I wish I had some mod points to give you. In my department at work (securities firm), we use Access for some of our projects. The company as a whole uses Oracle, but for our small department (about 15 people) Access is perfect. With Access, we can make easy to use forms where people who have a limited grasp of how computers work can enter data, filter, sort, generate queries and reports. There are a couple of people in the group who adminster these databases, but everyone in the department needs to have access to the databases. For people who are just computer literate enough to muddle their way through MS Office, it is unreasonable to expect them to learn SQL. Access and FileMaker are nice tools for people who don't have the time/inclination/basic knowledge to master Postgres SQL, but whose job functions demands that they have some access to the databases.
Excellent points. The best science fiction writers (IMNSHO) are the ones that extrapolate the future based on human behavior and motivations, rather than where we think our technology will take us. Good science fiction is not about predicting tehnological advances. It should read like non-fiction that hasn't occured yet. My four favorite science fiction writers are Dick, Gibson, Stephenson, and Bester. Their novels have aged well, and seem to portray a pretty accurate picture of humanity's future because they all realize one thing: people do not change. Technological advance and trends aside, we are not that different from people thousands of years ago. Books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Neuromancer, Snow Crash, or The Demolished Man seem more and more likely, because the technological advance therorized on are secondary. We identify with the characters in books like these. These books address religion, corporate greed, politics, race relations, the military, etc. They seem plausible because the characters in these books act like we would. A good science fiction writer needs to make a few good extrapolations on where technology might be in the coming decades (nanotechnology, cloning, genetic modifications, interplanetary travel, worldwide computer networks, whatever), but the real value is addressing the human factor. A hundred (or a thousand) years from now, people will still be bitching about the government, religion, and corporations. We will still be greedy and giving, petty and generous, cruel and kind. Human beings do not change. When writing science fiction, it is important to retain that insight into human nature if you want accurately forecast where we are going.
The Wikipedia entry is definitely a bit thin. I didn't even know that there was a Wiki entry for the MegaTen series until I saw the link posted here. I added a few more games to the listing while I was on break at work, and I plan on adding quite a bit more information later tonight.
There is a such a huge bias against female techies. She reports that she had difficulties getting a couple of games to work, and the male chauvinists shoot their mouths off. She might not be the most knowledgeble Linux user in the world, but she's written several books, many articles, and taught some Linux courses. If she was a dumbass, she would be out of a job. There are far too many skilled Linux users out there fo LinuxWorld to waste time with someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. Shit like this happened when Eugenia from OSNews.com wrote an unfavorable review of Fedora Core 1. Any time a complaint was made about the way something was implemented and the little boys jump in, denigrating the female as being stupid and not knowing what she was doing. You would hope that you wouldn't see this kind of immaturity in techies, considering that the majority of them are intelligent and well educated, but it persists even today.
Look, I don't know if anything useful will ever come of Looking Glass, but I think it's great that it exists and that Sun is opening the source under the GPL. They're trying to do something a little bit different. It might be too CPU intensive to be useful right now, but it might offer some cool code to bolster another open source project or act as the foundation for a better implementation of a 3D desktop. The important thing is that they're being creaive and they're sharing their work with the rest of us.
SkyOS contacted the owners of the GPL code, and an agreement was reached that they would provide the source code once SkyOS 5 final (not the beta version) was released.
