Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the concept of FreeMWare and will probably support that too, but when VMWare was first released, I did not hesitate to buy a legitimate individual licence not only for the potential for it to serve my needs, but for the future potential of it supporting them better.
In fact, despite having paid my due, if VMWare suddenly became free today, I would no more ask for a refund then become a single-booting Microsoft user >shudder<:) and I can only hope that others feel the same way. The money that VMWare gets can -- and I say "can" because there is always the potential [Microsoft] for a company [Microsoft] to just take you money and run [Microsoft] -- that that money can be devoted to a steady stream of development. Thus I would still support it even if it were "Free".
There are still a lot of hurdles to VM support of generic OSes, and even VMWare doesn't support OS/2 or BeOS, never mind MacOS X Server PC port, but the constant stream of revenue which makes them look like an IPO-potential capitalist player gives them not only the force of user pressure but the application of capitol clout to get the information they need from companies like IBM and Be Systems to support their operating systems.  [In fact, it is especially in Be Systems interest to be supported by VMWare as that would increase their sales margin into the ranks of 'on the fence' users who don't want to go through the trouble of setting up a whole new OS more or less untested.]
However, without question and for all allowable components that are not otherwise protected by third-party copyright, VMWare should be OpenSource! I'm sure I have no need to extol the virtues of OpenSource to the denizens of the/. community, so I will say simply, OpenSource increases development speed and produces quality code, so VMWare, this is your valued customer speaking -- Open Up! OpenSource!
Sure, we'll have no more Odd Days after today, but we've had so many of them over the course of our lives, I say, so what? I've had my fill. Now the first Even Day in over 1000 years! now that's cool! I bet no-one remembers the last time we had one of those. But I tell you, I feel sorry for our Great Grandchildren born 1 January 2100. They may never experience either an Even or an Odd Day. So sad.
OTOH, in the Coptic Calendar, they won't have another Even Day until 15 October 2283, but there will be another Odd Day on 11 September 2000. If you are Ethiopic however, you need to wait only until 13 October 2007 for your next Even Day, the next Odd Day being the same as in the Coptic Calendar. Alas, though if you follow the Islamic Calendar, the next Even Day will not be until 8 February 2562, though there should be a new Odd Day as soon as 1 August 2087. Persians have it even worse. The next Even Day for them won't be until 22 April 2621, though 20 March 2000 will be another Odd Day for you. The Bah'a'i will have their next Even Day 10 April 2225, but 21 March 2000 is also an Odd Day. For those of us following along on the Hebrew Calendar, our next Odd Day will be 5 April 2011, but we will have to wait until 24 April 2240 for our next Even Day. Ni Hao, because if you are Chinese and follow the cyclical system of 60 years, then Even and Odd days are quite common for any lifetime. Take for instance the next Odd Cycle Day, which will be Chinese New Year next year, 5 February 2000; the next Even Cycle Day will be 24 February 2001. But, if you consider the 60 year cycle has repeated 78 times since the Chinese calendar was established, then the next time the cycle count will be Even is 17 March 2105, and the next time it will be Odd is Chinese New Year 2044, on 30 January. Every other Chinese New Year is an Odd Day, actually. [You're probably getting pretty sick of this at this point but I shall continue...:) ] If you are Hindu, your Even and Odd days depend on whether you're using the Old or New Lunar or Solar Calendars. In the modern Lunar Calendar, 27 November 1999 will be an Even Day, but the next Odd Day will not be until 30 April 3054. However in the Old Lunar Calendar, the next Even Day will not be until 3 April 2899, but the next Odd Day will be 14 April 2010. For the Solar Calendar, the next Modern Even Day will be 17 May 2078, but the next Modern Odd Day will occur as soon as 14 April 2009. For the Old Solar Calendar, things are just as bleak as for the Old Lunar One: we will have to wait until 1 June 2899 for another Even Day, but the next Old Odd Day will be 16 April 2010. Mes amis, je continue en français à célébrer la Révolution. Puis, dans le calendrier de la Révolution, je raconte que nous avons ensuite un Jour Pair le 2nd janvier 2000, mais dois attendre jusqu' à le 23e septembre 2102 à notre Jour Impair prochain. Mais si nous regardons le Calendrier Révolutionnaire Moderne, alors le 1er janvier 2000 sera le Jour Pair suivant, et le 22nd septembre 2102 sera Impair. [Please consult Babelfish Liberally and for more information about the French Revolution, I suggest consulting the most respected historical source at the next NoVaDWVS meeting, 22 November 1999... <-- Plug.] Anyway, where would a list of Calendar Dates be without our good friends, the Mayans. Yes, thanks to Reingold and Dershowitz who provided the resources for all this information, I can tell you that the next Long Count Odd Day by one calculation of the Mayan Epoch will be 23 September 2033, and the next Even Day won't be until 13 October 4772!! That's going to be a long wait, but take solice, because if you only regard the Haab and Tzolkin Calendars, then you get many Even and Odd days each year. For instance, then next Haab Even Day will be 27 April 2000, and the next Odd Day will be 3 December 1999. The next Tzolkin Even Day will be Tomorrow, because today is an Odd Day.:) Of course, if you missed today's Odd Day, not only is Tomorrow another Odd Day but might I recommend getting Rustic and celebrating it on 2 December 1999, when it occurs its last time for 1000 years in the Old Julian Calendar, or wait until 15 February 2000 for the next Julan Even Day. Of course, if you're an Astronomer, then you're only concerned about the Julian Day Number. Fortunately, the next Julian Even Day Number will be 24 February 2023, but the next Odd Julian Day Number won't be until 31 October 3805! But none of this is ISO Standard, so therefore, I suggest that the next ISO Even Day will be Tuesday 4 January 2000, and the next ISO Odd Day will be Monday 20 December 1999. Alas, the last one for the next 1000 years will none the less be 26 December 1999. Of course, since most of us are programmers, let me suggest that ANSI C dictates the next Even Moment will be 10 January 2004 at 13:37:04 GMT in Hexidecimal and 4 May 2000 at 06:56:33 GMT will be our next Odd Moment. Finally, this one is for those suckers that still use the OS of a certain company that may be about to be split in half: The next OLE Even Day will be 6 July 2009 at midnight GMT and the next Odd Day will be 8 August 2001 at 2:40:00 GMT.
