near future, 2050 or so. Many of them deal with the consequences of perfected rejection-free organ transplants, but before new organs can be cloned. Consequently, a trade in "organlegging" is established... people are kidnapped and broken up into spare parts for black-market transplant shops. Other social ramificationss are delt with too, as the death penalty is common for infractions we'd consider ridiculously minor. The reason? Demand for transplant organs, as the perferred execution is the organ banks. Also forget about preserving yourself cryonically... you'll wake up one piece at a time.
They're really fascinating stories that I highly recommend.
john
An earlier poster mentioned how IBM threatened to pull all operations out of Florida when Tallahassee tried to get cute and tax ALL of IBM's business.
Well, why shouldn't the same principle apply to NC? What if every online retailer that has operations in North Carolina packed up and went to a more enlighteded state? Add in a nice consumer boycott of e-business that *didn't* leave, and you hit them where it REALLY hurts... business income tax!
After all, an online retailer can do business from pretty much anywhere. Why *not* relocate to a more enlightened state; one which is NOT run by viciously greedy tin-plated despots?
Something along the lines of "geeks of the world unite"? Make an example of NC, and the rest'll fall into line.
john
First of all, like a few others here, I was lucky enough to see Toy Story II in full digital projection at plasure island here in Orlando. I also saw it on film projection at a theater closer to my house.
And I have to say, digital wins hands down. No comparison, digital has ALREADY overtaken celluloid. The only place I could detect ANY digital anomolys was in the closing credits. But that is more than made up for, by the absolute clarity of the picture, perfect sound, no scratches, pits, or other defects on the film, and absolutely NO jitter.
But let's give Ebert the benefit of the doubt, and assume that, AS IT STANDS NOW, digital projection only EQUALS celluloid quality, and that this 48fps thing offers 5x standard quality.
Remember Morres law? I know it refers only to transistors on a CPU, but, given an observation of the advances in the last decade, I think we can reasonably extrapolate it into digital storage, DSP, and digital tellecommunication.
Now, Star Wars Ep II is scheduled for releast three years from TPM, yes? That's enough time for Morres law to act twice. So the digital projections we'll be watching for Ep2 will be @ 4x the quality of traditional celluliod. Just short of the 5x that Eberts 48fps system can deliver, and will that system even be in use in three years?
Episode III is due three more years after that. Time for Morres law to act twice more. So the projections we're watching of Ep3 will have 16x the quality of film, triple that of Ebert's 48fps system.
This is, of course, discounting any releases by other digital-enlightened studios like Pixar.
Has ANY other industry in the world EVER kept up with the exponential advance ment of computer technology? I can't think of one. What hubris is it that Ebert imagines that the film industry can not only keep up, but surpass, the efforts of the millions of computer geeks building the world of tomorrow?
(oh, and based on seeing *the same movie* in both digital AND analog recently, I can say, IMO, that digital projection has ALREADY won, making the whole arguement moot, even if Morres law *doesn't* extrapolate nicely into my point)
john
Ugh, hit submit when I meant to preview.
That last sentance should have gone more like.
Don't think, for a minute, that some basic electrical skill doesn't go a long way as well.
john
... to rig an extra switch between the main light control and the actual headlights?
Hint: Simplicity itself.
Seems as though prople here have a little too much emphesis on SOFTWARE hacking. Don't, for a minute, think that some simple electrical skill goes a long way as well.
john
Get a black caddie, tint the windoze, paint over the chrome bumpers black as well.
Kick this sucker on at night, kill your lights. You're pretty much free to haul balls @ 150 if you want.
Sure, if you blast past a cop his radar'll pick you up. But once you're outa the range of his headlights you're pretty much invisible to him unless the highway is really well-lit (most aren't) or there's a really bright full moon.
Meanwhile, you just tracked the cop with your radar detector. So you know to pull off into the next rest area, wait a few minutes, then head back out @ 70 or so with your lights on like a good little motorist.
Of course, I'd want to do it with night vision goggles so I could see all around the car in whatever direction I looked instead of just what's in that little HUD.
Hmmm, If people started doing this the roads'd get quite a bit more dangerous. Probably it's a good thing that the geezers most likely to own caddies rarely drive at night, and hardly ever above 45 when they DO drive.