Dear Senator Hatch,
I am disappointed how you are blindly acting as a mouthpieces for the RIAA and MPAA. Granted, these industries are having problems with illegal downloads of their products being made, but it is not the business of our government to act as hitmen and enforcers for them. It is their own responsibility to adapt to consumer demand and offer consumers a product that encourages the consumer to legally obtain the product. Free does not always win out with the consumer. People are willing to pay for a product if they feel that they're getting a good deal and that the people marketing the product are listening to them and what they want. If people are offered a quality alternative to internet piracy, such as Apple's iTunes store, they do avail themselves of the service. People are more than happy to spend their consumer dollars on a product, so long as they feel that they're getting their money's worth. Paying $19.00 for a CD is unreasonable, and that is why internet piracy of music is so rampant. (The music industry's current model for marketing homogenized music with no substance is also a factor, mirroring the record slump of the late seventies, but that is not relevant as far as issues of government action is concerned.) The music industry made similar complaints when radio stations started playing popular music on the air. They gnashed their teeth, moaned, and wailed. At present, they are still with us, despite their prophesies of bankruptcy and doom. The music industry, and to a lesser extent the movie industry, are at a crossroads. It is their responsibility to meet consumer demand and offer an alternative to internet piracy that is fair. When offered a good product at a fair price, consumers will do the right thing, and make a sound moral choice. When the band Wilco released their last album as free MP3 downloads, they built a good, grassroots, word-of-mouth buzz about the album. When the recording was released in a proper retail CD format, sales of the album were twice as many as their previous album. The record industry needs to adapt, not go running to the government for aid when they're licking self-inflicted wounds created by their rampant greed and indifference to their customers. We have many problems facing this country that need the attention of our capable legislators. We need our men and women in Congress working on solutions to the problems in Iraq, problem with health care, problems with trade deficits. The RIAA and MPAA can take care of themselves.
Respectfully,
Jack Morrison Greene
Jesus, there's less than a hundred posts and there are already people trying to act cool and knowledgeble by saying that they do all of their HTML coding in vi and Emacs. Good for you. No wonder your web pages look like shit. Have you take a look at www.gnu.org lately? Lots of great info, but it's uglier than sin. People who design great looking websites usually do a quick layout in Dreamweaver, and then finetune the HTML in vi, Emacs, BBEdit, etc. Best of both worlds.
I still use my SGI Indy and an old SPARCStation 10. They're very snazzy machines. I realize my iBook and P4 laptop running Gentoo are much faster, but it's fun to web browse or write ona more exotic machine. It's kind of like writers that will only use a certain kind of pencil or an Underwood No. 5 typewriter. A certain tool just puts in you in the mood to get serious work done, even if there's a more efficient tool for the job. Also, I have a Mac Color Clasic that I'm planning to retrofit for a Mac 6500 PPC logic board with G3 upgrade.
Personally, I wouldn't list him in the top 50 either. Top 100, yes. He started something very cool, but his own personal influence on tech has faded. Emacs was a long time ago, and Hurd hasn't gone very far. His influence is similar to Steve Jobs, in that both are visionaries. The reason that Steve Jobs is number one on the list and RMS isn't on it is that Steve Jobs will do anything to carry out his vision. RMS is a dreamer and a thinker, not a doer. I would have listed Eric Raymond in the top 50, though.
Regardless of whether most people would shell out the money for the systems, I think that most Slashdotters would agree that Apple's hardware is very, very nice. 1gHz bus, serial ATA, FireWire 800, etc. The hardware rocks. This poll is meant to measure influence, not power or market share. Apple innovates, everyone else follows. Incidentally, Motorola can go fuck themselves. They sat on their asses for years, contributing nothing to the improvement of CPUs. Fortunately, IBM has picked up the slack in a big way.
While I wouldn't call Sculley an asshole, Apple's boom years during Sculley's tenure as CEO were the result of projects conceived and decisions made before he became CEO. He got to enjoy the fruits of the Macintosh, the Laserwriter, PageMaker, etc. He milked these markets for what they were worth at the expense of moving Apple into new markets (like the doomed "Star Trek" project, MacOS on PCs). He was a mediocre leader at Apple. Michael Spindler, and to a lesser extent, Gil Amelio are the ones that killed Apple.
The Japanese game companies aside from Tecmo don't give two shits about the XBox. It doesn't sell for dick over in the land of the Rising Sun. The XBox is for American gamers who want to play PC first person shooters while sitting on their couch instead of at their computer desk. The XBox is great for what it is, a platform for computer games without having to buy a new video card every six months. Don't expect a lot of variety from the titles being released.