Notice Japanese is suspiciously absent from the list of supported languages, but Mandarin Chinese is first. A Taiwanese product, no doubt, and perhaps if a certain neighbour to our east (north) might have raped our land 50 years ago we might be neglecting their language in our technology too. Still, let's not forget what happened to the collaborators who allowed the Japanese possession of Manchuria. . .
It seems that despite being written up in the very educated annals of the British Broadcasting Corporation, that Professor Warwick has not been paying attention to enough of their programming. Were he to do so, he may have been forwarned as much as 30 or more years ago by Doctor Kit Pedler about the dangers of what he plans. Next thing you know, he will be discovering a new planet called Mondas and moving his experiments there...
Those AIBO's are worthless. Why would I want a mechanical dog with LEGS!? They need to fuse his legs in a permanent stance and attach some wheels so I can get him stuck in level sand or kitchen tile. They should also add a water dammage feature where you can just waggle his tale for repairs. And of course, he HAS to at least be able to say, "Affirmative Master!" Where's AIBO's nose laser anyway?
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey,
Who is holding out for news from John Leeson's agent that he has been comissioned to do voice work for a large Japanese Media Conglomerate...
Yep, today, RedHat Inc. surpassed Microsoft Corporation in terms of Ask/Bid price for most of that day, in fact (still trading)! It's quite likely they will remain close (last check they differed by less than a point) for at least a little while, but I do expect a market correction soon. Just in case though, I still hung onto 10 shares or RHAT...:)
Will buy back at around $40 to $50...:) (Which is where MSFT was around 8 October last year...)
Remember when you call the E-Trade broker to specify that your an "Affinity" member when you confirm your order. Affinity == Get the Letter, so you're in. No Affinity == No Dice.
To answer your question as I believe this is why I would be requesting Mixer suggestions were I in the original poster's situation, is that typically I'd only want to listen to 1 thing at a time, say the CD-Player for instance, but my computers are all set up to give me audio feed-back, say when there is an alarm or error message, or maybe I want to mix Quake ][ (assuming the impossible situation that I would ever be interested in playing a game like that:), but wanted my own CD audio track? Thus I would want the Sound Effects from the game mixed with my CD and the frequent system errors from my NT box, my talking Web browser under BeOS and for my linux box -- um, well I guess I can forget about the Linux box for now, but you get the picture. Anyway hope that makes things more clear. Take care.
When you apply for the RHAT IPO, E*Trade asks for your e-mail address (even though you already provide this via your registration). I have always had to register by phone for this deal (finally got accepted this afternoon), and they always run the e-mail address to verify eligability, thus RedHat must have simply provided them with a list of valid e-mails and they do a simple look-up. Now you know my e-mail and I got the letter, but I already registered, so don't even think about it!:)
It's one thing for someone to produce some content which they feel is their Intellectual Property (be it music, literature, software, video, art or what have you), and then try to achieve profit from that "idea" he or she created. That may be to many anti-FSF (against the doctrine that all knowledge should be shared globally for the good of humanity as a whole, not to benefit the individual), but a whole other issue then the one presented her.
If I choose to distribute my content freely, what right do you have to come along and take possession of it under any circumstances? One of the sad truths of this world is it is very hard to publish intellectual property. If I write a great song, I still have to find a record label to distribute it. If I can't everyone looses. But if I can, at least the record company will still pay me for the rights. They take possession and I get paid.
But what if I wanted to distribute my song to everyone? I could put it in an MP3 and put it on the web, perhaps. Say I write a story about the song and what it means to me, and put that up too. Now, maybe my web provider, as publisher, would request compensation FROM THE AUTHOR (me) for the right to publish. E.g. School Fees, ISP Charges, or the right to publish advertising along with your content. Obviously this is a sweet deal for the publisher, as especially in the latter case, there is large room for profit just for hosting / publishing my IP, and they didn't even have to pay for the profit-generating content. Personally I have no problem with this either, as long as the content is still MINE and I maintain the right to re-post the same content elsewhere or remove it from the original publisher (provider) all together. Maybe a local newspaper wants to publish my story or the dance club downtown wants to play my party-mix cut. After all, my intention WAS to distribute it freely, to as large an audience as possible, and by diversifying that is what I achieve.
If my original publisher then [retroactively] takes possession of all content I once published on the service, and threatens to sue me if I allow the paper to publish my story, that's just plain evil! Again, it's one thing if I willingly SELL the rights to my IP, or even explicitly give it away, but to just unilaterally take possession of material without my explicit agreement or any form of compensation is wholly another animal. Again, the issue is not that some provider / publisher like Yahoo would take possession of your IP, but that they can prevent you from your original goal of free dissemination by this action. It's my IP and if I want it to be distributed freely, you have no right to stop me, it's as simple as that.
Just because they're calling the K7 "Athlon" now (how does one pronounce Athlon anyway -- I keep think "Altheon" for some reason. Altheon sounds better, IMHO:), doesn't mean they're dropping the K7 moniker. As was pointed out elsewhere, K7 is probably not trademark-able, and thus Athlon was choosen as the name for the trades. Remember the K6-III is also known as "Sharptooth" -- a far better name, IMHO. Thus I wouldn't read too much into the name change.