But what happens when this thing gets put on a Porche???
john
The article says these etoy guys operate out of Europe (doesn't say which country i think). So just HOW the HELL does a Californis judge have jurisdiction over them????
Do they reside in CA now? The article led me to belive that they are still in Europe. Is the server hosting the site in the US somewhere?
If the answer to both these is no, why don't they tell that jackass of a judge to get stuffed, make sure the server's in Europe somewhere nicely out of his jurisdiction (preferbaly in a European country where etoys is not incorperated), and go on their merry way?
IANAL. But I don't see how some two bit yokel of a judge plans to enforce a fine on foriegn nationals who don't reside in his jurisdiction.
john
Posting so my moderation here cancels (hopefully, IIRC thats how moderation works)
I accidently moderated you down when I meant to mod you up. I think it's that wheel on the MS mouse that screwed it up.
Sorry 'bout that.
john (smacking my head on my desk)
I work with Andy Henderson, one of the participants in LokiHack.
When he found out that he'd been accepted into the competition, he went down to Best Buy to *TRY* to find a copy of Civ3 for Linux.
Despite the fact that Worst Buy sells the Linux os itself, there's no other software for it there. None. Gobs of civ3 boxes for windows, but out of a hundred of these, not one copy of the Linux version. Same situation if you want the Mac version, although I'm fortunate enough, in that regard, to live near a pretty good CompUSA.
Given the frusteration level involved in finding the game for the proper OSs. I too would probably be driven to buying the winblows version and DLing the proper executables later....
But only if I thought Carmack was wrong about the marketing drone mentality. Which, I suspect, he is not. I don't, however, see why the DLs of the alternate executablys couldn't be tracked instead of box purchases.
(Hell, and what about those of us, like me, who have Linux, Macintosh and windoze boxen?)
I, for one, will wait, and vote for either the Mac or Linux version, rather than contribute to marketing data which will not reflect my tre computing habits.
john
... that the for last few weeks, the microsofties seem to have come out in force to defend their master?
/. and ordered his minions to carry forth the windows banner and to battle with the resistance?
It's not just this topic either. All over the rest of the boards, you see a much higher concentration of microsoft FUD than before.
Prehaps bill has finally taken notice of
Bring 'em on....
Hey Lotus... about notes for Linux. At least you can rest easy that Linus won't try to rape you like bill has so many times in the past and present.
john
It's all well and good to say that digital misinformation is a warcrime and that military unit's can't engage in it. But what about all the anonymous civvies that might take it upon themselves to engage in cyberwar on their nation's behalf?
Remember when NATO had to put the smackdown on slobo milo? Hackers (yeah I know cracker is more PC but F-it) came out of the woodwork, on both sides, attacking various internet sites of the opposition.
Think, for a moment, about barriers to entry.
It's auful hard for a civilian to aquire, say a $50 million fighter and plant a bomb into an orphanage to commit a war crime. Even if you ignore the expense, there's all kinds of restrictions on the necessary hardware.
But digital morphing and rendering has become simplistically inexpensive over the years. Jurassic Park probably was rendered on several million $ worth of 1990-era SGI workstations, and remember how convinging the dinos were?
Nowdays, any yahoo with $5K worth of Macintosh and the associated FMV software can do the same job. Or for the more financially endowed $20K worth of SGI hardware and software (still within the budget of many americans) can render a more convincing job on FMV. For most still shots, a $1K Linux box running GIMP can do almost as well as Photoshop for altering photos.
And the internet, if you have any brains, allows for easy anonymous distribution.
So just what does the war crimes tribunal do when countless civies decide to "help out" in the IT arena of our next war?
john
>Well, based on the comments on this page, I would
> say opinion is pretty much splt, of course, it
>wouldn't occour to ESR, who seems to think that
>Marxism is as evil as Nazism..
Quick history quiz. More people were murdered under which system; fascism or communism???
Answer:
COMMUNISM!!!
Suprise!!!
Four million jews in germany doesn't compare to at least 20 million (people of various (any) religions) murdered during Stalin's "purges" in communist russia.
Communism, of course, doesn't choose who to murder based on religion alone. Communism demands the silencing(murder) of ANY person who deviates from doctrine to the slightest. Gee, an equal opportunity genocidal police state.... whodda thunk it??