FF7 wasn't the best FF game. That would be 6 or 8. However, it is probably safe to say that FF7 is the most beloved FF game. There are millions of people whose first experience with FF was FF7 on the PSX. Many of these people have gone on to play the games that came before and after FF7, but the fond memories of playing FF7 remain.
You should check out the the Sandman Companion. It came out a few years ago, and covers the entire run of the Sandman, offering interviews with Neil Gaiman and others, and provides an excellent analysis of the BEST comic book series ever. Anywho, there is section in the book where Gaiman discusses the stigma attached to comic books. He recounted the story of when he was introduced to a person at a party. When the person asked him what he did for a living, he replied that he wrote comic books. Ther person acted like he just cut a fart in an elevator, but out of politeness, asked if he wrote anything that he might have read. When he told the gentleman that he wrote the Sandman, the guy became excited and said something like "Good lord! you're Neil Gaiman!. You don't write comic books, you write graphc novels." Gaiman compared it to being called a lady of the evening instead of a prostitute.
Do you mean the old X-Force with Cable, Shatterstar, etc? Fuck that noise. The new X-Force, now X-Statix, beats the old X-Force like a red headed stepchild.
While Divx isn't what I would call a professional product, it is more than a tool for illegally pirating movies. Before I recently purchased my new laptop and DVD burner, my main portable machine was an iBook with a CD drive. I made Divx copies of movies that I legally purchased, so I could watch them on my iBook when I was away on trips. Also, it's a great, cost effective way to back up home movies that are going to suffer video/audio degradation from repeated palyings in a VCR. Not everyone has the money to invest in a DVD burner, making Divx a cheap alternative. Plus, they've released DVD players that recognize the Divx format.
The options offered by TiVo are well worth the subscription fee. Options like the Season Pass which can automatically skip reruns and detect time changes make the subscription fee worthwhile.
Also, typos in messages are understandable, but misspelling the word dying is a bit sad.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I had some mod points to give you. In my department at work (securities firm), we use Access for some of our projects. The company as a whole uses Oracle, but for our small department (about 15 people) Access is perfect. With Access, we can make easy to use forms where people who have a limited grasp of how computers work can enter data, filter, sort, generate queries and reports. There are a couple of people in the group who adminster these databases, but everyone in the department needs to have access to the databases. For people who are just computer literate enough to muddle their way through MS Office, it is unreasonable to expect them to learn SQL. Access and FileMaker are nice tools for people who don't have the time/inclination/basic knowledge to master Postgres SQL, but whose job functions demands that they have some access to the databases.
1. Blade Runner
The other nine in no particular order:
Minority Report
Gattaca
Total Recall
Donnie Darko
The Terminator
Aliens
Logan's Run
The Matrix
Robocop
Excellent points. The best science fiction writers (IMNSHO) are the ones that extrapolate the future based on human behavior and motivations, rather than where we think our technology will take us. Good science fiction is not about predicting tehnological advances. It should read like non-fiction that hasn't occured yet. My four favorite science fiction writers are Dick, Gibson, Stephenson, and Bester. Their novels have aged well, and seem to portray a pretty accurate picture of humanity's future because they all realize one thing: people do not change. Technological advance and trends aside, we are not that different from people thousands of years ago. Books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Neuromancer, Snow Crash, or The Demolished Man seem more and more likely, because the technological advance therorized on are secondary. We identify with the characters in books like these. These books address religion, corporate greed, politics, race relations, the military, etc. They seem plausible because the characters in these books act like we would. A good science fiction writer needs to make a few good extrapolations on where technology might be in the coming decades (nanotechnology, cloning, genetic modifications, interplanetary travel, worldwide computer networks, whatever), but the real value is addressing the human factor. A hundred (or a thousand) years from now, people will still be bitching about the government, religion, and corporations. We will still be greedy and giving, petty and generous, cruel and kind. Human beings do not change. When writing science fiction, it is important to retain that insight into human nature if you want accurately forecast where we are going.
