The SkyCar is not vaporware, since the prototype works fine.
Even if it were somewhat vapory, this sort of design is still important.
One of the lies about automobiles -- at least in the US, I don't know how cars are advertised elsewhere -- is the myth of freedom: the open road, the great western frontier, going anywhere you want, et cetera. IRL, you're tied down to an infrastructure of fuel, mechanical support and roads. Anything that reduces the dependence on those sorts of factors enhances individual freedom.
Getting the idea of roadless private travel into people's heads would be a huge step forward.
Well, I believe that in the future, the ethics of a company will greatly impact on their bottom line. What's good for our customers is good for us, and customers will be drawn to us BECAUSE of it.
I'm glad you said that, because "future" is the key word here. I believe that libertarian and Adam Smith economics can work, but they're based on the idea of people looking at what's in their own long-term best interest.
Every time you make a decision, ask yourself how it impacts your profits in the long run. If you maximize your long-term profits, you'll automatically -- invisible-hand style -- make the decision that best serves both you and your customers.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday that the FBI is not legally entitled to remotely activate the system and secretly use it to snoop on passengers, because doing so would render it inoperable during an emergency.
No privacy issues involved, it's that the idiots might break the bugging system. (Which includes turning off the emergency road assistance and airbag functions, by the way, but we wouldn't be spying on them unless they were already guilty, right?)
The US Government is moving very consistently toward monitoring and controlling everything they can lay their hands on, so the idea that the "copyright bit" or other DRM will follow us into cars certainly seems inevitable.
Okay, you made fun of my awkward syntax. I knew that was coming right after I hit the submit button.
"Where management isn't involved and/or overseeing 'the whole pie' you're talking about a mismanaged company."
Well, you can see how the omission could give a misleading impression.:-) Nonetheless, thanks for the clarification, as I'm not opposed to managment per se.
In fact, your word "involved" is exactly what I'd like to see more of. I'd love to see business management more committed to the explicit goals of business. As a libertarian, I'd like to see the people who run businesses become emotionally involved in the process of manufacturing the best possible product, or providing the best possible service.
What tempers my libertarianism IRL is that a state of mind like that is un-natural. It's completely biological to want to take care of yourself and those who bear your genes. You have to be trained to see el photo grande, to realize that making the best product and giving the best service require short-term sacrifices, but result in maximal long-term benefit, even to yourself.
And that's the day-to-day problem that results in my coming on strong to the all-management idea. You said it by accident, but a lot of people do mean it; many who aren't literate enough to say it in so many words follow such a philosophy instinctively. People way too often has a here-now-and-me take on things. People's duration in xyz-space, t-space and social-space is minimally-existent without training, and management is just people.
The outcome is that management, like people in general, make decisions to their own immediate benefit; this is to the detriment of profit, the other people involved in the business, and their own long-term benefit. The people in managment don't just see managment as "the whole pie".... they, like everyone else, have an instinctive view of themselves as the whole pie, even to the exclusion of their own future selves. Managers (and leaders of all sorts) require training to see the long-term outcomes.
Ummm, where management isn't 'the whole pie' you're talking about a mismanaged and out of control company.
So a company's entire business should be management? The whole thing? No quality assurance? No marketing? No manufacturing? No providing a service? No profit?
Let me get this straight. The people who at their best merely support and co-ordinate the actual money-making work of the business, and at their worst cripple a business with meaningless rules and regulations, un-needed paperwork and egotistic power games... those people?
Management?
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
... IT is only a piece of the pie- it isnt the whole pie....
Well, yeah, that's true, but management wants to pretend that management is the whole pie. Despite the fact that the tech people have a lot to contribute to the qualitative running of a business, tech people are treated like line workers (who also need to be treated better, but that's a whole other post) because of the two distinct worldviews of corporate culture and IT culture.
IT culture is open and flexible, based on "what happens if we do this?" and "does it make sense?"; corporate culture is built around conformity, procedure, and (sometimes) personal prestige, which few geeks have any patience for.
I suppose I understand where you're coming from, but I do get the feeling that you haven't actually played with XBox Live.