Another quick quiz... Place the quote... communist or fascist:
"One death is a tragedy, A milion deaths is a statistic"
Answer: COMMUNIST! Good ol' Uncle Joe Stalin, whom FDR was so buddy buddy with.
I, for one, agree completely with ESR. I have no desire, whatsoever, to ever be associated with the chineese. Remember, this is the same merry bunch who engaged in such niceties as the Tianinamen Square massacre and the occupation of Tibet. Not to mention their continuing harassment of Tiawan, giving Iran all the silkworm missiles they want. Oh, and don't forget they stole a good deal of our nuclear missile and warhead technology only recently, so they could have better weapons of mass destruction to point at us.
Why would ANYONE in the free software movement want to be associated with a governmental system that is the total antithesis of the word "free"???
And do you want to even think of the bad press Linux would get if it were to become the official communist operating system??? I can imagine the ads spread by Linux's competitors now:
"Linux, the choice of genocidal totalitarian police states all throughout the world. Invade your neighbors with the power of open source software on your side. Kill a few million dissedents, recompile your kernal, and do it all again!!!"
john
One thing about this affair *REALLY* well and truely bothers me. In fact, it has me downright pissed off:
[["The university said it discovered the copyright violations last month, when it conducted surprise inspections of student computer files AT THE ORDER of the Recording Industry Association of America. Read"]] [[[[EMPHESIS mine]]]]
"At the order". When the HELL did a fu*king trade group get the authority to ORDER around a major computer science university?!?!?!?!!!!
IANAL, but last *I* heard, I had thought it took a judge and a search warrant to ORDER a university to allow someone to search their servers. Okay, so CMU did the search themselves. But when the HELL was the F-ing RIAA given the authority to ORDER such a search????
Or did they mearly *coerce* CMU into thought-policing actions???
This *REALLY* pisses me off!!!!
Arrogance such as this is downright microsoftian!
Somewhere, somebody, has given WAAAAYYYY too much power to these thugs. That person, or persons needs to be dragged out and (metaphorically) shot, or at least voted out of office.
So how the hell do you stop the RIAA from rampaging around like this, bullying the very universitys which are supposed to be the bulwarks of free sppech, freedom of expression, and freedom of information???
Doesn't RICO cover corrupy, power-mad, bullying organizations such as this. IANAL again, and I know RICO was meant to combat the mafia, but IIRC, other corrupt organizations have been prosecuted for racketeering under RICO before. Anyone know how such a suit is initiated? Writing congressmen I suppose. Although it would have to be an en masse campaign.
Since the RIAA is so intent on destroying the MP3 format, how about a class-action suit against them... by all the creators and users of MP3 software???
Or, perhaps, as was suggested earlier, MP3 should just be made into everyone's default sound format for EVERYTHING. Make it so ubiquiotous, that there'll be NO WAY to stop it.
In any event, there's got to be *some* way to bring these SOBs down...
john
It's been quite awhile since physics class, so my recall may be a little fuzzy here...
But wouldn't the sphere of that tesla coil function as a Farraday cage for anything/one inside? I'm not 100% sure, but I think I'm right here.
If so, why is it shocking (no pun intended) at all? The guy would've been 100% perfectly safe.
Not that it doesn't still make quit a spectacular picture tho...
john
Is a filter option to screen out Anonymous Cowards.
/.
Seems like these twits compose >=90% of the first posts, flaimbaits, trolls, and just purely assinine crap posts on
john
By home machines are named after cartoon dogs and their sidekicks.
My primary desktop(minitower) is Dogbert. The file and web server is Odie, and my old 486 box that I revitalised with Slakware (FULL SIZE Tower) is Marmaduke.
When I finally get around to getting a notebook, It'll be Snoopy.
My PalmIII is Woodstock, and my Newton (TGF Ebay) is Ratbert.
At work, IT demands and administers NT for most of the company. But here in the graphics department, we have out own subnet of Macs, SGIs and Linux boxen.
The Macs are named after various cartoom characters, starting with Pixar (Steve's other Job), then moving into Disnet at large (woody, buzzLightyear, hopper, flik, etc...).
The SGIs are various characters from CGI intensive movies and tv shows (terminator, t1000, tRex, starfury, dancingBaby, etc.)