The Wikipedia entry is definitely a bit thin. I didn't even know that there was a Wiki entry for the MegaTen series until I saw the link posted here. I added a few more games to the listing while I was on break at work, and I plan on adding quite a bit more information later tonight.
There is a such a huge bias against female techies. She reports that she had difficulties getting a couple of games to work, and the male chauvinists shoot their mouths off. She might not be the most knowledgeble Linux user in the world, but she's written several books, many articles, and taught some Linux courses. If she was a dumbass, she would be out of a job. There are far too many skilled Linux users out there fo LinuxWorld to waste time with someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. Shit like this happened when Eugenia from OSNews.com wrote an unfavorable review of Fedora Core 1. Any time a complaint was made about the way something was implemented and the little boys jump in, denigrating the female as being stupid and not knowing what she was doing. You would hope that you wouldn't see this kind of immaturity in techies, considering that the majority of them are intelligent and well educated, but it persists even today.
Look, I don't know if anything useful will ever come of Looking Glass, but I think it's great that it exists and that Sun is opening the source under the GPL. They're trying to do something a little bit different. It might be too CPU intensive to be useful right now, but it might offer some cool code to bolster another open source project or act as the foundation for a better implementation of a 3D desktop. The important thing is that they're being creaive and they're sharing their work with the rest of us.
SkyOS contacted the owners of the GPL code, and an agreement was reached that they would provide the source code once SkyOS 5 final (not the beta version) was released.
Dear Senator Hatch, I am disappointed how you are blindly acting as a mouthpieces for the RIAA and MPAA. Granted, these industries are having problems with illegal downloads of their products being made, but it is not the business of our government to act as hitmen and enforcers for them. It is their own responsibility to adapt to consumer demand and offer consumers a product that encourages the consumer to legally obtain the product. Free does not always win out with the consumer. People are willing to pay for a product if they feel that they're getting a good deal and that the people marketing the product are listening to them and what they want. If people are offered a quality alternative to internet piracy, such as Apple's iTunes store, they do avail themselves of the service. People are more than happy to spend their consumer dollars on a product, so long as they feel that they're getting their money's worth. Paying $19.00 for a CD is unreasonable, and that is why internet piracy of music is so rampant. (The music industry's current model for marketing homogenized music with no substance is also a factor, mirroring the record slump of the late seventies, but that is not relevant as far as issues of government action is concerned.) The music industry made similar complaints when radio stations started playing popular music on the air. They gnashed their teeth, moaned, and wailed. At present, they are still with us, despite their prophesies of bankruptcy and doom. The music industry, and to a lesser extent the movie industry, are at a crossroads. It is their responsibility to meet consumer demand and offer an alternative to internet piracy that is fair. When offered a good product at a fair price, consumers will do the right thing, and make a sound moral choice. When the band Wilco released their last album as free MP3 downloads, they built a good, grassroots, word-of-mouth buzz about the album. When the recording was released in a proper retail CD format, sales of the album were twice as many as their previous album. The record industry needs to adapt, not go running to the government for aid when they're licking self-inflicted wounds created by their rampant greed and indifference to their customers. We have many problems facing this country that need the attention of our capable legislators. We need our men and women in Congress working on solutions to the problems in Iraq, problem with health care, problems with trade deficits. The RIAA and MPAA can take care of themselves. Respectfully, Jack Morrison Greene
Jesus, there's less than a hundred posts and there are already people trying to act cool and knowledgeble by saying that they do all of their HTML coding in vi and Emacs. Good for you. No wonder your web pages look like shit. Have you take a look at www.gnu.org lately? Lots of great info, but it's uglier than sin. People who design great looking websites usually do a quick layout in Dreamweaver, and then finetune the HTML in vi, Emacs, BBEdit, etc. Best of both worlds.
I still use my SGI Indy and an old SPARCStation 10. They're very snazzy machines. I realize my iBook and P4 laptop running Gentoo are much faster, but it's fun to web browse or write ona more exotic machine. It's kind of like writers that will only use a certain kind of pencil or an Underwood No. 5 typewriter. A certain tool just puts in you in the mood to get serious work done, even if there's a more efficient tool for the job. Also, I have a Mac Color Clasic that I'm planning to retrofit for a Mac 6500 PPC logic board with G3 upgrade.