3 years ago NEC already had a product called Narrow Band for which I was managing the software driver development. They renamed it Spectral Wave, which supported 8 OC-48 along a single fibre. A year later they were running 32 frequencies along the single fibre. It's no surprise to me that someone has upped the number of frequencies to 40, though at speeds much greater than OC48. All I'm saying is DWDM is not such a hot new technoledgy and Lucent shouldn't be touting itself as the instigator of the advance. When you think about it, the whole concept of freq-multiplexing makes a lot of sense anyway. However, extending the signal length should be a great advance in the lessening of Line Repeater necessity.
But the sad end of the stick is we still have Cable and local Telephone monopolies jacking up prices for lower and lower quality service. Alas, 'tis but a pipe dream...
Okay, I read the review, and sure you can sail your way around the equator, but what about the poles? I really like Civilization, but one think I utterly hated about it was, at the north pole there was an impenetrible barrier. If I go far enough north, I should come out the other side! And the land mass of the pole should be MUCH less than that around the equator. At least Populous III got it right, more or less. After the CTP linux port, the first priority for Civilization 4.0 should be fixing the globe, assuming it is not fixed already. I'll buy it, but without globe support, it's no improvement to me.
The upcoming Ultima IX: Ascension will be featuring a product placement where the Avatar is only able to order Coke Classic at pubs throughout Brittania. Also, the next version of Tomb Raider will have Lara Croft extolling the virtues of a product she can't live without: genuine Trojan Latex condoms...:)
I got a letter from Castlewood last week and it looks like at least for Internal SCSI, it will be another 1 to 2 months! They then tried to push an EIDE drive on me. Geesh! EIDE can Byte Me.:)
Will still buy the ORB Though!
[Hey Andrew, get with the programme and buy one with me!]:)
Just let them run 'An Unearthly Child' in that format, and move on from there... At least those PAL lines won't be chopped anymore as in NTSC. Only problem is, video is still a monster to compress. Maybe one 25-minute episode could be MPEGed onto a $1.50 CD, but at even $30 per 2.2 GB Orb and a limited xfer rate of 12 MB/s, that won't due. Panisonic L-101U (?) still cost the same per media, but are at least 5.2GB, double-sided and optical. How about Sony/Philips DVD-RW? Still not a full-capicity DVD writer though. And Goddess only knows how much an MPEG-4 encoder card/software would go for! I mean, even if we're not Film Pirates (We're not, right!:), writable DVDs would be great for home movies and such. I guess it's just a matter of time...
I am X -- Hear Me Roar!
on
Generations
·
· Score: 2
[With all due respect to the generation that coined that phrase -- the one that begat we X.]
In the beginning there was Babbage, and many the years his ideas and others lay dormant. But then lo, there was ENIAC, and it was good! But the goddess Insectidae saw this and was angered by the light of this ENIAC, and all its children, produced without air. And they were attracted to the light, and there was a great inward Popping sound, and the minions of ENIAC and her successors ran diligently around her hulken skin replacing her airless lights incessantly.
Then there was BellLabs, and thus was born the 3-Legged Spider that could kill the minions of the goddess Inscetidae! Slowly but surely the airless lights disappeared, and the Children of ENIAC grew smaller and sleeker. And they consumed the 3-Legged Spiders, and it was good. But still, the Children of ENIAC were large and slothy, and still required many, many 3-Legged Spiders, which they then called Transistor, by which to live.
Then the Transistors started to form many-legged collectives. The Transistors were packed tighter and tighter, with only a few legs exposed, Integrated into a colonies which they called Circuits. And these black Integrated Circuits further reduced the Children of ENIAC, until some underdeveloped offspring formed small, hand-sized entities, which could do the ubiquitous functions of Add, Subtract, Multiply and Divide with inhuman speed. And these small Children begat others and begat others and begat others and so on until they called themselves such as Palm, but that was yet many years to come, and we have not yet reached the Generation of X.
Then it was 1969, and Man walked on the Moon and HAL 2000, a descendant of ENIAC, was foreseen in a Vision by the late Kubrick, and a Great Bird reminded us to live long and prosper and the world rejoiced! [The King William V version of this document has the additional line: "And thus they knew the Cybernetic Men would roam the cities and the Pepperpots cried an extinguishing tone, first with a mission to EX-TER-MIN-ATE, and then more horrific still, with mass purchases of Piston Engines all across the land."] And thus was begat the Generation of X. And those of X learned of what had come, and saw their parents and their Holy Cards and their ancient tongue of Fortran, and were thankful it was not them. For X had avoided the lurching progress of the last quarter century and were grateful they had not suffered it. For they were now on the vanguard, with a perspective like no other! Young enough to have escaped the slow years of ancient progress, yet old enough to see the coming changes in perspective.
And so it was that X had its War of Stars, its Striking of Empires and its Jedihical Return. And it understood when the Reagan spoke of the War of Stars and again when the Clinton did, and it knew the nature of the Phantom Menace like no one since. And it knew Apple; it knew XT, TRS-80 and C64, all the Children of ENIAC, now small enough to live in our human homes. And we invited them, slowly at first, but in ever increasing numbers, watching, as they became as ubiquitous as the ancient Telephone and Microwave. They knew Atari, they knew Intellivision [nod to a certain moderator there...] and they knew the Connecticut Leather Company -- and they saw it all disappear.
"I knew that company." Spoke one of X of those days of yore. "I remembered passing it many times from my home in West Hartford. Coleco was what we called it. So lively a place, we watched its cabbage fields rot as we drove by in those bygone years. Then it was just a husk. Gone forever, and all we had left was our Commodore and our GWBasic for DOS. Little did we know what a virus the latter would spread..."