That's true, but believe me, my inner caveman is nagging me night and day to get an XBox and DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball. I'm just afraid I'd start skipping work to tweak the "jiggliness" settings. Don't tell anyone.;-)
The consistency being fostered by XBox Live is closer to the ideas, that, for example, "Ctrl-C" is for copy on a Windows app, and "Ctrl-V" is for paste.
Okay, but for me, ESC-W is copy and Ctrl-Y is paste. I don't want consistency or transparency in the interface, I want it in the back-end protocols. I want the interface to be absolutely configurable to my tastes.
I've been using Microsoft products since 1985, and to my mind, MS wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want everybody to use MS products and they want a standard MS interface. The implication of both of those statements is that MS wants everybody to do things their way. They've never shown a fundamental commitment to making the product serve the end user the way the end-user wants.
... the "N" key on a keyboard, when pressed, should result in the letter "N", not "D".
Artistic design is a profoundly intimate process. Sometimes N needs to result in D just because. It's irrational, but essential to some kinds of creation. Creativity seems to be linked to eccentricty in a lot of cases. In an office suite, sure, keep it simple and straightforward. But in games? I kind of expect games to be weird and crazy.
And as interfaces go, I think we've just started to scratch the surface. Where does that MTV drum simulator you see at arcades fit in? Maybe there could be a theremin hooked up to the GIMP that would make some radical new form of art. How about DDR? How would you think differently, feel differently, create differently, if you entered all your code on a giant Dance Dance Revolution keyboard 20 feet long?
I'm not saying I don't have frustrations over this sort of thing -- converting from Photoshop to the GIMP is crazymaking, and I still want to try and make fvwm give me the damn arrow keys in nethack -- but my experience says that you get more from life with many different ways to do the same thing. I can't shake the feeling that interface standardization is more about selling games than making new and different and interesting games.
How you can conclude that ease-of-use improvements and accessibility create a lack of content is beyond me.
Because a lot of people would feel like Cern's hypothetical developers. I wouldn't want to develop under someone else's idea of how I should code the interface. I presume other people would have the same desire for individual expression too, especially in a community well-known for rampant individualism.:-)
(And Cern, if you're reading this, I sympathize. I've been wrongly Flamebaited, too. I hope you get lots of +1, Funny and +1, Insightful.)
It doesn't matter how good and how uniform the online user interface is if the content isn't there.
One can't help but suspect that the uniform user interface created the lack of content. Even in the general population, freedom creates more opportunities and productivity, but the game creator demographic leans more libertarian than average.
... if you're actually implying that software piracy is piracy but music piracy isn't...
Hanh? You've got me confused with someone else. Whose post did you mean to reply to?
I never said anything about software "piracy", and if I had said anything on the topic, it would have been to point out that there is no such thing as "software piracy". The term "software piracy" is just more psychological warfare.
Said warfare has apparently worked on some people. Between your login, your belief in dictionary definitions and your defense of the current legal system, I'm starting to wonder if you're actually a law student.
Why do I need one? Has the RIAA stated in its press releases that there is legitimate downloading going on? No. Does the RIAA say that you are allowed to copy your CDs for backup? No. Does the RIAA mention that you are allowed to burn tracks to your hard drive? No.
Are you saying they are mentioning these things?
Do you have a citation for this, as well?
Once again, why do I need one? Is the use of the word "piracy" in question? What about the use of the word "theft"?
Piracy is not actually happening. Theft is not actually happening. Piracy is a violent act, not copying something. Theft is taking something, not copying something. Making a copy of an mp3 doesn't destroy or remove the original, so it's not theft. The people downloading have no physical contact with the RIAA members, so it's not a violent act.
The RIAA, to protect a dying monopoly, has engaged in pure manipulation of facts and emotions. The proof is their use of words like "piracy" and "theft".
Is the language of the RIAA the language of your friends and neighbors? Is their language of the RIAA the way people actually talk and think about downloading? Does the position of the RIAA on downloading touch -- even remotely -- the point of view of the millions of people who download? No. The RIAA's language is their propaganda about why control of music distribution needs to remain strictly with them.