Personally, I wouldn't list him in the top 50 either. Top 100, yes. He started something very cool, but his own personal influence on tech has faded. Emacs was a long time ago, and Hurd hasn't gone very far. His influence is similar to Steve Jobs, in that both are visionaries. The reason that Steve Jobs is number one on the list and RMS isn't on it is that Steve Jobs will do anything to carry out his vision. RMS is a dreamer and a thinker, not a doer. I would have listed Eric Raymond in the top 50, though.
Regardless of whether most people would shell out the money for the systems, I think that most Slashdotters would agree that Apple's hardware is very, very nice. 1gHz bus, serial ATA, FireWire 800, etc. The hardware rocks. This poll is meant to measure influence, not power or market share. Apple innovates, everyone else follows. Incidentally, Motorola can go fuck themselves. They sat on their asses for years, contributing nothing to the improvement of CPUs. Fortunately, IBM has picked up the slack in a big way.
While I wouldn't call Sculley an asshole, Apple's boom years during Sculley's tenure as CEO were the result of projects conceived and decisions made before he became CEO. He got to enjoy the fruits of the Macintosh, the Laserwriter, PageMaker, etc. He milked these markets for what they were worth at the expense of moving Apple into new markets (like the doomed "Star Trek" project, MacOS on PCs). He was a mediocre leader at Apple. Michael Spindler, and to a lesser extent, Gil Amelio are the ones that killed Apple.
The Japanese game companies aside from Tecmo don't give two shits about the XBox. It doesn't sell for dick over in the land of the Rising Sun. The XBox is for American gamers who want to play PC first person shooters while sitting on their couch instead of at their computer desk. The XBox is great for what it is, a platform for computer games without having to buy a new video card every six months. Don't expect a lot of variety from the titles being released.
FF7 wasn't the best FF game. That would be 6 or 8. However, it is probably safe to say that FF7 is the most beloved FF game. There are millions of people whose first experience with FF was FF7 on the PSX. Many of these people have gone on to play the games that came before and after FF7, but the fond memories of playing FF7 remain.
You should check out the the Sandman Companion. It came out a few years ago, and covers the entire run of the Sandman, offering interviews with Neil Gaiman and others, and provides an excellent analysis of the BEST comic book series ever. Anywho, there is section in the book where Gaiman discusses the stigma attached to comic books. He recounted the story of when he was introduced to a person at a party. When the person asked him what he did for a living, he replied that he wrote comic books. Ther person acted like he just cut a fart in an elevator, but out of politeness, asked if he wrote anything that he might have read. When he told the gentleman that he wrote the Sandman, the guy became excited and said something like "Good lord! you're Neil Gaiman!. You don't write comic books, you write graphc novels." Gaiman compared it to being called a lady of the evening instead of a prostitute.
Do you mean the old X-Force with Cable, Shatterstar, etc? Fuck that noise. The new X-Force, now X-Statix, beats the old X-Force like a red headed stepchild.
While Divx isn't what I would call a professional product, it is more than a tool for illegally pirating movies. Before I recently purchased my new laptop and DVD burner, my main portable machine was an iBook with a CD drive. I made Divx copies of movies that I legally purchased, so I could watch them on my iBook when I was away on trips. Also, it's a great, cost effective way to back up home movies that are going to suffer video/audio degradation from repeated palyings in a VCR. Not everyone has the money to invest in a DVD burner, making Divx a cheap alternative. Plus, they've released DVD players that recognize the Divx format.
The options offered by TiVo are well worth the subscription fee. Options like the Season Pass which can automatically skip reruns and detect time changes make the subscription fee worthwhile. Also, typos in messages are understandable, but misspelling the word dying is a bit sad.
A wonderful, quirky movie that no one got to see dut to limited release. Think, Shelock Holmes and Dr. Watson a hundred years later.