So it was that the phoenix rose again, festering in the Park of Xerox for many years. Thus came Macintosh and Nintendo and Sega, and another generation we watched go by. And it was good. But the virus did not lay dormant, for the goddess Insectidae grew restless at her near defeat and helped the virus grow. It gathered strength and saw the success of Macintosh and said, "I must have that!" And so it plotted and conspired to develop the Window of Oblivion, as the Children of ENIAC continued to contract.
"I had seen pictures of old hand-held Children of ENIAC, what we used to call Calculators. What a thrill it was to own my own! Not only did it Add, Subtract, Multiply and Divide, it took logarithms, cosines, and plotted graphs and was even programmable using Reverse Polish Notation. I also had a Wizard to help me remember things, the Original. It even had expansion cards, which could do anything from add more memory to translate Happy Birthday into Chinese. Little did I know what I was holding was the ancestor of a being many generations removed." So it was that the seeds were being sown.
But while the Windows of Oblivion began closing in on germination, a secret was wrought, known only to kings and their minions. And they called it ARPA. And the discoverers, like the breeding at Xerox, knew not what they had created, and had not the tools to allow it to grow. So it lay dormant, when the Window of Oblivion finally took hold!
"I remember the Third Generation of the Window. It was all shiny and new and fit so nicely on my Third Generation XT, which we called 386. Finally I had escaped the confines of the DOS. Little did I know the menace lurking within." The tables had turned and the pace accelerated.
3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 32, 95, OSR1, OSR2, 98: faster and faster they came, wave upon wave. Killing our OS/2 and our Macintoshes like a worm to the core. And so too those ancient Integrated Circuits got denser and faster, and we had 386, 486, Pentium, MMX, PentiumPro, Pentium II, Celeron, Xeon, Pentium III and K6-3DNow swarming, each generation trying to extinguish all others. The legions were afoot; the stage was set, and there seemed like no one left to fight.
"I remember installing Linux pre-1.0 on my 486. I loved it! It was great to finally escape from the gaze of the Window of Oblivion. Finally, there was a third way. We all thanked the generations that came before, the AUX, SunOS, BSD, but now there was a generation for us." And X knew, slowly but surely, there was a light in this generation.
Then came the Genf-people, who formed an enclave called CERN. And they plotted and planned and knew that information needed to be transmitted, indexed and cross-indexed again, like the net of a spider. And they saw ARPA, which developed far away and was now called Internet, and they knew it was good. And thus they developed a new generation across the Whole Wide World, and they called it Web.
"I was living not far from Genf, as the locals called it -- Genève or Geneva as I have sometimes heard it called. Little did I know that in a Canton not far from mine, a new Generation was in the making! I returned to the Royal Mountain of La Belle Province where I was studying, and knew that I needed to have my own slice of this Web. It took me a year to get access, but in 1993, I finally premiered The Original George Harrison and Tomorrow People home pages. Now, if there was only a better browser than Mosaic...." The stage was set.
But the virus returned, this time with a Spry Air about it! And it saw Mosaic and Mosilla and was again jealous. So it created an Explorer and integrated it into its 95. And the world at once cheered and feared. And finally the ARPA, now the Internet, was free to prosper. No longer did the people want their machine-telephone connections to be to simple BBS. And it was that everyone wanted access to this Internet. And the generations again rejoiced. [Until pornography took over and made everything seem smutty, but that's another story...] And soon the secret of kings was as ubiquitous as the Children of ENIAC were, and it was good.
Yet as another generation was born, but a few years later, a new war was beginning, a war between the Palmists and the Sea E of Oblivion. "Look, I played Phantasy Star, PS II, PS III, Gaiden and all the rest, and I can tell you, they are not Palmists, Parma-people or the lost race of Palm. They're Palmans, from planet Palma, like Alis, got it!? Jeez, kids these days with their Play Stations and their PDAs and their iMacs! What's the big deal; it's been done! And they're called Computers, ya yoink!" And so X became more outspoken and scoffed at being left behind as Generation after Generation built upon her [After all, this is Generation X we're talking about, not Generation Y or XY.] work. And X joined the ranks of the old foggey generations before, and could but watch as the world changed around her. But one thing is for sure, X knew her Windows were right!
For years I have been posting on their web site and sending e-mail to Microsoft suggesting that Open Sourcing is a good idea. Could they actually be listening?:) Hey, if you think it is a good idea, did you bother to let that position be known to Microsoft? Anyway, we'll see how it pans out, but I will continue with my dual-boot system (Linux for Real Work, Windows for Games) for the forseeable future come what may.
Of course, MS tech support has been more doting over me than ever as of late since I found a real stumper of a bug with their IE 5.0 Japanese Support update (installing it screwed up my video, which now only runs VGA on a 4MB Video Card and a 21" monitor) and pointed out in their response they actually BROKE the licencing agreement (they agree to acknolegde any support request within 24 hours, and it took them over 48 just to tell me it was being transfered to a Tech Support specialist.) Now, if I had the Source Code, sure as hell I'd have fixed it myself by now! C'est la vie -- c'est la Systeme Capitolist.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the concept of FreeMWare and will probably support that too, but when VMWare was first released, I did not hesitate to buy a legitimate individual licence not only for the potential for it to serve my needs, but for the future potential of it supporting them better.
In fact, despite having paid my due, if VMWare suddenly became free today, I would no more ask for a refund then become a single-booting Microsoft user >shudder< :) and I can only hope that others feel the same way. The money that VMWare gets can -- and I say "can" because there is always the potential [Microsoft] for a company [Microsoft] to just take you money and run [Microsoft] -- that that money can be devoted to a steady stream of development. Thus I would still support it even if it were "Free".