The RIAA indicts themselves on this issue. The evidence that the RIAA is distorting the facts comes straight from the RIAA. Do you really need a citation? Here you go: Recording Industry Association of America.
... but the RIAA hasn't purposely sued any uploader who was distributing his own music.
Their press releases don't point out the facts. Musicians are uploading their own music, you're allowed (even under current copyright law) to duplicate your CDs for backup purposes, and you're allowed to burn tracks to your hard drive for your own personal use. The RIAA never mentions these exceptions. They make blanket propaganda statements, including the use of terms like "piracy". Unless you're getting MP3s with a cutlass and an eyepatch, it's not piracy. The RIAA prefers "piracy" to "copyright violation" because one sounds violent and the other sounds like lawyers are involved, and they figure they can sway more people with an emotional appeal than a legal one.
They don't account for all the failed musicians that declare bankruptcy and stick the industry with the loss.
A lot of those musicians (for instance, Toni Braxton) were extremely successful in terms of sales and had to declare bankruptcy due to the prejudicial terms of their contracts. These contracts would never be held up in court if they were between two individuals. Only the undue influence of the RIAA has allowed these contracts to stand.
Unsuccessful musicians fall into two cases. Some would have been successful if they were marketing over the internet and pocketing some actual cash instead of paying huge percentages and fees to their labels. Others would still have been unsuccessful, but would have spent less money failing. In either case, the industry wouldn't be stuck with the loss; they would never have been involved in the first place.
Copyright didn't originate with feudalism, but as an attack on feudalism.
The attack failed. Copyright only helps the artists if they never sign a contract. If artists never sign, the artists keep the money, and the labels, professional middlemen, get nothing. Unfortunately, the labels now hold the copyrights (by contract), and artists receive only a tiny percentage of the revenues from their work.
Until recently, though, the best way to promote your music was with a contract. The artist provided talent and the label provided promotion. If artists could find a method of promoting their own material without the labels -- something with low overhead and access to customers all over the planet -- the labels would slowly start to lose their source of income.
That method is the internet.
The hookers-and-blow crowd might still prefer going with a major-label contract, but the labels no longer have their de facto monopoly on distribution. That's why the RIAA and others are desperately trying to portray all downloading as a criminal act. They're engaging in a campaign of psychology to create an unthinking aversion to non-label distribution -- not copyright violation, that's just an angle.
I think we've just found the title of the 'insane business deal' movie that's going to air in about 18 months. I was thinking "Retards At The Gates" or "The Crack Shift", or even "Yet Another Cable Docudramedy About Insane Executives". but
1. Trinity dies for no reason, as they don't use her death in any meaningful way.
Neo had to let himself be taken over by Smith in the final fight in order to defeat Smith. Trinity had to die, or Neo would never surrender himself. He was willing to risk the future of the entire human species to save her. He would survive to go back to her no matter what. The Oracle surrendered to Smith in order let Neo know -- at precisely the right moment -- "Everything that has a beginning has an end." Neo had to come to some kind of end. B5 fans will remember that "The only way out is to surrender to tock."
4. Neo's death in the end...
Neo isn't dead.
Check the dates on the call traces in the first movie. Matrix is in early 1998. Reloaded is six months later, Revolutions comes minutes to hours after Reloaded. But 13 months after Revolutions, Neo is in the phone booth telling someone:
"I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us, you're afraid of change. I don't know the future, I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how this is going to begin.
I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls and boundaries, a world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you."
I thought perhaps Revolutions would end inconclusively with respect to the war, and that Neo was talking to the Agents, or the Architect. Now, who knows? Is this an old enemy or a new one? Did the Architect change his mind? Is/are Smith still out there somewhere? Do the Agents continue fighting the humans? Are there humans who don't want other humans to be free of the Matrix?
In short, the "Death of the Internet" due to lack of IP space is a myth, which doesn't bode well for getting IPv6 rolled out any time soon.
Perhaps, but IPv6 will make addresses cheap and plentiful. Right now I pay $10 a month for one static IP. I want there to be so many addresses available that providers start advertising "Over 60,000 static IPs free with every account!" (Or the equivalent in name-based routing or any other technology that makes it quick and easy for me to throw another box on the network and connect it to the rest of the world.)