The linux boxen are various british warships (Intrepid, Indefatigable, Invincible, Relentless, Trafalgar, arkRoyale, and Triumph).
The lone Sun workstation was recently renamed methesula(sp) as it holds the company's record for longest uptime.
The single NT box that IT insists we keep around, we have christined titanic. The MCSE twit thinks we're following the convention we had for the SGIs.... but we all know better.
john
This is stooooopid!!!
When will it end. Yet another head-shrink, who's probably NEVER written a line of code in his life, thinks he can use a software company to crawl inside the heads of people who operate on a level so far above his own he can't even imagine.
How he got any geeks to go along with this and write the software I don't know. Perhaps they're COBOL programmers...
Has it occured to the people who came up with this half-witted idea that psychological tests like this are ridiculously transparent?
For example, that briggs-meyers personality test; you know the one that tells you if you are:
Introvert or Extrovert
iNtuitave or Sensing
Thinking or Feeling
Perceiving or Judging
Now, if *I* answer HONESTLY, I come out INTP. But I can easily make my restlts come out ESFJ, or ISTJ, or ENFP, or any damn thing I want.
So, suppose the ACLU *doesn't* throw a fit and keep this tied up in court till we're all dead of old age. And suppose that the PHAs DO use it to sift through the high school population looking for geeks.
They're not going to find any. Geeks are, by definition, too smart to fall for this crap.... unless they want to.
This test will find:
A) Violent people who are also idiots. These are more likely to blow themselves up building their pipe bombs, or forget which end of the gun you point at their target.
B) Smart asses like me, who are not actually violent, but who greatly enjoy messing with the heads of anal retentive reactionary administrator types.
Meanwhile, the rest of the geeks, are safely hidden away, due to the ridiculous transparancy of standardised tests. As are the INTELLIGENT violent people, who might actually pose a threat to *others* someday (as opposed to just themselves).
Sigh....
Time to dig out those old Marilyn Manson T-Shirts and KMFDM CDs....
john
I am just more and more sickened my the holier than thou hipocracy of the right-wing freaks.
Anyone see the pattern?
First, rock and roll was "the music of the devil". Well, the old skeezers couldn't kill off rock and roll, it was too entrenched with the youth, who were actually open minded about new trends (both culturally and technological).
So what do the right wingers do? They go with the old "if you can't beat them, join them" routine. And now we have "christian rock".
Next came chrisitan metal, christian rap, christian punk, christian ska.... Sorry revrends Fallwell, Robertson, and Buchannon, but if I want to listen to your right wing fascist propaganda, I'll actually GO to church again someday (or mabye I'll just watch the televangelists).
Now we have christian Doom.
This is even more hipocritical. All throughout the media, Doom was being bashed by the christian right as one of the causes of that Columbine nonsence. "We need more family values, Doom is a "murder simulater"" etc...
Now they have their own Doom, which they plan to use to indoctrinate 3d gamers. This after denouncing Doom, and its brethern as a cause of the decline of morality in America or some such non-sence.
Any you know what's REALLY funny? You know where the hipocracy surfaces big time?
Anybody remember the plot of Doom, the very game they were so intent on bashing?????
It had a *LITTLE* something to do with fighting the minions of hell! The VERY SAME MESSAGE these guts are trying to send with this holy avengers game!!!!!
Granted, in Doom, you weren't an angel fighting daemons with a holy sword or somesuch; you were a part of the US Marine Corps, fighting the legions of hell with a 12 gauge, and a healthy supply of buckshot!
In fact, you could argue, that because this "Holy Avengers" game lets you play on the side of "evil", wheras Doom only allows you to play as "good", that Doom actually sends a MORE MORALLY "RIGHT" massage than Holy Avengers!
I don't know what's worse, the continual efforts of these bastards to infiltrate every aspect of my life; or the blantant hipocracy when they do...
john
The original iMacs weren't packed THAT tightly inside. They LOOKED full because of the big aluminum RF sheilding around the monitor.
But inside that sheilding, there's nearly as much open space as in the current iMac.
In the new iMacs Apple figured out how to incorperate that shieldind into the plastic, so you can see through the whole thing.
Net result: the new iMac LOOKS less crowded, but is not less crowded by too large a margin.
john