There are still a lot of hurdles to VM support of generic OSes, and even VMWare doesn't support OS/2 or BeOS, never mind MacOS X Server PC port, but the constant stream of revenue which makes them look like an IPO-potential capitalist player gives them not only the force of user pressure but the application of capitol clout to get the information they need from companies like IBM and Be Systems to support their operating systems.  [In fact, it is especially in Be Systems interest to be supported by VMWare as that would increase their sales margin into the ranks of 'on the fence' users who don't want to go through the trouble of setting up a whole new OS more or less untested.]
However, without question and for all allowable components that are not otherwise protected by third-party copyright, VMWare should be OpenSource! I'm sure I have no need to extol the virtues of OpenSource to the denizens of the /. community, so I will say simply, OpenSource increases development speed and produces quality code, so VMWare, this is your valued customer speaking -- Open Up! OpenSource!
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
Sure, we'll have no more Odd Days after today, but we've had so many of them over the course of our lives, I say, so what? I've had my fill. Now the first Even Day in over 1000 years! now that's cool! I bet no-one remembers the last time we had one of those. But I tell you, I feel sorry for our Great Grandchildren born 1 January 2100. They may never experience either an Even or an Odd Day. So sad.
:) ] :)
OTOH, in the Coptic Calendar, they won't have another Even Day until 15 October 2283, but there will be another Odd Day on 11 September 2000.
If you are Ethiopic however, you need to wait only until 13 October 2007 for your next Even Day, the next Odd Day being the same as in the Coptic Calendar.
Alas, though if you follow the Islamic Calendar, the next Even Day will not be until 8 February 2562, though there should be a new Odd Day as soon as 1 August 2087.
Persians have it even worse. The next Even Day for them won't be until 22 April 2621, though 20 March 2000 will be another Odd Day for you.
The Bah'a'i will have their next Even Day 10 April 2225, but 21 March 2000 is also an Odd Day.
For those of us following along on the Hebrew Calendar, our next Odd Day will be 5 April 2011, but we will have to wait until 24 April 2240 for our next Even Day.
Ni Hao, because if you are Chinese and follow the cyclical system of 60 years, then Even and Odd days are quite common for any lifetime. Take for instance the next Odd Cycle Day, which will be Chinese New Year next year, 5 February 2000; the next Even Cycle Day will be 24 February 2001. But, if you consider the 60 year cycle has repeated 78 times since the Chinese calendar was established, then the next time the cycle count will be Even is 17 March 2105, and the next time it will be Odd is Chinese New Year 2044, on 30 January. Every other Chinese New Year is an Odd Day, actually.
[You're probably getting pretty sick of this at this point but I shall continue...
If you are Hindu, your Even and Odd days depend on whether you're using the Old or New Lunar or Solar Calendars. In the modern Lunar Calendar, 27 November 1999 will be an Even Day, but the next Odd Day will not be until 30 April 3054. However in the Old Lunar Calendar, the next Even Day will not be until 3 April 2899, but the next Odd Day will be 14 April 2010. For the Solar Calendar, the next Modern Even Day will be 17 May 2078, but the next Modern Odd Day will occur as soon as 14 April 2009. For the Old Solar Calendar, things are just as bleak as for the Old Lunar One: we will have to wait until 1 June 2899 for another Even Day, but the next Old Odd Day will be 16 April 2010.
Mes amis, je continue en français à célébrer la Révolution. Puis, dans le calendrier de la Révolution, je raconte que nous avons ensuite un Jour Pair le 2nd janvier 2000, mais dois attendre jusqu' à le 23e septembre 2102 à notre Jour Impair prochain. Mais si nous regardons le Calendrier Révolutionnaire Moderne, alors le 1er janvier 2000 sera le Jour Pair suivant, et le 22nd septembre 2102 sera Impair.
[Please consult Babelfish Liberally and for more information about the French Revolution, I suggest consulting the most respected historical source at the next NoVaDWVS meeting, 22 November 1999... <-- Plug.]
Anyway, where would a list of Calendar Dates be without our good friends, the Mayans. Yes, thanks to Reingold and Dershowitz who provided the resources for all this information, I can tell you that the next Long Count Odd Day by one calculation of the Mayan Epoch will be 23 September 2033, and the next Even Day won't be until 13 October 4772!! That's going to be a long wait, but take solice, because if you only regard the Haab and Tzolkin Calendars, then you get many Even and Odd days each year. For instance, then next Haab Even Day will be 27 April 2000, and the next Odd Day will be 3 December 1999. The next Tzolkin Even Day will be Tomorrow, because today is an Odd Day.
Of course, if you missed today's Odd Day, not only is Tomorrow another Odd Day but might I recommend getting Rustic and celebrating it on 2 December 1999, when it occurs its last time for 1000 years in the Old Julian Calendar, or wait until 15 February 2000 for the next Julan Even Day. Of course, if you're an Astronomer, then you're only concerned about the Julian Day Number. Fortunately, the next Julian Even Day Number will be 24 February 2023, but the next Odd Julian Day Number won't be until 31 October 3805!
But none of this is ISO Standard, so therefore, I suggest that the next ISO Even Day will be Tuesday 4 January 2000, and the next ISO Odd Day will be Monday 20 December 1999. Alas, the last one for the next 1000 years will none the less be 26 December 1999.
Of course, since most of us are programmers, let me suggest that ANSI C dictates the next Even Moment will be 10 January 2004 at 13:37:04 GMT in Hexidecimal and 4 May 2000 at 06:56:33 GMT will be our next Odd Moment. Finally, this one is for those suckers that still use the OS of a certain company that may be about to be split in half: The next OLE Even Day will be 6 July 2009 at midnight GMT and the next Odd Day will be 8 August 2001 at 2:40:00 GMT.