Re:Hacking And Overclocking - What?
on
Hackers On Atkins
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
There's a reason our bodies have a such mode as lipolysis; it was meant to be used once in a while.
I'll go a little farther and say that it's meant to be used most of the time. Our evolutionary background was in low-carbohydrate environments, which is why the Atkins diet is sometimes called "the Caveman diet". Contrary to nutritional folk wisdom, it's the current high-carbohydrate agricultural environment that's unnatural.
Atkins discovered his diet when he started ingnoring nutrionists. He started as a cardiologist, and despite the high-carb and low-fat diets traditional nutritionists recommend, his patients continued to get fat and die of heart attacks. When he looked into existing studies, he found that carbohydrate deprivation has minimal effect on the human body, and that it caused rapid weight loss by shifting metabolic modes and burning fat.
I've been on Atkins, and I lost over 25 kilos of fat in about six months while eating 3500 calories a day, including downing entire pints of sour cream with a spoon. My exercise program was non-existent unless you count clicking the remote.:-) My rate of weight loss and other physical indicators were all dead on to predictions made by Atkins in his book. I've tried lots of the popular diets, and none of them delivered on their promises except Atkins.
The Mozilla lizard is widely recognized by developers and early-adopters on the web, but does not reach far beyond these groups. It is also used inconsistently across projects and products.
IIRC, the lack of a strong visual identity started about the same time Toho started suing people for using *zilla in conjunction with a lizard or dinosaur logo. There's some more about this at Davezilla's Notzilla page.
Slashdot Mirror
The SkyCar is not vaporware, since the prototype works fine.
Even if it were somewhat vapory, this sort of design is still important.
One of the lies about automobiles -- at least in the US, I don't know how cars are advertised elsewhere -- is the myth of freedom: the open road, the great western frontier, going anywhere you want, et cetera. IRL, you're tied down to an infrastructure of fuel, mechanical support and roads. Anything that reduces the dependence on those sorts of factors enhances individual freedom.
Getting the idea of roadless private travel into people's heads would be a huge step forward.
Page is out of date by almost a year.
:-)
Wow. They've had a year to correct the typo "f light test" (first paragraph, second sentence)?
Maybe they should switch their proofreading staff to metric.
Well, I believe that in the future, the ethics of a company will greatly impact on their bottom line. What's good for our customers is good for us, and customers will be drawn to us BECAUSE of it.
I'm glad you said that, because "future" is the key word here. I believe that libertarian and Adam Smith economics can work, but they're based on the idea of people looking at what's in their own long-term best interest.
Every time you make a decision, ask yourself how it impacts your profits in the long run. If you maximize your long-term profits, you'll automatically -- invisible-hand style -- make the decision that best serves both you and your customers.
Hmmm... maybe there should be a law that requires election districts to have the minimum possible perimeter. :-)
So women in space have hairy legs and hairy armpits? Cancel my ticket, I'll stay on Earth.
Hmmm... combine that attitude with article headline, and I think the women astronauts might prefer that we stay dirtside.
- If a VT-50 was good enough for me and good enough for my father, then it's good enough for you!
- My relatives live 10 timezones away and now my circadian rhythm is all messed up!
- Dammit, the whole point of technology is to avoid human contact! Especially with my biologicals!!!
(I was going to make a Surak joke, but flashed on Johnny Carson trying to tell jokes about Lincoln.)Probably pretty good. While reading the ZDNet article, I followed the link to the Court to FBI: No spying on in-car computers article (emphasis mine):
No privacy issues involved, it's that the idiots might break the bugging system. (Which includes turning off the emergency road assistance and airbag functions, by the way, but we wouldn't be spying on them unless they were already guilty, right?)
The US Government is moving very consistently toward monitoring and controlling everything they can lay their hands on, so the idea that the "copyright bit" or other DRM will follow us into cars certainly seems inevitable.
Okay, you made fun of my awkward syntax. I knew that was coming right after I hit the submit button.
:-) Nonetheless, thanks for the clarification, as I'm not opposed to managment per se.
"Where management isn't involved and/or overseeing 'the whole pie' you're talking about a mismanaged company."
Well, you can see how the omission could give a misleading impression.
In fact, your word "involved" is exactly what I'd like to see more of. I'd love to see business management more committed to the explicit goals of business. As a libertarian, I'd like to see the people who run businesses become emotionally involved in the process of manufacturing the best possible product, or providing the best possible service.
What tempers my libertarianism IRL is that a state of mind like that is un-natural. It's completely biological to want to take care of yourself and those who bear your genes. You have to be trained to see el photo grande, to realize that making the best product and giving the best service require short-term sacrifices, but result in maximal long-term benefit, even to yourself.
And that's the day-to-day problem that results in my coming on strong to the all-management idea. You said it by accident, but a lot of people do mean it; many who aren't literate enough to say it in so many words follow such a philosophy instinctively. People way too often has a here-now-and-me take on things. People's duration in xyz-space, t-space and social-space is minimally-existent without training, and management is just people.
The outcome is that management, like people in general, make decisions to their own immediate benefit; this is to the detriment of profit, the other people involved in the business, and their own long-term benefit. The people in managment don't just see managment as "the whole pie".... they, like everyone else, have an instinctive view of themselves as the whole pie, even to the exclusion of their own future selves. Managers (and leaders of all sorts) require training to see the long-term outcomes.
Ummm, where management isn't 'the whole pie' you're talking about a mismanaged and out of control company.
So a company's entire business should be management? The whole thing? No quality assurance? No marketing? No manufacturing? No providing a service? No profit?
Let me get this straight. The people who at their best merely support and co-ordinate the actual money-making work of the business, and at their worst cripple a business with meaningless rules and regulations, un-needed paperwork and egotistic power games... those people?
Management?
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
... IT is only a piece of the pie- it isnt the whole pie....
Well, yeah, that's true, but management wants to pretend that management is the whole pie. Despite the fact that the tech people have a lot to contribute to the qualitative running of a business, tech people are treated like line workers (who also need to be treated better, but that's a whole other post) because of the two distinct worldviews of corporate culture and IT culture.
IT culture is open and flexible, based on "what happens if we do this?" and "does it make sense?"; corporate culture is built around conformity, procedure, and (sometimes) personal prestige, which few geeks have any patience for.
I suppose I understand where you're coming from, but I do get the feeling that you haven't actually played with XBox Live.
;-)
... the "N" key on a keyboard, when pressed, should result in the letter "N", not "D".
That's true, but believe me, my inner caveman is nagging me night and day to get an XBox and DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball. I'm just afraid I'd start skipping work to tweak the "jiggliness" settings. Don't tell anyone.
The consistency being fostered by XBox Live is closer to the ideas, that, for example, "Ctrl-C" is for copy on a Windows app, and "Ctrl-V" is for paste.
Okay, but for me, ESC-W is copy and Ctrl-Y is paste. I don't want consistency or transparency in the interface, I want it in the back-end protocols. I want the interface to be absolutely configurable to my tastes.
I've been using Microsoft products since 1985, and to my mind, MS wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want everybody to use MS products and they want a standard MS interface. The implication of both of those statements is that MS wants everybody to do things their way. They've never shown a fundamental commitment to making the product serve the end user the way the end-user wants.
Artistic design is a profoundly intimate process. Sometimes N needs to result in D just because. It's irrational, but essential to some kinds of creation. Creativity seems to be linked to eccentricty in a lot of cases. In an office suite, sure, keep it simple and straightforward. But in games? I kind of expect games to be weird and crazy.
And as interfaces go, I think we've just started to scratch the surface. Where does that MTV drum simulator you see at arcades fit in? Maybe there could be a theremin hooked up to the GIMP that would make some radical new form of art. How about DDR? How would you think differently, feel differently, create differently, if you entered all your code on a giant Dance Dance Revolution keyboard 20 feet long?
I'm not saying I don't have frustrations over this sort of thing -- converting from Photoshop to the GIMP is crazymaking, and I still want to try and make fvwm give me the damn arrow keys in nethack -- but my experience says that you get more from life with many different ways to do the same thing. I can't shake the feeling that interface standardization is more about selling games than making new and different and interesting games.