And now you know the rest of the story...
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
Notice Japanese is suspiciously absent from the list of supported languages, but Mandarin Chinese is first. A Taiwanese product, no doubt, and perhaps if a certain neighbour to our east (north) might have raped our land 50 years ago we might be neglecting their language in our technology too. Still, let's not forget what happened to the collaborators who allowed the Japanese possession of Manchuria. . .
Something to think about.
It seems that despite being written up in the very educated annals of the British Broadcasting Corporation, that Professor Warwick has not been paying attention to enough of their programming. Were he to do so, he may have been forwarned as much as 30 or more years ago by Doctor Kit Pedler about the dangers of what he plans. Next thing you know, he will be discovering a new planet called Mondas and moving his experiments there...
EXCELLENT.
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
Those AIBO's are worthless. Why would I want a
mechanical dog with LEGS!? They need to fuse
his legs in a permanent stance and attach some
wheels so I can get him stuck in level sand or
kitchen tile. They should also add a water
dammage feature where you can just waggle his
tale for repairs. And of course, he HAS to at
least be able to say, "Affirmative Master!"
Where's AIBO's nose laser anyway?
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey,
Who is holding out for news from John Leeson's
agent that he has been comissioned to do voice
work for a large Japanese Media Conglomerate...
Yep, today, RedHat Inc. surpassed Microsoft Corporation in terms of Ask/Bid price for most of that day, in fact (still trading)! It's quite likely they will remain close (last check they differed by less than a point) for at least a little while, but I do expect a market correction soon. Just in case though, I still hung onto 10 shares or RHAT... :)
:)
Will buy back at around $40 to $50...
(Which is where MSFT was around 8 October last year...)
Remember when you call the E-Trade broker to specify that your an "Affinity" member when you confirm your order. Affinity == Get the Letter, so you're in. No Affinity == No Dice.
Bonne Chance!!
To answer your question as I believe this is why I would be requesting Mixer suggestions were I in the original poster's situation, is that typically I'd only want to listen to 1 thing at a time, say the CD-Player for instance, but my computers are all set up to give me audio feed-back, say when there is an alarm or error message, or maybe I want to mix Quake ][ (assuming the impossible situation that I would ever be interested in playing a game like that :), but wanted my own CD audio track? Thus I would want the Sound Effects from the game mixed with my CD and the frequent system errors from my NT box, my talking Web browser under BeOS and for my linux box -- um, well I guess I can forget about the Linux box for now, but you get the picture.
Anyway hope that makes things more clear. Take care.
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
A sure-fire way to get Extra-Terrestrials to invade and set up a dictatorship propped up on the basis of human slavery. :)
We had it coming...
Cheap BeOS stock, mmmm. I love buying in a Bear market... :)
When you apply for the RHAT IPO, E*Trade asks for your e-mail address (even though you already provide this via your registration). I have always had to register by phone for this deal (finally got accepted this afternoon), and they always run the e-mail address to verify eligability, thus RedHat must have simply provided them with a list of valid e-mails and they do a simple look-up. Now you know my e-mail and I got the letter, but I already registered, so don't even think about it! :)
Friend, I believe you missed the point:
It's one thing for someone to produce some content which they feel is their Intellectual Property (be it music, literature, software, video, art or what have you), and then try to achieve profit from that "idea" he or she created. That may be to many anti-FSF (against the doctrine that all knowledge should be shared globally for the good of humanity as a whole, not to benefit the individual), but a whole other issue then the one presented her.
If I choose to distribute my content freely, what right do you have to come along and take possession of it under any circumstances? One of the sad truths of this world is it is very hard to publish intellectual property. If I write a great song, I still have to find a record label to distribute it. If I can't everyone looses. But if I can, at least the record company will still pay me for the rights. They take possession and I get paid.
But what if I wanted to distribute my song to everyone? I could put it in an MP3 and put it on the web, perhaps. Say I write a story about the song and what it means to me, and put that up too. Now, maybe my web provider, as publisher, would request compensation FROM THE AUTHOR (me) for the right to publish. E.g. School Fees, ISP Charges, or the right to publish advertising along with your content. Obviously this is a sweet deal for the publisher, as especially in the latter case, there is large room for profit just for hosting / publishing my IP, and they didn't even have to pay for the profit-generating content. Personally I have no problem with this either, as long as the content is still MINE and I maintain the right to re-post the same content elsewhere or remove it from the original publisher (provider) all together. Maybe a local newspaper wants to publish my story or the dance club downtown wants to play my party-mix cut. After all, my intention WAS to distribute it freely, to as large an audience as possible, and by diversifying that is what I achieve.
If my original publisher then [retroactively] takes possession of all content I once published on the service, and threatens to sue me if I allow the paper to publish my story, that's just plain evil! Again, it's one thing if I willingly SELL the rights to my IP, or even explicitly give it away, but to just unilaterally take possession of material without my explicit agreement or any form of compensation is wholly another animal. Again, the issue is not that some provider / publisher like Yahoo would take possession of your IP, but that they can prevent you from your original goal of free dissemination by this action. It's my IP and if I want it to be distributed freely, you have no right to stop me, it's as simple as that.
Just because they're calling the K7 "Athlon" now (how does one pronounce Athlon anyway -- I keep think "Altheon" for some reason. Altheon sounds better, IMHO :), doesn't mean they're dropping the K7 moniker. As was pointed out elsewhere, K7 is probably not trademark-able, and thus Athlon was choosen as the name for the trades. Remember the K6-III is also known as "Sharptooth" -- a far better name, IMHO. Thus I wouldn't read too much into the name change.