How you can conclude that ease-of-use improvements and accessibility create a lack of content is beyond me.
:-)
Because a lot of people would feel like Cern's hypothetical developers. I wouldn't want to develop under someone else's idea of how I should code the interface. I presume other people would have the same desire for individual expression too, especially in a community well-known for rampant individualism.
(And Cern, if you're reading this, I sympathize. I've been wrongly Flamebaited, too. I hope you get lots of +1, Funny and +1, Insightful.)
It doesn't matter how good and how uniform the online user interface is if the content isn't there.
One can't help but suspect that the uniform user interface created the lack of content. Even in the general population, freedom creates more opportunities and productivity, but the game creator demographic leans more libertarian than average.
... if you're actually implying that software piracy is piracy but music piracy isn't...
Hanh? You've got me confused with someone else. Whose post did you mean to reply to?
I never said anything about software "piracy", and if I had said anything on the topic, it would have been to point out that there is no such thing as "software piracy". The term "software piracy" is just more psychological warfare.
Said warfare has apparently worked on some people. Between your login, your belief in dictionary definitions and your defense of the current legal system, I'm starting to wonder if you're actually a law student.
Do you have a citation for this?
Why do I need one? Has the RIAA stated in its press releases that there is legitimate downloading going on? No. Does the RIAA say that you are allowed to copy your CDs for backup? No. Does the RIAA mention that you are allowed to burn tracks to your hard drive? No.
Are you saying they are mentioning these things?
Do you have a citation for this, as well?
Once again, why do I need one? Is the use of the word "piracy" in question? What about the use of the word "theft"?
Piracy is not actually happening. Theft is not actually happening. Piracy is a violent act, not copying something. Theft is taking something, not copying something. Making a copy of an mp3 doesn't destroy or remove the original, so it's not theft. The people downloading have no physical contact with the RIAA members, so it's not a violent act.
The RIAA, to protect a dying monopoly, has engaged in pure manipulation of facts and emotions. The proof is their use of words like "piracy" and "theft".
Is the language of the RIAA the language of your friends and neighbors? Is their language of the RIAA the way people actually talk and think about downloading? Does the position of the RIAA on downloading touch -- even remotely -- the point of view of the millions of people who download? No. The RIAA's language is their propaganda about why control of music distribution needs to remain strictly with them.
The RIAA indicts themselves on this issue. The evidence that the RIAA is distorting the facts comes straight from the RIAA. Do you really need a citation? Here you go: Recording Industry Association of America.
... but the RIAA hasn't purposely sued any uploader who was distributing his own music.
Their press releases don't point out the facts. Musicians are uploading their own music, you're allowed (even under current copyright law) to duplicate your CDs for backup purposes, and you're allowed to burn tracks to your hard drive for your own personal use. The RIAA never mentions these exceptions. They make blanket propaganda statements, including the use of terms like "piracy". Unless you're getting MP3s with a cutlass and an eyepatch, it's not piracy. The RIAA prefers "piracy" to "copyright violation" because one sounds violent and the other sounds like lawyers are involved, and they figure they can sway more people with an emotional appeal than a legal one.
They don't account for all the failed musicians that declare bankruptcy and stick the industry with the loss.
A lot of those musicians (for instance, Toni Braxton) were extremely successful in terms of sales and had to declare bankruptcy due to the prejudicial terms of their contracts. These contracts would never be held up in court if they were between two individuals. Only the undue influence of the RIAA has allowed these contracts to stand.
Unsuccessful musicians fall into two cases. Some would have been successful if they were marketing over the internet and pocketing some actual cash instead of paying huge percentages and fees to their labels. Others would still have been unsuccessful, but would have spent less money failing. In either case, the industry wouldn't be stuck with the loss; they would never have been involved in the first place.
Copyright didn't originate with feudalism, but as an attack on feudalism.