Darn them for not carrying ToTN Hour 2 in the Washington, D.C. area!
3 years ago NEC already had a product called Narrow Band for which I was managing the software driver development. They renamed it Spectral Wave, which supported 8 OC-48 along a single fibre. A year later they were running 32 frequencies along the single fibre. It's no surprise to me that someone has upped the number of frequencies to 40, though at speeds much greater than OC48. All I'm saying is DWDM is not such a hot new technoledgy and Lucent shouldn't be touting itself as the instigator of the advance. When you think about it, the whole concept of freq-multiplexing makes a lot of sense anyway. However, extending the signal length should be a great advance in the lessening of Line Repeater necessity.
But the sad end of the stick is we still have Cable and local Telephone monopolies jacking up prices for lower and lower quality service. Alas, 'tis but a pipe dream...
Okay, I read the review, and sure you can sail your way around the equator, but what about the poles? I really like Civilization, but one think I utterly hated about it was, at the north pole there was an impenetrible barrier. If I go far enough north, I should come out the other side! And the land mass of the pole should be MUCH less than that around the equator. At least Populous III got it right, more or less. After the CTP linux port, the first priority for Civilization 4.0 should be fixing the globe, assuming it is not fixed already. I'll buy it, but without globe support, it's no improvement to me.
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
Hey, this company's East Coast office is right around the corner from here! Anybody want me to walk around the corner and check them out? :)
:)
Now, if they only had a model with 8 5 1/2" bays.
The upcoming Ultima IX: Ascension will be featuring a product placement where the Avatar is only able to order Coke Classic at pubs throughout Brittania. Also, the next version of Tomb Raider will have Lara Croft extolling the virtues of a product she can't live without: genuine Trojan Latex condoms... :)
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
I got a letter from Castlewood last week and it looks like at least for Internal SCSI, it will be another 1 to 2 months! They then tried to push an EIDE drive on me. Geesh! EIDE can Byte Me. :)
:)
Will still buy the ORB Though!
[Hey Andrew, get with the programme and buy one with me!]
Just let them run 'An Unearthly Child' in that format, and move on from there... At least those PAL lines won't be chopped anymore as in NTSC. Only problem is, video is still a monster to compress. Maybe one 25-minute episode could be MPEGed onto a $1.50 CD, but at even $30 per 2.2 GB Orb and a limited xfer rate of 12 MB/s, that won't due. Panisonic L-101U (?) still cost the same per media, but are at least 5.2GB, double-sided and optical. How about Sony/Philips DVD-RW? Still not a full-capicity DVD writer though. And Goddess only knows how much an MPEG-4 encoder card/software would go for! I mean, even if we're not Film Pirates (We're not, right! :), writable DVDs would be great for home movies and such. I guess it's just a matter of time...
[With all due respect to the generation that coined that phrase -- the one that begat we X.]
In the beginning there was Babbage, and many the years his ideas and others lay dormant. But then lo, there was ENIAC, and it was good! But the goddess Insectidae saw this and was angered by the light of this ENIAC, and all its children, produced without air. And they were attracted to the light, and there was a great inward Popping sound, and the minions of ENIAC and her successors ran diligently around her hulken skin replacing her airless lights incessantly.
Then there was BellLabs, and thus was born the 3-Legged Spider that could kill the minions of the goddess Inscetidae! Slowly but surely the airless lights disappeared, and the Children of ENIAC grew smaller and sleeker. And they consumed the 3-Legged Spiders, and it was good. But still, the Children of ENIAC were large and slothy, and still required many, many 3-Legged Spiders, which they then called Transistor, by which to live.
Then the Transistors started to form many-legged collectives. The Transistors were packed tighter and tighter, with only a few legs exposed, Integrated into a colonies which they called Circuits. And these black Integrated Circuits further reduced the Children of ENIAC, until some underdeveloped offspring formed small, hand-sized entities, which could do the ubiquitous functions of Add, Subtract, Multiply and Divide with inhuman speed. And these small Children begat others and begat others and begat others and so on until they called themselves such as Palm, but that was yet many years to come, and we have not yet reached the Generation of X.
Then it was 1969, and Man walked on the Moon and HAL 2000, a descendant of ENIAC, was foreseen in a Vision by the late Kubrick, and a Great Bird reminded us to live long and prosper and the world rejoiced! [The King William V version of this document has the additional line: "And thus they knew the Cybernetic Men would roam the cities and the Pepperpots cried an extinguishing tone, first with a mission to EX-TER-MIN-ATE, and then more horrific still, with mass purchases of Piston Engines all across the land."] And thus was begat the Generation of X. And those of X learned of what had come, and saw their parents and their Holy Cards and their ancient tongue of Fortran, and were thankful it was not them. For X had avoided the lurching progress of the last quarter century and were grateful they had not suffered it. For they were now on the vanguard, with a perspective like no other! Young enough to have escaped the slow years of ancient progress, yet old enough to see the coming changes in perspective.
And so it was that X had its War of Stars, its Striking of Empires and its Jedihical Return. And it understood when the Reagan spoke of the War of Stars and again when the Clinton did, and it knew the nature of the Phantom Menace like no one since. And it knew Apple; it knew XT, TRS-80 and C64, all the Children of ENIAC, now small enough to live in our human homes. And we invited them, slowly at first, but in ever increasing numbers, watching, as they became as ubiquitous as the ancient Telephone and Microwave. They knew Atari, they knew Intellivision [nod to a certain moderator there...] and they knew the Connecticut Leather Company -- and they saw it all disappear.
"I knew that company." Spoke one of X of those days of yore. "I remembered passing it many times from my home in West Hartford. Coleco was what we called it. So lively a place, we watched its cabbage fields rot as we drove by in those bygone years. Then it was just a husk. Gone forever, and all we had left was our Commodore and our GWBasic for DOS. Little did we know what a virus the latter would spread..."
So it was that the phoenix rose again, festering in the Park of Xerox for many years. Thus came Macintosh and Nintendo and Sega, and another generation we watched go by. And it was good. But the virus did not lay dormant, for the goddess Insectidae grew restless at her near defeat and helped the virus grow. It gathered strength and saw the success of Macintosh and said, "I must have that!" And so it plotted and conspired to develop the Window of Oblivion, as the Children of ENIAC continued to contract.
"I had seen pictures of old hand-held Children of ENIAC, what we used to call Calculators. What a thrill it was to own my own! Not only did it Add, Subtract, Multiply and Divide, it took logarithms, cosines, and plotted graphs and was even programmable using Reverse Polish Notation. I also had a Wizard to help me remember things, the Original. It even had expansion cards, which could do anything from add more memory to translate Happy Birthday into Chinese. Little did I know what I was holding was the ancestor of a being many generations removed." So it was that the seeds were being sown.
But while the Windows of Oblivion began closing in on germination, a secret was wrought, known only to kings and their minions. And they called it ARPA. And the discoverers, like the breeding at Xerox, knew not what they had created, and had not the tools to allow it to grow. So it lay dormant, when the Window of Oblivion finally took hold!
"I remember the Third Generation of the Window. It was all shiny and new and fit so nicely on my Third Generation XT, which we called 386. Finally I had escaped the confines of the DOS. Little did I know the menace lurking within." The tables had turned and the pace accelerated.
3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 32, 95, OSR1, OSR2, 98: faster and faster they came, wave upon wave. Killing our OS/2 and our Macintoshes like a worm to the core. And so too those ancient Integrated Circuits got denser and faster, and we had 386, 486, Pentium, MMX, PentiumPro, Pentium II, Celeron, Xeon, Pentium III and K6-3DNow swarming, each generation trying to extinguish all others. The legions were afoot; the stage was set, and there seemed like no one left to fight.
"I remember installing Linux pre-1.0 on my 486. I loved it! It was great to finally escape from the gaze of the Window of Oblivion. Finally, there was a third way. We all thanked the generations that came before, the AUX, SunOS, BSD, but now there was a generation for us." And X knew, slowly but surely, there was a light in this generation.
Then came the Genf-people, who formed an enclave called CERN. And they plotted and planned and knew that information needed to be transmitted, indexed and cross-indexed again, like the net of a spider. And they saw ARPA, which developed far away and was now called Internet, and they knew it was good. And thus they developed a new generation across the Whole Wide World, and they called it Web.
"I was living not far from Genf, as the locals called it -- Genève or Geneva as I have sometimes heard it called. Little did I know that in a Canton not far from mine, a new Generation was in the making! I returned to the Royal Mountain of La Belle Province where I was studying, and knew that I needed to have my own slice of this Web. It took me a year to get access, but in 1993, I finally premiered The Original George Harrison and Tomorrow People home pages. Now, if there was only a better browser than Mosaic...." The stage was set.
But the virus returned, this time with a Spry Air about it! And it saw Mosaic and Mosilla and was again jealous. So it created an Explorer and integrated it into its 95. And the world at once cheered and feared. And finally the ARPA, now the Internet, was free to prosper. No longer did the people want their machine-telephone connections to be to simple BBS. And it was that everyone wanted access to this Internet. And the generations again rejoiced. [Until pornography took over and made everything seem smutty, but that's another story...] And soon the secret of kings was as ubiquitous as the Children of ENIAC were, and it was good.
Yet as another generation was born, but a few years later, a new war was beginning, a war between the Palmists and the Sea E of Oblivion. "Look, I played Phantasy Star, PS II, PS III, Gaiden and all the rest, and I can tell you, they are not Palmists, Parma-people or the lost race of Palm. They're Palmans, from planet Palma, like Alis, got it!? Jeez, kids these days with their Play Stations and their PDAs and their iMacs! What's the big deal; it's been done! And they're called Computers, ya yoink!" And so X became more outspoken and scoffed at being left behind as Generation after Generation built upon her [After all, this is Generation X we're talking about, not Generation Y or XY.] work. And X joined the ranks of the old foggey generations before, and could but watch as the world changed around her. But one thing is for sure, X knew her Windows were right!
Oh, no! We're gonna get sued! :)
For years I have been posting on their web site and sending e-mail to Microsoft suggesting that Open Sourcing is a good idea. Could they actually be listening? :) Hey, if you think it is a good idea, did you bother to let that position be known to Microsoft? Anyway, we'll see how it pans out, but I will continue with my dual-boot system (Linux for Real Work, Windows for Games) for the forseeable future come what may.
Of course, MS tech support has been more doting over me than ever as of late since I found a real stumper of a bug with their IE 5.0 Japanese Support update (installing it screwed up my video, which now only runs VGA on a 4MB Video Card and a 21" monitor) and pointed out in their response they actually BROKE the licencing agreement (they agree to acknolegde any support request within 24 hours, and it took them over 48 just to tell me it was being transfered to a Tech Support specialist.) Now, if I had the Source Code, sure as hell I'd have fixed it myself by now! C'est la vie -- c'est la Systeme Capitolist.
But can it say, "Affirmitive, Master."?
:)
If so, I bet John Leeson is available to record the voice for it. If not, they could always get David Brierly.
I know some fellow slash-dotters (isn't that the foreign minister of Iceland?) know what I'm getting at. (Cue Grainer Theme 1...)
For those among who speak German or know how to use Babelfish, there is a brief article on this at:
http://www.vol.at/tmh/zr/na tional/wissen/news-19133.asp