The attack failed. Copyright only helps the artists if they never sign a contract. If artists never sign, the artists keep the money, and the labels, professional middlemen, get nothing. Unfortunately, the labels now hold the copyrights (by contract), and artists receive only a tiny percentage of the revenues from their work.
Until recently, though, the best way to promote your music was with a contract. The artist provided talent and the label provided promotion. If artists could find a method of promoting their own material without the labels -- something with low overhead and access to customers all over the planet -- the labels would slowly start to lose their source of income.
That method is the internet.
The hookers-and-blow crowd might still prefer going with a major-label contract, but the labels no longer have their de facto monopoly on distribution. That's why the RIAA and others are desperately trying to portray all downloading as a criminal act. They're engaging in a campaign of psychology to create an unthinking aversion to non-label distribution -- not copyright violation, that's just an angle.
The oft-referenced Courtney Love does the math is recommended reading.
sounds much better.
Neo had to let himself be taken over by Smith in the final fight in order to defeat Smith. Trinity had to die, or Neo would never surrender himself. He was willing to risk the future of the entire human species to save her. He would survive to go back to her no matter what. The Oracle surrendered to Smith in order let Neo know -- at precisely the right moment -- "Everything that has a beginning has an end." Neo had to come to some kind of end. B5 fans will remember that "The only way out is to surrender to tock."
4. Neo's death in the end...
Neo isn't dead.
Check the dates on the call traces in the first movie. Matrix is in early 1998. Reloaded is six months later, Revolutions comes minutes to hours after Reloaded. But 13 months after Revolutions, Neo is in the phone booth telling someone:
I thought perhaps Revolutions would end inconclusively with respect to the war, and that Neo was talking to the Agents, or the Architect. Now, who knows? Is this an old enemy or a new one? Did the Architect change his mind? Is/are Smith still out there somewhere? Do the Agents continue fighting the humans? Are there humans who don't want other humans to be free of the Matrix?
Who is Neo talking to?
In short, the "Death of the Internet" due to lack of IP space is a myth, which doesn't bode well for getting IPv6 rolled out any time soon.
Perhaps, but IPv6 will make addresses cheap and plentiful. Right now I pay $10 a month for one static IP. I want there to be so many addresses available that providers start advertising "Over 60,000 static IPs free with every account!" (Or the equivalent in name-based routing or any other technology that makes it quick and easy for me to throw another box on the network and connect it to the rest of the world.)
There's a reason our bodies have a such mode as lipolysis; it was meant to be used once in a while.
:-) My rate of weight loss and other physical indicators were all dead on to predictions made by Atkins in his book. I've tried lots of the popular diets, and none of them delivered on their promises except Atkins.
I'll go a little farther and say that it's meant to be used most of the time. Our evolutionary background was in low-carbohydrate environments, which is why the Atkins diet is sometimes called "the Caveman diet". Contrary to nutritional folk wisdom, it's the current high-carbohydrate agricultural environment that's unnatural.
Atkins discovered his diet when he started ingnoring nutrionists. He started as a cardiologist, and despite the high-carb and low-fat diets traditional nutritionists recommend, his patients continued to get fat and die of heart attacks. When he looked into existing studies, he found that carbohydrate deprivation has minimal effect on the human body, and that it caused rapid weight loss by shifting metabolic modes and burning fat.
I've been on Atkins, and I lost over 25 kilos of fat in about six months while eating 3500 calories a day, including downing entire pints of sour cream with a spoon. My exercise program was non-existent unless you count clicking the remote.
The new nickname for the 40 teraflops system is "Thor's Hammer."
In related news, Sandia National Laboratories has laid off all but one of its Jaffa technicians, citing diplomatic and security concerns.
They help us recognize each other, help us affirm common values and cooperate more closely.
Cooperate? To do what?
It's not that there aren't lots of good causes and good reasons for cooperation, but why this and why now? I feel like there'a another shoe coming.
The Mozilla lizard is widely recognized by developers and early-adopters on the web, but does not reach far beyond these groups. It is also used inconsistently across projects and products.
IIRC, the lack of a strong visual identity started about the same time Toho started suing people for using *zilla in conjunction with a lizard or dinosaur logo. There's some more about this at Davezilla's Notzilla page.